I have news. Like, actual writing news!

jason-leung-479251-unsplash

Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

On Monday, I learned that my manuscript, “A Perfect Facebook Life,”  was chosen by Woodhall Press as one of six finalists for the Fairfield Book Prize.

And then I spent a few days processing that information because IT. IS. BONKERS.

First of all, the other finalists are amazingly talented and I am honored to be named with him. I can’t believe my strange little book has been named alongside their work.

Second, I didn’t intend to write the book. I usually write fiction and this is a weird little experimental book of poetry, humor, micro-memoir and …plays, I guess? (I’m not sure. It’s experimental.) I had no plans to write or submit, but a former grad school colleague who thinks I’m funny on Facebook suggested I do it. I wasn’t writing anything else — having a business and a preschooler has been cutting into my ability to write coherent long-form fiction — so I decided to try it.

Third, I legitimately expected a thank u, next response when I submitted this manuscript. You get used to rejection in publishing. I’m almost always prepared for a no thank you. I’m pretty much never prepared for a yes.

So yes, this is thing that is happening, and it’s happening this summer — the winning manuscript will be judged by National Book Award winning author Phil Klay and the winner will be announced in July.

/0 Comments/by

4 questions to ask before your tech company starts looking for a content writer

Your tech company has decided that it needs to invest in content marketing. Maybe you’ve got an editorial calendar and a full content team already. Maybe you’ve got nothing, but you know that content marketing is the best, least expensive form of marketing your company can invest in, and you’re panicking, thinking “oh god, we should have started blogging yesterday.” In any case, you need content writers, and you need them now.

You’re about to head over to LinkedIn to post an opening, but I’m going to stop you right there. Do you know what you’re looking for? Do you know who you’re looking for? As a tech firm, you’ve got pretty specific content needs, and there is a sea of freelance writers out there. Once you post that you’re looking for a writer, a ton of them will respond.

It shouldn’t be overwhelming to find content writers. Before you do anything at all, ask yourself these questions to make sure you drill down and hire the copywriter who is right for your company. In fact, after answering these questions, you may not need to take out an ad at all, because you’ll know exactly who you’re looking for, and you’ll be able to find them yourself. No LinkedIn post needed.

Here are the questions you’ll want to ask:

  1. What’s the tone of your existing content?
  2. What’s your existing marketing team like?
  3. Who is your audience?
  4. How much onboarding are you willing to do?

Let’s get into it.

1. What’s the tone of your existing content?

A company’s blog usually has a particular tone. Some tech companies’ blogs are super-informal, almost like personal blogs. Some read like news releases. Some are reports about new features. Some are slick operations that read like long-form magazine journalism. How does yours read?

Look for content writers whose work matches the tone you want for your website and check out their portfolios for samples of their writing. (While you can find these on Contently or Skyword, or even on LinkedIn, a Google search will turn up individual freelancers’ sites and portfolios as well.)

If you want an informal blog, look for pieces with a conversational tone, and maybe hit up bloggers who have been blogging personally. Interested in a press release ambiance? Look for someone with a background in PR. If you want a blog that feels more like a trade magazine, find a writer with a journalism background. In fact, you may even want to hit up the writers of your favorite trade magazine. Chances are, those writers also work as content and copywriters in your industry.

2. What is your existing marketing team like? 

Your marketing team may be a one person operation. (Or even a no-person operation, if you’re the founder of a start-up.) Or you might be the head of a well-oiled content marketing machine, just looking to fill out your stable of writers.

If you’ve got a small operation and need someone to handle all the content marketing, you’ll need someone who has the availability to write a lot. You may expect your freelancer to find images for blog posts, handle SEO, schedule social media posts, take on copywriting duties, and help with content strategy. If that sounds like what you’re looking for, be up-front about what you’re looking for. That’s a lot of work, and freelancers will want to know what they’re applying for before — not after — they’re contracted to work with you.

If you’re looking to slot a new writer into a pre-existing team, think about the culture of your team. What sort of writer do you want to join your existing freelancers on your marketing department’s Slack? Do you want someone who has worked successfully with a team before, or are you going for a certain type of personality?

How do you verify any of this? LinkedIn. Look for writers with the experience you want, but also see if they have testimonials. Those testimonials will help you evaluate the writer: do they communicate well? Do they meet deadlines? Play well with others? You can also get an idea of a writer’s personality from their social media presence — check Twitter to see if their personality matches your company culture.

You’ll also want to look at content writers’ specialities, of course.

3. Who are you selling to? 

If you’ve got a marketing team, chances are they’ve already built customer personas — a fictional person who embodies your ideal customer. Even if you don’t have personae created, chances are you know who you’re selling to.

Your ideal customer will help you choose your ideal writer. If you’re selling to extremely technical people, like developers, you’ll need someone who speaks their language. If you’re selling to attorneys, you want a writer with a firm grounding in the law. Not only will this help your writer understand your subject material and the pain points of your clients, it will also make your content relatable to your clients.

4. How much onboarding are you willing to do? 

There are a lot of great content writers out there, but not all of them understand technology, and while some of them can be brought up to speed quickly, there is likely to be a learning curve for every writer.

It will be somewhat less steep for someone who has been writing about tech for a long time, or for someone who has worked in tech themselves. Or you may want to hire a writer who has worked in your field. A writer who was a teacher will understand the pain points addressed by your edtech, for example. A writer who worked as a sales rep will understand why the features of your CRM are vital to sales teams. A writer who worked in a doctor’s office will get why your healthtech is so important.

That said, you may end up having to pay a little more for a writer with a lot of experience in a particular industry.

Still looking for a writer? 

I’m a tech writer with journalism experience. I’ve written about edtech in higher ed, and I’ve taught using technology at the college level. I’ve written about development, business processes, and blockchain — and in my personal life — I’m a writer who has been hanging around with developers for most of my adult  life. So, if you’re looking for someone who can translate tech to English, or for someone to write about educational technology, I might be your ideal writer.

If that’s what you’re looking for, contact me and let’s talk about your company’s content.

(And if I’m not, that’s cool. You have some ideas of where to start looking for content writers now.)

/0 Comments/by

Edtech, ed tech, or ed-tech? Here’s the deal.

I’d like to talk about a bee that’s gotten into my bonnet. I’ve been writing about education technology since 2014, and in that time, a question seems to be buzzing in the background; one that everyone seems to be afraid to ask.

Maybe because it’s the sort of thing we feel like we should already know. Maybe we’re afraid we somehow missed an essential definition by a tech guru on an important blog. Maybe we don’t want to ask, for fear of looking stupid.

But let’s just go for it, guys, okay? No judgment.

Is it edtech or ed-tech?

There are a lot of ways to shorten education technology: edtech, ed-tech, ed tech, EdTech. I’ve experimented with all of them at one time or another. But which is it? What’s the rule?

The short answer is that there is no hard and fast rule when it comes to a new compound word. The long answer? Well, let’s dig in.

What do the stylebooks say?

The two big stylebooks, Chicago Manual of Style and the Associated Press Stylebook, don’t have rules about specific compound words like edtech. And they probably won’t, until edtech (ed-tech?) stops being jargon, and enters common usage, as it seems poised to do.

The Chicago Manual of Style’s online forum, however, did address this specific question. The forum (which is subscriber only, although if do some Googling you can read quite a bit of the discussion in the Chicago search results) suggests that education technology should be spelled out on first reference, and then two words thereafter: ed tech.

Other commenters on that thread weighed in as well, saying that the accepted spelling should be taken from magazines, trade publications, and blogs.

And that’s how stylebooks tend to work: whatever the accepted spelling seems to be, that’s what it actually is.

What are all the cool kids using?

Here is my extremely unscientific survey of trade magazines, blogs and industry groups:

  • Campus Technology uses two words — ed tech — although just as often it uses “education technology” in the body of its articles rather than shortening it.
  • EdTech Magazine uses “ed tech” (despite its name.)
  • Inside Higher Ed uses both “edtech” and “ed-tech”, depending on the writer. (One IHE writer has made a case not only for “edtech” but to recognize edtech as being more than an abbreviation of educational technology.” )
  • Education Week uses “ed-tech” and “edtech”
  • Wired uses “edtech.”
  • Techcrunch appears to be using “edtech.”
  • e-Literate, the education technology blog run by Phil Hill and Michael Feldstein, uses both one and two words, but I’m seeing more “ed tech” than “edtech.”
  • EdSurge appears to favor “edtech.”
  • The Online Learning Consortium is using “edtech.”
  • The Gates Foundation has used “edtech,” “ed tech” and “ed-tech” on its sites.
  • The U.S. Department of Education Office of Educational Technology uses “educational technology” almost exclusively, but when an abbreviation does slip through, it can be either “ed tech” or “edtech.”

There’s not a clear winner, but we can see one thing: none of the industry groups are really using “ed-tech.”

Step away from the hyphen.

This move away from the hyphen and toward a closed compound is pretty representative of both the big stylebooks, Chicago and AP (which states “the fewer hyphens, the better”). For an editor adhering to either book, a hyphen is something that should be used only when an unhyphenated word might be misread.

And then there’s the fact that American English speakers do tend to love closed compounds, like online (which, long ago, was once written “on-line”) or Kimye.

This affection for closed compounds, and the fact that industry groups like EdSurge and the Online Learning Consortium are using “edtech” in their materials, and the rise of other kinds of tech (fintech, salestech, martech, healthtech) makes me believe that we’re headed for a one-word edtech.

Let’s face it, if educators and developers are consistently using “edtech,” the publications that cover them will follow suit.

So, one word or two?

Unless you really love hyphens, or your branding uses it a lot already, I would steer clear of “ed-tech.”

If you are an adherent of Chicago or AP Style, or just don’t like that your spellcheck app gets salty when you use “edtech,” you might want to use “ed tech.”

I think “edtech” will age better, however. It also preserves keystrokes, which is helpful when you’re sharing your content on social media, or want a headline to be read more clearly.

A lot of this will come down to your brand’s internal style guide.

Need great edtech content? 

If you’re developing great edtech (or ed tech or ed-tech) and need great content to go along with that product, contact me. I’ve been writing content for edtech companies for five years, and as a journalist, I’ve been writing about education for much, much longer. I can help you develop an editorial calendar, talk you through your content strategy and develop great content for your organization.

Get in touch!

Want to read more about edtech terminology? Check out my piece about the blurry definition of personalized learning in Campus Technology.

 

/0 Comments/by