photo by creativecommoners

One of my favorite books on writing is Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. In it, Anne Lamott writes:

Annie Dillard has said that day by day you have to give the work before you all the best stuff you have, not saving up for later projects. If you give freely, there will always be more. This is a radical proposition that runs so contrary to human nature, or at least to my nature, that I personally keep trying to find loopholes in it. But it is only when I go ahead and decide to shoot my literary, creative wad on a daily basis that I get any sense of full presence, of being Zorba the Greek at the keyboard. Otherwise I am a wired little rodent squirreling things away, hoarding and worrying about supply. Arthritis forms in my hands and in the hands my mind is using to shape things, in the hands of that creature in the cellar who wants and needs to use all of his favorite rags in the ragbag he works from.

You are going to have to give and give and give, or there’s no reason for you to be writing. You have to give from the deepest part of yourself, and you are going to have to go on giving, and the giving is going to have to be its own reward. There is no cosmic importance to your getting something published, but there is in learning to be a giver.

Besides the fact that there really is no cosmic importance to getting something published when everyone is a publisher (certainly not the case when Lamott wrote those words 15 or so years ago), I’m struck by how aptly it describes what we experience every day in social media.

Giving is one of the great givens, a prerequisite for success in social media. Others expect you to give freely of your time, knowledge, expertise and advice, with no obvious expectation of return on your investment.

While Lamott may have been writing about the return one derives from investing oneself fully in her writing, she could just as easily have been talking about the investment you make in your social media efforts. We’ve seen time and again cases in which the investment of giving has paid rich dividends to the giver.

If there’s no reason to write other than to give and give and give, then I think much the same can be said for participating in social media. For many business folk this may be an alien concept, but for nonprofits it nicely complements our mission-driven, social-benefit, collaborative natures.

Learning to be a giver is one of the keys to social media success. Hoarding and worrying about supply simply lead to arthritis.

photo by abnelphoto.com

I’ve been a writer since high school. It started with some really lame attempts at humor for the school paper, followed by some slightly less lame attempts at news and feature writing for the college paper. Since then I’ve held a series of positions in which writing has been an integral part of the job description. I’ve done annual reports, newsletters, brochures, direct mail and all the other projects that come with a job in marketing or communications.

I’ve always taken pride in my work. That isn’t to say I’ve been satisfied with everything I’ve written. Far from it. But I’ve been pretty conscientious in my efforts to turn out high-quality results. And my employers and clients have almost always been pleased even when I’ve been less than satisfied.

I consider writing to be a craft that, while many can manage competence, few are really good at it. It isn’t that the many couldn’t do a better job of it, it’s just that, for whatever reason, they choose not to invest the time and energy into improving the quality of their prose. Writing is easy; it’s the rewriting that’s a bitch. Turning the lathe until the shape is just right takes practice, and most people obviously don’t consider it worth the effort.

That’s fine by me. As long as there are those who value what I do and are willing to pay for it, I’m OK with being an ant among the grasshoppers. Unfortunately, the number of those who prize high-quality writing seems to be dwindling rapidly.

When did good writing become such a devalued commodity? The explosion of the internet as a communications ecosystem is a major culprit. Now that everyone has access to the printing press, we’re flooded with writing that no one in his right mind would ever pay to publish. That may be one of the reasons that most writers find it difficult to earn a living wage these days.

Worse yet, there’s a whole cottage industry of coaches and blogging “experts” whose own writing frankly doesn’t compare favorably to the lesser published writing guides. Say what you will about that dinosaur book publishing industry. At least they have editors. And fact checkers. And writers worth publishing.

Seems to me that there are two problems and no immediate solutions. First, the instantaneous “press Publish” nature of online writing has encouraged greater laziness even among those who know better. We’re seeing a lot more first drafts and far fewer fifth drafts.

Second, while bad writing has always been with us, the web makes it far more visible and accessible. Remember that saying about not sharing every thought that pops into your head? Thanks to the web, you can record the thought, share it with the world and revisit it for all eternity.

P.S. This was pretty much a first-draft effort. OK, maybe second-draft. Just imagine how great this post would have been had I invested the time and effort it deserved. But hey … it’s just the web.

photo by robert couse-baker

Going postal over the letters to Santa program. The secret behind a truly great brand. Chicken soup in the cold remedies aisle. A look at why Twitter followers without engagement is worthless.

These are just some of my most popular tweets during the month of November. No surprise in today’s jobs-challenged “recovery” that the top tweet was a post concerning my search for a communications manager (still under way, tell all your friends).

If you missed any of these when first we tweeted, be sure to check them out now. Lots of good stuff here for what ails you.

Now Hiring: a Communications Manager

The Secret to Making Your Brand Truly Great

The Case of the 4,000 Twitter Followers Who Don’t Care

Confused Stock Boy … or Brilliant Product Placement?

Let’s Play 20 Questions to a Solid Strategic Plan

Is Social Media a Marketing Thing?

Content-ment: Curation Vs. Aggregation

Postal Service Limits Letter to Santa Program

Top 20 Tweets in October

Why Facebook Continues to Suck

25 of the Most Powerful and Influential Women in Social Media 2009

Why Nonprofits Should Be on YouTube

Five Things Brand Marketing Can’t Do

Writing Errors That Make You Look Stupid

Location is the Missing Link Between Social Media and the Real World

Email Campaigns That Work for Nonprofits

Beth Asked a Question

American Red Cross – Nonprofit Social Media Marketing Example

Top 50 Journalism Blogs

Ten Things Social Media Can’t Do

photo by CarbonNYC

With all the profound advances being made daily in social media and  communications technology, anyone want to venture a guess why I’m revisiting the land of bad grammar, poor word choices, misspellings and abused punctuation?

Here’s a hint. Effective communication is only going to grow in importance in both our personal and professional lives. I don’t care what you think you do. Communication skills are now on everyone’s short list.

If perception is frequently reality, then the perception that you don’t know what you’re talking about because your writing is filled with easily corrected errors is one you need to avoid at all costs.

As much as I’d love to write an exhaustive resource list for you on this subject (insert sarcastic emoticon here), the good news is that everyone and her sister already has done it. A search of the phrase “common writing mistakes” turns up nearly 20,000 results on Google. Don’t bother sifting through them all; the following should answer most if not all of your questions. Commit them to heart and at least the writing errors that remain in your deathless prose should be a bit more esoteric.

SoYouWanna Avoid Common Writing Errors?

Common Writing Mistakes

Top Ten Common Writing Mistakes

Ten Common Writing Mistakes Your Spell Checker Won’t Find

Do You Make These 7 Mistakes When You Write?

Five Grammatical Errors That Make You Look Dumb

Common Mistakes of English Grammar, Mechanics, and Punctuation

photo by lepiaf.geo

I have a confession to make.

When I first decided to start blogging nearly nine months ago, I dreaded it just a little. Any writer can tell you about the slightly nauseous feeling they get when faced with a looming deadline, and the thought of a regular schedule of self-inflicted blog post deadlines (something no one was asking me to meet) was a bit intimidating.

What if I don’t have anything to say on a given day? What happens when inspiration fails me? What if I just don’t want to?

I got over it. And the way I got over it, to paraphrase Nike, is by just doing it. My first post was no deathless piece of prose, just a simple welcome and explanation of what the hell I hoped to do here.

As I try to add a little something of value to the vast, dark reaches of the web, I’ve come to one simple conclusion: Every professional communicator should be doing this. No excuses. No B.S. Just do it.

Why? What I get out of it is as good a place to start as any.

It’s good for my writing. What does it take to become a better writer? Uh, writing. A lot. And rewriting. And editing. Then writing a lot more. Improvement comes through constant, consistent effort. Practice really does make perfect … or at least pretty good.

“Gimme a break,” you say. “Bad enough I do it every day at work, now you want me to do it in my free time, too?” Oh, quit your whining. You wouldn’t be in the communications business if you didn’t (on some level) enjoy writing.

And here’s the good news: You can blog about anything your little heart desires. I write mostly about communications and social media because that’s what really fascinates me. Someday I’ll start another blog on horror fiction because that really fascinates me, too. But for you it might be the daily drama of parenting. Or gardening. Or Death Metal. Or how vaccinations are part of a government conspiracy to track our every movement using alien technology. If so, I probably won’t be reading you, but go with God.

It’s good for my brain. Even the laziest, most ill-conceived and poorly structured post will generally force you to think and maybe do a little research. I’ve found myself with the germ of a half-assed idea that has dragged me deep into the web, reading all kinds of fascinating stuff that, admittedly, has little to do with my original thought but stretches my brain in new directions.

It’ s good for my employer. Blogging was my first real step into the social media arena. It and Twitter have helped me build a fairly robust network of fellow professionals that I can tap when facing issues outside my areas of expertise. Anything that makes me better at my job is good for the people who employ me.

It’s good for my career. The organization I work for isn’t ready to delve deeply into social media. I can’t wait. My current and future value as a communications pro requires building experience in crafting social media strategies and comfort in using the tools. Poke the Beehive is as much about building my skills as it is sharing my knowledge and expertise with others.

It’s good for my soul. Let’s face it. If you’re in marketing or communications, you produce work on a regular basis that makes you hate yourself just a little. Maybe others tell you it’s great, it’s brilliant, it’s just what’s needed. And you look at it and think, “This kinda sucks.” Because you don’t create in a vacuum. You have people you report to, committees that review and weigh in on your projects, politics to contend with, compromises that must be made. And the result is work that may meet or even exceed the standards of others, but not your own.

(An aside: If this isn’t the case for you, if you work where you never have to compromise or settle for anything less than your personal best, then give me a call. I’d like your job.)

My blog, on the other hand, is me for better or worse. Sure, there’s a certain degree of self-editing that goes on (because I enjoy having a job, and friends, and family), but what I write here is for me, and you to the extent that I want to create something others find valuable. The limitations you find here are my own, not the result of editing by committee or business realities or any other external influences.

So when someone says, “Hey, that was a great post!” I feel pretty good about myself. Actually, I feel pretty good when someone says “Hey, that didn’t totally stink up the internet!” But that’s because I’m easy to please.

photo by the u.s. national archives

Why do we create so much crap communication? You know what I mean. The inane press release no one reads. The badly composed photo of people standing around, doing nothing of interest. The ad apparently created solely because a deadline had arrived and something was needed to fill the space. Email so dull based on the subject line that it’s deleted without being opened. Annual reports that follow the same tired formula year after year because (wait for it) “that’s how we’ve always done it.” Websites whose only purpose is to remind us that you exist (and barely succeeding at that).

At the same time, we now have these amazing tools and technologies at our disposal, just aching to be used to push the boundaries of what we mean by effective communication. Instead we use them to deliver the same old crap with ever-increasing flair and pinpoint accuracy (think Predator drone armed with cow dung missile). We have wikis and blogs and micro-blogs and social networks and virtual communities and social bookmarking and content sharing and … we use it to deliver grip-and-grin photos, bad writing and spam marketing.

We’ve got the most phenomenal content delivery systems imaginable, and yet we fill them with crap. It’s a craptastrophe of epic proportions. Please, god, save me from bad photos of guys in suits awkwardly shaking hands. And stories of meetings that even the five people at the meeting don’t want to read.

It’s time to start living up to the potential of the tools at our disposal rather than dragging them down into the sludge of our old, tired ways. There no longer are any excuses for bad content.

Can’t write? Hire a writer … there must be a million out-of-work journalists who will work cheap for you. Can’t take a picture to save your life? Take 20 minutes and read one of the thousands of blog posts that explain how to stage a shot that won’t embarrass you. Or buy a really cheap, really good stock shot. Can’t afford a graphic designer? We’re in a recession, folks. When times are tight, rates are negotiable. Or do I dare mention the wealth of design templates out there that can make your publication halfway presentable?

The point, friends, is that there’s no excuse for crap anymore. Hallelujah. If you’re still producing crap, it must mean you’re either ignorant, lazy or incompetent. Or you’ve just given up. If that’s the case, please step aside and let others who still care do the work.

In case you missed any of them, here are my 20 most popular links (in order of popularity) tweeted during the previous month. I think I post somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 or more links via Twitter each month, and these garnered the greatest response. They serve as my monthly reminder that there is some truly superior content out there to assist you in your own communication efforts; you have only to surf (or follow me).

Letting Nonprofits Act Like Businesses: One Foundation’s Brave Act of Leadership

Social, Global, Ubiquitous, and Cheap

50 Content Ideas That Create Buzz

Katya Andresen on the Six Most Miserable Mistakes of Social Marketing

Are We Breeding Social Media Ne’er-do-wells?

Social Media and the Paradox of Choice

Are You Antisocial in Your Social Media Efforts?

In Advertising, Stupidity Can Win You Awards

Communicate as You Wish Others Would Communicate With You

Five Steps to Building a Successful Social Media Strategy for Your Nonprofit

Your Story Doesn’t Move Me

The Basics of Social Media for Nonprofits

Sometimes It’s Best to Kill the Ones They Love

70 Percent of Journalists Use Social Networks to Assist in Reporting

Social Media Listening for Nonprofits

Shredding Some Misconceptions About Social Media (Part I)

Your Communications Plan: What It’s For

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Writers

Why Seth Godin Is Wrong

Tips, Tricks & Tools From 140 | The Twitter Conference

photo by tim and selena middleton

Communication isn’t rocket science. Most of us have been doing it since the moment of birth. Sometimes it takes a slap on the ass to get us started, but that’s just because some people are more obstinate than others.

If you’re not a communications professional (years of experience with the right job title and responsibilities) you may feel a bit intimidated when someone like me says you need to do a better job of communicating with your stakeholders or customers. I’d like to make this really simple and non-intimidating.

I believe that roughly eight out of every 10 people are basically good, decent folk looking to do the right thing in their lives, both at work and at home. The ninth guy is a clueless idiot beyond help. The 10th is an evil sociopath. These are the people who either get talk shows on FOX or end up running major movie studios.

For the rest of us, my guiding rule for communication is simple: Communicate with others as you wish they would communicate with you.

Do you want to be lied to, misled, confused, dazzled with bullshit, talked down to, starved for useful information, taken advantage of or left feeling slightly dirty? Me neither.

If you communicated with clarity, honesty and sincerity, focused on helping others with their issues and eager to share what you’ve learned, I guarantee you would be ahead of two-thirds of the yowling pack out there.

Yes, I’m a stickler for things like grammar and punctuation, spelling, correct word usage and all the other things that good writers fixate on. But I also appreciate sincere effort and a willingness to learn. You can master this stuff even if you never passed an English test. And one of the great things about social media is that there are legions out there who want to help you get better at it. You just have to ask.

For every email, memo, marketing piece, ad, press release, blog posting, etc., consider what you would think if you were on the receiving end. If the answer doesn’t make you happy, take another shot at it.

A few years ago writing consultant Judy Rose put together this list of common word use errors, and unfortunately it holds up very well today. If you’re one of those people who’s not sure whether it’s it’s or its, you’re or your or who’s or whose, print this one out and stick it next to your PC.

If everyone who made the errors identified in Rose’s list were to correct them, editors everywhere would breathe a huge sigh of relief.

photo by wildxplorer

Time once again for a quick roundup of the 10 most popular links I tweeted last month. Twitter continues to be a fixation for many of us, but there also was lots of interest in storytelling, internal communication and social media in general. In order of popularity:

Advice From the Pros: Telling It Like It Is courtesy of Brain Traffic, noted content strategist Kristina Halvorson‘s firm, preaches the gospel of short, sweet and simple (my kind of sermon).

Content Creation Strategy for Nonprofits is a slide deck from Kivi Leroux Miller on how you can effectively manage all the content you create in support of your marketing and communication efforts.

Peter Shankman, the man behind HARO, asks the eternal question, Is Your Social Media Expert Really an Expert?

Time for a Twitter Reality Check, courtesy of yours truly, takes a look at the reality behind the hype that is Twitter (and I’ll be reviewing some of the feedback I received in my next post).

6 Lessons From the Best Marketing Campaign Ever looks at how an unlikely underdog stunned the marketing world at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.

Wild Apricot did us all a real service in compiling Social Media for Nonprofits: 26 Presentations. Now there’s no excuse for not being ready to explain this stuff to your organization.

Kevin Spacey Explains Twitter to Letterman pretty much sums it up. Watch it. It’s funny stuff.

Use of Social Networking Tools Growing in Nursing, Medical Schools looks at a new study that finds growing popularity of Web 2.0 tools in health curricula.

How to Tell Your Story in 100 Words or Less is my take on the value we all can derive from having an elevator pitch.

Internal Communications and Twitter is me again on how Twitter might be used to support an effective internal communications program.

That’s it for July’s tweets. I’m out there every day in search of useful info on communications, marketing, social media and more, so be sure to follow me on Twitter so you don’t miss the good stuff.