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In this episode Katie and Carol discuss Tip 10 from Skirt Strategies: 249 Success Tips for Women in Leadership. Listen as Katie and Carol give their insights on how to create written material and where to submit it for publication. There is also a special guest in this episode.
Tip #10 – Publish something, even if it is a small article in the company newsletter, and include a picture of yourself. It will build your credibility as a leader.
Writing forces a thought process that galvanizes your expertise and molds your opinions into text.
For those of you who are good at writing or see yourself as a subject matter expert, challenge yourself a tad more and begin a blog.
An added bonus is your name in print. Your readers associate that with expertise.
Here are three places to start for getting help writing articles and other content (these are not affiliate links):
Elance Writing & Translation Category
oDesk Freelance Writers Category
Guru: Discover the finest freelance writer online
PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION
Hello and welcome to the Skirt Strategies podcast, the podcast to help you get the support, validation, and skills you need to accomplish your goals and really succeed in a male-dominated world, all without having to give up your incredible female strengths.
Carol: We are here to talk about –
Katie: Another installment of Skirt Strategies success tips, from the book, and if you have been following us you know that we’ve been delving into a tip from the book for each of our podcasts. This one happens to be Tip Number 11. What is it Carol?
Carol: Katie.
Katie: Not the book, the tip.
Carol: We are at Tip Number 10. Backtrack. Should we start over?
Katie: No. I think our followers understand us and they know that things happen and they want to see how we recover.
Carol: Okay, we recover well.
Katie: Tip Number t 10.
Carol: Tip Number 10. This is, publish something even if it’s a small article in the company newsletter. Include a picture of yourself. It builds your credibility as a leader.
Katie: This is somewhat akin to the public speaking that we talked about a few tips ago. You may have listened to that. The writing does a forced function – a forcing function around putting into words, whether verbal or written, putting into words what you do or something of your expertise. In the tip I used to word galvanize, which I love because it makes it sound like I’m erudite.
If you are good at writing that’s great. If you are good at writing that’s not going to be much of a problem for you.
Carol: Well getting it published is not that easy.
Katie: No but it also depends – we’re not talking about getting it published in Chicago’s Business Weekly, we might be talking about, depending on the size of the company that you have, do you have a newsletter that goes around?
Carol: That’s true.
Katie: Do you send out if you are a small business owner, do you send out a regular newsletter to your customers or your followers? You can do it there and they’ll listen to anything you write if they are customers of yours, won’t they?
Carol: I would think so and you are right. It doesn’t have to be anything big, so don’t make a big deal of it. Write something that people would enjoy hearing about. Make yourself an expert in that field, whatever it is.
Katie: I think that anyone that’s had any more than a few years expertise in their career, I mean a few years in your career, you are going to be an expert at something, wouldn’t you think? That’s pretty good.
And this also forces you to articulate what you do. Why do we say include a picture of yourself?
Carol: I don’t know.
Katie: Everyone likes to see what you look like.
Carol: True.
Katie: So if I can visual – do you watch The Voice?
Carol: No.
Katie: In The Voice, four famous singers listen to a novice without looking at them. So I’m not one that gets into some of those realities shows but this one has been super interesting because there is a lesson in how we judge people based on their looks.
If you’ve had a nice head shot or something that looks like a professional picture, then it gives people a sense of, “Oh that’s what she looks like. Oh I can see her age which tells me how maybe she’s in our low 50’s.” Maybe, are you going to lie?
Carol: I was thinking about it but now I can’t.
Katie: Again I’ve thrown you under the bus.
Carol: You have. Just because we were born in the same year and we graduated in the same year does not mean we are the same age.
Katie: Okay. Can you say denial?
But what if you can’t write? Not illiterate, but what if you are not good at writing? You ain’t good and you don’t think you could do it well? What would you do?
Carol: I believe this a good time to bring in the undercover man because he might have some good insight into this.
Katie: Let’s do.
(Music plays)
Katie: So Undercover Man, we’ve been talking about publishing something even if it’s a small article in the company newsletter because it will build your credibility as a leader. What happens if I want to build my credibility as a leader, publish something, but I ain’t good at writing?
Undercover Man: Get someone to write it for you.
Katie: From the country?
Undercover Man: That is not plagiarism.
Katie: Say more about that.
Undercover Man: Well being a person who writes a lot of things that never are anywhere close to my name, I know that this happens all the time. So you can get someone to write something for you.
Now keep in mind that there’s nothing illegal, immoral, unethical, or tawdry, untoward, something – there’s some other un-word, there is nothing wrong with it. Find someone to write it for you.
And the key is that if you sign your name to it, it becomes yours but there are a lot of people that can do that. You give them a little outline depending on how well you know them, you can say, you can give them whatever level of instructions necessary and they can produce this wonderful written document for you.
Katie: They are okay not having credit? Unless they ask for it perhaps?
Undercover Man: No. You do what’s called, it’s like a fee-for-service contract with this person where they retain none of the copyright to it and you need to be very clear with them.
Carol: You can actually get this service online. You can pay somebody online to do this. Like a 1-900 number.
Undercover Man: No, like Fiverr. I don’t recommend Fiverr, any of the outsourcing, Guru, oDesk and I’ll see if I can find some to give you to put in the show notes but there are writing sights just like oDesk tends to be more for programming but there are specific sites where you can get things written. And there’s nothing wrong with doing that so if writing is not your forte, dictate it. Dictate it, call them up, give them an outline. I’ve done it. It works fine. I’ve done it on both sides of this. I’ve paid others to write things for me that –
Katie: Like a speech writer.
Carol: I get people asking me to author things in the paper. So they’ll say, “You are an authority on such and such. Would you please present this to the paper as though it is yours as an op-ed?”
So every once in a while I’ll do it. If it’s something I wouldn’t say, I change it up to be in my voice, so come from my voice, but then if it’s something I believe in, if it’s something I advocate for I’ll do it.
Katie: And we think this is a great tip for leaders because why?
Carol: Because it’s always important for you to –
Katie: It’s always important for you to be able to articulate yourself publicly. That’s like public exposure.
Carol: That’s just what we didn’t do – articulate well in public. But I do want to say most of my stuff I do write and I have people edit. So I have sent stuff to Katie before, Katie’s edited for me. I have other people in my circles help me edit before I publish.
Katie: Here’s a great tip. Our good friend Meggin who is also on our advisory board, Meggin.com. She offers a course called 30 articles in 30 days. I’ve taken it. It’s awesome because it’s super simple, a brainstorming step. How do you brainstorm 30 different topics based on what you know? What are the five rules of women’s leadership? What are the ten things that I think would be useful for anyone starting a business as a female leader? What can someone in public maintenance learn from a woman in leadership? Things like that.
Carol: So that’s Meggin MacIntosh.
Katie: M-E-G-G-I-N. She says it’s the funky spelling. Meggin.com. She offers that occasionally and I think it’s probably an option on her website.
Carol: Meggin’s fantastic and we also have a series of audio training lessons.
Katie: To be determined.
Carol: Now make sure though, if somebody else, okay, write it yourself, but if you get someone to write it for you, you’ve got to make sure that it is something you are proud of and particularly if you are using a subcontractor or a contractor for the first time, and you don’t like what they do, have them do it again. Most of the time you don’t have to pay a lot for these and so if you pay 10 or 20 bucks for something and it’s not good, don’t use that person. Get someone else to do it.
Katie: That’s all it costs?
Undercover Man: I’ve gotten relatively good articles for as cheap as 3 or 4 bucks.
Carol: Don’t use the Russians.
Katie: Their English isn’t so good. Or Japanese translators. Is that at Fiverr.com.
Undercover Man: Yes, well that wasn’t at Fiverr, that’s a different site. But I’ll give you some of the places to start but also one of the things I think business people underutilize and that is, if you have a skill, if you know how to do websites, do websites for somebody and if you do websites for somebody who can write, you can trade out a lot of services. If you are in the net working group, if you know other professionals, ask around. Say, “Hey is anyone here who is a good writer that would like to trade out services?” You can do stuff like that too.
Katie: That’s a great idea.
Katie: I have a friend whose husband is a great writer. I’ve thought about asking him to take a look at rewriting some of my pages, and our friend Autumn Gray is a great writer.
Carol: Oh she is yeah.
Katie: I know she enjoys doing that so there are resources out there. There are people that we know that would be willing to do that.
How do you give them a start? Do you identify what you are passionate about? What do you tell them as a starter, Mister Undercover Man?
Undercover Man: Well let’s do this. Let’s talk about the places and types of writing you can do and then it would be different for each one.
One of the things, let’s say you are doing something in a trade journal, a trade journal, that means it is in the same business you are in and so if you are doing something there what is the reason you are doing it? And who is your audience and so if it’s a trade journal it’s people that are in the same business you might want – like joint ventures or look for people to take on bigger projects. You might have some goal in mind.
But then you can share something. So that’s a great place. It’s good to start but keep in mind you are not going to get direct clients from a trade publication that’s in the same business because everyone else, you know if you are a pest control person and then you write something in Pest Control Monthly, they are not going to ask you to come exterminate the cockroaches in your kitchen.
Katie: You are speaking to the exterminators themselves.
Undercover Man: Yes, but the same sort of content, where you say, “Hey, here is a cool new way I have found to do whatever product or service,” that you might do in that trade journal, you could also put that maybe in some of the papers, the Living Section, the Home Section. You could write an article for that that said, “Hey here is this cool thing I’ve done.”
And the key to these things is not to be too promotional but if your name and your business is in there, they’ll get the idea. Just to use the exterminator example, “…local exterminator comes up with new green technique that works great in this climate to get rid of bugs.”
If that article is in there – there’s a rule of thumb – anywhere from 10 to 100 to 1000 times more valuable to have real content than an ad and so don’t think you need to do a lot of, “I have a special.” That’ll get you kicked out of the paper but having information –
Katie: They want content rich.
Carol: You know the interesting thing is I’m just thinking back to my days in owning restaurants, and they used to have a section of the newspaper where you could write your own article and it looked like an article in the paper but it was an advertorial –
Katie: An advertisement? Did they have to qualify it as that?
Undercover Man: They put a header around it that says advertorial. But interestingly, I got so much good feedback from that and like you say, 10 to 100 to 1000 times more people would come in after one of those articles appeared in the paper than after an advertisement appeared in the paper because they were skipping over the advertisements but they were reading the articles.
You know if I go back and think about it, that’s when I started getting good at writing. I realized also at that point that in press releases, small town newspapers and even some larger newspapers anymore will pick up a press release and print it verbatim.
So if you will write a press release like an article, they will pick it up and print it.
Katie: I have heard that. So that’s a great tip for our entrepreneurial women do need to be forthright in their content delivery.
Carol: They need to be able to write and the better you can – the more you can make it sound like an article, you put quotes in, so and so said, blah blah blah, you write it like somebody would write an article.
Katie: Here’s an advance tip. I have a friend of a friend, I was going to say a darling young lady but we ought to say she is a capable young lady, Kelsey Myer who actually went to Mizzou at a different time that I did because she’s much younger, she runs a company called Influence & Co. Their website is Influenceandco.com and they run a service where they write articles about you as the expert. They do a lot of the writing and get it published for you.
So if you are one of those women and you want to get more of the spotlight maybe in a specific trade magazine or it would be great if you are in fast company but they look for where your niche is and they write an article for you based on how they’ve interviewed you and you say what your expertise is.
Carol: Oh nice.
Katie: It gets you out there as those women that are the industry expert in whatever it might be.
Undercover Man: But if your local hometown paper and you can either write it yourself or have someone write you an article, you can just email it to them and it doesn’t always get picked up. They don’t always run it but they will an amazing amount of the time.
Just back to the thing if you find somebody who is a journalism student I found sometimes they are wrong. They use the classic– the reason for a press release is to engage the publication, to call you up to get more information, to do an interview. That is a type of press release. These are done and there is a legit – that’s how The Wall Street Journal does it. The Wall Street Journal doesn’t cut and paste your stuff but a lot of hometown papers do if it’s truly an article.
So if you’ll do an article with your name. There’s this person that we know that is in the restaurant business who writes these articles and I would say, I don’t want to exaggerate but I’d say he gets $25,000 to $50,000 worth of space in the paper, meaning he would have had to spend $50,000 to get the benefit he gets from his articles getting placed in his hometown paper every few–
Katie: How’s he do that?
Undercover Man: He writes these quirky articles.
Katie: He’s a good quirky writer.
Undercover Man: It’s quirky but it’s not rocket science. But just try it. Don’t be afraid.
Carol: You don’t have to be terribly clever, you can just be an expert in your field and present yourself as the expert that you are.
Katie: Here’s a word of caution. Let’s say you get an email from a local journalist that says, “I’m writing an article about (insert what you are good at)” even if you think, I’m not the expert but she’s asking me. Hey this is great. This is an opportunity.
So you send bark an email where you say, “Here’s what I think about blah and blah. This is my point on blah and blah.” It gets cut and pasted like that and you have this “Oh crap” moment because you emailed back, not expecting that to be what was cut and pasted. So the lesson there is any time you are writing something be careful about where –
Carol: Be careful when speaking to the press. You have to be very careful about what you are saying because they will cut and paste you and they will cut some of the ugliest things you say especially if you spend a lot of time with them.
Interestingly, just recently, three days ago, I got a phone call from the local TV channel and they asked me to make comments on something and it was kind outside of my realm but if you will give them a story they will make you look good.
Katie: Wait? They will make you look good?
Carol: If it is a noncontroversial thing they’ll make you look good because you gave them the story. If it’s a controversial thing, if they have already called in that favor –
Undercover Man: If you have spoken on a controversial difficult topic then you become their source for almost everything. So if there is a problem in your industry, even if it’s not just you, you are the go-to person. So whatever it is and let’s think in, to use my stupid pest control – we have a lot of pest control women in our followers.
Undercover Man: I knew that so that’s why I did that. This chemical is now associated with some horrible health problem and you have used it but guess what? So has everybody else. If you become the spokesperson for that and say you know what, yes we at such-and-such pest control have used it, once this report came out we immediately discontinued that and we’re working through our trade group to encourage the entire industry to cease use of this product immediately, there you go.
Consult your attorney. But here’s the thing. If you are out there in front of the tough stuff, guess what? They will come to you time and time again for the easy stuff. Every town has its moth season here in our town and so if they need a quote from somebody on moth season, they come to you.
Katie: I have found that the audio, I mean we are talking about publishing things in print but I have found that if you become the expert in audio, I have been interviewed not as the expert but as a, “What do you think about the construction in the new school zone down the treat from you?”
And I might say, “Well I don’t really think it’s a good idea but I would support it if all they are going to do is add speed bumps which is what I think they are going to do.” They cut it off at, “I wouldn’t support it.”
Carol: No there is that danger.
Katie: So out of context. I have been nailed.
Undercover Man: But here’s a good point, ahis the good for writing and spoken is, it’s called burying the lead. In my experience, I won’t say I’ve been in every industry, if you are an engineer, pay special attention, engineers are horrible at burying the lead because the way the engineering mind set works is we are going to lay this foundation when the earth’s crust was cooling and then when these minerals were forming and then we were mining the metals etc., etc., they really build it from the very basics up to today. And if they ask you a question, is it not true that this or that and you start way back 10,000 years ago that never works out well.
You need to start at the other end. If you can’t answer the question because it’s a bad question, don’t start out a hundred years ago. Say, “I realize that that’s the question you want to ask but the real question is this. . .” Don’t go the other direction.
Now we are not out there. Most people that we are talking to, don’t be afraid of the media because 99.9 percent of you will be challenged doing this difficult story but if you are telling somebody something don’t bury the lead which means get the most important part of it, the way good articles are written, if there’s ten paragraphs you don’t do nine paragraphs building up and then put the punch line at the end. You do it so, you give them the guts in the first paragraph, second paragraph, third so then if the story gets cut later the core of the story is still there.
Katie: It’s kind of like at dinner, you don’t save is wine until the dessert, you have it right off the bat.
Carol: Always.
Undercover Man: Or during the middle or end.
Katie: Maybe just the whole time.
Carol: But you definitely start out with it.
Katie: Carol what are you drinking?
Carol: Malbec.
Katie: Malbec. It’s an “E.”
Undercover Man: Tomato, potato.
Katie: It doesn’t matter.
Carol: In Australia it’s a Malbac.
Katie: It is.
Carol: I don’t know.
Katie: Our next podcast will be transmitted from the wine region of Australia.
Carol: Carol and Katie both wish. Yes and if anybody would like to send us their – please do. The other thing is we would love some comments on our website, Skirtstrategies.com. We would also love to hear from you just one on one – Katie@ or Carol@ Skirtstrategies.com. It really makes a difference to us to know that you are listening and to know that you are hearing what we are saying.
Katie: Those of you that have not subscribed to our mailing list, you know that if you are subscribed as a free follower you get a tip twice a month. We have a different tip each month, a different category each month so we delve into a lot of different topical areas. By the end of the year you have a 12-pack of female leadership skills. Hope you join us.
(Music plays)
That’s it for this episode of the Skirt Strategies podcast. Thank you for joining us and please be sure to leave a question or comment at Skirtstrategies.com. Remember that success comes when you lead using your natural female strengths.
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