One would think this is a good thing – a great leap forward for marketing and advertising, allowing the small and mid-sized business owner a chance to compete with the corporate leviathans of the world. While it’s true, these new and ever evolving technologies allow us the average Joe to reach out to customers and clients, to expand their business networks and improve brand awareness, it’s also true that these new tools (toys) allow business owners a dozen and a half new venues to alienate and irritate their customers.

So what’s the solution? Knowledge of your technology and how the end user utilizes it is key, and with everything, research (vast amounts) goes a long way towards improving that knowledge. The internet has for the last two decades, and likely for the next two at least should be your first stop when trying to learn about these new methods of telecommunication.

There’s a catch, however. This caveat is subtle, and simple and for small business owners, logical. No website, blog, newsgroup or wiki is going to give you all the answers for free. If every master SEO writer gave away his secrets, he’d have no business. If every master web designer could step you through creating the most magnificent website ever, he’d have no clients.

This goes back to what grandpa always said “You get what you pay for.” This is especially true with technical knowledge. That’s not to say one shouldn’t do their own research, but unless you’re planning a career change from business owner to SEO Specialist or Web Content Specialist or Web (insert flavor here) Guru, you’ll need to hire a professional.

I don’t know what I was reading, some trade rag or a news article one of my nemeses circled for me and left in my in-box, some ten-dollar fluff on a forgotten back-channel of the internet… I don’t know what it was, but it was all about “Your Personal Brand.”

Brand. The word means different things to marketers and real people. When I buy shoes, Brand is a choice between Dr. Martens and Sketchers, Nike and Converse. When I’m at work, tip-tapping my keys, hacking out magical phrases as catchy quips for my masters, Brand becomes the soul and salvation of an organization, its single-aspect face that must be clearly understood and represented to the unwitting consumer, who most likely, ignores more of it.

Do writers have a Personal Brand? Let’s compare a few and think hard on their Personal Brands.

Randomly (right?), let’s start with Hunter S. Thompson. The very name could be “a killing word.” Muttering the name is like chanting an incantation, ancient and esoteric worlds designed to release some raving, drug-maddened beast on the world. Next time you’re with a group of readers, literati and like who would have cause to know the name, try just dropping it and see the reaction you get.

When I do it, the whole group goes “Oh, well, yeah!” There’s usually a chorus of laughter and knowing smiles. Someone always shakes their head and says wistfully, “…imagine,..”

So what is Hunter’s brand? Is it riotous chemical abuse and unbridled self-destruction? Maybe on the surface, but peering a little deeper, we see a writer who is obsessed with truth, in what ever Huxley-esque form it manifests. One could wax philosophical for weeks about the mysteries that Hunter S. Thompson chased after in his self-induced dystopia of indulgence.

The choice to write about his adventures, mythical or otherwise, was a choice for representing truth, as he saw it. It was a decision designed to make his “brand” more true, and perhaps even more palatable to the audience. If 1960’s America was confronted with an author who was simply hyper critical and adventurous, how might they react? Perhaps it was safer for Hunter S. Thompson’s “brand” if he let the audiences believe only a crazed addict of marijuana and scotch (which, these days, would be half the thinking world) would challenge convention and dare question the myriad cultural constructs that serve to protect only the status quo.

Then again, he was a “…doctor of journalism goddammit…”

Perhaps the average copywriter or fiction author can’t afford to be so…gregarious with their personal brand. Businesses, as much as we want to lie to our selves about it, are all about the Benjamins. I doubt seriously Sony would dial up Hunter S. and ask him to knock of copy for the latest Blue-ray player. On the other hand, Hunter S. did enjoy a proto-blog hosted by ESPN in his later years.  My point is that for most writers who are lucky enough to get some qwan from local businesses, are just that, lucky. It’s the small business (a term synonymous with desperate in these uncertain times) that the copywriter can get access to, and it’s that same business that’s dreading spending any money. So what can your “brand” say that will put these fellow at ease, or at least ease up on their purse strings?

Well, when you find out, let me know. But I’d say a few things are essential to a successful personal brand.

1. When you write copy for your client, get it done. Get it done right, and get it done on time. Yes, this is a creative industry, and success depends on a very subjective product. But, you know what’s good and what is crap. If you don’t, maybe you should unpack that MFA application…
2. Throw ‘em a freebie. The reason most of us became writers (aside from our innate desire to create and an unnatural cleverness) is because we don’t really want to work. Hammering out copy for the local bakery or head-shop takes all of ten minutes. You’re billing for .5 hours, at least. Throw a freebie in once in a while. You can point this out in a very gentlemanly fashion by mailing a copy your invoice that quietly denotes the donated time. Hell, take another seven seconds and scrawl “thanks” on the bill.
3. Grammar. Much as I hate admit it, good grammar and punctuation make things easier to read. Easier to read means more people will read it. Look at it from a shopkeepers point of view: s@l3 is clever (and sickeningly trendy), but Sale! is simply easier to read.
4. Know who you are talking to, about what. I’m terrible at this. I’ve got so many different projects going on (ranging from getting my yard raked to graduate school transcripts to actually showing up for work) I don’t know what day it is most of the time. In fact, just today I walked into a meeting where I was expected to present a recurring article idea. And I blew it. Regularly, I’m embarrassed to say to my clients “…I’m sorry, can you refresh my memory?” If you’re not an organized person, get organized. Or marry one. Seriously.

If you incorporate simple policies like this into your personal “brand,” your bland sales copy won’t have to stand out. Your service will.

Anyway, this blog is going to be about writing. All aspects of writing, in fact. Topics like the character, plot, scene, sense, backstory, villains, heroes, anti-heroes, monsters, to name just a few. In between highly focused blogs about writing, there may be a smattering of philosophy, and though I will attempt with all my might to avoid it, perhaps some social commentary as well.

Ugh! I know, another blogger who somehow believes that the world give s a damn about his opinion! When will it end? Well, hopefully never. Personally, I swing wildly from the idea that the internet is down fall of culture and invention (all art suffers from our cultures collective bad taste), and the idea that the interwebs will be the salvation of the next few generations, allowing a stymied mankind the ability to kick-start their intellectual evolution.

I’ve been working with the interwebs or some aspect of it for longer than I can remember (or care to admit), and for me, it’s become sort of blasé. I’ve seen ten-hundred websites, representing the ten-thousand forms of ingenuity and human determination: the start-ups, the unique service, the niche vendor, the public service, the crusader, the blatant opportunist, the pleasure seeker, et al, ad nauseum.

The one thing they all have in common is the need for words, the need for convincing copy, brief, tight text that tells their version of the capitalist dream. Anyone who’s ever written ad copy before has heard this:

“I’ve been selling lawnmowers longer than you’ve been alive. I know the business.”

And we bite our tongues, us writers, and try desperately not to retort “Yes, but I’m the one with the degree in writing/marketing/advertising.” Good copy is a hard sell, no doubt. Like a good logo, everyone needs it, but no one is willing to fork over the bacon for the time it takes for a creative to pull genius from thin air and make your brand complete.

Internet technology makes good copy even more vital. The world of Search Engines and SEO forces web site owners to develop good content and continuously produce relevant topical information. But if I’m a web site owner, hiring (firing these days), buying stock, making deals, worrying about being hacked, protecting my customers data and all the rest of the headaches that come with entrepreneurial spirit, do I have time to sit down and draft some SEO-strong but catchy copy? Obviously not.

It’s a matter of the right tool for the write job. You never tell the doctor which needle to use, you never sneak up behind the plumber and tell him which wrench to use. So, why do business owners insist on writing the copy themselves? That philosophical quandary simply cannot be addressed in a mere blog. It would take more starships with more firepower than I’ve … oh wait, that’s a different movie.

I digress.

My suggestion is that writers learn the ins and outs of SEO and internet search engine marketing. Back in the day, softcore erotica and Penthouse Letters were the last bastion of starving fantasy and science-fiction authors. In this post-cyberpunk paradise, it’s the wordsmiths with the world wide wiki that make the bank and pay the bills.