It's Saturday. Fart around.

Inspiration comes in the strangest forms.

Which is exactly why we all must take time to fart around.

Happy Saturday, blog-o-sphere. Do what makes you uniquely you. Your writing is sure to benefit.

Kurt Vonnegut can't be wrong.

Please. Do Not Write Like You Talk

A Case for NOT Writing Like You Talk 

People enjoy and retain good conversation and renounce boring, corporate cliché and jargon. That’s why some experts advise you to write like you talk.

Yikes. Have you ever listened to yourself talk?

Unless you’ve spent the last five years getting your speech on at Toastmasters, please, please—do not write like you talk.

A little credit

Okay, I know you don’t take this “write like you talk” advice literally. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be reading this post from your company-issued desktop.

In business writing, an informal and conversational tone can help you connect with your reader. But writing like you talk can be difficult to do well.

The dangers of writing like you talk (beyond the overuse of like, um, and other such offenders)

1. You bury your point. Or don’t even have one (see Exhibit A below). Your best friend will forgive you for a lack of objective. Your captive readers will not. No point = no reader.
   
2. You ramble. Saying “to make a long story short” in conversation might pass, but readers prefer you start with “the short.”
   
3. You don’t edit yourself. Verbally, you can rewind and revisit what you’re trying to communicate until you get it right. There are no such mulligans in writing. 

Writing like you talk—done well

1. What you wrote sounds like something you’d actually say. Minus the big words meant to impress. Minus fillers like “at the end of the day” and “with all due respect.” Minus redundancies like “end result” and “free gift.”
   
2. You use simple language and keep it brief. This doesn’t come naturally to me. Edit yourself or find someone else who can.
   
3. You speak to your audience. Whether you need to communicate a new procedure or you want to bond with a potential client, consider your reader to find the right tone. When I write for doctors, my attempts at cleverness are whacked like a mole. But other clients prefer a bit of wackiness.
   
4. You connect by showing personality. Read the last thing you wrote. In ten years, would you recognize it as your voice? Even if you ghost-write like me, kill the robotics. A human voice keeps readers interested. 

Business writing doesn't need to be stiff, formal, and boring. Use your conversational skills to capture your reader’s attention. Don’t ramble, always edit, and for God’s sake—don’t write like you talk.
.........................

Exhibit A: A recent conversation with my best friend.

Me: Hey dude.
Her: What’s up?
Me: Nothing. Oh wait, that’s not true. I totally had something to tell you. But I forget what that was.
Her: Dude, hate it when that happens.

Granted, we’ve known each other since 7th grade. So our conversations can lean towards juvenile.

Yet, imagine the nonsense that would emerge if we all wrote like we talk.

Social Media Lessons from a Psych-O

I am a Psych-o. And I crave delicious flavor.

Today I ate breakfast with Colorado’s best health care communicators and learned about award-winning social media strategies.

It got me thinking about—wait for it!—the USA Network and its fan-favorite show, Psych.  

I already admitted to being a Psych-O (something all good Shawn Spencer lovers routinely do). However, Psych is an excellent example of ridiculously awesome social media campaigns that support and engage brand enthusiasts.

Never heard of Psych? I’ll catch you up. It’s a quick-witted “dramedy” about a police consultant who, along with his reluctant sidekick and lifelong best friend, solve crimes using acute observation that leads the Santa Barbara police department to think he’s psychic.

Yep, just like The Mentalist. Only first. And better.

Psych is pop culture + humor + friendship + mystery + snark. Anyone coming of age in the 80s and 90s is sure to fall in love. But it’s what happens off-screen, in the realm of social media, that makes us Psych-Os transition from fan to raving evangelist.

Here are a few examples—and thoughts on how you can adapt these ideas to your own brand.

PARTY. Remember first: social media is social. No duh, you say, but think for a second about what that means. What do we do when we’re being social? We have fun. We let loose. Share. Laugh. Get drunk. Dance on the tables.

To build excitement about Psych Season 7, they threw a party. Psych-Os stayed up all night to watch and tweet about the Psych Slumber Party, in which seven fan-selected favorite episodes (chosen by the fans who voted a whopping 280,000 times) were replayed from midnight to 6 a.m. The network streamed #PsychSlumberParty tweets all Friday night, including those of Psych’s actors.

They got great results.

• Psych was Saturday's #1 entertainment show on TV for social media mentions.

•  #PsychSlumberParty drove 157,000 Twitter mentions reaching 22.4 million people with 12 trending hashtags.

•  Psych’s Character Chatter earned 122K page views and 6K uniques.

Any brand can have fun with its audience if it knows what gets ‘em excited.

At the aforementioned breakfast meeting, 9HealthFair talked about its strategies and challenges. Their lesson was this: connect first, then engage. Psych resonated to people as a program; it’s social media strategies engage. 9HealthFair fans were at first reluctant to share their stories. So 9HealthFair developed a strategy to connect with its fans about topics of interest to any Coloradoan: the Broncos, the crazy weather, ski season, etc. The results? Once they established the connection, their audience began engaging on the personal level they were looking for.

SWEEPSTAKES. I’ve lost count of the number of sweepstakes that I’ve entered for Psych. Everything from winning some pineapple slippers to visiting the set to the most recent—a SuperFan Adventure to Universal Studios.

Whether you’re looking to increase the number of “likes” or get more comments on your blog, giveaways encourage action. 9HealthFair further engaged its audience by creating a contest to name its blog. The winner? Just for the health of it.

YOU TUBE. Today’s speakers affirmed that video, while a great tool, isn’t always viewed on Facebook and Twitter. That’s why, according to our speakers, brands are creating videos with a longer shelf life. But don’t count video out. Psych’s You Tube channel gets tons of views, and offers previews, character-based clips, actor interviews, and more, giving Psych-Os another way to connect with their favorite characters.

Think about the stories in your organization and how you can tell them. Or, open it up to your audience. Oreo is rocking it right now with its “Cookie vs Creme” campaign. In the next two weeks, Oreo will be boosting its You Tube following by showing videos of four super fans. The first video follows a physicist who created a machine that removes the creme from his cookie.
How can your brand use video to entertain and enlighten your audience?

CHARACTERS. USA Network’s slogan is Characters Welcome. Most of the network’s original programming is based on unique and crazy characters that fans adore. They are quirky, smart, and flawed—just like the rest of us.

How can you put this to use? Consider using characters to drive your social media program. Colorado and Donor Alliance use social media to promote “Guy Vroom,” an 80s-loving, mullet-wearing dude who reminds us to “Save Time, Renew Online” and to be an organ and tissue donor.

No matter what, your social media presence should have a voice that reflects your brand. The more human that voice, the better.

HASHTAG. Killer, that is. In 2011, Psych debuted The Hashtag Killer, a social media game where loyal Psychos helped Shawn and Gus solve a crime on social media. Round two is “The S#cial Sector” where, for the next eight weeks, fans can solve the mystery that plays out online using games, prizes, and on Twitter under hashtag #SocialSector.

Yes, it’s unrealistic for most of us to create something so complex. But consider the lesson. USA took something from TV to an entirely different screen by using some creative thinking and by knowing its audience. You know your brand best. What strategies would make you engage with it?

Thanks for indulging me as I publicly profess my Psych-O-ness. If you take anything out of this post, it’s this: There is no limit on the creative approaches your brand can use to engage audiences on social media.

And if you’ve never seen Psych, call in sick, order a pineapple pizza, and Netflix  seasons 1-6 in rapid succession.

You know that’s right…*virtual fist bump*