Category: Writing

 

Echo chamber. Vacuum. These are just some of the terms used to describe the social media environment within which we communicate — ubiquitously — through posts and comments. The desire to communicate has become insatiable — the need to post, comment and, for some of us, chase the viral unicorn.

Some statistical context around engagement.

My thanks to Jimit Bagadiya of SocialPilot.co who tread the statistical waters to provide some of these compelling numbers.

• There are 3.5 billion users on the internet.
• 100 million hours of video content are viewed on Facebook daily.
• 35 million Facebook users update their status daily.
• 500 million Tweets are generated per day, an average of 5,787 per second.
• 40% of LinkedIn’s 500 million members use the channel daily.
• 95 million photos are uploaded every day to Instagram.
• 400 hours of video are uploaded to Youtube daily and 80% of them are viewed outside the US (that prompted a second take from this writer).
• 61 percent of your FB community sees your post; 35 percent see a post with a comment or hit the ‘like’ button (Business Insider.com). Based on BI’s Intelligence, FB users have an average of 266 friends; 95% of those users have less than 40 ‘friends’ who liked a post; 18 friends went as far as to offer comments. (For anyone reading, you can extrapolate the math against your own numbers.)
• According to Scrunch.com, the average engagement rate on Instagram runs between 1% and 3% (considered acceptable).
• Meetedgar.com reports that 46% of Twitter users log on once a day; 34% check it more than once and spend only 60 seconds on the platform. (Talk about a moving target; meaning frequency of posting is everything).

There are 3.5 billion users on the internet.

It’s a jungle. (Factoid: one acre of Amazon rainforest is home to 70,000 species of insects.) Kinda’ puts things in perspective. So, we put up our insect-attracting lights and think, “They will come!”, and it will be meaningful, except, they disappear in a flash of terminal heat, much like our posts on social media.

About your voice. Why should it matter that you know more about your voice? Social media experts and brand strategists expound much around the topic of relevance. So, the first question you might ask yourself is, “Am I relevant to my audience?” YES — you have an audience. You can call them friends, contacts, colleagues, customers — regardless of how you define them, they are an audience, in some cases a target market. Ultimately, they are readers and viewers.

“Am I relevant to my audience?”

Second question: “Who are you communicating to?” Are they simply your friends — or just contacts? Is it your expectation or selfish hope that they hang on every word you say? Nothing wrong with that. It does say that you expect unconditional acceptance; a lofty notion in some respects. Certainly, your fans respond predictably; however, the perspectives of many others in your community might shock you. Granted, this may not be an issue for you depending on what your voice is.

What do I really know about my audience; my readers?

Third question. How does one define “voice”? Perhaps the best example to offer is the one this writer can provide; herein: “I see life from the edge of a coin, looking at both faces to understand everything from love to hypocrisy, integrity to betrayal, truth to fabrication — the list is endless.”

From this perspective, one investigates the shadows (negative space, if you will) as well the light to understand and respond to life’s events both from a personal perspective as well as a more objective global view, which is generally subjective anyway. The hope is that the content motivates thinking and considerations of new perspectives — perhaps even enlightenment, leading to an improvement in the human condition.

In simpler terms, this aforementioned voice is always examining the underbelly of thinking and perhaps offers perspectives not previously considered. Why does this writer use this voice? Because it informs and contributes to knowledge, understanding and wisdom — which affects everything in the personal and professional experience.

For most us — the billions using social media — it is an exercise in futility to consider these questions because the experience is generally organic. Posting, commenting, liking  — they are responses on the fly at the best of times; however, if you are posting your thoughts with a desire to offer something tangible to others, it implies that you want to make a difference or maybe just to be noticed and accepted. Knowing your voice is an important component to the impact your posts will have. Otherwise, the communication experience is exclusive to you: absolute self-expression serving only you, which, to repeat, is certainly valid. Being gregarious is a choice, not an obligation.

So, here are questions to answer (including the aforementioned), which, if you’re inclined, can direct you to a meaningful understanding of who you are within the posts you generate.

• Describe the themes your posts tend to reflect: spontaneous, humorous, ironic, informative, enlightening, educational, color commentary of life … etc.
• Describe yourself as a communicator in social media. Are you a philosopher, critic, counsellor, advisor, specialist, pundit, dilettante, comedian, humorist, teacher, parent, agitator, self-absorbed, bleeding heart, chasing acceptance, spiritual, tree hugger, cause cheerleader, innovator, dreamer …?
• What kind of posts get your attention and compel a response from you?
• Who is your audience? Family? Friends? Colleagues? Adversaries? Passers-by?
• What is your concept or sense of the people who you know read your posts? What posts do they like consistently? What kind of comments do they respond with? Do they debate, agree, or offer a third, unexpected perspective? Are they agreeable, adversarial or philosophical?
• Are ‘likes’ or ‘comments’ important to you? Do you care? If NOT, then why do you post? Caveat: posting for no reason is not without reason. Even if you do not take an audience into account, writing or posting as self-expression does not happen in a vacuum. It may be that personal expression is the driving motivator — and there is nothing wrong with that; however, this writer believes most social media users (who are sane) post or publish with some context of readership or viewer.

Are ‘likes’ or ‘comments’ important to you? Do you care or not? If NOT, then why do you post?

UCP – Unique Content Proposition — is a spin off from USP (Unique Selling Proposition). Marketers rely on unique positioning strategies to drive their brand. Social media gives their brand a definitive voice in the market place. As more and more individuals begin to establish their own small businesses, especially within the online domain, the need to create unique content becomes an increasing imperative. The truth can be said for individuals actively communicating online for personal reasons.

Albeit that most of the personal content is ad hoc, it would be ignorant to assume that there is no purpose associated with personal communications through written and visual postings. To some degree, it might be suggested that many individuals are seeking to define their own unique identity through their communications online. On one hand, we want to be unique; on the other hand, we need to belong to something; to be accepted.

Your UCP – Unique Content Proposition — is driven by your voice.

Where do you fit into this matrix? What is your voice? Give your voice ….  a voice. Define it in writing — and then say it out loud.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

 

You might recall that famous bike riding scene in the sky in Spielberg’s film, E.T. That scene was shot on a massive blue screen (originally called ‘traveling mattes’) using wires on the actors. Later, editors put an entire landscape and city behind them. At the time, blue was used because it is the furthest color away from red in the color spectrum. Red is found in the color of skin. The first film to use the effect was in the film, The Thief of Bagdad (1940). It won an Oscar for the effect, by the way.

These days, the industry prefers green screens for that purpose, especially in a world of high definition. Green is also a color you won’t find in human skin. Apparently, it works better than blue with digital cameras, which are incredibly sensitive to green. So now, green screen is popular.

Green is not found in the color of most human skin and, in terms of video editing, is better for movement.

 

So, what about white backgrounds? Will video editors kill the director who made the decision to shoot on white and then decided to alter the background in post? In terms of video production, it is more of a challenge because movement is difficult to light consistently. Given video cameras’ sensitivity to green, it makes chroma key editing much easier.

A new photo-video studio being built by Michael Kryton in Edmonton will feature an infinity white wall. So why white? Practicality. The reality is, white gets more use. Most smaller scale productions can use portable green screens if green is a must and there’s lots to choose from. And if you’re shooting video and want to have a background you can manipulate, green is the better solution, unless the editor is a victim for punishment or, perhaps, is just that good and can make magic happen.

Digital photographers use solid white as well black and gray as alternatives to green or blue screens. With the right lighting to contrast the subject from the background, these colors can work in photo editing. So, photographers have some wiggle room when it comes to deciding on white or green.

Given the right lighting, photographers can make white work.

So, there’s a colorful look at screens — so to speak. If you have any thoughts, let us have the opportunity to screen your opinions.

It’s always fascinating to listen when people talk about their children.  Aside from the regular menu of topics including where the children are in terms of education and the activities in which they are involved, invariably, subtle things emerge that indicate the challenges, sometimes problems, a parent is facing with their progeny.  It’s what we don’t hear that is even more interesting.

Of late, I have become fascinated with the context of ‘negative space’ — technically, the space around and between subjects.  If you really want to experience negative space, go into a larger room in your home and stand on your head.  Suddenly, you see the gaps a little more.  In fact, you see things you didn’t notice before.  I have been applying negative space to my thinking — hence — negative space thinking.  I listen for what I do not hear in what someone says.  I probe the darkness, the other side of a coin, the drop beyond the cliff.

As it applies to parents and their children, we can hear the stress, sometimes pains, which parents are experiencing with their children.  We can hear it in the things they don’t say.  As far as I’m concerned, it’s about our quest as parents to figure out where we have failed our children or missed the mark.  I go through this all the time, always evaluating what I didn’t do as a parent and how it affects my troops.  I can hear it when I talk about them.

Switching gears.  Text messages are fascinating.  They motivate us to brevity; they reveal even more.  It’s what people don’t say to each other (negative space) that speak volumes.  Most often, the lack of communication is the root of all the problems in a relationship.  Rather than say what we’re thinking or feeling, we say nothing and let speculation prevail.  I hate that, frankly.

I am learning to simplify things through negative space thinking.  If you are not communicating with me, then it means you don’t want to or you are afraid to.  So, I take out my intellectual probing iron and jab: what is it you are not telling me?  Then I wait for the response, which will fall invariably into one of these categories: deflection and avoidance (hiding a truth), finally the truth comes out (the truth revealed), don’t have a clue as to what I’m doing (encumbering the truth within chaos).

My application of negative space thinking is taking me into new territory all the time.  As I discover more about life I seize the negative space with the understanding that the more I know, the more I embrace the vastness of my own ignorance.  This context helps me strike a balance between the bitterness I sometimes feel because of my failures, especially as a parent, and the opportunities to use the knowledge of my shortcomings for the benefit of my children (and the rest of my paradigm).  What does that look like?

I tell them I screwed up.  Lately, my children and I have engaged in discussions about relationships.  They have been particularly curious about my relationship with their mother.  So I talk about why and how the relationship failed (reminding them that there are two sides to the story) with the hope that they will take this information and carry it with them as they wander into the realm of love and broken hearts, partnerships and betrayal, and muses and twisted games.

As I turn 57 this week, I can boldly say I have learned a thing or two.  Most importantly, I have learned that honesty and truth — spoken out loud — are the best tools we have to create loving relationships from friendships to marriages.

Negative space thinking is a ‘positive’ negative.  Try it.  Listen to the silence.  Read between the words.  Look a little more deeply in places you don’t usually focus on.  Announce out loud that you have failed — or triumphed — and fill the space with the unexpected.  It is a process that will take you far beyond your expectations.  And it can help those parents feeling guilty or carrying regrets move on.  Happy birthday to me.

On April 20th this year, I celebrated 39 years as a short-writer. Understand that I’m 5 feet, 11 inches tall and shrinking. Short-writers are politely ignored by the literary world because of our vocation: writing commercials for radio and television, writing ad copy for newspapers and magazines, thinking in 30 and 60 second increments and conceptualizing language in blocks and banners. However, writers of novels, plays and screenplays can learn from short-writers. (Did I hear an unamused grunt?)

Short-writing is, at once, an art and science demanding an ability to abstract ideas and stories, to consolidate images and layers of human communication. It requires surgical and, always, ruthless, editing skills. The creative challenge of short-writing is as complex and dynamic as penning a screenplay like ‘Traffic’. (I sense gloves coming off.)

Commercial writers, copywriters, ad writers —- short-writers — -are scribes focused on the manipulation of the consumer mind. The science embraces the understanding of the communication path and its seven steps (refer to your expensive, marketing communication textbook): exposure, awareness, knowledge, liking, preference, conviction, purchase, or, action. (One can buy into an idea as much as one can buy a product.)

Through an understanding of the communication path, we learn to escort the reader, listener, or viewer through a proven process, drawing them to a state of “buying into” in many ways and at different times: obliquely, quickly, very slowly; it varies. Like the mind, it is linear and non-linear.

As writers, we need to understand where the reader or viewer stands relative to any particular step. Have they been exposed yet to the name and basic definition of a character, product or idea? If not, we expose them first to symbols, words and phrases that will always serve to identify the subject.

Awareness builds familiarity. Usually, in advertising, this means buying enough media to generate a frequency of communication that reaches the target as often as possible. If nothing, they will know the name.

The step referred to as knowledge is the strategic pivot that completes the first phase of the communication path. Herein, the short-writer assesses the power to persuade using unique selling propositions (USP), features and benefits.

In phase two, short-writers begin to focus on issues that lead the reader or viewer to a liking first, and then a preference for a product or idea. “More doctors recommend” gives you a reason to like that toothpaste. The young male getting the female glances (and male) as he drives away the stylish tin on wheels begins to attract the testosterone-driven target to the brand.

Although the line between preference and conviction can sometimes be thin, it requires some aggressive, marketing techniques to push the consumer along.
One can develop a preference for something without actually choosing it. If one were to hear a consumer say, “I think I might try this, I like what I hear about it”, then you would have evidence of the actualization of preference in the communication path paradigm. But, will they or won’t they choose?

A lower price, as an example, can cause the shift to conviction. A consumer can be motivated to consider reaching for the advertised brand as it sits in silent competition next to its rival based on pricing policy alone. Sometimes, product marketers simply increase the amount of the product you can buy at the same price as the rival brand. Bonus size! Particularly effective with shampoos and detergent.

Once we convict the target or, more appropriately, the target convicts himself, we hear cheers in the boardroom as the sales reports are reviewed, clearly showing that the public is now purchasing the product.

Short-writers look for beacons to help them sail through the fog of human thought. Over the years, I have found a beacon I call “inherent value” (IV). Defining an IV can be as simple as using the name of a business to inspire a theme: “The solution is as clear as Crystal Glass.” An IV for a screenplay can be defined by a high concept question such as: what would happen if two people exchanged personalities, but not souls?

By focusing first on inherently strong, consumer/audience/character issues and values, the writer can build blocks that fit together within the human thought-matrix, which is governed by emotion and reason. We use the knowledge block to develop blocks of affinity (liking & preference), employing reasoned justification or scintillating, emotional appeal, sometimes engaging both simultaneously.

Short-writers learn to ask questions all the time, before and during the writing process. Am I a mother talking to mothers, a significant challenge for a middle-aged male short-writer —? Am I invoking a masculine read-with-authority because the client’s marketing team or advertising agency wants to convey technical, product information with a clinical air of confidence?
Women are relationship oriented, and it is better to express information to them (and to portray them) in terms of how it all inter-relates. Men are task-oriented. Facts, tasks and results should read like a menu in a pool room. Then they get it. How often have you seen men just sit down and relate? Men cluster their communication, more often than not, around activity or pursuit. They may not be actually playing pool, but, without that pool cue in hand, a certain amount of confidence is held in check. Escort a group of females to a table and six chairs, and it’s all they need to generate communication. Women are far more confident than men in this regard.

Always the big question: what current, general perspective does the consumer/audience have regarding the idea or product around which I am creating messages? Is it new and forward thinking? Is it trendy or nostalgic? Is it plugged with social politics? Is it really sensual? Or is it gratuitously pornographic? Short-writing is long on psychology, but any good writing is.

Activation methods and tone & manner are all tools and beacons qualified short-writers use to churn out the messages that actually work. Activation methods are chosen to appeal to reason or emotion or both depending on the nature of the message. Imitation is an activation method employing well-known personalities to convince you a product is worthwhile. If a famous, popular model uses a particular eyeliner, it is possible that young female teens will want to imitate her.

Motivation through psychological appeal is an activation method you would see manifested in the lifestyle, chewing gum, commercial that uses Xtreme snowboarders in faraway mountains pulling big-air moves supported by a killer, music track. My scripts have often called for a track that is “highly syncopated, supporting adrenalin tension”. The objective is to make the product appear “cool” enough so that you remember the brand name and reach for it at the inconvenience store.

The tone and manner of the previous example would be described as the Xtreme sports action, music-video style in which the message and images are presented. This is where the art takes over. Tone & manner may be defined as a simple, direct-to-camera delivery of a serious message from a former drug addict asking young people not to engage in the use of dangerous substances. From a novelist’s perspective, tone and manner can be defined as a first-person narrative. In film, tone & manner was taken to new heights in the movie, “Traffic”. The ground-breaking style embraced ENG (electronic news gathering) and surveillance techniques.

Short-writing is manifested within a pressurized, script development vacuum where creativity gets compressed. It avoids lengthy plots, multiple conflicts, and fleshed-out, character relationships. It is lean of, but not completely devoid of metaphor, simile, or alliteration. (In fact, alliteration thrives in short-writing much as it does in poetry and lyric.)
Out of necessity, short-writers are single-minded with their creativity. It teaches them to be intrusive and efficient. They establish contexts, situations and relationships quickly. Their writing, ultimately, reflects the currency of thought and feelings in a world pursuing possession, convenience and better self-image.

A radio station manager once said to me, “If you can say it in a minute, you can say it 30 seconds. If you can say it in 30 seconds, you can say it in fifteen, in ten, in five”. He’s right. We live and write by the notion that we have six seconds to get your attention and have a favorable impact. The first, six seconds makes and breaks careers.

As small as the canvas may be, there are layers upon layers of communication at work in radio and television commercials: language (spoken and read), symbols, sound effect (or audiographic) — even silence. The effective use of a sound effect replaces many words. A picture is worth …

Silence arrests the ear and reengages the mind, whether it occurs in radio, television or film. Silence is difficult to create in a literary work, but not impossible to the accomplished writer who commands language. From “Under Milkwood” by Dylan Thomas: “Tis spring; moonless night in the small town, starless and bible black; the hunched courters’ and rabbit’s wood limping invisible down to the slow black, sloe black, fishing boat, bobbing sea.”

A short-writer can use a gunshot followed by silence to reinforce the announcer-driven, voice-over which tells you that, in some countries, “your first offence for drunk driving is your last: death by firing squad”. BANG!

What can we learn from short-writers? Perhaps the best lesson is the age-old notion that the best work comes from the practice of keeping it simple. Inherently, there are many complex issues within one idea. If we learn to write from a position of strength and move slowly out, in a sense, working in ever-expanding, concentric circles, we stand to realize a work that has more depth wherein ideas relate more strongly and appeal more readily to the audience. (Is it me, or are there some television shows that are over-scripted and hard to follow? Is this why many of them are failing?)

The communication path may appear to be clinical, but it is the best, linear expression of the communication process I have had the pleasure to work with over the years. It forever guides me to the right questions. Inherent value (IV) stimulates my creative thinking in seconds. Take these tools and try them on your next newspaper ad, short story, lyric, novel, screenplay — in short —- wherever your keystroke or pen takes you.