Walt Kania, Writer

This comes under the heading Seldom Asked Questions. SAQ.

“Which writers have influenced you the most?”

Tom O’Neill of Exodus Capital Advisors was the first client who had ever asked me that.

He explained it was a good way to gauge a writer’s mindset and approach.  And any writer who couldn’t point to role models and heroes was no student of the craft.

Luckily, I was able to rattle off  a few  idols on the spot.  Enough to convince Tom I was no dilletante.

Since then, I have thought more about who has shaped the way I build content for clients. Just in case anyone else brings up the question again.

The big guns, as I see them:

How to be interesting

Malcolm Gladwell, author of the Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers and regular pieces in the New Yorker.  I study the way he makes a case with a deft combination of story and fact. He gets you nodding, “Yes, yes, that makes sense. That’s intriguing.” He has a knack for finding a fresh take on topics covered many times before. Which is precisely what the best content should be doing. If we’re not fascinating, we’re not selling anything. The content world needs more Malcolm Gladwells.

Want people on the edge of their seats? Use bold visuals, skip all that text. And reveal a new slide every few seconds.

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple. His keynotes and product introductions are grand theater. A Jobs presentation becomes an event, buzzed about in advance, covered live on the Web, sound-bited on the Today show, and made available as streaming video later. (Anybody see what Dell or HP launched last week? Me neither.)

His style: Be casual, personable (though meticulously prepped and rehearsed). Love what you’re talking about. Weave in suspense. Unfold the story. Pause. Reveal. Build to a big finish. Leave out the crap.

And punctuate it all, every twenty seconds or so,  with an elegantly minimal slide.

Whenever I take a lumbering, text-heavy PowerPoint and give it this treatment, the piece immediately takes wing. The effect is startling. And clients think me a genius.

For examples of other captivating presentations, see the TED Talks.  And Garr Reynolds’s Presentation Zen.

Enthusiasm works.

Tom Peters. Okay, he overuses ellipses and dashes and overdoes the ALL CAPS. His sentences often take way too long to get where they’re going. But boy, his enthusiasm and velocity trumps it all. He pulls you along with sheer backdraft. The spit is flying, but you’re listening. And it sticks with you for weeks.  Or even decades.

David Ogilvy, the late founder of Ogilvy and Mather advertising, famous for his Rolls-Royce and Hathaway shirts campaigns. He could make you ache for a product with just a few fascinating facts, and nary a touch of marketingspeak or infomercial-style hype. That’s a skill rarely seen nowadays.

"You cannot bore people into buying."

When I feel my copy getting off kilter, I reread Ogilvy on Advertising for a few minutes. That always puts things right again.

Readers Digest. The publication feels dated now, but they have a way of enticing you into their articles with irresistible headlines. And the prose is effortless to read. Like walking downhill with a tailwind. As a kid I used to read dog-eared copies of the Digest in the barbershop while waiting my turn.

Esther Benz, high school English teacher, New Providence, New Jersey.  Retired 1981.  She was BS-proof, merciless, (‘this is FLAB!’), but praised you to the skies when you got it right. She looks over my shoulder still.

Steven Pressfield, author of Gates of Fire, the Legend of Bagger Vance, the War of Art, among others. He brings you into a story and keeps you there, without a hint of artifice. Very natural.

Elmore Leonard. I confess I don’t like his crime novels much. But I love his quote: “If it sounds too much like writing, cut it out.”  And, “Leave out the parts that everyone skips.”  Which goes in spades for marketing stuff.

John Caples, an old-school copywriter (Tested Advertising Methods).  Simple ideas, simple language, zero extraneous matter. His claims and promises would never pass Legal today, but the approach still holds.

James Patterson, thriller novelist.  Say what you will about his literary merits, but he knows how to pull you into a story and keep you there. Short chapters, too, make you turn pages.You won’t remember the story a month from now, but for the moment you’re in deep.

Content Marketing is a clunky term for a marketing approach that relies on a wide arsenal of written and online material to win customers — rather than plain old ‘selling.’

I think of it as marketing by teaching and helping.  Selling by being interesting, by dispensing wisdom, by offering better advice and how-to than the next guy.

By turning your customers into geniuses.

It’s especially useful if you’re selling a lot of complex products like Cisco and AT&T do. When you’re selling expertise or brains, like KPMG.  Or if you’re sellling consumer products like Crutchfield, or credit cards, like American Express.

Instead of hawking your HR software, you expend your efforts showing HR teams how to transform themselves into the most powerful recruiting organizations ever.  Let your competitors yammer about their modules and integration. You are enabling superstars.

Instead of chattering about the specs of your industrial pressure washers, you show maintenance foremen how to get a fleet of grimy buses turned around — and back on the street — in record time.  You’re raising fleet maintenance to high art.

Instead of cranking out another brochure on the featuresandbenefits of your latest product, you’re telling stories of some jaw-dropping things other customers are doing.  (Or things they could be doing.)

In other words, ‘content marketing’ is what the savviest marketers have done for eons.  We just have a clever name for it, now.  And the Internet makes it a bit easier to get your stuff out there.

I know what it feels like on your side of the desk right now. Looking for someone to build content for you is an iffy business.

Is this guy right for what I’m doing?  Will he ‘get’ it?  What if I pay all this money and the work comes out lame?  What if all I get back is tripe?

I’ve been there.

On several occasions clients asked me to hire and manage writers for large content projects.

And I turned out to be lousy at picking writers.

I’ve been writing content since forever, but when it came to deciding who could deliver on a given project and who couldn’t, I was clueless.

Like everyone else, I looked at writing samples, recommendations and resumes, but the results were spotty. Some candidates wrote far better than their resumes would predict.  And some wrote way worse.

But I finally hit on one thing that worked, nine times out of ten.

A12-minute phone conversation.

That’s it. As low tech and unsophisticated as you can get. And I feel dumb for not thinking of it sooner. (Which is why I am a writer and not a manager. At the keyboard, I’m on my turf. Otherwise, I’m faking it.)

Talking to a writer for 10 to 15 minutes was enough.  Most times, it only took five minutes to tell if they were on my side or not, and if they had the chops for the project.

No, I can’t give you six sure-fire questions to ask. The conversations were always different. But each time I simply knew.  Yes or no.

When I think back on it, that is precisely what my clients did. They called me out of the blue or on someone’s recommendation. We talked once or twice. Or three times. Something jibed. Once in a while, I did a small piece for them, just to show where I was coming from.  (Sort of what I do now with the $599 Rewrite.)

And we started working together.  Or the client instantly crossed me off the list.  (“This guy’s supposed to be a genius? Um. Don’t think so.”)

And occasionally I declined.  (“Gee, I have no idea how to crack this one.”)

So if you’re game, try me at (908) 464-5192.

You’ll know in twelve minutes, tops.