Whenever I meet with new clients or interview people for articles in business newspapers, I always spot more than one idea or story that could be covered or written about. Always.
Writers are curious and we spend our lives looking at details and nuances that do not concern other people. I sometimes wonder what it must be like not to have write about so much that I observe. It must be a relaxing way to be.
There’s much discussion and promotion of repurposing content. What is that? It is the breaking down of content into chunks so that it can be combined and re-used in various situations and formats. Sometimes it’s very effective. The white space is filled but sometimes I get the feeling that human characteristics and quirks seem repurposed out of the equation to the point of becoming beige generic.
Repurposing fresh content every day
I spent many years working as a journalist for the Financial Times and other newspapers. We would update and reposition stories according to their currency, and against competing stories, for different formats and editions all over the world. We also had to operate with pagination restraints depending on the number of advertisements sold. Remember that?
Newsrooms are the engine rooms of repurposing content. I remember the end of the Cold War when every night the story was developing across Eastern Europe. Berlin, anyone? As the editions were rejigged and updated, it was probably the most interesting repurposing of content that I am ever likely to encounter.
Writers and journalists are the original re-purposers of content. Writers have always taken parts from this and that story and seeing other spots where they can go. Then we add details and nuances. We put people into the story. It is bespoke repurposing of content complete with people. That is the purpose.
Marian Edmunds
We are all writers now, even if we don’t think of ourselves in that way. There is no end to the writing – emails, lists, social media, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, SMS, Tumblr. We write to prepare costings, to stock content management systems, present business and marketing plans, and every day we write requests and actions in project management and collaboration tools, be they a Moleskine diary or on Basecamp.
How many proposals are you writing these days? In the GFC aftermath era amid the baby boom masses, people are reaching the pinnacles of their skill, creativity and glittering experience to find more time is spent preparing proposals for projects than doing actual work. Proposal preparation, much of it ultimately unpaid, is part of the everyday working lives of people highly trained at many fields other than writing.
We are all writers now, and depending on your level of confidence, this can be painful, boring, or it can be a pleasure. It can however be made a little easier. In the coming weeks we are publishing a little book giving easy tips for business writing. Let us know if you would like to be alerted to its readiness.
What does The Writing Business do in a world where we are all writers?
We almost never write from scratch these days. We mostly work on text already worked on by the client. Most people don’t budget for writing services from beginning to end, if at all. Yes, you can reduce costs by writing yourself. You just need to be sure the writing you are producing delivers the outcome you require.
Some of our best clients handle most of their writing needs perfectly adequately themselves. They book us when, sometimes at short notice, they have a major proposal for new business or content that will be seen by many people. We tweak and rewrite where needed. At that time we are the writers.
What writing do you handle yourself, and what do you need a helping hand with?
‘Refreshing’ – Sunday Times Style
A book review in Sunday Times Style, one of the post popular sections of one of Great Britain’s leading Sunday papers appeared on December 30, 2012. It described Navigational Tips For Living as a ‘self-help book with a refreshingly different message’.
That was certainly our aim in writing the book as we chose not to have a huge and arduous checklist of self-improvement tasks. The book by Charles Bentley PhD and Marian Edmunds (of The Writing Business) includes drawings by FT cartoonist, Roger Beale. The intention of the book was for readers to first of all know you are all right as you are and to be accepting of yourselves and others. Then it provides techniques for recognising patterns in yourself and others and techniques for improved communications. Not least, as the review mentions, is connecting with the child within. Most important, is for that child, you, to have some fun again! What could that be like? What will you do?
STOCKISTS
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