“I took a first step and ordered the book Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer. I know it’s going to improve my writing someday, if I could just get some time to read it!”

–Jennifer

“I keep a spreadsheet of all of my freelance assignments (TPS and otherwise). I include the publication, subject, word count, key deadlines, a note about where the project stands, whether it’s been submitted, and whether I’ve been paid. It helps me to stay organized and slightly more sane.”

–Dave

“The editing suggestions from the last newsletter have proven very helpful to me: walk away, give it 24 hours, read it aloud, search for repetitive words, and let someone else do it. Knowing I need the buffer of time for effective editing has caused me to get my work done earlier so that it can percolate for a while. Thanks, gang.”

–Kirsten

“In one of the newsletters, Laura gave a great tip on editing that you can “use the ‘Find’ feature to search for repeated words and change those.” I just never thought about using this option in that manner – it’s like highlighting, without pulling out the yellow marker.”

–Molly

“I like the outline. Since each story is a team effort, the outline really keeps everyone involved focused on the message.”

–Sophia

“Dave reminded us a few years ago (April of 2009) to record the interview but take notes too as you always need a backup. Recently, my note taking hasn’t been as complete as it should be and I was burned when I didn’t set up the tape recorder correctly. Now I always take copious notes during every interview.”

–Laura

“On every project, make sure you review the publication’s writer guidelines and the client’s website before you start the project. The information you discover can save you time and energy during the project development process.”

–Gerri

Onward State, a student-run blog about Penn State University, had reported via Twitter on the evening of Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012 that legendary (and recently fired) Penn State football coach Joe Paterno had died. CBS sports and other news outlets soon picked up the story.

Only problem was, JoePa wasn’t dead. Not yet, anyway.

Paterno, age 85 and in the hospital for complications from his lung cancer treatment, had been taken off a respirator—this much was true. He passed away the next morning, but not before the footballs hit the fan. The Paterno family issued a blunt rebuttal of the report, saying that the family patriarch was fighting on. CBS sports retracted its report. Angry Penn State fans made, well, angry tweets. And the managing editor of Onward State, Penn State student Devon Edwards, resigned immediately from his post, saying in a message on the blog:

I never, in a million years, would have thought that Onward State might be cited by the national media…In this day and age, getting it first often conflicts with getting it right, but our intention was never to fall into that chasm. All I can do now is promise that in the future, we will exercise caution, restraint, and humility.

It’s easy to be critical of Devon Edwards, but the fact remains he’s just a kid. He made a mistake, but he handled it in a very adult manner by issuing a sincere apology and resigning. He doesn’t deserve to lose his job, but given the intense emotion surrounding the release of Paterno, the anger from fans, and the heinous crime that was covered up or at least handled poorly by Penn State’s football staff on Paterno’s watch, it’s probably for the best.

Let’s just hope that Devon Edwards doesn’t become a Steve Bartman, the Chicago Cubs fan who tried to catch a foul ball during a playoff game with the Florida Marlins—a ball that Cubs outfielder Moises Alou was also trying to catch. Cubs fans like to think that Bartman cost them a World Series. Bartman was doing what any fan would do: trying to catch a foul ball. In the heat of the moment, he didn’t make a good decision.

Edwards is guilty of the same. In this insane, information-crazy media world into which we’ve found ourselves thrust unprepared, a world in which everything is “so 12 seconds ago,” Edwards made a mistake in the heat of the moment. In the rush to be first, to scoop the world, he goofed by not practicing one of the most basic tenants of journalism: check your facts.

Steve Bartman has since become a ghost, not talking to the media and certainly not attending Cubs games. His mistake ruined him in many ways. It would be a shame if this happened to Devon Edwards, too. Get back on the horse, kid. You’ve learned an important lesson about the sorry state of the media. Consider this a challenge to the next generation of journalists to change it.

Ugh. Sick of the acronyms yet? Only the military could come up with more contrived combinations of letters. And they have: ARGONAUT, or Applied Research reGarding Operationally Novel And Unique Technologies. (And that’s just one example…)

SOPA and PIPA are supposed to protect something of great value to companies and writers, too: intellectual property. These acts would do that by giving the Justice Department new powers to protect your intellectual property, including getting court orders that would bar online advertisers from doing business with websites that trade in illegally obtained copyrighted material, and even putting people in jail for distributing copyrighted material. That means if you write something and copyright it (you don’t even have to file the copyright—just say it’s copyrighted and it is) and post in on your website, and someone steals it and distributes it, the feds could be all over the case. The same goes for a company’s intellectual material.

This has been coming for quite some time, really. Back in the internet’s Wild West phase in the late 1990s, copyrights were largely ignored. Programs like Napster allowed people to share bad copies of songs if they were willing to wait up to an hour for them to download. You see, in those days, nearly everyone was connecting to the internet with a dial-up modem over a phone line. If the government had created an acronym for this technology, it would be SLOW, or TURTLE. Sure, a lot of pirating of copyrighted material took place, and that’s one of the reasons that Napster was shut down. But we hadn’t seen anything yet.

Fast forward to 2012. Broadband internet is everywhere, even in rural China, where US copyright law isn’t in the vocabulary. Thanks to broadband internet, file-sharing programs like BitTorrent, and hundreds of millions of people worldwide who like to share, one can download an entire two-and-a-half-hour movie in HD in literally just a few minutes. Compared to the Clinton era, the sharing of copyrighted material today is like comparing a Ferrari to a Model T Ford.

Critics of the proposed laws say they overreach and give the federal government the power to violate the first amendment and censor the internet. In fact, by the time you read this, WikiPedia and potentially dozens of other sites will have already staged day-long blackouts of their sites in protest.

What does this mean for your business? It means you need to educate yourself and make up your own mind. A good overview can be found on CNET. I won’t tell you how to think or what to decide. But this is big, and you owe it to yourself to learn the facts and then voice your opinion to your Congressmen and Senators.

1. Color can provide visual cues that direct the reader’s attention to certain parts of your document. If you want to highlight key product features, a quote, or a contact phone number, a splash of color will draw the eye to that section of the page.

Which headshot is more inviting, the left or right?

2. Color encourages readers to act.  A prospective customer reading your sales brochure is more likely to move beyond the cover if the piece uses color to appear inviting and welcoming.

3. Color conveys emotion. Red is an attention getter and expresses vitality. Green conveys freshness and health. Yellows are happy, while blue portrays a corporate look.

4. Color adds professionalism. Use of color in today’s world is expected from a professional company. Black and white print implies old technology and out-of-date methods, while color implies newness, freshness and cutting-edge technology.

5. Color adds personality. Since we live in a virtual world that often transcends borders, people like to see others (who they may not meet in person) when they view marketing materials or advertisements. The use of color brings life and personality to staff photos, images of customers in testimonials, and more.

What is important is to make certain you use color wisely. Too much color can detract from your message. Poorly-planned color schemes just convey ugliness. Lastly, remember to work with a graphics and marketing professional who can ensure that the color in all of your printed materials matches.

1. E-book sales will equal print book sales by the end of the year. While e-books have made steady inroads into the total sales of book, they aren’t at 50 percent just yet. However, it looks like e-books are making up about 20 percent of total book sales, which is phenomenal, considering that in 2008, they made up just over one percent of sales. And in some niche categories, e-books are outselling print.
2. Two dozen more major market newspapers will end their print editions. While some newspapers have completely gone out of business and others have dropped certain days from publication, the real trend seems to be a shift toward a “web-first” model, in which the online version of the newspaper is the primary product for consumers, and the print version is the “afterthought,” instead of the other way around. It’s causing massive reorganization of newsrooms and paradigm shifts in corporate cultures. It’s even messing up employees’ holidays, as companies realize that consumers still want a full day’s worth of news of traditionally “light” days like Christmas when much of the news staff is off.
3. The Internet and TV will become one. This has darn near happened. Most every new TV is being sold with full internet connectivity, and more and more people have dropped cable TV for Hulu, Netflix and other services.
4. Self-publishing will exceed the traditional publishing house route. Self-publishing is indeed growing, and self-published books make up as much as 14 percent of the market for adult fiction, according to the Association of American Publishers.
5. Reading will surpass television watching as the national pastime. Sorry, bibliophiles, but TV (or video in some form) is still king. A June 2011 Nielsen reports said that Americans are watching 22 more minutes of TV a month. Oh, well. One can dream…

Not too bad, given the ups and downs of 2011. Happy 2012!

I’d like to think that at TPS, we’ve followed their advice quite well, and the proof is in the results. As president of the company, I spend nearly my entire day on the phone, looking for leads, talking to prospective clients, nurturing relationships with existing clients, and cementing deals for new work. No “head in the sand” for me. As I wrote in the October edition of “TPS Writers’ News and Views”:

The news of a sluggish economy continues to plague many companies. Yet there will always be a need for businesses to communicate clearly, strategically and frequently with customers, prospects, employees, vendors and other key stakeholders. We recognize this reality and proactively engage in business activities to assist companies that have changing and expanding corporate communications needs.

The results? Through December, TPS had generated 21 new clients. Many of the new clients were outside of TPS’ traditional bread and butter business consisting of bylined articles in trade publications. For example, we saw great increases in requests for:

• B2B success stories
• White papers
• Blogs
• Publication in non-print outlets such as websites

TPS is adapting and staying ahead of trends in the industry. As more and more communication goes digital and to new platforms, TPS plans to be there. And we’ll continue to keep you posted on the latest developments in the industry via our Trade Secrets blog, our Facebook page, and our Twitter feed (@tradepresssvcs). Please contact us if you’d like to grow your client base, improve profits and communicate more effectively with all of your stakeholders.

Warm wishes and good business in 2012.

Gerri Knilans

Kim Jong Il

With the passing of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il, the world has lost another evil human being in a year that was full of the deaths of evil individuals. (Osama bin Laden and Moammar Gadhafi being two of them). Not to make light of Kim Jong Il’s death or the potential for challenges that his passing may mean for the Korean Peninsula, but there are lessons to be learned from how the North Koreans handled the situation. What would your company do if it had to make a sudden (and perhaps unpleasant) announcement? It happens. The Steve Jobs of the world die. Products malfunction and have to be recalled. CEOs are suddenly embroiled in scandal. But more commonly, routine changes occur every day that necessitate communication with the public. Here are some tips we can learn from the North Koreans:

1. Control the timing of the announcement. Don’t let outsiders force you to make an announcement before you’re ready with the facts. Mr. Kim supposedly died on a train on Saturday, which was really Friday for America due to the International Date Line. But the reports of his death didn’t hit the US media until Monday—a good two to three days later. Even in a closed, secretive country like North Korea, bottling up news like that is an accomplishment. They even managed to launch a short-range missile around the same time the news was released. Which brings us to…

2. Let everyone know you’re open for business. The North Koreans wasted no time in launching missiles, showing the world that their internal military command structure was intact, and not to use their leader’s death an opportunity to invade (however unlikely a scenario that may be). If your company is making a big announcement, make sure the public, your employees and your investors know that the company won’t grind to a halt just because you’re making a change… and you’re not open to a hostile takeover from a private equity company.

3. Have a succession plan. There’s a saying that goes “Your only job is to groom your replacement,” and there’s some truth to that. The North Koreans have done a good job of parading around Kim Jong Il’s son, Kim Jung Un, as the heir apparent to the leadership role in the communist state. Having a succession plan helps to reassure your stakeholders that there will be continuity when top leadership changes, and that the company will continue to be profitable and show growth.

Yes, it’s odd to draw lessons for capitalism and free-market economies from the world’s most closed, state-controlled society. But the lessons are there. After all, spinning the news was practiced long before western Europeans created free markets in the middle ages and Greek philosophers conjured up representative government thousands of years ago in Athens.

Virginia Tech's Andrea Brunais address a group of freelancers

Andrea Brunais of Virginia Tech’s Faculty Development Institute recently spoke at a gathering of freelance writers and gave them some advice on making it as a freelancer. Bruanis has more than 25 years of news media and public relations experience and is the co-author of a book on media relations titled, I See Your Name Everywhere. She has served on the editorial boards of Knight Ridder and Media General newspapers and is the recipient of a Robert Kennedy Journalism Award and first-place awards from the Florida Press Club, the Academy of Florida Trial Lawyers, and the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association. Here is a summary of her talk:

1.  Know the audience of the publication for which you wish to write. A surefire way to determine the audience is to look at the ads. They represent the interests of the current and future readers. You’re not writing to express yourself. You’re not even writing to please the editor. You’re actually aiming to connect with the readers the editor wants, which are not necessarily the ones he or she has now.

2. Don’t waste the editor’s time. Keep emails and phone calls short and to the point. Don’t pitch stories that are completely outside what the magazine does or topics that have been covered recently.

3. Make sure your story is accurate. If it’s a complex story, at the very least, run the direct quotes by the source. If the source is unhappy, the editor is the one who has to take his or her phone call, not the writer.

4. Write and then sit on the content for a day or two. Don’t turn an article in the moment you’ve written it, because you know you’re going to go back and revise—and that means sending the editor more emails and asking him or her to change your work (see item #2).

5. But—keep in touch with the editor so the editor becomes invested in the story. Production schedules change, and you don’t want to find that the editor has changed the theme for the May issue, didn’t tell you and can’t use your piece. You may or may not get a kill fee, but you sure won’t get a byline.

6. Deliver the goods.

7. Don’t exceed the word limit.

8. Write well.

9.  Have a trusted friend-cum-editor read your work over before submission.

10. Do great work, and you’ll be in demand.

At Trade Press Services, our corps of veteran writers knows all the tricks of the trade. To get your company in the press, or to create that powerful white paper or engaging blog, contact TPS at gerri@tradepressservices.com or (805)496-8850.

1. The comma. All of us were taught in school to use commas to separate items in a list: milk, bread, and eggs. But some journalists had to go and wreck things and get rid of that last comma, known as the serial comma. Why? Who knows? There are various arguments about clarity and redundancy and even bulky sentences. It definitely makes sentences like “The selection of sandwiches includes turkey, watercress, tuna and peanut butter and jelly” a little confusing…and not always appetizing.

2. The single space. Once upon a time, every sentence had two spaces at the end of the next sentence. Now most journalists use just one. Again, the logic is fuzzy. Some say it’s because computers can adjust the space after a sentence’s ending punctuation so one need not worry about sentences bumping together illegibly. All I know is that nothing is more annoying than editing someone’s work and removing all their extra spaces…only to have them edit them right back in on the next draft. Oy…

3. The paragraph. A paragraph is supposed to be composed of a topic sentence and some supporting statements—maybe four or five sentences, right? Wrong. Paragraphs exist because it’s too hard for the human eye to read long blocks of text. So, journalists break things up early and often. People don’t read newspapers like they do books or even magazines—their eyes roam and wander. Newspapers are scanned and perused; books and magazines are read. So journalists write in choppy paragraphs of sometimes just one sentence so the eye doesn’t get bogged down in the column.

4. The essay. Speaking of paragraphs, remember writing the classic five-paragraph essay on, say, George Washington in elementary school? You had your introductory paragraph, three paragraphs in the body, and then the conclusion, which often restated much of the introduction. You put your good stuff in the second paragraph—like how Washington defeated the British at Yorktown. Well, forget everything you learned. Journalists stick the good stuff right at the beginning. Putting the good stuff in paragraph two is called “burying the lede” (and “lede” is another story in and of itself). And a conclusion? Never. The story just ends. Why repeat yourself? You may as well start using extra commas and spaces, as if ink grew on trees.

Why is this? Again, newspapers are scanned and perused. If a reader only makes it halfway through the story and gets bored (or, more likely, an editor chops the story in half to make room for a mattress ad), at least they’ve gotten the most important facts.

5. Quotations. Many journalism students are shocked to learn that you can quote people in an article and not write down what they actually said. That’s right. As long as you’re close and the meaning is the same, it’s considered an accurate quote. This is probably because journalists, like cavemen, once took notes with pencil and paper. Today, in the era of the HD cell phone videos, we know what everyone says, so this rule is a little antiquated.

I could go on…but you get the point. The do’s and don’ts of writing, like other disciplines, continually change. It’s neither good nor bad. It just is…

Thank goodness—because there are a lot of them. Wikipedia lists about 200 of the most popular sites, from Facbook to iWiW (it’s big in Hungary) to My Opera (the performance, not the web browser).

What’s scary is that list is woefully incomplete, and more sites are being added every day. And what’s very real is that there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to stay meaningfully engaged in more than a small selection of these sites without giving up on your core business altogether.

Graphic by www.sironaconsulting.com/

Writers and communicators of all kinds are always taught to consider their audience. And Niles agrees. “I’m a big believer in meeting your audience where they are at, and of serving their needs using the tools most convenient for them,” he says.

At Trade Press Services, we successfully create and place bylined articles in the trade publications and on the websites that your customers read. It’s common sense, right? For some reason, this same common sense hasn’t translated over to social media, where too many companies and writers chase social media like a dog chasing its tail.

Question one for anyone using social media should be “Who is my audience?” followed immediately by, “Which social media sites do they use?” While Facebook and Twitter are general sites for most any audience, there are dozens of other venues that cater to your company’s specific niche, or your audience as a writer or blogger. And many of your customers will be using multiples sites within that same niche.

As Niles says, “It might be that if one video service, or one metrics tool, or one microblogging platform works well for you, so you don’t need to spend any time duplicating your efforts with someone else’s. There’s no point in using three different services to reach the same thousand users on each.”

Above all, find what works for your needs and your audience. If something provides results, stick with it. If it doesn’t, don’t feel an obligation to continue with what is a likely waste of your time. As Niles concludes, “It’s not your job to build someone else’s social network or publishing tool.”

If you’d like to help your company find its social media niche, contact Trade Press Services at (805) 496-8850 or e-mail gerri@tradepressservices.com.