Last year, I was really busy. Tons of client work, wrote a book, etc. It got to where cutting the lawn was a pain in the @#$. So we hired a lawn guy. Local business, great guy, really professional, etc etc.

Let me tell you, this was bliss. For the first time in my life, I didn’t even think of the lawn - every Tuesday, as if by magic, the lawn was cut. Not only did it make me feel good personally (bending over a lawnmower is not great for my back), but also in a work sense - it’s hard not to feel like you’ve “arrived” when you can hire out to have the lawn done.

Anyway, cut to this year. Business is not as good. Scary economy. Etc etc. The lawn care proposal for this year comes. As a service to his customers, he’s not going to raise his prices, but I’m still somewhat considering dropping it. Bad economy and all.

Then my wife steps in. “Owl” she says (she calls me “Owl”) “you are NOT dumping the lawn guy. You still make enough, and we’re not going to be the people that cut someone. He needs his customers just like you need yours. And you LOVE having the lawn cut. I’m sending that proposal back with a “yes” right now.

God, I love my wife. She puts it in pretty good perspective. Business is down a little, but it’s not down enough that I’m gonna cut my lawn guy.

From the last few blog posts, you can see that I’ve been experimenting with fonts a little bit. Must have changed the CSS sheet 50x, trying to get the best font / line space look.

And, of course, I screwed it up a few times… note to those who, like me, know just enough web stuff to be dangerous - make a backup of your CSS before you begin mucking with it. Because after an hour, it’s hard to remember what you changed to what size - and changing that one line makes your website explode.

Anyway, I settled on my old favorite - Verdana, in 10pt (or 13px or .8em or whatever passes for 10pt in web/css speak), and using 140% line spacing. I feel this combination is the easiest to read, and, being a writer, I find that pretty important.

As I write, I’m also experimenting using a different font for the sidebars - Arial 10 pt. I don’t know if I like the “two font” thing - we’ll see.

The reason I’m even writing this is because many businesses pay little to no attention to their fonts. They care about the picture that’s on the website, but don’t care so much about the look of the words. Trust me when I tell you, fonts are vital. I have done this before (play with fonts… I have an odd sense of amusement, don’t I?… Literally, I’ll spend hours changing the fonts on my website. Clearly I am out of control)… where was I?

Oh, playing with fonts. Yes. I have tested this type of thing. Tracked my conversion rate and time people spent on my website, then changed the font, and looked at the numbers again a week or two later. This is how I settled on Verdana - I have noticed better results with Verdana than any other font. Arial is second, and no other font is even remotely close.

And the size I am currently using is best. I know you corporate people like your tiny little fonts, but they look too much like fine print to me (and everyone else.) You know what “fine print” is, right? It’s where evil corporations bury all of the terms and conditions and side effects. They put “the fine print” IN fine print because (get this) NOBODY READS IT. IT’S TOO HARD. 

Trust me, “May Cause Festering Boils” will NEVER be in easy to read print.

So, if we can agree that fine print is hard to read (and a great place to bury the bad stuff), why on earth would a company use “fine print” on the pages of their website? I dunno, but lots do - they’d see better results if they changed it.

Ok, that’s today’s marketing thought. Verdana (or Arial). 10pt+ (or similar).

Yesterday, I saw a blog post by some marketing guru that really pissed me off. Essentially, he was cheering the fact that we’re going through a tough economic time.

I’m sorry, but I find that appalling.

Yes, Virginia, we are in a recession. Be it far from me to deny that, let alone cheer it on. In fact, I can’t understand why someone would.

The blog post I read yesterday was essentially saying “good, we’re in a recession. That means you are going to be forced to change your marketing. Your competition will go away, and you’ll be standing, because you adapted. YOU SHOULD BE THANKFUL THIS HAPPENED! I, for one, am thrilled” 

(this isn’t verbatim - his was actually MORE cheerful - I envisioned him doing the “tightly wound Type-A prick dance” as he wrote that)

Now, on the surface, I get it - he’s saying that in a recession, one should change their marketing, do different things, etc etc. Yea, that’s fine advice. 

But you know, there’s something wrong about cheering while people lose their jobs and saying it’s a good thing… my goodness, there is a line where “positive thinking” becomes “asshole in a suit” and this guy crossed it.  

Know what? I don’t want my competition to go away. I want all of us to thrive. My competition - my real competition - adds credibility to my industry, which can only help me.

Later in the post, this guy said something like “and all of you might want to acknowledge this recession, but count me out - I refuse to participate.”

Again, this is kind of “asshole” territory.  As if just willing it away will change the very real fact that less money is being spent.

Same as before, I “get” the overall message - if you make smart marketing choices, you may not get affected as much. Again, sound advice. But the delivery is arrogant and pompous.

Yes, the recession is real, and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t affected. I have changed a few things (this site is one of my changes); I have a few more changes in the works, and I think many of them have helped me. Business is down, but last year was my best year ever, so in comparison, that’s not such a bad thing - I do not subscribe to the “must go up every year” mentality (in one sense, it’s that kind of thinking that partially is responsible for this mess.) But business is not down for me as much as it is elsewhere, and the things I’ve done have helped me. Trust me, I’ll be here a good, long time.

Again, putting your head in the sand and saying “I refuse to participate” is nothing more than arrogant puffery. Saying “this is real, and I’m doing what I can to make sure I’m ok” is genuine.

Be genuine. And don’t be “happy” that times are hard. It’s arrogant. Plus, I’m a believer in Karma - be a jerk, and life will eventually treat you as one. 

Have a nice weekend, all.

There are times that I’m asked something like “why do you charge ‘x’ to write a simple letter?” (or webpage, proposal, etc)

While many professionals get annoyed when justifying their price, I have found that it’s really better to make the asker understand that they aren’t paying for the actual “work”, but for the results that the work produces.

Take my line of work for example: Let’s face it - anyone can put words on paper and write a letter. Or copy for a webpage. Or a marketing proposal. There’s nothing to it - press a few keyboard buttons. A child can do it.

But will it be read by strangers?  And get you the result you want? THAT’S what you are paying me for.

This reminds me of a great story that’s been floating around the net’ for a few years (I do not know who to credit for this - if anyone knows, let me know):

*****

“The huge printing presses of a major Chicago newspaper began malfunctioning on the Saturday before Christmas, putting all the revenue for advertising that was to appear in the Sunday paper in jeopardy. This was a big problem. None of the technicians could track down the cause of the malfunction. Finally, a frantic call was made to the retired printer who had worked with these presses for over 40 years. “We’ll pay anything; just come in and fix them,” he was told.

When he arrived, he walked around for a few minutes, surveying the presses; then he approached one of the control panels and opened it. He removed a dime from his pocket, turned a screw 1/4 of a turn, and said, “The presses will now work correctly.” After being profusely thanked, he was told to submit a bill for his work.

The bill arrived a few days later, for $10,000.00! Not wanting to pay such a huge amount for so little work, the printer was told to please itemize his charges, with the hope that he would reduce the amount once he had to identify his services.

The revised bill arrived:

$1.00 for turning the screw

$9,999.00 for knowing which screw to turn. “

When you get right down to it, the success of any writing is based on one thing - whether your intended audience actually reads it, understands it, and is influenced by it.

It’s really a simple rule: If your audience likes what they read, they will react favorably towards you.

Crisp, compelling writing persuades people to do business with you and/or your company. It entices readers to buy your products or contact you. Great writing allows readers to understand and agree with your position, or to think of your company/brand in a positive light.

So why do so many organizations have such ineffective writing?

There are a few reasons I think this happens. Let’s tackle these one at a time:

Reason 1: Writing is subjective

Notice this article isn’t about “bad” writing - it’s about “ineffective writing”. That’s because all writing that the public sees was written by someone, and that someone doesn’t think it’s bad (even if it really is.)

Since “everyone” can write at a basic level, writing is extremely subjective.

The marketing manager of a Fortune 500 company thinks the writing he or she wrote for the brochure is good. The business owner who wrote his or her own website thinks their writing was fine.

And hey, they may have even asked colleagues and friends: “here, read this - is it good?” And the person will read it and offer an opinion (almost always positive, too.)

But there are a few flaws in that.

The obvious flaw is most people won’t tell you the truth. Your loved ones… well, they’d rather not tell you your writing is boring. And if you’re the boss? Forget it - you won’t get the truth, and will instead get what people think you want to hear (unless, of course, I worked for you. As most of my old bosses will attest, I was pretty clear about letting them know how I felt.)

Anyway, back to your writing - your writing doesn’t have to impress your loved ones or the people who will lie to you because you control their paycheck. Your writing has to impress complete strangers, which is an entirely different ballgame.

That’s because once these complete strangers graduated school, they generally stopped reading things they didn’t want to read. You do it yourself - you don’t read things that don’t interest you or are poorly written, right? Why would you?

This is why so many companies don’t have effective writing. They simply don’t know it’s not effective, because nobody tells them “I didn’t read it because it wasn’t interesting”.

Reason 2: People do not read the way you want them to.

Most people on my website will not read this blog article. Even fewer will read this far into it. In fact, if more than one out of a hundred visitors reads this sentence, I’d be really surprised. In simple terms, nobody will read your writing like you want them to. In fact, it’s proven that many people, after reading the beginning of a letter, will jump right to the PS at the end.

It’s like that for all business writing. Prettymuch the only things that get read from beginning to end are articles and books (and even then, some people cheat and skip to the ending of a book.)

This is why “scanability” is so important. Subheadings, bolds, calls to action… it all matters, very much. This brings me to the next point…

Reason 3: People write without purpose.

I used to make resumes for friends in the past. One of my friends would want all this elaborate stuff on his resume, and agonize that I wasn’t telling his story perfectly…. he was forgetting something: a resume has ONE purpose (and only one purpose) - to get you a phone call.

That’s it. That’s the purpose of a resume. And that’s what I was writing for - to tell his story so he gets called. NOT to tell his story as he saw it (which was way too long and boring). In other words, the resume really isn’t meant to please HIM, but the potential EMPLOYER.

Too often, people look at their resume as a “deal closing” tool. They want to shine so brightly in it, they somehow think the resume itself is actually going to get them a job.

It isn’t. Its only function is to get you a phone call.

It’s the same with business writing - it should have a clear purpose.

While sometimes I do write to ‘close the sale’ and sell a product, most of the writing I do is meant to spur a contact (an e-mail, a phone call, etc). All too often I run across writing that is trying to close the entire deal instead of trying to get a phone call. There’s a big difference.

Giving a few good reasons to call you and then asking readers to do so is great. Listing every single reason why they should do business with you - that isn’t so great. It’s probably boring.

That’s like the business card that says “One call, that’s all” and “no job too small” and “free estimates” and “we deliver” and “lowest prices in town”…

I’ve sold business cards in the past, and some people do just that. They think those silly slogans get them business, so they’re going to put ALL of them on there.

It’s the same with websites… If you’re looking for a contact, keep things short and simple. Two thousand words on a page is about fifteen hundred too many in asking for a contact. I’m not saying it isn’t important to give good reasons to contact you. But the writing should have a goal, and not lose sight of that goal. This is true with every piece of writing out there.

And with that, I’m off - going to spend the weekend in Vermont with Maryellen and our friends, the Wakefields.