Five Tips To Avoid Blog Writer's Block

More wall than block

This week, several people in my network commented on the prolific nature of my writing... and the funny thing is, some of them don't know the half of it, in that I also write a blog about sports, to go with this one about marketing and advertising. As I am on target to post over 100 times in 2015 on both sites, in addition to holding down a day gig that also involves writing, and have been doing this for the better part of a decade, I know how to keep the fires burning. Here are five tips for getting yourself out of a sticking point.

5) Cheat with numbers.

I've talked about how a learning engine of analytics driving creative is an edge. It also works for writing. Your blog posts that get more traffic, retweets, likes and comments are all good for inspiring more thoughts. Or, darkly, less.

4) Don't give a block power.

Writer's block is like any other form of self-created drama; it requires fuel to burn, and that fuel is your own mind telling you that you are blocked. You can, and will, get unstuck any moment now, because you have every other time you've stopped writing. This isn't a matter of blind self-confidence; it's a matter of looking at past track record, and assessing the situation from an emotional distance. The next sentence will come, and more after that one. So write it already.

3) Be open to many sources of inspiration.

I've written about everything from my leisure activities (golf and poker), entertainment choices (Bridgett Everett, the Daily Show succession), dog (the rise of high-end services for pet owners), technology (the IoT), current events (Volkswagen and others) and war stories from my past gigs. I don't view everything in my life through an advertising and marketing filter, but the nice part of the subject matter is that it travels across a wide swath of experiences.

2) Fill the frame.

The late great Frank Zappa once described art as the stuff that's inside the frame, because without the frame, it's an open question as to who left that mess on the wall. (I am not quoting exactly, because Frank was wonderfully rude, and didn't say mess. You get the gist.)

Blog posts follow a template, and a rhythm, that is fairly consistent. It's not like we're cranking out rivets in a factory, or blind to quality or flights of fancy, but let's be realistic about this. I'm writing three posts a week, I'm turning in the post after so much time writing it, and killing myself with over-editing and perfectionism is just a way to waste time, and not get to the next item on my to-do list. Fill the frame, then move on.

1) Live your story.

All of us have any number of other things we can do with our time. I could pull out my guitar, work on my stand up comedy, clean the house, play golf or poker, run some miles, toss the frisbee for my dog, watch a game, and so on, and so on.

But the story that I tell of my life is that I am, more than any other hobby or avocation, a writer. Writers have deadlines, and need to meet them, or they are not writers. (Yes, I know, there are other kinds of writers, and you can be a great one without a deadline... but this is my story, and I'm sticking to it.)

So my story is never that I need time off, or that I'm sick, or over-committed, or can't function unless a certain amount of sleep happens at a certain time of day. The saving grace of all of this is that writing has strong elements of craft to it, and you get better at craft the more you do it. (Also, thank heavens, faster.) I am infinitely happier when I am being true to the story of my life; most people are, really. So I write.

What's the story of your life, and are you living it?

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

Reputations For Sale

Your Money Or Your Stars

Ratings are an increasingly important aspect of the way people use the Web, not just for products, but also for people. From Peeple's horrible model and PR disaster to Uber's get ratings or don't get work, not to mention AirBnB's approach, traditional management of project employees is getting outsourced to the wisdom of the crowds. This isn't even all that new, given the relative maturity of eBay in the marketplace, and the presence of power buyers and sellers on that site. But it is becoming more pronounced, and noticeable on a greater amount of buying decisions.

At first blush, this just seems inevitable, because it's just something that's under the hood of a disruptive technology. But just because something is inevitable does not mean that it's desirable, especially for the people without leverage, which would be the contractors. Rankings don't just put the power in the hands of the customer, they also create the potential for abuse that would be illegal in a traditional workplace, without the potential for counter-measures like unions or collective bargaining. And it's not as if you, as the provider, get more work or a better rate from glowing reviews. All you get is to stay in consideration.

As a consumer, the power of prior ratings is undeniable, to the point where low marks will more or less eliminate a product or provider from consideration for the vast majority of us. But as a provider, on a personal level, the change is very worrisome. I've spent decades going the extra mile for clients and co-workers, all to make sure that my network -- the only aspect of an individual career that can give you any degree of real job security, especially in careers in start-ups and other high turnover fields -- is large and eager to work with me again. But no advertising and marketing pro hits all the time. I'm sure that I've been on the wrong side of enough people to ensure that if my profession was rankings dependent, I could be a risk to not get future gigs, just from the actions of a handful of people. And sure, we're just at 1.0 in terms of this technology, let alone how people use it, but sometimes, v1 is all you get. I could easily see de facto blackmail from buyers who become aware of the power of a one star review.

So what happens next in a situation like this? Well, in other aspects of too much power being in a single metric, to put it bluntly, fraud. Advertising contracts that are purely cost per click inevitably led to black hat coding that produced fraudulent clicks. Five-star ratings and glowing reviews for products are already something you can buy from compromised people, with Amazon even going so far as to sue to try to maintain the integrity of their system. It's going to be even harder to police that sort of thing when it comes to a services provider, but just as fraud is inevitable, so are policing measures.

As consumers, what's going to happen is that ratings aren't going to be enough to make an informed decision. We're also going to have to become detectives and skeptical hiring managers, reading reviews with an eye for veracity, questioning a ranking if it has a suspicious amount of positive rankings for the amount of probable business, and maybe even doing a second pass through a more rigorous approach, like maybe checking references on LinkedIn, or looking at someone's Facebook or Twitter before giving power to their review. This will also be a time management problem, since some purchases are more important than others. Just taking the shortcut of lots of stars equal automatic purchase won't cut it.

That's the thing about disruptive technology. It disrupts more than just a single market. We haven't seen all of the ripples and impact from this wave yet.

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.

A Recession-Proof Consumer Category?

Selfie X2

This weekend was very busy around the house. (Don't worry, we'll get to the marketing and advertising soon.) I had my poker game on Friday night, and my eldest was holding a Halloween event the next day. My wife wound up working on both weekend days, and my youngest had an illness. Into that mix, enter a dog, seen above.

Minion, our 18-month-old collie mix, needs a lot of exercise, then peace and quiet, to be at his best. If there a lot of people around, it tends to activate his herding instincts and makes him antsy, but he's great around other dogs, because it lets him engage in brief and intense exercise. He's the kind of pooch that wants to play for about 10 minutes every 90, which doesn't always make him the best of choice for a busy family, but it works out well enough.

He's also a great companion, and borderline spoiled in that way that dogs after kids get spoiled, because a family member that doesn't need a college fund or driver's license, and doesn't engage in the usual teen drama, just has appeal for miles.

So instead of having him around when he wasn't going to get enough attention and just have issues, we chose to board him for a couple of days. We put him up at a local dog kennel and exercise facility that we've used before. He had a good time (the business has web cams), and when I picked him up this morning, he was in perfect health and happiness.

Now, to the marketing and advertising.

True wages for most American households have been stagnant or worse for decades now, but what hasn't been stagnant is the amount that we spend on our pets. Instead of just selling on price, pet food makers have continually upped the seeming quality and marketing, going for more organic materials and specialized products. In the past five years, there's also been an explosion of pet bakeries to go with the food, and now, dog spa treatment.

There are cheaper kennels (many, honestly) than the one we use. I won't get into the specifics on what was spent here, but I have no doubt that the facility is a profitable business, even on the customers that don't spring for the full services. Stuff like spa days for dogs are, of course, not a necessity, or something the dog requests. Instead, it's a matter of making the owner feel good, and doing something special for a companion. The market segment just keeps rising, with seemingly no end in sight, especially with more affluent households going for pet ownership.

I am, personally, a dog guy. I have had them for nearly my entire adult life, from purebreds to strays, and never the same breed twice. I've also lived with all kinds of other pets (gerbils, rabbits, cats, lizards, birds, fish). I like taking care of them, think that the benefits outweigh the costs, and get many of my ideas for business and creative while taking Min on his daily walk.

But throwing undue money at them is silly, in ways that seem prone for backlash at some point. My guess is that there will be some kind of pushback as comedians and social commenters call specific points of insanity out at some point, but there hasn't been up to now, and there's no reason why there should be a sudden change of priorities. Frankly, we love our pets a lot more than we do our fellow citizens.

Maybe smartphones, which seem to have the same level of affection for many of their owners, will start to gate the purchasing. But those same devices are used so often to share pictures of our companions, and maybe even publicize the services via social media.

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Feel free to comment, as well as like or share this column, connect with me on LinkedIn, or email me at davidlmountain at gmail dot com, or hit the RFP boxes at top right. RFPs are always free, and we hope to hear from you soon.