Content wants to be free.

We all want free content.

But somebody has to pay for it, and that somebody is you. And me.

What are we willing to pay to get our content for free? What costs are we willing to pay beyond the monetary?

How much of our privacy are we willing to have invaded to get the information and convenience we desire free of charge?

How good does the content need to be in order for us to part with our hard-earned bucks? I was certainly willing to pay for New York Times opinion articles when the Times Select program was in place, but apparently, there were not enough people like me as the program was discontinued.

Now, the Wall Street Journal is one of the few major content providers to charge for content, but it’s not content I’m willing to pay for. However, when an iPhone app recently appeared that allowed free access to WSJ content, I was all over it. Rupert Murdoch is, apparently, quite upset at the existence of the app, but the technology does not exist to charge iPhone users, yet.

Many sites exact a non-monetary toll, requiring you to create an account that collects personal data that, theoretically, can be used to market products to you. These sites do assume that you are faithful in reproducing your biographical information. I am not. I have signed up for many a site as Phil McCracken, Hugh Jass or Jacques Strappe. Age 104. Etc. (While this makes me feel better, I doubt this small-time deviancy really affects the value of the database.)

But there’s other information about yourself online that you can’t hide from the marketers.

If you have a Gmail account, as I do, you already agree to let Google read your email. Why do you think the ads you see are uncannily related to the content of the message you are reading?

Troubling? Yes. Worth giving up the convenience of my FREE Gmail account? Not yet.

(As an aside, it’s really wonderful when contextual advertising fails spectacularly. See this great juxtoposition between a swine flu story, an advertisement for White Castle’s new pulled pork sandwiches, and the cover of The Jerusalem Post. Kosher? No. Funny. Yes.)
Contextual advertising is just one of the tools the advertisers have to get their meat hooks into us when we’re partaking of the free content.

On a logical level, and this is coming from a former newspaperman, I know that there is a cost to producing content. I know that top-notch, unique content costs even more. For years, I readily paid a nominal fee every day to have that content delivered to my doorstep, but the internet changed the content landscape in a fundamental way.

(Interestingly, I pay more each day for internet service than I ever paid for a newspaper subscription; ironically, none of the money I pay my ISP goes to the content creators. It’s like if my newspaper subscription money just stayed with the paper carrier and never went to the New York Times.)

So I am conflicted. I know that advertising pays for content, but I am used to getting my content for free on the internet and there is a part of me that will do what it takes to make sure I don’t have to pay, monetarily or otherwise. However, there is exceptional content out there that I have paid for in the past and would pay for again rather than go without (Sunday just isn’t Sunday without The Times, printed or not.).

And I have resigned myself to the fact that Google reading my Gmail is probably just the beginning of the future of advertising that’s directed solely at me based on where I have been browsing and what I have been writing. Behavioral targeting is the next step, but that’s another post.

— Jonathan

Photo by Fagerjord

Seriously.

Because as one of the sources in the Today Show segment said, “I just wanted to learn a little bit about a world that seems to be still asking for content.”

–Britta

As a former literary agent, friends and family are constantly asking me advice on how to get their book published. And since I end up giving out the same information over and over again, I thought I’d share a recent email I sent to a friend.

Chris emailed me because his friends have a b-to-b title they’d like to shop around. Being that the authors are M.I.T. graduates and have a successful medical consulting company, they have a pretty solid chance of getting noticed by a professional/medical book publisher. Here’s what I recommended.

//

Hi Chris,
Ian sent me your email. My experience is in consumer publishing, so I don’t have any editor contacts in the b-to-b sphere. However, some of the same search tactics still apply.

I did a search on Amazon for professional>medical books and got this result.

From this search, you’ll be able to identify book publishers who publish in your category. This is a good way to figure out who you should submit your proposal or manuscript to.

(NOTE: Chris doesn’t necessarily need an agent because his project is a professional/technical title. See below for more info on whether or not you need an agent.)

Once you narrow down your list, go to each publisher’s website to get specific instructions on how they want material submitted. And by all means, follow their guidelines so your manuscript doesn’t get trashed by some intern who was told to go through the pile and light fire to any submission that doesn’t fit their submission criteria–seriously!

McGraw-Hill is a good publisher, and you’d want their Professional-Medical division. From their description, your book would be right on target:
“McGraw-Hill MEDICAL provides students and professionals with the global standard of best healthcare practices by delivering current and comprehensive resources from leading authors and institutions.”

Here’s their page for authors who want to submit proposals.

They have a series of pages about submissions, and you’d want to be sure to go through their checklists before submitting.

In this case, it looks like they would want to see the full manuscript (vs. a book proposal).

However, if you find that other publishers want a proposal and if you need help writing one, I highly recommend the book How to Write a Book Proposal by Michael Larsen.

//

More about finding a Literary Agent
Authors hoping to get published by a mainstream consumer publisher (Random House, Penguin Putnam) will need an agent. Most mainstream publishers no longer accept submissions directly from authors. And no author should even think about signing a publishing contract with having an agent or experienced publishing lawyer (i.e. not your brother-in-law, the criminal lawyer) reviewing it first.

Don’t be stingy about giving away some of your royalties, even if you already have an offer in the bag. There are hundreds of stories about an author who didn’t fight for film rights—or foreign rights or that extra ½ percent—who got royally screwed. Agents typically have “boilerplate” contracts on file with major publishers. These boilerplate contracts represent years of haggling with the publisher’s legal department.

How to find a literary agent? Start by reading the acknowledgments page of your favorite titles in your category. Authors usually thank their agents, and agents tend to be interested fresh takes on the same topics. Don’t fret if a junior agent expresses interest in your project—do you really want to share an agent with Stephen King?

Additional tools for finding a literary agent:

• 2009 Guide to Literary Agents by Chuck Sambuchino
• Jeff Herman’s Guide to Book Publishers, Editors & Literary Agents 2009
• Thinking Like Your Editor: How to Write Great Serious Nonfiction–and Get it Published by Susan Rabiner
• MediaBistro.com’s “Pitching an Agent” column

But don’t just find the agent: find the agent who is going to add the most value.

In his recent post, “Where Have All the Agents Gone,” Seth Godin wrote, “Literary agents are crucial when publishers believe that their choice of content is essential but have too many choices and too little time. But publishers don’t trust every literary agent. They trust agents they believe in. Key point: anonymous agents are interchangeable and virtually worthless.”

Good luck!

–Britta

Confession: Up until this week, I’ve been building production schedules in Excel. It’s something I started in my early 20’s at Ammirati Puris Lintas, where I wore miniskirts and three-inch heels and tracked 100 unique print ads a month for the Dell account.

(That was before my eventual transition down to the creative floor, where, as a copywriter, I wore red corduroys and green Nikes and got to hang out in the creative lounge dreaming up campaigns for Montblanc and Marriott. Life was much better on the 35th floor.)

After hammering out dates for a July launch only to realize that a September launch would make much more sense, I loathed the thought of reworking the entire schedule. Which is when my brilliant partner Ian informed me that everyone else in the office uses ConceptDraw to build their production schedules.

Is this a print vs. web thing?

Lured in by the pretty colored lines that show intersecting milestones, I downloaded ConceptDraw and got to work. I endured multiple crashes and some annoying usability issues, but I got through it. And the launch date still wasn’t quite right.

Which is when I realized just how much extra work I had been creating for myself as an Excel devotee (er, dinosaur). Because a Gantt chart calculates the total number of days for each project phase, all I had to do was plug in the new launch date and—presto magic!—the schedule updated itself. It even knew the difference between work days and weekends.

Sometimes it’s shocking to realize ways in which you are (i.e. I am) behind the times. I use Mint.com on my iPhone. I Twitter occasionally. We play Pandora in the office on our George. I’m a slave to Basecamp and Backpack for project management, and can even work my way around Dreamweaver. So why was I still using Excel for my production schedules?

Because that’s the way I’d always done it.

Which goes to show that just like our clothes closets (i.e. miniskirts and chunky heels), our Applications folders could use a seasonal assessment.

Meanwhile, I wonder if could still rock the red cords?

–Britta

If you’ve ever watched an episode of Hell’s Kitchen or Kitchen Nightmares, you have seen (and heard) the F-bomb machine that is Gordon Ramsay. It takes a lot of moxie to walk into someone else’s business and tell them they don’t know their a*$ from their elbow, but episode after episode Ramsay does it. While both shows are entertaining, Kitchen Nightmares showcases some quality project management and problem solving skills bloody relevant to content strategy solutions.

Here is the flow of the show:

1. Assess the problem as an outside observer—Ramsay inspects the restaurant, staff and food.

*Content strategists need to find the root of the problem. Is the design struggling due to limitations with the CMS? Is the CMS choking because of an IT issue? Is the content irrelevant because of usability issues?

2. Inspect the systems being used to manage the team/projects—Ramsay watches the way employees interact and inspects the physical and interpersonal ways they distribute information from management, to the front of the house staff, on to the back of the house staff and back to management.

*Content strategists often play the role of cartographers. They take migration maps, design specs, software limitations, internal politics, wishes-on-horses, the beggars-that-ride and put the puzzle pieces together. When they are one of many vendors on a project they must stitch together vendor and client systems from: Word, Excel, online collaborative tools, Visio docs, XML, forwarded emails, IM’s and phone calls. It ain’t always fun and it ain’t always easy.

3. Remove/replace unproductive team members. Simplify complicated systems. Create authenticity, transparency and accountability—Most of the F-Bombs and “you Donkey” comments are saved for this portion of the show, this is when Ramsay gets hands-on with the staff, operations and makes projectiles out of overcooked salmon and soggy veggies.

*Content Strategists are most effective if brought in at the outset of a project but often they parachute in during the middle of a project. When that happens, identifying your strong and weak links is essential. Create new transparent systems and get all vendors, team members and management focused on the same goal.

4. Give the new system a test run. Assess. Repeat—Chef Ramsay’s new menu is usually a struggle the first dinner service. There is usually push back from management and staff but in the end he reviews, adjusts and makes it work.

*The process of creating a content strategy is…a process. It is a living, fluid monster that learns and moves and occasionally leaves a little present in the middle of the room for you after a long day at work. The ongoing execution of a content strategy takes work, in our experience at least two cycles, before finding a balance between stakeholder/content creator/editor and end-user. Be patient. Execute one, cohesive strategy. Have lots of paper towels on hand.

A successful content strategy consists of many sciences, oftentimes multiple vendors and the ability to be both uber-macro and atomically micro. Though Information Architecture doesn’t embrace all categories it is incredible useful for the heavy lifting, “whose bucket does this go in”, decision-making.  Here is a great outline and introduction to Information Architecture sans F-Bombs and cockroaches.

“In today’s fast-paced world, everyone’s looking for a shortcut. It can be very difficult to convince people, particularly senior mangers with little hands-on web experience, of the importance of taking the time to do research and develop a solid strategy…The immediate perception of progress feels good but often comes at the expense of overall efficiency and effectiveness. Since information architecture forms the foundation of the entire web site, mistakes made here will have a tremendous ripple effect.”

Morville & Rosenfeld
Information Architecture-for the World Wide Web
1998

—Ian

Now that all the inauguration hoopla is over, it’s time to make like Obama and get to work. But before we let our Basecamp to-do lists get the best of us, let’s take a breather and remember what we’re in this for.

On my corkboard, buried under production schedules, magazine layouts and meeting notes, is a little gem I pulled out of Timothy Ferris’ The 4-Hour Workweek.

It helps me remember the big picture, even when I’m feeling too overwhelmed to answer its questions.

—–

Define: What do I want to be doing?

Eliminate: Am I being productive or am I being busy? Eliminate the noise and disruption.

Automate: Delegate or automate the remaining tasks.

Liberate: Enjoy your mobility and use the time you create.

—–

Your turn: What messages are tacked up beside your desk?

BONUS: I just stumbled on Basecamp’s new time-tracking feature, check it out.

—Britta

If you’re a freelance writer, don’t make these mistakes.

As ad budgets come and go and staff writing jobs continue to evaporate, freelance content marketing is a viable way to earn a living (and buy you some time to work on that screenplay or novel). Avoid these mistakes; make your editor happy; get more work; keep the good life going.

1)    Don’t understand the primary tool of your trade—the computer. As a staffer, you worked on a six-year old version of Microsoft Office, your IT team set up your email account and no one used IM because they loved sitting in unproductive meetings all day. So when you launch your freelance business, you buy a no-name computer from a friend loaded with software you don’t know how to use. You use webmail as your primary email source because you can’t figure out how to use a real email program. And you broadcast your outdated ways to the world by using an AOL or Hotmail email address.

Bottom line: Learn the technology of your industry. It’s your job. And get a Gmail account, already. Or better yet, buy your own domain.

2)    Take full advantage of the fact that you work from home and you’re your own boss. Go out of pocket for blocks of time during the day so that when your editor has a question about a piece that’s hours away from going to press, there’s no way to reach you. Consistently take several hours—or even up to a day or more—to reply to simple email queries, thus holding your editor hostage and unable to shuttle your piece along.

Bottom line: Just because you work for yourself doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep normal office hours. If you’re committed to shopping at the mall on Wednesday afternoons, then get a Blackberry or iPhone. Make yourself available like a professional person.

3)    Refuse to learn your editor’s style guide. Submit a 3,000-word story full of dashes or space-dash-dash-spaces instead of proper em-dashes—and if your editor is kind enough to explain to you how to create a proper em- or en-dash using the Mac shortcuts and you’re on a PC, don’t bother to do a simple Google search to figure out the PC equivalent. Editors LOVE combing through 15-page documents to convert your lazy dash-dashes to proper em-dashes.

Bottom line: Pay attention to the line edits you get back from your clients. Ask for a copy of their style guide. Keep a Post-it by your computer listing which clients use the serial comma and which don’t. Even though these are simple fixes we’re talking about, wouldn’t you rather have your editors focus on the content of your work rather than the mechanics?

4)    Fill your word count criteria with lazy metaphors, throwaway quotes and “narrative resume” material. Hey, no one wants to read an actual story, right? Just take a look at a source’s resume and write it out in a series of paragraphs. That should do the trick.

Bottom line: If you’re bored by your writing, you can bet your readers will be, too. It’s your job to dig deeper in your research, get better material out of your interviewees and work an idea until you get an interesting angle or twist.

5)    Your editor has spellcheck and proofreaders, so don’t bother printing out your work and reading it over before shooting it off. Spell your sources names two or even three different ways throughout your story. Forget a period here and there. Ignore the squiggly red line Word offers to help you identify typos throughout your work. And definitely don’t take time to proof for the things spellcheck wouldn’t catch, such as typing “if” instead of “it” or “an” instead of “and.”

Bottom line: You’re not just a writer; you’re an editor and proofreader, too. Read your own work.

6)    Don’t bother to read the assignment letter detailing minor points like word count, where to send your draft, and when (and how) to submit your invoice. While your at it, go a few hundred words over the word count—that way the editor has plenty to work with, right? Send everything directly to your editor instead of their story inbox or accounting department—he or she will handle it for you, right? Shoot off an informal invoice in the body of your email instead of creating a proper Word doc or PDF—they’ll figure it out, right? Wrong, wrong and wrong.

Bottom line: Pay attention to the job details. Not following the guidelines your editor took the time to explain is no different from going to a restaurant and the waiter bringing you a “top shelf” margarita with Jose Cuervo tequila instead of Patron.

7)    And the always popular—let deadlines come and go without alerting your editor in advance. Let the editor wake up in the middle of the night to realize your story didn’t come in. That’s a great way to build a relationship and get more work.

Bottom line: If you’re a week out from a deadline and still haven’t heard back from a key source, let your editor know right away. He may have an alternate source for you, or he may give you an extension. A week out from a deadline means there are still possibilities. A missed deadline means your editor is left scrambling to fill the hole left by your lack of a story.

-Britta

This weekend (Friday night at 8pm) I was contacted by a “content marketing” firm from California. After a litany of fast-talking hubbub (I thought fast-talking hubbub was passé) and admittance by the CEO of being a “pain in the ass,” I was asked if our writers could drop links on his client’s blogs for a fee. Really? I’d collect cans before I would have our writers post insincere, irrelevant links on blogs. In my mind it goes against everything wonderful and democratic about the web.

I’m going to do this company the incredible favor of not mentioning their name. But the part that saddens me is their client list seemed impressive and their sales numbers looked good.

I believe that branding and content marketing are about providing relevant content first and tuning SEO and technology second. But moments like Friday night give the impression that messages like 100% FREE and spamming are the way to go. Someone bring me back to the light.

This newsletter from Steve Baldwin, editor-in-chief at Didit, just popped in my inbox and gives hope:

“The onus is on us at SEM agencies to prove our case, realistically, free of jargon, hype, and especially over-promising. We need to start acting less like salespeople, and more like serious business consultants. If we can’t be honest and forthcoming about what we can — and can’t — do for our clients, and can’t find a way to make all the complicated moving parts of search comprehensible to plain people who don’t know or care who Danny Sullivan is, we shouldn’t be surprised when these people slam the door in our faces.”

The Olympics were all abuzz this summer about the new Speedo LZR suits the swimmers were wearing. Speedo’s technology meant swimmers were able to use 5% less effort to achieve the same speed. Less effort, better results—that makes sense.

In the past few months, we’ve been working with a number of companies transitioning from the old rules and old technologies to the new rules and new technologies. And I am here to say that transition isn’t always pretty and organizations are working too hard for mediocre results—picture the 400 medley in a 3-piece suit.

A few of the Old School to New School challenges we have seen are:

Refusing to be Nimble—Today’s organizations need to pace themselves according to the technologies that are dictating their future. Applying 1980s project management techniques and meeting schedules to a 2008 landscape virtually assures your organization will be playing catch-up. Things move fast today and if that means you need to re-org to streamline, do it. Don’t let politics and poor project management be the difference between success and failure.

Hot Potato—When transitioning from the old rules to the new rules there are two schools of thought. One, champion the hell out of the new rules and fight the underlying tide that is the status quo. Or, try to appease the status quo and move forward with your plans while never really taking ownership (or creating a confusing hierarchy) of the project. If the first plan works, you’re a hero, and if it doesn’t…well it will. If the second plan works, you’re a hero, and if it doesn’t, no one knows who to blame.

The Safety Dance—Yes, there are industries that require curtsies to regulations and legal verbiage but at a certain point the marketing department has to get legal to bend a bit. Try this; “They won’t be able to sue us if we don’t differentiate ourselves because…we won’t be around anymore.”

A Website is Not the Answer—If you are placing ads in magazines you should have a social media strategy in place. I recently worked on a campaign for a company who was on the fence about putting their URL in the print ad. I am one of the few who think print isn’t dead but I do realize that it needs an overhaul. (If you can name 10 friends who have an e-book reader, email ian at eatmedia.net and I will jump into panic mode.) Until then, the case is clear—if you are using your website as a business card only (i.e. Home/Products/Contact Us) and your organization doesn’t have a blog, news feed or a content strategy, start worrying.

In the end, it is all about budgets and approvals but it’s also about speed and selecting the correct strategies and tools for the job/race. Big fan of the suit and tie here, but I wouldn’t jump into a pool with my 3-piece suit against my competitor wearing a time-shaving Speedo.

Dear Advertorial,

I don’t know how to say this nicely but…it’s just not working. I’ve tried for years to include you in my circle. I’ve never made you play the uncomfortable host, I’ve sat you in between features and ads and even given you your own tagline: “Special Advertising Section.” But know matter what I do, you always seem to either want more or blend in covertly and then start passing your card around in the middle of dinner. It wasn’t until this past week when you mimicked my department style that I realized it wasn’t you, it was me. I should have never trusted you to begin with. I should have kept my editorial editorial and my advertising advertising. We’ve had some good times—the ad cloaked as a story about our trip to the US Virgin Islands, the business opportunities in India where I let you interview your friends and those photo-styled dinners we cooked in the new condos on the West Side (remember how we soaked up real estate money when the market was hot?) All good memories, but times have changed and my analyst says I need to clean up my act and start setting some boundaries. Everyone always told me you were a little shady, a little “local coupon magazine-ish.” I guess they were right.

Best Wishes,

Editorial