Susan B. Weiner's Blog, page 55

Tips for crowdsourcing self-published book covers

When you’re not a publishing or design professional, it’s hard to make decisions about covers for your self-published books. I’ve turned to my connections for feedback on the design and text on many of my book covers. Crowdsourcing your self-published book covers may help you to make valuable refinements.

My crowdsourcing experiment started with the very first cover for Investment Writing Top Tips. When I decided in 2011 to add a professionally designed cover, I needed help choosing an image from the library of image offered by my designer. Back then, I relied on the members of my mastermind group to help me decide. These days, I’m more likely to put out a call on social media.

Questions to ask when crowdsourcing your self-published book covers

Some questions work better than others. Don’t ask a big, open-ended question, such as “What should my book cover look like and what exactly should it say?” Well, you could ask that. You might even get some useful answers, even though you’re asking a lot of your readers. However, you’re more likely to get useful answers if you ask narrower questions (accompanied by images), such as

Which of these three images do you like best for my book cover?

My Facebook post asking for help with the call to action for the 2013 edition of Investment Writing Top Tips

Which of these three cover designs do you like best?
Do you see anything I should improve on in my first version of the cover?
Can you suggest any tweaks to the text on my book cover?

To the right you’ll see what I posted on social media when seeking help with the call to action for a past edition of my Investment Writing Top Tips.

Beware: You’ll get contradictory advice

It’s hard to please everybody with your cover design and text. When I worked on the cover of Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients, some people loved the image of a fishhook through a piece of paper saying “client.” Others hated it. They felt that the fishhook was too violent.

The crowd also expressed dissatisfaction with my original book title, Simply Irresistible: Writing Financial Blog Posts People Will Read, because it failed to highlight my topic. This was especially true with the way the text fit onto my cover. You can see the initial design below.

Ultimately, the decisions are up to you. I changed my book title to feature “Financial Blogging.” I also went with the fishhook image, but asked my designer to soften its point, which now blends into the black area at the top of my cover. That’s a refinement I wouldn’t have thought of, if I hadn’t crowdsourced feedback on my self-published book cover.

An early version of my self-published book cover

The final version of the cover for Financial Blogging

Reminder: Your title text should be big enough

You can save your crowd from the need to correct you if you make your title big enough on the cover of your self-published book. Your book cover is an important part of your book’s marketing. People won’t buy if your title isn’t big enough when they see it as a thumbnail image on a web page.

More tips for self-publishers and book authors

Here are posts about other lessons I’ve learned from publishing:

6 lessons from my book writing experience


7 steps toward picking your self-published financial book’s formats and formatter

How to market your self-published book: Lessons from my experience

How to price your self-published book—lessons from my experience

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Confessions of a grammar ignoramus

Many people think of me as a grammar expert. I can see why. After all, I’ve shared many blog posts and social media updates that touch upon grammar. However, I know the truth.  I’m no expert.

My history with grammar began in a conventional way, with English classes in a suburb of Rochester, N.Y. The classes challenged me. My brain didn’t seem to think in terms of the rules. However, I slowly absorbed them. As I recall, I was a B student in my high school English classes. They weren’t my strength.

Then, educational reform hit. My high school switched to teaching what it called “linguistics” instead of grammar in English class. It was a totally different approach to understanding sentence structure. It wish I could say that linguistics clicked with me in a way that traditional grammar did not. Nope. The only thing I remember from those classes is the word “morpheme.” However, I didn’t remember what it means. I had to use Google to find that Wikipedia defines as “is the smallest grammatical unit in a language.”

The result of my high school’s switch? I learned neither system. If you ask me to explain either system’s approach to sentence structure, I’ll give you a blank stare or run to my computer to do an online search.

However, I eventually came to understand many of traditional grammar’s rules. I haven’t achieved this through an intensive study of grammar rules. That strikes me as a time-consuming exercise in memorization. Instead, I’ve learned by fixing problems in my writing, with help from other people’s feedback and my research.

I’ve unconsciously absorbed good grammar by reading and applying other people’s feedback on my writing. I’ve received this feedback in writing classes and writing groups, where teachers and peers tell me what works and what doesn’t. I’ve also received it in one-on-one exchanges with editors and friends. The people who gave me feedback typically didn’t mention grammar in their feedback, but they pushed me toward writing in a more grammatical, reader-friendly way.

My grammar research has been spurred by the realization that I don’t know grammar well enough to decide what’s right. Sometimes a Google search is enough to answer my questions. Other times I turn to my favorite reference books or online resources for grammar, punctuation, and usage questions. Sometimes I turn to writers forums or friends because I’m not sure what to input into the search box—or to seek in the index—to find the answers to my questions. Some of my blog posts about grammar, punctuation, and usage have originated with my trying to answer questions raised by my writing or the questions of my readers. My question-inspired blog posts include “How do you make Degas possessive?” “That vs. which: Which is right?,” and “Proper usage of periods: One space or two?”

My inadequate knowledge of grammar has made me feel sympathy for other people’s struggles with writing. It’s not easy to get things right, especially if you haven’t received good training.

I still have a lot to learn. For example, I struggle with when to use commas in long, complex sentences. That’s a tough topic to understand. Putting commas in the right places requires making many judgments. Once I figure out the answer, I’ll share it here.

Thank you for sticking with me as continue my quest to better understand grammar!

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Financial jargon killer: The Wall Street Journal

“How can I talk my boss out of using financial jargon?” I hear variations on this question from my clients and blog readers. I’ve already written “Seven Ways to Talk Your Financial Execs Out of Jargon and Bad Writing” (registration required) for MarketingProfs. But recently I thought of a new idea to help you rein in the worst offenses by your firm’s lovers of complex language.

Here’s my idea. Ask “What would The Wall Street Journal do?” We can call this technique WWTWSJD for short, in a nod to other “What would ____ do?” strategies.

I suggest that you use WWTWSJD because most financial professionals read The Wall Street Journal. More importantly, they respect the newspaper. They don’t feel that it treats them as stupid. Thus, if you show them that the Journal wouldn’t use a piece of financial jargon, they might listen to you.

Step 1. Identify financial jargon for review

Search results for “smart beta” in The Wall Street Journal

Identify the piece of jargon that you’d like to eliminate from your firm’s publications. Then search to see if The Wall Street Journal uses it.

Take a technical term like “convexity,” which is used in the world of fixed income. When I searched it on the newspaper’s website, I found “No articles or videos have been found.”

How about “smart beta”? I found only three results. That result also suggests that the term isn’t widely understood.

Step 2. Dig deeper into the jargon’s usage

Let’s look more closely at the newspaper’s use of “smart beta.”

It uses the term, but quickly defines it. For example, here’s how Ari Weinberg treats the term in the first two results (emphasis added):

Even the more-complex “smart beta” or factor-based ETFs, which weight holdings according to an investment factor such as volatility or value instead of market capitalization, are able to manage constituent changes to minimize capital gains.
“ ‘Smart beta,’ in particular, creates real due-diligence problems,” Mr. Nadig says, referring to the growth in index products that shun traditional market-cap weightings and instead weight holdings according to an investment factor such as volatility, value, quality or momentum.

The third article using “smart beta” was written by one of the outside contributors to the newspaper’s “Ask the Experts” section. It seems to be considered as a blog post, based on a disclaimer on the comments page. I imagine that those pieces aren’t edited as rigorously for jargon as the pieces written by staffers. The editors let the outside contributors write in their own style.

Step 2a. Cross-test jargon with The New York Times

While I  like the idea of using The Wall Street Journal to talk senior execs out of financial jargon, I’m a bit concerned about the shallowness of the archive that’s easily accessible online. The newspaper’s online search doesn’t appear to go back more than about three months. Thus, I’m checking The New York Times, another reasonably literate newspaper, because I can go back further in my search.

Here are my results for a twelve-month period:

Only one article used the term “convexity,” but it wasn’t used in a financial context. The article discussed the shape of a bowl scraper.
Four articles used “smart beta.” As you can see from the excerpts in my screenshot below, each article makes an attempt to define the term, rather than assuming the reader will understand it.

“Smart beta” results in 12-month search of The New York Times

Step 3. Define financial jargon

If you must use financial jargon, then define it.

Need ideas about how to explain technical terms? The Wall Street Journal is a good source for explanations at a fairly sophisticated level. WWTSWJD?

For more examples of how to incorporate definitions into your writing, see “Plain language: Let’s get parenthetical.”

Caveat: Sometimes financial jargon is okay

I’m a big believer in writing using plain language. Ideally I’d like to write more plainly than The Wall Street Journal when addressing an audience outside the financial world. Even when you’re writing for institutional investors, you may encounter readers with less knowledge than you of financial vocabulary.

However, sometimes multisyllabic vocabulary and financial jargon are more precise or make for easier communication. This is true only when you’re communicating with other highly knowledgeable professionals. For example, saying something increased by 200 basis points is more precise than saying it rose two percent. And if your readers care about measures like Sharpe ratios, there’s no substitute for using those terms.

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Improve your financial writing with these rules

Sometimes I find inspiration for my writing in unusual places. Most recently, it appeared in a newsletter from a professional organizer. Lorena Prime’s “7 Golden Rules of Organizing” made me think about how you can improve your financial writing skills.

Rule 1. Be open to change

It’s not easy to change your financial writing style after putting your words together in the same way for many years.

However, the rules that you learned in school may no longer apply. For example, I learned in typing class to put two spaces after every period. Today, one space is the standard practice, as explained in Farhad Manjoo’s “Space Invaders: Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period.” Similarly, today a much more personal, casual style of writing prevails than when I entered the business world. For example, when I rewrote my website in 2015, I changed my biography from using “Susan Weiner” to “I.”

Also, there are always new areas where you can learn things. I try to take at least one writing-related class every year. I also read extensively and ask questions of the experts around me.

You’re a smart person who can learn. Take advantage of your curiosity and intelligence to try new approaches to your financial writing.

Rule 2. Purge

One of the biggest curses of financial writing is wordiness. Purge those excess words from your writing.

While you’re at it, replace multisyllabic jargon with simpler words that count as plain English. I mentioned one tool for identifying text that needs purging in my post on “Donald Trump, grade level, and your financial writing.”

Rule 3. Put like things together

Keep like with like, as I keep my sweaters together in one drawer

Financial writing that’s well organized is easier to read than writing that hops from one topic to another and then goes back and forth again.

Divide whatever you write—especially longer pieces, such as white papers or quarterly letters—into distinct sections that each discuss one topic.

I describe an example of how to do this in “Key lesson for investment commentary writers from my professional organizer.”

Not sure if you’ve succeeded in putting like things together? You can outline or diagram the topics covered in each paragraph to check. The color coding used in Roy Peter Clark’s margin analysis technique may help.

Rule 4. Create homes

Your ideas for articles, blog posts, and longer pieces deserve homes. Creating a place where you store your ideas (and the data to support them) will help you to find them when you need them. There’s nothing worse than sitting down at your keyboard with no idea of what you want to write about.

You can house your ideas in a way that suits your style. Some people write notes by hand and cram paper copies of relevant articles into manila folders. Others have embraced virtual repositories, such as word-processing document, Evernote folder, or online mind map. I store my blog post ideas as Microsoft Outlook tasks.

Rule 5. Do it if it takes 2 or 3 minutes

I’m stretching to apply this rule to your financial writing. However, I’d like you take advantage of even small time slots to work on your writing.

For example, if you’re struggling to write a blog post, commit to spending 15 minutes on it. What you write doesn’t have to be great. It’ll get your mind thinking. You may develop momentum and keep going after your 15 minutes end. Even if you stop after 15 minutes, the ideas will continue marinating in your head.

Only have two or three minutes? Brainstorm ideas for future topics. Try my Barbie-inspired technique if you’re out of ideas.

Rule 6. Maintain it

You must write to improve your financial writing skills. Write regularly—daily, if possible.

Rule 7. Work with someone

I’m a big believer in classes—and getting feedback from others—as a way to improve one’s writer. Even non-financial writing classes can make you more aware of your writing’s strengths and areas where you need to improve. I took many writing classes through adult education programs while I was learning to write better. None of the classes had anything to do with investments or other financial topics.

If you’d like to focus on financial writing, I offer coaching and my financial blogging class, “How to Write Blog Posts People Will Read: A 5-Week Writing Class for Financial Advisors.” I also lead writing workshops on email and investment commentary for professional societies and corporate clients.

 

How are YOU working to improve your financial writing?

I’m always interested in learning from you. Tell me how you’re improving your financial writing.

By the way, if you need a professional organizer to help you get your office in shape, I recommend Lorena Prime, whose article sparked this post. She is a woman of many talents. She has also acted as facilitator for my annual investment commentary webinar.

Paper image courtesy of adamr/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Financial blogging lessons from my spinning class

I learned some financial blogging lessons in a funny place—at my gym.

Spending 45 to 60 minutes on a stationary bicycle boosts my heart rate in my spinning class. It’s good for me, but I can’t say that I enjoy it. Sometimes my mind wanders, as I try to distract myself from my exertion. Sometimes I write haiku in my head, counting syllables on my fingers. In a recent class, I thought about how a good spinning class offers lessons for a good financial blog.

1. Personality matters

I most enjoy spinning classes—and blogs—led by individuals with great personalities.

I can get a great cardio workout in any spinning class. However, I’m fussy about which classes I’ll attend. I like the instructors with a rah-rah “You can make it up the mountain on your bicycle” attitude. They’re positive people who give me energy. Instructors who simply read instructions in a monotone leave me cold. That’s true even when their classes are technically competent.

Similarly, bloggers who combine personality with competence attract more attention from me and other web surfers.

To show personality in your financial blog, try the following tips.

Share a personal story or a personal passion to illustrate a blog post.
Use some of your characteristic expressions when you write. Write as if you’re carrying on a conversation. But don’t go overboard, as I discuss in “Writing wisdom from novelist Gish Jen.”
Check out the techniques in”How to add personality and warmth to your financial writing–Part one” and “Part two.”

2. A comfortable environment matters

I keep a blanket in my husband’s car because I’m always cold. But somehow I heat up quickly in spinning class. I couldn’t survive if my gym lacked cooling equipment. I go early to the gym to get the bike in front of the portable fan because I get hot before my classmates let the instructor turn on the air conditioning. My environment matters.

Similarly, the right environment makes a blog more comfortable. In blogging terms, this means an attractive, uncluttered layout. Reader-friendly language and images that help to tell your story also make a blog into a place where readers linger.

3. Value matters

Spinning classes push me. I work out harder in class than I would on my own. That’s thanks to the teacher’s encouragement, the beat of the music, and the sight of my hard-pedaling classmates. Spurring me to work harder is the biggest value that I find in spinning.

A good financial blog offers value to its readers. The value may come in terms of the blogger’s information on investments, financial planning, or other practical topics. Or perhaps the value comes in the form of encouragement. Some readers understand what they should do, but find it difficult to implement on their own. A little encouragement—or a reminder that all of us struggle with similar issues—can go a long way.

4. Sameness bores

One of my spinning instructors relies on one instruction—”Add more resistance”—for variety in class. There are so many other variables she could change. Spinning has three positions: first, pedaling in a seated position; second, standing; and third, hunched over the handlebars. There are sprints and other cadence changes. Some teachers vary according to the students’ perceived level of exertion, such as “can’t carry on a conversation.” I prefer teachers who teach less predictable classes with more variety.

When writing your financial blog, use a broad enough array of topics and techniques. For example, it’s unlikely, though not impossible, that your blog could thrive if you only write variations on “One way you can save enough to retire by age 50.” However, your blog should have a focus, rather than bouncing all over the financial world.

5. People approach your material at their own level

There are some people in my spinning class who think nothing of bicycling 50 miles at high speeds on the road. There are others with physical challenges who feel fortunate to be able to pedal seated at a low resistance. Students at different levels perform differently in class.

Similarly, the readers of your financial blog will come at it from different levels of knowledge and motivation. You may find it helpful to identify your target reader so you can pitch your posts at their typical level of knowledge and motivation. If you try to write for all levels, it may be hard for you to find readers who consistently return to your blog for information.

6. You can’t please everyone

People aren’t all the same. That makes this a more interesting world. It also makes it impossible for one spinning class or one blog to please everybody. There are people like me who get bored by spinning instructors who focus on adding resistance. There may be as many, if not more, who relish the challenge of consistently adding resistance.

With your financial blog, you’ll find people who think your blog is too basic, while others think it too advanced. You can’t please everyone. If you add value and target a niche that includes a reasonable number of people, you’ll find an audience. If your blog taps an issue related to your investment, wealth management, or financial planning business, it will also bring you new business.

YOUR financial blogging lessons?

If you spin, or if you have strong feelings about financial blogging, please comment with the financial blogging lessons you’ve learned through your experiences.

Spinning class image courtesy of photostock/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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What’s too long for a blog post?

What’s too long for a blog post? I stirred up a lively conversation when I posted this question on social media earlier this year. I asked because I’d drafted a 2,400-word blog post. That’s unusual for me. My natural length seems to be 400 to 600 words, although I’ve written longer.

As I expected, there’s no consensus on the perfect blog post length. However, you can make the decision that’s best for you, if you understand the issues.

The case for blog posts running 2000+ words

Long posts do best, as measured by shares and links. That’s what BuzzSumo-Moz research on content—that’s “content” of all kinds, not just blog posts—suggests, as reported in Contently’s “5 Ways Content Goes Viral.”

“Long” means way longer than the typical blog post. It means 2,000 words or more. To put that in perspective, according to Contently, “After studying close to 490,000 text-based articles, BuzzSumo and Moz found that 80 percent of content contains fewer than 1,000 words, while only 2.5 percent surpasses 3,000 words.”

The difference between shorter and longer content was dramatic. Content with less than 1,000 words averaged about 3.5 shares apiece vs. almost nine shares for content with 2,000 to 3,000 words, and 11 shares for 3,000+ words.

Evidence from financial blogger Michael Kitces

When I think about long blog posts, I think about Michael Kitces, who writes the Nerd’s Eye View blog. He shared the following graph with me, showing that long content dominates his shares. In fact, 2,000 to 3,000 words is his perfect blog post length.

Michael Kitces’ share counts by article length. Image courtesy of Kitces.com

Here’s what Michael said to me in an email exchange about longer blog posts:

I’ve found that optimal length seems to be in the 2,000 – 3,000 word range.

We often say that people “don’t have time” to read long posts. And I suppose technically that’s true. Most people don’t. But people who have REAL problems, need REAL solutions, and might want to HIRE you, are the ones who are motivated enough to actually read a long post. And get interested. And do business with you.

So think of it this way: writing long and thorough posts is a great screening process, because it helps to ensure the people who read it are interested enough to potentially do business with you.

That’s an intriguing point about your best prospects being willing to read your long posts.

An earlier Investment Writing take on blog post length

For another perspective on blog post length, read this guest post on my blog “Do longer articles really get shared more often?”

Reasons you shouldn’t go long
1. Sharing isn’t the same as reading

If you’d like people to read your content, rather than simply sharing it, shorter may be better. When people share your content, they may not have read it from start to finish. I’m living proof of that.

I confess that I’ve shared articles that I haven’t finished. Why? Because I’ve found an article that I believe will interest my followers, but it isn’t that useful to me. I read enough to find worthy content and then I skim the rest to get a sense of whether it upholds the standards of the beginning. If there’s one tip in the first part of the article that can help my connections move closer to achieving their goals, I figure it’s worth sharing.

When it comes to reading an entire post, shorter is better, unless the reader is motivated to learn about the topic you present. To support this, here are some of the comments I received in response to my asking if I should publish a 2,400-word blog post:

I’ve been staying under 1000 for my site….a typical newspaper column used to be about 500
Few blog entries I’ve edited were more than 550 words long.
I think it’s too long!

Several respondents suggested breaking my blog post into two parts to make it more manageable. They also made the smart suggestion that I should structure a long post to make it easy for my readers to absorb.

2. You’re not good at writing long

Don’t write long blog posts if can’t do a good job on them. You need compelling insights or strong writing skills—or both, ideally. Without them, you’ll drive away the people whom you’re trying to attract.

One person who commented on my question said, “Long posts are better if well written.” Clearly they they don’t enjoy poorly written long posts. Who would?

3. Your topic doesn’t need a long explanation

If you emphasize length over content, you’ll end up with repetitive, boring blog posts.

Your content should be “long enough to make your point,” as one of the people who commented on my blog post length question. Don’t make it longer than that.

Short can work

What if you lack the skill or motivation to write long? Don’t give up!

Short can work.

In “How Long Should Each Blog Post Be? A Data Driven Answer,” Neil Patel shares the example of Seth Godin. He has been tremendously successful with short posts on his Seth’s Blog. At a quick glance, his posts generally run fewer than 300 words. Many run under 100 words.

Still, if you’re not a social media visionary like Seth Godin, consider writing longer than him. Yoast, which produces an SEO optimization plugin (to help you get found in online searches) suggests in “Common sense for your website” that you aim for a minimum of 300 words.

Your page content should contain at least 300 words. That has a simple reason: would your page be a great source for the topic or keyword you want to rank for when it would only contain 50 words? Is that all there is to say about that keyword? I don’t believe that, you don’t believe that and Google does not believe that. There should be a significant amount of content for your page to be considered a great source of information.

The perfect blog post length?

What’s the perfect blog post length? It depends. The answer will vary depending on your goals, the strength of your writing and information, and the time that you have to sink into writing.

I’m going to continue to average far fewer than 2,000 words per post, despite all the research about sharing. Shorter works for me, with some exceptions.

Speaking of exceptions, I published “My experiment blogging on LinkedIn,” the blog post that sparked this discussion, with a length exceeding 2,700 words.

Please tell me what you see as the perfect blog post length.

 

Blog image courtesy of Stuart Miles/ FreeDigitalPhotos.net

 

The post What’s too long for a blog post? appeared first on Susan Weiner's Blog on Investment Writing.

Blog post template: Write about a talk

Do you get tired of generating original material for your blog? Do you attend talks on topics that would interest your blog’s audience? If so, you can benefit from this template for blogging (or writing an article) about a talk. This blog post template will help you to spend less time thinking and writing. Plus, you’ll get better results from what you write.

This blog post template draws on my many years of blogging about presentations that I attended at the Boston Security Analysts Society. Plus, I also covered conference presentations as a staff reporter for Dalbar’s Mutual Fund Market News (now Money Management Executive) and as a freelance writer for Advisor Perspectives. If you’d like to learn more about writing blog posts, check out my financial blogging class.

Here is the process you can follow to apply my blog post template:

Introduce your topic
Give credit
Make at least one point
Write your headline

Step 1. Introduce your topic

Don’t make the mistake that too many amateurs do. Don’t kick off your article by saying “I went to a talk and it was great.”

Instead, start by sharing the speaker’s topic or main point. For example, I led with “‘U.S. economic growth is recovering robustly, receiving the usual cyclical boost from housing and inventories,’ said Dean Maki” in “Recovery will be stronger than consensus, says Barclays Capital chief U.S. economist,” a 2009 blog post. This quickly told the reader what they’d learn in the piece.

Doesn’t that beat the heck out of an introduction that lacks substance? For example, I can imagine an inexperienced writer starting with something like the following: “I went to one of the Boston Security Analysts Society’s excellent lunch presentations for Boston area investment professionals where Dean Maki, managing director and chief U.S. economist of Barclays Capital spoke and I got some great insights into the U.S. economy.” Yes, I’m exaggerating how badly most people write. However, I bet that you’ve read plenty of blog posts and newsletter articles that started similarly. Still, I am grateful that those authors take the time to credit the source of the observations that follow their introductions. That’s far better than presenting someone else’s ideas as your own.

Step 2. Give credit

If you pick up some great ideas at a talk, it’s good to give credit to your source. Just don’t write it in the way that I’ve parodied in the preceding paragraph.

Name the speaker, the title of his or her presentation, the sponsoring organization, and the date, if applicable. This information helps your readers to assess the credibility of the information in your blog post. The date will cue in the reader if information cited in the presentation is no longer current.

Here’s how I gave credit in the first paragraph of the Maki post:

“U.S. economic growth is recovering robustly, receiving the usual cyclical boost from housing and inventories,” said Dean Maki, managing director and chief U.S. economist of Barclays Capital in his “U.S. Economic Outlook” presentation to the Boston Security Analysts Society (BSAS) on December 8.

In the Maki post, I covered steps 1 and 2 in my first paragraph. Then, I moved to Step 3.

Step 3. Make at least one point

When you report on a talk, you don’t need to cover everything the speaker says. Especially in a short blog post, it’s fine to focus on one point.

In the Maki post, I focused on the economy’s strength, the theme introduced in my first paragraph.

Here’s the structure for the rest of the post, in terms of points made:

Paragraph 2: Maki sees a strong recovery, in contrast with the consensus, because he doesn’t see tight credit as a problem.
Paragraph 3:  He thinks strong growth will be driven by these factors.
Paragraph 4: Here are his specific predictions for the economy.
Paragraph 5: Maki sees two things that could derail his predictions.

Here’s the flow of the piece, in terms of the actions I took:

State the speaker’s main opinion.
Provide supporting evidence.
Go into more detail about what the information covered above means.
Provide information about what could go wrong.

Here’s a generic version of my blog post template for you to follow.

State the speaker’s main opinion.
Make your first point. For example, you could describe the main piece of supporting evidence offered by the speaker. Or, you could describe the first of the speaker’s three main suggestions. Or, tell a story that illuminates the speaker’s main opinion.
Make your second point. For example, you could explain the second piece of supporting evidence offered by the speaker. Or you could explain why you disagree with the speaker’s main point.
Make your third point. For example, you could introduce a related theme discussed by the speaker.
Offer a conclusion or call to action. For example, if you’re an investment or wealth manager reporting on economic predictions, you might say how the predictions will influence how you manage money for your clients—or how the predictions should influence your readers’ behavior.

Step 4. Write your headline

It’s often easier to write your headline after you’ve completed writing your entire blog post or article. Writing may help you to identify your main point so you can feature it in your title. For the Maki post, I chose “Recovery will be stronger than consensus, says Barclays Capital chief U.S. economist.”

In addition to highlighting the main point, I included Maki’s corporate affiliation. I chose that over his name because I figured that Barclays Capital had better name recognition.

Apply this blog post template to a longer article

When you write a longer article, you may feel tempted to cover more of the speaker’s twists and tangents. You may also try to present the information in the order and structure used by the speaker. Sticking closely to the speaker’s approach may hurt your article or blog post.

Some speakers wander all over the place. That’s fine when you’re listening to an insightful, entertaining speaker. However, that structure doesn’t translate well into writing. I urge you to pick one theme and stick with it.

I ran into the problem of the wandering speaker when I wrote “Dan Fuss: The 50-Year Opportunity in Bonds” for Advisor Perspectives in Dec. 2008. Fuss held his audience rapt, but he rambled. He’s a leading thinker in the area of fixed income, so any speech by him is an opportunity to gain valuable insights. Still, his talk didn’t lend itself easily to becoming an article. However, along the way he made one point that riveted me: Opportunities in the bond market are as attractive now as they have been in at least 50 years.

The 50-year opportunity in bonds became the focus of my piece, which hit the top 10 list on Advisor Perspectives. I focused the article under two headings. First, “Treasuries overvalued, and investment-grade and high-yield attractive”; and second,”When will it end?”

Believe me, the talk Fuss gave was not as focused as my article. It’s fine for a talk by a leading thinker in the field to ramble. It’s not okay for a written piece. To fix the problem, I created a structure that didn’t exist in the original talk.

To identify the main themes for my article, I used mind mapping, which I teach in my book and my financial blogging class. Then, I used the mind map to organize my thoughts before writing the article.

Sometimes the most important decision you make in writing up a speech is what to omit. I ignored lots of my notes because they didn’t support my theme of the 50-year opportunity in bonds.

Try this blog post template

If you use my blog post template to write about a talk that you attend, please post a link in the Comments section of this blog. If you’d like more guidance from me on how to write this kind of piece, you can sign up for one-on-one coaching or my financial blogging class.

The post Blog post template: Write about a talk appeared first on Susan Weiner's Blog on Investment Writing.

4 tips for turning books into blog posts

The books you read can provide fodder for your blog posts. You don’t have to write a boring book report like an elementary school student. Use the four techniques I describe below to punch up your book‑related blog posts so they attract, inform, and entertain your readers.

1. Highlight one quote from the book

Pick a quote that resonates with you and is relevant to your target audience. For example, I thought “YES!” when I read the following advice for writers in The McGraw Hill 36-Hour Course: Business Writing and Communication: “…give me the information in the order I can use it.”

I wrote a blog post explaining how that advice applies to members of my audience who want email recipients to act on their information.

First I told the readers why they should care about the quote. Then, I shared the quote. Finally, I gave an example of how they could use the quote’s advice.

You can see how I did this in “Email writers, think about this quote.”

2. Share book author tips

You can’t explain an entire book in one blog post, but you can go into detail on one narrow topic, as I did in “Reader challenge: How can investment and wealth managers apply this tip?”

In this case, the first section of my blog post focused on the author’s tips without commentary by me because her tips were straightforward.

The second section was my call to action. I asked readers to comment on how they apply the author’s advice.

3. Get extra comments from the author

In “3 ways to speak plainly while giving financial advice,” I complemented technique #2 by asking author Kathleen Burns Kingsbury to elaborate on one of her book’s tips. This gave readers some knowledge they couldn’t find in her book.

Asking an author for a quote is also a great way to start or deepen a relationship with an author whom you respect.

4. Run a guest post from the author

Publishers are trying to generate publicity for new books, which can benefit your blog. For example, McGraw-Hill, publisher of Meir Statman’s What Investors Really Want, offered me a guest post from Professor Statman. I came up with the topic after reading the book.

If you read a book you like (or see a press release about an upcoming book of interest), consider requesting a guest post from the author. Some authors make a virtual book tour—a series of guest posts, often spread over days, or even a month—on blogs. For example, Statman’s blog tour ran from Nov. 29 to Dec. 15, 2010.

I’d like to hear your best ideas for using books to fuel your blog. Please comment.

This post originally appeared on the RegEd Arkovi blog, which no longer exists in its original form.

 

Book image courtesy of Felixco, Inc. at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The post 4 tips for turning books into blog posts appeared first on Susan Weiner's Blog on Investment Writing.

My financial writing crusade

“Are you on a crusade?” A reader asked me that question with a smile after he read the Barron’s article that quoted me on the need for financial writers to lower the grade level of their writing.

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll probably say the answer is “Yes, I am on a financial writing crusade.” After all, I often urge people to improve their financial writing. Plus, I put the term in the title of this post, picking up on the wording of my reader’s question.

However, I prefer to think of myself as an advocate for good writing. The word “crusade” has overtones of intolerance and single-mindedness. I don’t want to demean people who are doing their best to communicate. Indeed, sometimes poor writing can be good enough for the situation. Think, for example, about a condolence card. The sincere expression of sympathy is more important than the worst misspellings and awkward wording.

Still, good financial writing beats bad financial writing. It’s important because good financial writing helps people to understand the world of earning, spending, saving, and investing.  It might even make the difference between an individual sleeping peacefully instead of tossing and turning at night, due to worries over an investment. It might prevent litigation when risks are clearly disclosed by a disclosure document. On a less dramatic note, it might help institutional investors to choose the strategy that’s right for their unique circumstances.

Here’s what I believe about good financial writing.

Everyone can learn to write better

Good writers are made, not born. You’ll benefit from having other people read and edit your work. Classes, reading and analyzing other people’s work, and using software tools also help.

I think of myself as a good writer, but I still have room for improvement. I continue to read and get feedback from others to enhance my writing.

I’ve come a long way. I mention this to make you realize that you also can improve. As I said in an earlier post, “I wince when I read selections from my Ph.D. thesis, Bureaucracy and Politics in the 1930s: The Career of Goto Fumio.” It’s full of the kind of writing that I warn people against today. My path to improvement involved taking many writing classes, participating in writing groups, and being edited by savvy editors.

I’ve been thrilled to see some of the hard-working students in my financial blogging class make big improvements in their writing. Even small improvements can help. For example, if your sentences average 32 words in length, cutting the average length to 22 words will boost your readability.

You’ll benefit from becoming aware of your writing grade level

To improve your writing, you need to learn your weaknesses. One of the biggest weaknesses of much financial writing is that it’s too long-winded. The authors use too many multisyllabic words in long, convoluted sentences that pile one upon another in impenetrable paragraphs.

To get an idea of how you rate in terms of long-windedness, look at your grade level, which I discussed in “Susan Weiner's Blog on Investment Writing.

Mistakes to avoid in your first live webinar

Planning to run your first live webinar? It’s a great way to attract prospects and deepen relationships with clients of your investment, wealth management, or financial planning firm. I watched a bunch of live webinars as I planned to relaunch my financial blogging class. Some of them were painful to watch. These webinars got me thinking about what distinguishes the best from those that seem less professional. I compiled a list of mistakes to avoid in your first live webinar.

Live webinar mistake 1. Not practicing before you deliver the real thing

You know the saying, “Practice makes perfect”? It may not make perfect, but it helps you to avoid problems that you could have anticipated. I participated in a live webinar where the host was surprised to discover “Oops, the webinar software won’t let me do that.”

If you practice enough times in advance, you’ll get a sense of what can go wrong. For example, during a live presentation of my investment commentary webinar, I accidentally touched the cursor to the wrong spot and popped out of slide presentation mode. This had happened during my practice sessions so I knew exactly how to get back to the right place. Of course, it’s impossible to anticipate everything. Your viewers will forgive you if you’re reasonably good at using your software.

Live webinar mistake 2. Not logging in or acknowledging participants by the official start time

Imagine that you’re a participant who shows up on time for a webinar. The designated start time comes and goes without any word from the presenter. You start to wonder if you’re there on the right day. You feel anxious and maybe a little angry at the organizer’s lack of respect for your time.

When you’re the presenter, you should log in early. You don’t need to start your call early, but it’s nice if you make people aware that you’re there and that you will start at the designated time. On my webinars, my facilitator starts checking in with participants as much as 30 minutes early. This courtesy is particularly important when people pay to participate in your webinar.

Live webinar mistake 3. Not having an agenda

When you don’t manage people’s expectations, they’re often disappointed. Sharing an agenda at the beginning of your presentation helps. People look at the agenda and can decide, “Yes, this is what I want” or “No, this webinar isn’t for me.” Turning away people who aren’t a good fit can be valuable.

Touch upon your agenda in your webinar’s marketing materials. This could include your online sales page, emails, and other communications.

An agenda will also help to keep you on track by providing a road map for meeting the commitments you’ve made to your audience.

Consider offering a handout that includes your agenda and other aids to note-taking. I don’t believe in sharing slides—especially not ahead of time—because they’ll distract people from your presentation. My handouts include headings for each major section of my presentation. I often include the text of the “before” versions of my many before-and-after writing samples.

Live webinar mistake 4. Not having a helper

When you present a live webinar, you need to devote 100 percent of your attention to the presentation. You can’t stop to respond to participant questions about technical problems that are unrelated to your content. That’s not fair to your other participants.

Even answering questions about your content can be a problem, detracting from your ability to connect with participants. Have you ever heard the sound of overwhelmed presenters as they try to scroll through a long list of participant questions, comments, and chitchat entered into a webinar’s chat box? They start talking fast and in a tentative tone of voice. It’s not easy to sort out the legitimate questions from the noise. When you’re anxious about doing that, it’s even harder to answer questions well.

You can make the technical problems and Q&A process easier by recruiting a tech-savvy helper. Your helper can field technical questions behind the scenes. When Q&A starts, ask your helper to sort through the questions and then read them out loud to you. In addition to relieving your stress, the change in voice—from you to your helper—will make it easier for your audience to understand where the question ends and your answer starts. It may even wake up listeners whose attention has wandered.

I wish more webinar presenters hired helpers. My main helper has delivered many webinars herself, which means she understands the technology. She has also seen what can go wrong. Before I present, we run through the entire presentation, including my logging in from a separate computer as a viewer to lob questions at my helper.

Live webinar mistake 5. Expecting people to multi-task for your webinar

I participated in a webinar where the well-meaning speaker expected us to open a second window on our computers and follow her instructions as she spoke. It was a great idea. People absorb lessons better when they apply things as they learn. However, it didn’t work. Instead, participants seemed to get frustrated by the difficulty of understanding and implementing her instructions.

Here are some reasons why expecting participants to work along with you may fail:

They may not have enough computer power to open a second window on their computers. Webinar software can be a big drain on resources.
Your content may be too complex for them to absorb and implement based solely on hearing your instructions orally, with no instructions in front of them. This might work better if you send step-by-step instructions in advance for participants’ reference. But if you do that, why should they watch your webinar?
Your participants may be at different levels of ability to understand and implement your instructions. It’s hard to give instructions that satisfy people at multiple levels.
Inviting people to do other activities on their computers may make it more likely that they get distracted by other opportunities on their computers, such as checking email or social media. When you tell them to take time away from watching your presentation, you communicate that they won’t miss valuable content from you while they’re not focused on your presentation.

If you want people to take actions during your webinar, keep them simple. Consider providing a handout to make it easier for participants to absorb important instructions. Your handout can incorporate worksheets to help participants plan for later actions.

Live webinar mistake 6. Not providing step-by-step instructions in writing

People have different learning styles, but most will benefit from written instructions when learning a complex process. I felt frustrated when I attended a webinar that attempted to teach me a complex process. It was great that the instructor demonstrated the process. However, I had trouble keeping track of the many variables that went into doing the process correctly for my situation. I’m still confused after watching the webinar replay multiple times. I wish that the instructor had provided written instructions, instead of relying on the live presentation and participants’ ability to access the webinar recording later.

Your written instructions could appear on-screen during the presentation. You can also put them in an outline-style handout or a separate step-by-step instructional handout. Another idea: Have you helper type the instructions into the chat box.

Live webinar mistake 7. Not testing the recording quality in advance

“The words are too small in the recording.” If you don’t test the quality of your recording ahead of time, you could be caught by surprise with a comment like this. It happened to one webinar presenter whom I know. What you see as the presenter (or as a live viewer) isn’t always what comes through in the recording. I don’t know how to explain the technical problem, but in this instance it seemed to be related to the webinar provider’s technology, rather than anything the presenter did.

Do a test recording in advance so you’re not surprised by things that you could have anticipated. Of course, most webinar software is glitchy—at least in my experience—so you may still encounter problems that you couldn’t have foreseen. That has happened to me.

Live webinar mistake 8. Not telling people about replay availability

Some webinar participants like to watch replays. Others start craving a webinar when something happens during the webinar to make them miss some of your content. In either case, they’ll approach your webinar in a happier state of mind if it’s clear up front that a replay will be available.

If you’re not sharing a replay—or if the replay will be available for only a limited period of time—announce that, too. It’ll inspire your participants to pay more attention to your live webinar.

Live webinar mistake 9. Not engaging your participants

Ignoring input from your participants means that you miss out on opportunities to boost their satisfaction or to learn from them.

Most webinar software has some sort of Q&A or chat function. Use it.

As I suggested in my discussion of Mistake 4, interaction will go more smoothly when you have a helper to assist in soliciting and responding to participants’ input. But sometimes the participants can do perfectly fine on their own. I’ve participated in a webinar where the chat was visible to all participants. I picked up some great tips from other chat-room participants. They answered some of my questions before the speaker.

When I’ve delivered my webinar on “How to Write Investment Commentary People Will Read,” I’ve learned from the answers people gave to my live polls and when I asked them to type answers to my question into the chat box.

What next?

Avoid these nine live webinar mistakes and you can enjoy more success as you educate your clients, prospects, and referral sources.

I don’t know everything there is to know about live webinars. Please share your tips and suggestions. For more of my webinar-related tips, see “Tech tips for your educational webinar–Learn from my experience.”

 

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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