Monetizer (left), Curator (right)

The job’s highlight came in June: covering the annual convention of the Pharmaceutical Sales Representatives Association (PRSA) held in a Motel 6 or Holiday Inn outside Cleveland. Because most pharmaceutical sales reps of that era seemed to be former high school and college athletes dreaming of bygone glory, presentations tended to begin and end with Vince Lombardi anecdotes and quotes.  [When I die and go to hell, the punishment for my sins will be a front row seat at Eternity's motivational festival.]  Since the motel had a decent swimming pool, I alternated between listening to the positive thinking palaver indoors and working on my tan while I typed up story notes. Yes, Virginia, that is what trade reporters really do at such events.

I made sure to catch the last day’s Vince Lombardi Paean delivered by a Wayne Dyer knockoff named Dwayne hired out of Poughkeepsie. With the final “leaders aren’t born, they are made” homage to the old ball coach, the audience leapt to their feet and cheered. The group’s president, a college linebacker gone to flab, rushed toward the stage to open the Q&A session.

“Dwayne,” he panted earnestly, “can you example what you were talking about?”

In that moment, as if the Archangel Michael himself reached down from the heavens and touched me, I knew my life’s mission, or one of them anyway.  I stretched an arm into the aisle and grabbed the mic from president Flubadub.

“Excuse me, Flubs, but did you just use ‘example’ as a verb?”

I’ve been on a tear ever since, outing pompous, inflated and/or inappropriate use of language. It’s a never ending job in the tech sector, where The Word is ruled by experts in verbal inflation.

My current peeves: “curate” as a catch-all verb and “monetization” for making money.

I’m not the first to pick on the expanded use of curate as verb.  The New York Times did the best job back in 2009, noting how those who like “to curate” are indulging in a harmless form of self-inflation. Since then, use of “curate” as a verb has expanded to include any kind of managerial function, e.g., the act of selecting, commenting on and regurgitating somebody else’s news in a blog –which somehow seems a tad removed from the original function of a curator as caretaker of the soul, or of a museum.  Nonetheless, the blogosphere is rife with self-styled curators.

On another front, merely making money from a product simply won’t do anymore. One must “monetize” it.  Again, the blogosphere overflows with advice on how to “monetize” social media.  In the telecom sector there’s a movement to “monetize bandwidth.”  Translation: Make a buck.

“Monetization” sounds so phony that I was surprised to find it’s an actual word dating from the late 19th century. But its specific meaning is to legalize or coin an object as money — not profit from.

In all fairness, what appears strange to me may seem normal to many others.  Those that like to curate and monetize might be right in asserting that I’m over-educationalized and given to pedanting. I’ll mull that while I curate the barn stalls and daydream of monetizing what I muck there.

1. The Hook. The lead you just finished reading is classic reader bait. Worked, didn’t it? Three reasons why: (1) It addressed your need; (2) It succinctly told you what you’re about to read; and (3) It promised results. Writing a great lead is the hardest and most critical part of anything you write. Of the hours spent writing a blog, at least half that time should be committed to creating and refining the lead.
2. The Image. When you’re not working or sleeping you’re likely watching television or surfing the ‘Net — i.e., absorbing images. Man has loved visual representation since the first Neanderthal took carbon cinder to cave wall. Pictures tell a story. Finding the right image that complements your blog and “says it all” to the reader is second in importance only to crafting the hook.
3. How To’s. We’re all looking for direction, guidance, help. We want it in simple, structured, listed format so that when we click out of the post we can do exactly what we’ve just been told to do. This blog is a classic “how to.” You don’t have to turn every blog into a set of bullets, but don’t neglect them, either — readers love lists.
4. Proof. There’s a lot of “expert advice” out there. How can you be sure that the author knows what he’s talking about and that what he says to do actually works? Only through evidence. Example: We’re a PR firm. We’re in the business of changing outcomes for clients. Ergo we always showcase our Results.
5. Close the Sale. Most blogs peter out and die at the end because the writer doesn’t know how or when to stop. It’s simple, really: End where you began. Summarize your key points and provide a “call to action” that gets the reader off his arse and doing what you’ve just recommended.

Got all that? Great writing is great selling. You have to knock on a lot of doors, look in the customer’s eye, tell them what they’re dying to hear, then barge into the living room and get their signature on the contract, in this case, an agreement to read what you’ve created all the way to the end. It’s about the hook (lead), the image (visual story), the list (how to’s), the quals (proof), and finally, the close.

And yes, in case you were wondering, I began my career as a door-to-door salesman. I was 18 years old, sold bibles and encyclopedias, and was damned good at it. That’s the gospel truth. Now go to our Contact page and “sign here” for a free consultation.

Blog sprawl, as I call it, isn’t so much of a problem for small companies with a handful of regular bloggers who write on a few topics. But for Fortune 500 companies with multiple lines of businesses and dozens of bloggers, what begins with a few entries can over time turn into an unnavigable array of blogs hidden in the equivalent of cross-streets, back alleys and hen tracks.

Common examples of blog sprawl:

• Click on “blogs,” assuming you’ll be taken to multiple blogs, and in fact you find a single blogshack packed floor to ceiling with bloggers crawling over one another — it’s really only one blog.
• Look for “Company News” and it’s stuck in the corporate News Room, not in a blog at all. If the visitor’s aim is to follow company announcements, he or she must subscribe and receive them by email.  A simple RSS feed? — fugedaboutit.
• Seek out a great thought leadership commentary by the CEO and unless it went live that day it’s likely stuffed into a folder by month,  next to blogs by engineers and marketers who also posted then.

There are simple fixes you can undertake with your web consultant — be sure to grab him or her as this will involve re-architecting site navigation:

1. Home Page — If you have more than one blogger, it’s legitimate to promote “Blogs” on the home page with a link to your blog site. It’s misleading and confusing to say “blogs” on your home page then link to what’s really just multiple posts for one blog.
2. Segmentation — Create separate sections for each category of blog you plan to run: CEO Blog, Engineering Blog, Marketing Blog, whatever.  Categorize videos the same way — by topic and subject matter expert.  Do not throw all videos into one master “Video” section.
3. News — Make your company news a blog to help Google readily find your latest updated “news posts.”  Make it available by RSS so readers can sign up for the feed.

That’s for starters.  Follow these simple pointers and you’re well on your way to making blog posts as easy to find and follow as streets that run North-South or East West. More to come from Kate later, I’m sure.

Whether it’s a blog, a tweet, a byline, a letter to the editor, a guest editorial, a lofty “viewpoint” piece or just a blog comment, we’re talking about one thing: opinion. People like it strong. They want you to be, dare I say the word, opinionated. It means you believe in something.

The popular social media practice of “following” or “recommending” others, regardless of whether it reflects sincere interest, means the opposite. If you profess to admire everything, you likely have a firm opinion on — and believe in — nothing.  You’re not fooling anybody.

There’s a great line from an old Jason Robards movie, The Ballad of Cable Hogue. It’s the final scene. Hogue, played by Robards, is a scabby reprobate who’s just redeemed himself by saving the heroine and fighting off the bad guys — a fight that’s cost him his life. At a loss for anything else to say but the cold hard truth, the girl delivers this simple eulogy, “Lord, he wasn’t a bad man. . .and he wasn’t a good man — but by God, he was a man.”

Go ahead — stand for something, even if it means being controversial. Often that’s the only honest course. If when the end comes you haven’t made a few deserving enemies, you probably didn’t amount to much.

I attribute his actions to Fear of the Dread Lord Google. We all know the sermon: In order to drive traffic to one’s site it’s essential to lay new content on the altar daily lest Google forget we exist. Whether that’s true or not, it recalls Old Testament faith in a remote God who cares not for humans yet must be appeased. Forced to worship a deity out of fear, not inspiration, an angel would (and once did) rebel.

Existential beats essential. Writers should write and post only when possessed by their own creative demons. If the spirit moves you 10X/day, then go for it, and in the moment. If that sudden burst is followed by days or weeks of silence, so be it.  It’s when we flog ourselves to meet a deadline that matters to no one, or fill space for the sake of it, that content rings hollow like liturgy.

Algorithms add. Customers struck by the uniqueness of your vision count.

Consider a few of the things we’re never supposed to do in this business:

1. Never issue a press release on a national holiday, a Friday, over the weekend or after 6pm.
2. Never conduct a media tour between Christmas and New Year’s.
3. Never criticize anybody in social media.
4. Never argue with an editor, even when they’re wrong.
5. Oh,  and never blog on Sunday, either.

What I want to know — If you never break the rules, how do you know it’s a bad idea?

One of the most successful media tours I ever conducted was during a Christmas holiday.  Why’s that?  Because journalists were still in the office, no other companies were crazy enough to issue news or visit press — and the latter desperately needed something to cover.  We gave it to them.  The stories came out right after New Year when the wires were once again flooded with announcements that press were then too busy to pay attention to.

So ask yourself: What in your line of work should you never be doing, and would it really be such a bad idea to ignore the taboo and do it anyway?

From all the furious effort companies and agencies devote to posting comments, one might conclude it’s the new holy crusade of PR.  No sooner does an article appear in national press than PR people blurt out comments by the score.  The same happens in trade press, though to a lesser degree.  Whatever the media outlet, editors accept nearly all comments. Since anybody’s can be posted, everybody’s usually is.

Aside from providing PR people with an easy “hit,” what’s behind the current rash of commenting?   Likely it’s the herd of social media pundits, who give me a rash on a number of matters.  The common wisdom among this lot is that commenting on others’ blogs and articles helps drive traffic to your own web site.  Izzat so?  Writing in DailyBlogTips, Daniel Scacco notes that including your url in a comment may well draw traffic for awhile, but mainly when your blog is new.  After that, trying to attribute traffic spikes to a comment is a crap shoot.

So is commenting worth it, or just a waste of time?  Let’s mull that.

There may be some merit in commenting on trade media articles.  So few readers actually weigh-in on trade stories that their remarks are virtually guaranteed of placement bump-up against the story itself.  Great positioning? — you bet.  Anybody who reads the article also sees the comment right away. But does the comment generate measurable new traffic to a company’s own site?  Heck if I know.

What about national media — is it worthwhile posting comments there?  That depends.  When readers have the option to “recommend” a piece, popular comments can fly to the top of the heap and gain great position.  Just as often, though, comments are published in chronological order.  The odds of one comment standing out among the multitude posted are nil.  As for generating new traffic to the commenter’s site, who knows?

In the end, comments are just a poor man’s letter-to-the-editor.  They don’t qualify in any true sense as a placement, and don’t rank anywhere near a guest blog, byline or op ed in importance.  You say you posted a “major blog comment”?  So can my toy poodle.

Bark back if you like, but be sure to include the ROI on your PR comment program.

I’ve worked in a factory, a steel processing plant where I operated drill presses, drop presses, shears, lathes and bandsaws — heavy, fast-moving equipment that can rip your arm off if you look away for a second. When I speak of factory work, it’s from the experience of a man who has stood 8 hours a day, six days a week at a drop press, bending thousands of pieces of steel re-bar, one-by-one, to reinforce the concrete slab that keeps your house from tumbling over.

On breaks or at lunch time, I might go out in the sun and lay back on a bag of steel bolts to read “Ode to A Grecian Urn” — something a marketing executive today would reduce to the lowest common denominator and call “content.”  Friends kept a respectful distance.  I must’ve had this look that said I was thousands of miles away, maybe on the Spanish Steps where John Keats walked.  And I still would be — transported far off in spirit — when I re-entered the dark, clattering, hissing cavern of the steel plant.  I was 20, and I knew that the “content” I loved and the factory I loathed were as far removed, one from the other, as is heaven from hell.

Today when companies talk about creating “content factories,” it jars on the ear.  I have a hard time putting those two words together, at least until I realize what the social media shop floor boss means by content: blogs and tweets turned out quickly, cheaply and uniformly, like any other assembly line product.  That kind of content certainly fits in a factory environment, so it all makes sense.

Or does it?  The ostensible goal of this content is to attract the public’s interest and drive traffic to the company’s web site.  But will people care about content that holds no more life, spirit or interest than a hunk of pig iron?  If you try to run creativity through a mill, quality suffers. Lose that spark of genius that makes great content unique, and lose the people, too.

Look at the world’s truly great bloggers: in the business arena, Seth Godin, Chris Anderson, Chris Brogan, and on the political front courageous dissidents such as China’s Liu Xiaobo, Iran’s Mohammed Ali Abtahi and Myanmar’s Nay Myo Kyaw.  It makes no difference whether they blog 10X per day or only once per month: When they reach out to the world, it’s to say something significant.  These remarkable individuals write from the heart, never to meet a production quota or deadline.  For that reason, each has enjoyed a huge following.

Years ago when I started this company, my first prospective client wanted to speak to a member of the press as a reference.  The Washington Post’s Mike Mills said he’d be glad to, and proceeded to pay me the highest honor I’ve ever received:

“When Jim Crawford calls, I pick up because I know it’s important.”

We won that first account.  And since then, whether it’s in a blog or any form of communication, I’ve always tried to live up to Mike’s words.  Were I to call the media just for the sake of doing so, or blog whether or not I had anything to say, who would listen?  No one.

Crawford produces a huge amount of content for our clients: bylines, blogs, white papers, speeches, presentations, marketing collateral, op eds, letters to the editor — you name it.  We have one Iron Rule about content: Every piece must be fresh and original.  Occasional use of source material is fine as long as the reference is brief and the author of the borrowed idea is given full credit.

Here’s a conundrum: When content is produced as a “work for hire” and purchased by the client, can they do whatever they want with it?  That’s a trick question.  The answer depends on how and by whom the content is used.  Here are guidelines that may help when you face this issue.

1. Bylines Belong to the Publication.  If you pitch and place a bylined article with a media outlet, it belongs to them unless you negotiate the right to re-use the identical content.  You may not reprint it without permission.  You most certainly may not offer the same piece to another publication.
2. Guest Blogs Must Follow Copyright Laws.  Editors want fresh content.  If the guest executive blog you’ve promised them has already appeared on your web site, make sure the editor knows that, to avoid any potential conflict with or later embarrassment to the editor.  If the blog you write appears first on a publication’s site, regular copyright rules apply — the piece belongs to the media outlet.
3. Re-Purpose Means Rewrite — Not Re-Title.  Merely slapping a new headline on old content doesn’t make it new.  If a piece has great ideas worth repeating for new audiences, then it’s also worth doing a fresh take on the content from the standpoint of those readers.
4. Never Steal Someone Else’s Content.   You’ll get caught for sure. Placing a new byline on somebody else’s content is the worst editorial sin of all — even if the client owns the content.

A few years ago a British PR agency that supports one of our clients in Europe ran afoul of these rules.  The agency was lifting, in toto, bylined articles already published in the U.S. on the client’s behalf, substituting European executives’ names for the original U.S. authors’ — and pitching these pieces to UK-based media.  When the client discovered what was going on and confronted the agency, the account rep’s attitude was: “Hey, what’s the harm?  Who will ever know?”

Here is the harm.

In the Internet era, media is not confined by national boundaries, and hasn’t been for many years.  In the tech arena particularly, English is the new lingua franca, and U.S.-based media dominate.  When a story appears online in a prominent tech trade, it likely has as many readers in Mumbai, Bonn, Moscow, Beijing, Tokyo and London as in New York, Seattle or Silicon Valley.  If the same story appears twice under different names or titles, then readers — and the authorities — will be all over it immediately.  International copyright laws apply in most countries.  But even if there were no such laws, would you want to risk incensing an editor by tricking him into using content already published by another, or to lose credibility with your audiences due to such buffoonery?  Of course not.

So. . .how did I take the news that content developed for the client was appearing in multiple countries under different names?  It stopped me cold. It’s a sad comment on the state of the media world when agencies, whose principle job is to create and place fresh content for clients, pilfer others’ work and don’t even know that’s wrong.

Just as 1999 saw the last great splurge of the dot.com era before an inevitable correction, will 2009 be the crest of all the hype about social media before reality sets in?  Business Week thinks that might be the case.  One sure sign of an imminent backlash is this year’s explosion of  “experts” promising to lead everyone to social media riches.  Baker jokes about the number of out-of-work real estate agents now posing as social media gurus — and there are, in fact, quite a few who do so.  Whenever everybody and his dog (or realtor) jumps into a market, run for your life.  The end is nigh.

To be clear, Baker does not pan social media.  He urges companies to look for actual results that put this new phenomenon in perspective.

Whenever some innovation comes along, its proponents always proclaim the end of the Old Order.  Such was the case with eCommerce in the 1990s.  And, at every holiday shopping season, analysts still get worked up about the “rising growth of online sales.”  The fact is, according to Forrester Research, online sales account for just 6% of total revenue in the U.S. retail sector.  Sure, online retail is important — but it’s certainly not the whole thing.

The same is true of social media.  It’s new, it’s hot, it’s exciting, it’s changing traditional media.  And, like all movements touted as “tranformative,” it will most certainly experience a backlash and correction, after which we’ll all have a clearer understanding of how it works, and its place in the overall mix of media, marketing and communications. Actual metrics will replace the practice of taking social media on faith, e.g.,  assessing its value via “numbers of Twitter followers,” blog mentions and YouTube hits.

To digress a moment, the current obsession with numbers of Twitter followers tickles me to no end.  So I conducted an informal experiment to test the impact of negative versus positive tweets on followers.  The results were predictable in most cases, but mysterious in others.

Posting a statement like, “We’re all gonna die and go to hell,” was a surefire way to lose 15-20 followers.  However, I could get them all back and more the next day by posting some soothing pap like, “Every day in every way we are getting better and better.”

The most interesting finding of all: I could gain 10 or so followers per week for weeks at a time by doing absolutely nothing — zero posts.

What does it all mean and what does it say about the value of Twitter?  I have no idea.  Nobody else does, either, I suspect.  Until we have a more informed basis for the commercial use of social media — particularly in the B2B arena — the jury will remain “out” on their precise, accountable ROI and business value.  The answer is out there.  Bring on the market correction!