Spin, PR And Viral Marketing.

The difference between Spin, PR, and Viral Marketing.

Spin is when you lie to promote a good image.

PR is what you have to do to get you out of the crap left by your lies!

And Viral Marketing s the bad or good things people say about you, all depending on your Spin and/or PR.

There couldn’t be a finer cautionary tale on the dangers of spin than the venereal (my misprint!) British Prime Minister, The Right Honourable Anthony Blair, Our Tone to his friends.

Putting my political bias to one side, Mr Blair seems to have really believed that the public are fools.

He used spin to enhance his image with the public, but to him image was the priority over substance.

There is no point in enumerating the many examples of Downing Street spin, they are already well documented.

But image over content is no way to engage and build on the trust of a not so gullible public.

Remember that any promises you make, every word you utter can, and often does come back to haunt you.

And to try to cover half-truths and maybe downright lies, as in the Iraq war, with spin attempting to make the decision appear correct is a guaranteed recipe for disaster.

No matter what the size of your company, a one-man business or the British or US Government PLC, your word is, or should be your bond.

There is no finer way to build a business than to have a well-earned and respected image, honestly won and diligently built on.

A good reputation, enhanced by PR and voluntarily passed on to others by Viral Marketing is worth more than any amount of paid for Advertising or Spin.

Mr Al Fayed, who bought the illustrious Harrods store in London, also discovered that a good name must be earned not bought.

Money can’t buy a good name, or the prestige, which goes with it.

And empty words and rhetoric will not maintain it.

PR, Public Relations, is just that, building a relationship with the people you come into contact with.

And Spin is what a car often does when it runs out of control, just before it crashes!

Internet Snake Oil

We are in awe of this wonderful being called the internet, fortunes are being made through ignorance and fear.

It’s like the old days when the bogus quack Doctor sold “snake oil” to cure all ills and gullible people queued to buy his wonder potions.

That’s exactly the scenario we have today.

Look around the WWW and what do you see?

All the old ideas, repackaged, and sold at 5 times the price.

The greatest work of all time, according to those who know on here, is a work called Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins. What a wonderful name, you couldn’t make it up!

That was written over 100 years ago.

Yet it’s still being promoted as the best thing since sliced computer chips.

Forget the get rich packages you see on the internet, where wonder kids will introduce you to riches beyond your wildest dreams.

Don’t believe me?

Some of the greatest financial brains of our time had orgasms over the wonder of the internet snake oil revolution.

Their greed and their fear of being left behind led them to invest billions of dollars on internet dreams.

We saw the dot com revolution where fortunes were made overnight with dubious promises…and we witnessed the spectacular dot com crash when those dreams were found to be just that.

The snake oil buyers got bit!

Everything you see and hear on the internet is the same as it’s always been.

Nothing changes.

All the marketing and sales skills which work so well in the real world also work on the internet.

OK, you have to dress them up a little differently.

But isn’t that true of the skills you already have and the way you apply them to different customers?

You wouldn’t sell a Roll Royce to a millionaire in the same way that you’d sell a nose job to a Barry Manilow wannabee.

But the principles are the same.

I have subscribed to a so-called internet marketing guru for three years now.

He has yet to talk about any technique, ploy or subterfuge which isn’t used every day in some form by every marketing person who has managed to keep their job.

Yes there are differences.

But the biggest difference is so basic.

No matter how good your product or ideas, they must be communicated effectively to sell.

Without the ability to communicate, your ideas are useless.

And on the internet, the method of communication is by writing supported by graphics.

And that, dear reader is why success on the internet has to be accompanied by good writing skills.

Write Selling…the art of marketing in a different media.

Enjoy your weekend,

Mike (Samuels)

A final word on the spellchecker...

Eye halve a spelling chequer

It cam with my pea sea

It plainly marques four my revue

Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word

And weight four it two say

Weather eye am wrong oar write

It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid

It nose bee fore two long

And eye can put the error rite

Its rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it

I am shore your pleased two no

Its letter perfect awl the weigh

My chequer tolled me sew!

K.i.s.s. - Keep It Simple Stupid.

Corporate Speak…Written English gone mad!

Try this.

“A marketing blog about the intersection of social media, search marketing and online public relations”

How about that for the subtitle for a blog!

Now I have no doubt the writer really knows blogging inside out.

He has probably forgotten more about copywriting than I will ever know.

But I just read the sentence to my wife, who ain’t stupid, and she said, “What does that mean?”

Now this is what I was saying in my last blog about the self-styled guru’s of the internet.

Make the thing complicated, baffle them with science, and then watch the consultancy fees roll in.

(I have no idea if the writer of the blog concerned is actually selling anything, I never got beyond the title)

The whole point of writing is to get the reader to continue reading.

If they have to stop and work out what your title means, then you have lost straight away.

In writing the whole point of the headline is…to get them to read the subhead.

And the point of that, to get them to read the first sentence.

And then the second sentence.

And if you break that natural flow, even for a moment, you stand a good chance of losing your reader.

Would the writer of the above blog talk like that in the real world?

Use those words?

I think not.

And that is the biggest problem facing a writer.

People tend to write as they think people are expected to write.

They seem to think that the complicated bull makes them sound smarter, it doesn’t.

Nothing can be further from the truth.

Write as if you were chatting.

OK.

What is the first thing we do when we are chatting to a new acquaintance.

We subconsciously adapt to their level.

Speak to them in a language that our subconscious thinks is right for them

To a baby it might be “Hi diddums”, but try saying that to a Manchester United “Neanderthal Man” fan, and you are likely to have your headlights kicked in!

You adapt to your audience.

So before you can write one word, you must know who your audience is, or it’s all a waste of time.

Picture the person and importantly, realise that you are presenting and developing an idea, a thought.

And remember, in your real world conversation, if the person you’re chatting to doesn’t understand what you mean, fine they just ask.

Not possible here.

Your readers, most if not all of them, must understand what you mean with no chance of you clarifying that meaning.

To me the art of true genius is not to understand your art yourself, but to be able to make it sound easy to others.

So make sure you KISS off the bullsh*t.

Have a good one,

Mike

P.s.

Before the author of the blog I mentioned messages me, I admit to being a satisfaction deprived, locationally disadvantaged , melanin-impoverished member of the mutant albino genetic-recessive global minority oppressor who is motivationally dispossessed, factually unencumbered and a sexually focused, chronologically gifted individual. So there.

Translation…A pissed off, lost, white male who is lazy, ignorant and a dirty old man.

Before you go...

There was once a young man who, in his youth, professed his desire to become a great writer.

When asked to define great, he said, "I want to write stuff that the whole world will read, stuff that people will react to on a truly emotional level, stuff that will make them scream, cry, howl in pain and anger!"

He now works for Microsoft writing error messages.

What is the big deal here?

I read so much online about self-styled internet gurus.

All selling their secret magic formula which has to be paid for within seven days or the spell wears off.

It seems to me that the internet is turning into a bottomless pit for unsuspecting mugs.

The internet is not some secret, sleeping giant which can only be released by those who are in possession of the magic spell which is only available from those in “the know”.

What is this big secret, this instant riches bonanza?

There is none.

The internet is no different to the world as we’ve always known it, except it's in the here and now.

Everything you’ve ever learnt can be applied to the internet with only small adjustments.

Sales and marketing is no different just because it takes place between a keyboard and the punters monitor.

Yes you do need to adapt, and anyone with a bit of common sense and able to read can perform quite nicely on the internet.

Talking about performing…nah that’s for another blog :)

They say there’s nothing new under the sun, and that goes for the internet too.

As in any new venture it’s the person who identifies a basic need, and fills that need with a product or service that the punters need and want who will be successful.

Forget the get rich quick scams, concentrate on providing a service that people want.

So how does the internet differ to the “real world”?

It’s called the attention span.

Look at a TV advert, the normal length is 30 seconds.

I know there are longer ads smartarse, but by far the most often used length is…30 seconds.

Now it’s not because the advertiser is too tight to spend his hard-earned readies on anything longer, it’s because 30 seconds has been identified as the amount of time that people will concentrate on something!

Ye I know that a great body and not many clothes may get your attention for longer, (note the asexual wording there, no sexist here) , but for you to get a message over to Mr Average, you have just this 30 second time span.

Actually it’s tragic, at a time when the written skills of most of the worlds new generation have never been so bad, here comes a medium in which you sink or swim by just those same skills.

Everything you do or have done in the past in a face-to-face situation now has to be done by word and graphics alone.

Master the art of marketing and copywriting on the net and you will make money.

"The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be the beginning."...Ivy Baker Priest

"When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us."...Alexander Graham Bell

While we're talking about change...

A farmer goes out one day and buys a brand new stud rooster for his chicken coop.
So the new rooster struts over to the old rooster and says,"Ok, old fart, time to retire."
The old rooster replies, "come on, you can't handle ALL these chickens, look what it's done to me. Can't you just let me have the two old hens over in the corner?"
The young rooster says,"Scram! Beat it! You're washed up and I'm taking over."
The old rooster says, "I'll tell you what, young stud, I'll race you around the farmhouse. Whoever wins gets exclusive domain over the entire chicken coop."
The young rooster laughs, "You know you don't stand a chance old man, so just to be fair, I'll give you a head start."
So, they get a chicken to cluck "Go!", and the old rooster takes off running.
About 15 seconds later the young rooster takes off after him. They round the front of the farmhouse and the young rooster has closed the gap He's already about 5 inches behind the old rooster and gaining fast.
The farmer, meanwhile, is sitting on the front porch when he sees the roosters running by.
He grabs up his shotgun and BOOM!, he blows the young rooster to bits.
The farmer sadly shakes his head, "Dang it,.....third gay rooster I bought this month."

The art of writing for the internet.

Get a “niche” today and you can't go wrong.

Find the right niche and success is assured so the Guru's of the
internet tell us.

I go along with that, but in the words of the song “If I only had time,
only time”

Running a business requires skills in all kinds of areas, which means
that the budding entrepreneur has to master many different aspects of
the commercial world.

This is where niche marketing falls down.

It assumes that the businessman has the time and inclination to access
many different websites and read a similar number of specialist “niche”
blogs to acquire the information and knowledge he needs.

By the way, sod Political Correctness. “He” is much quicker than writing
“he/she” or trying to find alternatives to satisfy the loony left. So
“he” it will be!

Anyway back to our poor businessman.

(I just ran spellchecker on this blog…the first correction? Businessman
should be businessperson! Are they real? Take a bow Microsoft)

“Write Selling” sets out to provide a balanced view of writing for the
internet today, taken as the whole and not one particular part of it.

A big part of business success also involves keeping up with the world,
and trying to be one-step ahead of the competition.
You can make money writing for the internet, lots of it but be prepared
to write about all sorts of things, and write about them well.

So how do you set out to write?

If you take a successful meeting or lecture as an example, the host or
speaker has managed to find the right balance between the heavy, the not
so heavy and the downright funny. A good laugh is a great aid to memory!

My view is a blog should try to be similar, laugh while you learn.

Hopefully, all these and more you will find in Write Selling.

And please remember blogging is a two-way thing.

You can add to the value of the information here with constructive
response to my posts. The good and the bad.

Ask questions, suggest topics to be covered and if you want to add to
the points covered, please feel free to do so.

Wanna laugh?

Peter and Alfred Nussbaum were tailors and partners in the firm Nussbaum
Brothers.

After many years they decided to anglicise their names and henceforth
the firm should be known as the Nuss Brothers.

After completing the legal paperwork, they informed the receptionist,
Ethel, that from Monday on she should answer the phone as “Nuss
Brothers.”

“I quit,” said Ethel.

“But why?”, asked Peter, “The pay and benefits will be the same!”

“Yeah? Well, YOU answer the phone then. I don’t want to answer and find
that the caller says he wants to speak with Mr. Nuss. Then I have to
say….. “Yes Sir; which one? P-Nuss or A-Nuss?”