Starting to Get Twitter’s ROI

So I took the plunge on Twitter to better understand its ROI… Started following people I have been follwing via online marketing sites, newsletters, feeds, forums, etc. for years via Twitter last night.

Twitter was playing a bigger part in conversations with clients, so I thought it was time to jump into the birdbath rather than watch from the side. [Cringing at my metaphor but not enough to remove it. ;-)] As with most things the practice is more enlightening than the theory…

Been following Twitter’s growth as part of my siysphean efforts to stay on top of the ever-evolving world of online marketing for years. But I hadn’t done much more than set up an account and follow a couple of copywriters I admire. Until last night…

Interesting!

Simply following a large group of SEO and online marketing “gurus” has generated a lot of followers for @southerncontent. Generated a lot of followers and got me a lot more energised about the potential value of Twitter for building community around a brand.

I remain a underwelmed about the insight into the minuate of people’s lives. It’s gonna require discipline to ignore all the help people’s tweets about useful resources though. And I can see how quickly a compelling message can spread in a way that countless articles and webinars on Twitter never really captured.

Still stand by my earlier view that Twitter doesn’t fit into everyone’s online marketing mix. But I can see a definite ROI on Twitter activity for those sites/businesses for whom it does fit.

Follow me www.twitter.com/southerncontent. I’ll try to share as many of the internet marketing goodies I find as possible.

“Unique” Article Content?

Arghhhh: another from the junk Web content and article marketing related naivete file… A thread from Sitepoint.com’s busy forums starts off with a question about whether a rewritten article is “unique” — well, um no — and highlights a disturbing phenomenon in article marketing. An all too common scenario if you look at jobs appearing on freelance work sites.

There is always useful discussion about website content, optimisation and online marketing going on somewhere. So from now on I’ll be choosing a thread to highlight here every week… This week a thread from Sitepoint.com’s Content Writing forum caught my eye because it points to a regrettable attitude toward creating content.

The thread starts with a question about the uniqueness of rewritten content. Little context is given but I’m guessing the scenario goes something like:

“I need content for my site. Hmmm… Writing’s hard. Wonder if there is a shortcut? Maybe I could just rework some other people’s content in my own words…”

I might be wrong and I’m not suggesting an attempt to deceive. The issue here is more about naivete.

Naivete that is all over sites like Guru.com and Elance.com. It’s based on two key misconceptions:

1. Search engines like content and as long as it is keyword rich the quality doesn’t matter too much.
2. Good content can be aquired cheaply — about $3 to $4 per 500 word article will do it — or copied, if you are clever.

Wrong! Search engines are well beyond keyword richness in terms of assessing content’s value. You can’t get a chunk of good content for $3. And rewriting others’ content is not ok as long as you change a lot of the words.

Rewriting others’ content and presenting it as your own is categorically wrong. It’s theft if you don’t acknowledge the source of your ideas or insight or, indeed, words.

But wouldn’t there be reasons you might rewrite content?

Well, yes. Freelance writing gurus/teachers/courses often talk about getting maximum value out of an idea or experience by offering different angles on that idea or experience for different markets/contexts. But the key thing is that they are your experiences/ideas and the pieces of writing are completely different.

All too often I see people after someone to rewrite some articles for their website for a few dollars a pop. Cheap content! No thought. Just reword and publish. Easy….

Argh! It is not a question of changing the words enough to pass some copyright infringement software test. Rewriting others’ ideas is not unique and presenting them as your own is reprehensible.

I remain depressed by the number of people that fail to understand the value of good — compelling, unique to your site, written by/for your site, showcasing your expertise and an interesting point of view — content.

Um… Ah… Building Links, Link Bait & Interview Podcasts

Um.. Ah… Building links can be all about demonstrating expertise in link bait on your site but… Um… But an interview I did yesterday for a podcast illustrates why you should be prepared when demonstrating expertise on other sites.

I am not a big fan of the traditional link request way of building links. The Web is all about links but they should occur organically… How do you get links then? You offer link bait and you engage with relevant websites. And, ideally, you do so in a way that builds your brand…

Do an interview with a journalist running a site offering podcasts about making money online? Of course.

Perfect: demonstrate my expertise to the site’s audience and build a link.

Lesson learnt: remember your tendency to “um” and “ah” when forming your thoughts; ask for questions first and get those thoughts half way formed before the interview. Listen and see what I mean.

Boring as it is to repeat the tired phrase, content is king in the link building realm too. Good content on your site will attract links. Good content you provide on other sites will drive traffic (assuming you think about it enough for it to be “brand enhancing”).

Mike Moran and commenters covered the request vs build links issues succinctly in a Search Engine Guide piece and resulting discussion

As I tell clients, building links is very similar to offline networking where you seek out relevant people and build a relationship. Online links represent that relationship. People will link with you if you offer them something of value to their business or site.

And the value should go beyond the value of a link — “Hi I wondered whether you would like to link to our site because we [insert tenuous association]? We’ll link to you too!” just doesn’t cut it. As Brian Clarke of Copyblogger suggested recently in an excellent post offering five value-based link building strategies:

“The days of flat out link begging are fading…”

Requesting links will work in some cases. But as Mike Moran suggested in a Search Engine Guide piece and commenters, generally, agreed an earned link is preferrable to a requested one.

Building links should be all about offering value on your site and on other people’s sites and demonstrating your expertise as you do it. But do it in a considered way and know your weaknesses… No more interviews for podcasts without some prior knowledge of questions for me!

Recommended Punctuation “Mistakes” Useful Online

Sometime breaking the rules of punctuation can be a very good thing. I have a reasonable grasp of grammar and rules of punctuation. It’s debateable whether my grasp is good enough to justify my errors and repeated ignoring of said rules. But I think the end result is more readable and compelling content.

I have support for my practice of neglecting the letter of punctuation and grammar law. Respected copywriter, John Forde of The Copywriter’s Roundable, recommended “Five Punctuation ‘Mistakes’ You Should Make” recently…

An “Aha!” moment for me… Not just because I am guilty of all these mistakes. But also because all help “scannability” and help give content the feel of speech — useful qualities for website content to have.

Maybe I’ve picked up these mistakes because Mr Forde’s excellent newsletter is one of my longest lasting email subscriptions — maybe seven years and as many primary email addresses. I have always admired the way he writes. Perhaps the “mistakes” have slipped into my content and copy work by some process of osmosis.

But hang on. Didn’t a friend wonder what was going on with all my elipses back in ‘97… And didn’t a professor of mine make a comment about my penchant for the emdash back in ‘89… No matter. I’ve definitely picked up a lot reading Forde’s regular advice on copywriting and noting the way he puts that advice together.

The point?

Forde’s advice has particular relevance to writing for the Web.

January 18th’s issue of The Roundtable (a must read for anyone wanting to write compellingly) recommended the mistakes in the context of writing “powerful sales copy”. But all five also help make your writing more readable by breaking up the flow of conventional sentences (commas ending in full stops or periods, if you prefer).

So, what are these five “mistakes”? All are acceptable in moderation but likely to raise the hackles of “proper” punctuation’s defenders when used frequently. Forde advocates extensive use of:

1. Emdashs
2. Parentheses
3. Quotation Marks
4. Ellipses (”…”)
5. Apostrophes

The emdash and the ellipsis are particularly useful in the online context. Why? Because they serve to make content more readable.

Next time you’re looking at a page of content online note how the long dashes and three little dots break things up and grab the attention of your scanning eye.

You scan a page before you read it (unless you “read” the Web differently from most people) so best practice demands multiple sub-headings, short paragraphs, and bullet points… Creative and “illegal” use of punctuation complements these best practices by making your short paragraphs more scannable.

And all five “mistakes” have another important online value. They help give content a feel of people speaking: a rhythm of speech rather than the more even flow of more formal writing. A rhythm that is particularly useful in giving voice to the people behind a website.

Ideally, website content should serve to engage and inform. To do that it has to:

1. grab attention by offering visitors easy access to key points
2. and convey key messages in a compelling way.

You’ll find punctuation your english professor might have frowned on a useful tool in achieving these duel goals.

I urge you to read “Five Punctuation ‘Mistakes’ You Should Make”. Forde describes why they can help to make content more engaging and your message more effective. (He does it much more eloquently than I could.) And then think about those “mistakes” when you are next creating content for your website. Use them to make your content more engaging and readable.

[Aside: reviewing what I have written here, I am not sure whether I would have used the "mistakes" less if they hadn't been the subject of the post... I wonder. ]

SEO Spam Primer Featuring Key Insights From Major Search Engines

Found this really great video of SMX East (US Search Engine Optimisation Conference) session on SEO Spam on Search Engine Land. Nothing really new from my point of view. But a succinct introduction to tactics that will get you in trouble with search engines… If your search engine optimisation company recommends the things discussed in this video, fire them.

This video is a useful primer on SEO spam for anyone who isn’t familiar with the issues. And it offers great information on finding out if you have been penalised by search engines and what to do about it. But it also has significant value as an insight into big search engines’ assessment of sites and attitude to links.

Talking About SEO Spam Means Talking About What Search Engines are Looking For

Random quotes/notes, many of which are music to my ears, as an exponent of an “offer content that is of value to your target audience and the search engines will value it too” approach to SEO:

• Don’t “lose track of the user perspective” in building links — for Yahoo it isn’t about whether a link is paid but whether it is a value link that makes sense with respect to the content of the source and destination of the link… good links point your users to content they will value.
• Nathan Buggia of Live Search reminds people of the all-important search engine perspective on assessing the Web. A perspective too often lost in the discussion around obtaining search engine visibility –
  

  “Goal of a search engine is trying to find really great content and connecting people that want that content”

• Nathan again: “stay focused on creating good content” … ahem… content is… um… king!
• For Aaron D’Souza of Google site owners should concentrate on, “building great content that users are going to create the links for you” — that is, offer content that people will want to link to rather than get involved in trading links, etc.
• Aaron also reassures people that the removal of the suggestion that people submit their sites to online directories from Google’s Webmaster guidelines didn’t mean those links had been devalued. Seems it is about discouraging the plethora of low value directories. Removing the suggestion makes it harder for these directories to convince nieve site owners that investment in listings on their sites was an essential part of obtaining search visibility.
• Sean Suchter of Yahoo! Search talks about an approach to web content I would heartily endorse, suggesting site owners create content that has “timeless user value”. He cautioned against adopting the latest techniques based on SEO’s interpretation of the latest algorithm changes. Future algorithm changes will inevitably discount that content’s value… “What might work this year or this quarter might stop working at some near future point if it isn’t necessarily user focused.”

So it might be a session about what you shouldn’t do to get search engine rankings but it ends up being a powerful insight in what you should do.

Search Engine Optimiser or SEO Buyer This is Stuff Worth Knowing… Worth Watching

Watch it for that and a really interesting discussion around the issue of paid links and PageRank (Google’s measure of link popularity/site authority, Link Flux” for Yahoo! and “Static Rank” for Live Search) and whether search engine rankings should take account of big brands’ profile…

All sound a little geeky? Some of it is. SEO spam involves some tricks that take you to the border of geek world. But if you are trying to get search visibility or employing search engine optimisers, you should take a look. You will learn something.


SMX East 2008: What Is Spam? from Search Marketing Expo on Vimeo.

Article Marketing: A Question of Value

The dynamics of the article marketing content market are a classic example of the failure of simple supply and demand to create a value-based outcome. The Web offers writers easy access but low-pay opportunities but they should be withholding supply to this cheapskate demand. The Web would be a better place for it: less junk, more worthwhile content.

Aspiring freelance writers, the supply side of the market, as Jennifer Williamson of Catalystblogger asserts, need to understand that they can say no to poor pay for article marketing copy.

Trouble is the Web, which makes it so much easier to sell writing, provides a medium for putting people who don’t understand the value of good content together. It also provides a medium for getting the “don’t sell yourself short short-term in hope of long term gain” message out to writers and freelancers in general. But the noise of the supply and demand curves meeting in a chorus of low-bids drowns out the voice of reason…

It Goes Beyond Low-Value Content

The noise drowns out the good sense. Hmmm… How like the web. How like modern media. How like modern life… [At which point I am going to stop before I start my essay on the ills of our information saturated time... Others, better qualified, can deal with that. Back to the issue: Article marketing...]

But the Ugly Article Marketing Picture is the Matter at Hand

It’s an ugly picture. Poorly… No… Abysmally paid writers producing articles of dubious value that offer minor link profile value and make it harder for people to find valuable information. The web is flooded with hundreds of articles making it harder for people and search engines to find useful information.

And I don’t think I captured the whole picture when I bemoaned the article marketing generated junk website content phenomenon a while back.

• I was naive to think that the bulk of bids for $5 article writing would come from the less prosperous countries of the world.
• I forgot that there is a large supply pool of people for whom earning money from stringing words together — even at a fraction of a cent per word in the string — is a “major life goal”. (Silly; I was involved with a site for aspiring writers on a daily basis for six years.) And then there’’s the whole “build up your portfolio” temptation.
• And, because of my first two errors, I neglected to address the supply side of the market equation properly.

Value Your Writing to Enhance the Value of Writing Work

In a compelling argument for ignoring those fraction-of-a-cent-per-word writing “opportunities”, Williamson of encourages people to ask for more. As she said, the low value article writing market prices writers time at well below minimum wage.

Who’d work for less than minimum wage? Well, it seems, lots of people — $3, $4 and $5 per 500 word article projects on Elance.com, Guru.com and the like are seldom short of bidders.

What to do then?

Williamson’s blog earned a comment from, master copywriter and freelance writing information seller extraordinaire, Bob Bly about sites like Elance turning article writing into a commodity market. He urged people to concentrate on copy more directly linked to revenue to get/demand a premium price.

Value Shouldn’t Only Be Associated with Obvious ROI

All makes sense:

• If writers start ignoring the $5 article opportunities the price starts to rise. So, its important for writers to value their time and their writing.
• It is much easier to demonstrate the value in a landing page or email newsletter content that asks for a sale.

But the message I’d prefer to get through the low-pay article market noise is the first. The second message — pragmatic in it’s “accept of the way things are and work around them” approach — could contribute to the continued devaluing of all article marketing.

Demonstrating expertise and building trust through article marketing can be an important part of achieving sales and ROI online. But low-pay, low-value articles make it harder to stand out…

Bottom line:

The situation is a classic case of the dark side of the Web. The web facilitates a market, bringing people who need content together with people who can provide it. But it’s too easy for both parties. Neither party understand the potential value of that content because they can get together without doing the groundwork that might have been required to join a less accessible market. The content traded is devalued.

All of which makes it harder for writers to get a return on their writing effort that reflects the effort put in and harder for valuable content to stand out. Eventually people find voices of reason like Williamson and Bly but the ease of access means the supply of people willing to offer super-cheap writing services won’t dry up any time soon.

Later:

Here is a classic case in point. This Tennessee based business owner doesn’t attach much value to the time of the “Freelance Article Writers” he/she asks to submit proposals…

“Project Description:I am looking to hire a freelance writer that is willing to write three (3) articles a day for $1.00 per article for one (1) week. After a relationship has been established and I get to know your work, we can talk about future business involving more articles at a slightly higher rate[...]

Project Category:Article

Document Length:450 words

But there is also the issue of the quality of the articles in question. If he/she finds someone willing to do the job, are they likely to produce work that you’d want associated with your business? [sigh]

Junk Website Content Bad For Business

Dumbed-down website content so devoid of value it’s effectively junk can’t be good for the web. It’s definitely bad for anyone trying to build a respected business…

Sites like www.guru.com and www.elance.com demonstrate an alarming trend with respect to the value of website content. Their website content job listings are dominated by people offering $1-3 for 500 word articles. Why? A distorted view of an effective internet marketing tactic based on a quantity not quality-based search engine optimisation strategy.

The alarming thing is that these [irony] enlightened [/irony] internet marketers are not short of people, often from the Indian sub-continent, willing to produce [irony] articles [/irony] for them.

Three problems:

1. I can’t see how quality content can be the end result of these projects. So they simply add to the junk people have to wade through to reach quality content and waste search engine bandwidth as the engines try likewise to find the quality content.
2. The people producing the [irony] articles [/irony] are being exploited.
3. The overall value of website content is dragged down by an over supply of junk content.

Truly Alarming Disdain for Fair Pay, Copyright, etc.

The problem is epitomised by this Getafreelancer.com job posting requesting bids for 60 thousand word “articles” with a $250 budget.

“You can just use content from ezinesarticle, ehow or any famous articles site and rewrite it.”

Who would think $250 was a reasonable price for 60,000 words (half to two thirds of the latest novel from your favourite author) of content? Well. Twenty three bidders think, on the basis of an average bid, $172 is about right.

[irony] I s’pose, if all you need to do is copy others’ work…[/irony]

Why Would People think There Was Value in Exploitative Junk Website Content?

The demand that drives this sort of unhealthy scenario bastardises legitimate article marketing.

Rather than producing keyword savvy articles and distributing them to build links and demonstrate expertise beyond your own site. These internet marketers, often specifying keyword density, are adding little value to the Web’s content in their attempt to get search engine rankings via back link text. They may see some search engine visibility payback but spamming content sites with articles of dubious value devalues their brand and the payback won’t last…

Recent buzz about Google algorithm changes reducing weight attached to back link text are an indicator that, as with all spam tactics aimed to influence rankings falsely, the search engines will catch up with this.

Bottom line: better 10 articles that actually say something than 100 articles that just use words to create some space around keywords. Paying a few dollars for thousands of words smells a lot like your average sweatshop…

Life, Times and Blogging Best Practices

Ooops. 16 days & counting. Time flies when you should be blogging. What is blogging best practice, when comes to posting frequency?

It’s the first issue I raise when the subject of blogging comes up with clients. [With suitably serious look on face] “If you are going to do a blog, you need to be able to sustain it. If you can’t post consistently, then you’re better not starting.”… Um. Mea culpa.

But there is more to best practice than blogging consistently and frequently because, as Hayden Sutherland asserts in his excellent presentation on Corporate Blogging Best Practice posted on www.slideshare.net, “its [sic] not just a ‘Me Too’”.

If I were assessing my blog, as I assess clients’ blogs, I would be noting that leaving a new blog unattended for two weeks wasn’t a good idea.

Failing the best practice test

As it is almost always, it’s a case of “do as I say not as I do”. My goal with this blog was to blog at least three times a week… Well. At least 10 times a month. Again: “Ooops”! It is over two weeks since I last blogged.

What happened? Life happened.

[Warning: excuses of varying legitimacy follow.] It’s been a bad winter for bugs and littlies and toddlers are notoriously toxic. Jo (wife, partner, etc.) went to the doctor with a cough that had hung around for nearly a month and came back with a diagnosis of pneumonia. We flew in Grandmothers from various parts of the country but time became a precious commodity.

Then there was all the other work stuff, the Olympics, other bits and pieces that make us all time poor, the client who offered an opportunity to go heli skiing ;-)… I could and should have posted something. But I fell into the trap of being a little too wedded to a “value not frequency” based blogging strategy.

There is more to blogging best practice than frequency, though.

Listening to a couple of radio show panelists the other day, I nodded along as they agreed there was nothing worse than a blog where posts have a “posting because I should” feel rather than a “posting because I have something to say” feel.

I have already canvassed the ebb and flow of universal insight into web marketing and content. An ebb and flow that influences how often I post because I wait until:

• a) I find something interesting to post about
• and b) have something to say about that something.

Not a bad rule of thumb IMHO unless your blog is more about following/reporting the latest news. But don’t fall into the trap I fell into and set the “something to say” bar a little high.

Useful References For Developing a Blogging Strategy

As I fretted about my neglected blog I wondered what was the latest on blogging best practice when it comes to freqency. A bit of searching and reviewing revealed little that was new apart from Mr Sutherland’s aforementioned presentation. But its a presentation that offers a very useful guide to anyone developing a blogging strategy for their business. I, for one, have bookmarked and downloaded it.

Failing the “no just ‘Me Too’”, I can’t think of anything I would add to the presentation or dispute in it. I would, however, note that SMBs probably don’t have to deal with the corporate politics that can stymy a natural voice and remove the necessary edge from a blog. If you are looking for a set of guidelines for your business blog you may have found it:

The other useful guide/reference on the relationship between blogging frequency and having something to say is an old blog from my ex-boss Stephan Spencer. Stephan’s take on “Optimal blog posting frequency” is well worth reading.

Bottom line: Aim to post frequently — once a week is probably the minimum — but aim to have something to say when you post. The trick is to find the right mix and be consistent i.e. do as I say not as I do.

King Content, Advertising Effectiveness & Adwords Placement

“Content is king” is a tired old phrase. But phrases don’t get used enough to get tired unless they warrant repeated use. And this old friend of web content specialists is ever more relevant even, it seems, with respect to online advertising’s effectiveness. Something to bear in mind when setting up Adwords placement campaigns.

According to e-consultancy’s Drama 2.0, who references two recent studies:

“it may be smarter for advertisers to focus on content, content, content — which really means location, location, location on the internet.”

It is not only the relevance of the content that your ad appears in but also the quality of the content that determines effectiveness.

• Referenced study one (Ipsos MediaCT’s MOTION digital video study) says — as Drama 2.0 notes, a concern for the likes of YouTube — that people will put up with ads in video if the video is off sufficient quality.
  • Advertising in downloaded full length TV shows or sports clips, acceptable to 75 & 66% of people, respectively.
  • Advertising before that 16 second clip of the cat, fur bolt upright, sizing itself up in a mirror, not ok.
• Referenced study two, by the Online Publishers Association, finds that:
  

  “…ads on content sites have greater impact on the overall purchase process, including customer awareness, brand awareness, brand consideration, brand preference and purchase intent[...]“

Makes Sense… Relevance to SMBs?

Makes all sorts of sense to me and is, in some ways, statistical confirmation of common sense and existing reality. You pay more for space in quality publications offline not just because they are quality publications with good distribution but also because the implied endorsement makes readers less wary of your message. Same scenario online.

“So. OK. Yawn. Thanks a lot. If I want my ads to be effective online, I have to pay big bucks for popular/recognized authority sites. Very helpful.” says you, SMB owner with your tight ad budget in mind.

Well, yes. Hang on a minute, though. There is an opportunity/point in this…

Where Does Adwords Come Into This

I spent a bit of time creating a Adwords placement campaign for this site yesterday and enjoying the new control on offer.

Google’s content network is an effective, if flawed, traffic generator. People often ignored it in favour of search results because the traffic was generally less likely to convert and therefore less valuable. In my experience, not always the case. But often the way to lift Adwords traffic conversion rates is/was to turn of content network placements.

The newish ability to see sites in the content network where your ads are appearing opens means the content network is no longer an inpenetrable black hole.

It opens up the possibility of focusing on content network sites that refer valuable traffic. What a change. Now you know where your ads appear and you can target very specific sites. Target those authority/high credibility site for affordable rates. (I will report back exactly how affordable after my campaign had been running.

So, that is exactly what I was doing yesterday. The tightest of tight budgets in mind, going through sites in the content network relevant to my services and checking out sites I wasn’t familar with before adding them to my placements.

And the Tie in With Content Quality and Ad Effectiveness is?

With very little to spend I can’t afford to place my ads on sites that don’t have some credibility. I made sure to read a couple of articles on sites I was considering, which were all content sites rather than service providers.

Seems I was right to be wary and you should be too.

Bottom line: Adwords or otherwise, when you are vetting advertising opportunities don’t just think relevance to your target audience; think quality content.

Added bonus: you’ll be doing us all a favour by helping starve those begged*, borrowed or stolen content based sites whose only raison d’étre is adsense revenue. These sites have been cluttering up the web with poor quality content for too long.

And by the way: Also from e-consultancy, and related to the nexus between website content and online advertising, Graham Charlton’s 12 PPC Landing Page Tips are well worth a reading — nothing too startling there but a useful checklist.

*Freelance writing sites and places like Elance and Guru are overflowing with [embed tongue in cheek] amazing opportunities[dislodge tongue] to write 500 words for one of these sites for $2 or even $3. Lest we forget, Internet marketing is sullied by slave labour just like many other industries.

Uh Oh Somebody is Listening

Maybe I understand the appeal of diaries a bit better now. Blogging here without any readers was somehow liberating.

But wait. Somebody is listening.

Imagine my surprise to find two comments when logging in today.

• One from Paul who obviously has his reputation management sorted and is courteous enough to thank me for commenting on the service he is offering.
• A second from Sue, who is very complimentary — thank you Sue!

Thing is: the idea was to start building up content and get into a reasonable blogging routine as I got the site to version 1.0 and then start actively trying to build traffic. Cunning plan: have a reasonable amount of content before sending people here — furnish the house before you ask people in, sort of thing.

Seems all that is needed to get noticed is a few links to other blogs, etc. We’re definitely not talking traffic to write home about [Ahem. What am I doing now? :-)]. But people are reading what I am writing.

Second thing is: um, duh, isn’t being read the whole point. Yes all I am saying is there was something liberating about writing down comments that would previously have been part of some sort of internal dialogue.

I often find the act of writing helps me discover what I think about something. [Interlude to scramble round the web confirming the Oliver Goldsmith quote about knowing what you think after you've written on a subject. Discover the quotation that follows has been attributed to a few writers but Joan Didion wins the prize on the basis of most results on major search engines. Well established misconception corrected.]

“I don’t know what I think until I write it down.”
Joan Didion

S’pose I can still discover a lot of my own thinking with an audience… [Internal editor: "Get over yourself; judging by the analytics your audience would fit in a small lift."]

And the lesson/point is: if you are struggling to create content around a product/service/idea, it’s worth just writing down what you think, to start fine tuning your thoughts. Thought can be viral and the thoughts you explore often generate others that can be revised to suit your content’s goal.

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