Archive for the ‘Writing to build community’ Category
Why I Want To Do What Others Don’t (Shop Talk #6)
Guest Post from Kayla Schwartz
From The conchological illustrations, by George Brettingham Sowerby, London, 1832.
[A few of us have been discussing what fulfillment looks like for a professional writer. The entire discussion was in a response to a question from Kayla Schwartz, a professional writing student at Northwestern College. Check out these six essays filed under Shop Talk: The Collision of Craft, Faith and Service for more on that. Kayla’s back with this guest post that contains a few of her thoughts and conclusions.]
“Technical writing? That’s so…interesting.”
This is the response I usually get when I tell people what I’m studying. As a professional writing major, I’ve done journalism and PR writing, but I’ve been most drawn to technical writing.
Why? I had not given it much thought. Most people think of technical writing as boring or tedious. So why pursue it? What really drives technical writers?
As I’ve thought about these questions and talked to technical and other professional writers who’ve been at it much longer than I, I’ve gleaned a few potential answers.
- It’s useful. Some people find a lot of satisfaction in their ability to help others understand things. They feel they are making a difference.
- It’s necessary. Technical manuals may not always be read by customers, but they are a necessary step in the process of distributing the product. There is satisfaction in contributing to a company’s success.
- It’s interesting. For people who are naturally curious, technical writing offers an ideal situation: learn about new ideas and products, and get paid for writing about them.
- It’s lucrative. Yes, some people are just looking for something that pays the bills.
All of these are valid reasons to do technical writing. However, none of them really expresses my motivation (although the last one is starting to look pretty good when I think about my student loans).
I’m pursuing technical writing because I genuinely enjoy it. I like creating an organized, easy-to-follow document. I like figuring out how to use words effectively and concisely. I’m a bit of a perfectionist and don’t mind spending time on “minor” details. I suppose I enjoy learning about new things or knowing that I’m helping others, but ultimately, it’s a way to do what I love.
Maybe this makes me the exception among technical writers, but I hope not. Technical writing isn’t for everyone, but for those of us who enjoy it, it can be just as satisfying as any other career.
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Image credit: George Brettingham Sowerby via OBI Scrapbook Blog
What is Remarkable—in Your Industry?
Connect the Dots for Your Clients and their Customers
Over at the Same Rowdy Crowd, Joe Loveland wrote about the best and worst of the Blogosphere. One of the points Loveland made is that the blogosphere is less about creating and more about aggregating. Nothing new there: we’re all curators today. But in aggregating, we are also connecting the dots for ourselves and for each other. This actually is a value-add: because I get to see how you are thinking about life today. Which also points to the ephemeral side of social media. Like tweets, blog posts are mostly of the moment. Meant to be read and discarded, much like verbal conversation: as we announce something, it is gone. That is the nature of sound.
Blogging and tweeting (and etc.) are simply tools of remarking. My working definition of “remarkable” is that a thing is remarkable when I choose to tell someone about it. Bear with me: there’s more to this. If I remark on something to someone, I think they’ll care. And I think they will find it interesting. I won’t remark on something to a friend if I think they’ll not care or if I think they will find it boring (like my 10-year-old friend thought me yesterday).
So the work of social media, in many ways, is that of connecting the dots by remarking on things we think people—our audiences—will find interesting. And along the way we show our expertise (or reveal our shallowness) even as we invite our audiences to think with us about one slivery facet of a topic. One small thing. One small thing that is of today.
It is this one small thing, this one slivery particular that has the power to pull in the outsider. This is because we can become fascinated by the inner workings of someone else’s world. It is the momentary pulling aside of the curtain that both reveals what is inside and draws others in.
Over at Clarity Coverdale Fury they are running a series of posts on the conscious consumer. Rob Rankin remarked about how his wife rented a dress for a Christmas party rather than buying one. He called the organization she used the “Netflix of fashion” and went on to hint at how this model of commerce will intrude into yet another industry. That is interesting and remarkable and a nice connection for most any audience.
One challenge of communication today has to do with finding those remarkable things you can share with insiders—and industry outsiders—which they will find interesting. It’s a language challenge. And a focus challenge. But since the days of monologue and the bully pulpit are long gone, this is our invitation.
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Image credit: via Frank T. Zumbachs Mysterious World
Gay Marriage and the Desperate Times/Desperate Measures Argument
People of faith can do better
Amy Bergquist’s powerful editorial (“This man shouldn’t get the last word on gay marriage”) in today’s StarTribune makes a strong argument about treating people as adults. Read the comments (59 as of 10:10am, 135 as of 2:50pm) and you’ll be reminded of what a lightning rod issue this is for our culture. Setting aside the lightning and the working parts of Christian conviction in a multi-religious nation for a moment, I believe Ms. Bergquist is exactly right about Frank Schuber/Schubert (The Strib printed his name both ways) methods:
Running emotion-driven ads at the last minute does not give room to debate, discuss or even engage one’s mind. It’s all visceral. It’s all knee-jerk reaction—which is the point: We all know that every institution and cause, from the Axis to AIDS, has played on emotion to move people to action. We each tune out countless of these messages every day.
As a copywriter and a student of persuasion and a Christian, I question Mr. Schuber/Schubert’s tactics: while his ads may move the vote, they do not promote transformation. Transformation happens as people engage with an issue and think it through and talk it through (and pray it through). On a personal level, it is one-on-one conversation that makes things happen. The notion of ambush communication tactics may give short-term gains in Jerry Falwell’s culture wars while leaving the nation’s current inhabitant’s thumbing their fact-checkers as they walk away.
I know these tactics well as a copywriter. But anyone can see that advertising and marketing communications are moving away from the trick-you-into-buying mentality. The marketplace is much more conversational and becoming more so every day.
As a sometime faculty member at Northwestern College where Mr. Schuber/Schubert was interviewed weaving his emotional magic, I wonder if the faith community that supports the college can call for better, more mature, truly Christian communication. I doubt the college sanctioned Schuber/Schubert’s particular work, though clearly the marriage amendment would have a lot of support from the evangelical-minded folks aligned with Northwestern College. But I would challenge the community to find ways to engage people in conversation—sort of like Jesus and Paul did—rather than supporting more rapid-fire emotional outbursts.
Let’s grow up.
Together.
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Image Credit: Famous Movie Quotes via thisisnthappiness
What does a “social” church look like?
What Does a Social Anything Look Like?
hey-let's unlock our solipsism
We talk a lot about “social” but often marketers and corporate communicators practice the same old monologue and one-way messaging characteristic of the last century—they just shrink and divide their messages into packets of 140 characters and broadcast them through the channels people happen to be listening to at the moment.
For most of us “social” means only broadcasting through relatively new channels. We mostly don’t get the listening part of dialogue. This deafness comes from a deep place: this human tendency to see ourselves and our thoughts—our messages—as the axis for all that happens in the world. How could it be otherwise, given that we experience every part of life through our senses: the world comes to us as images, sounds, tastes, feeling and odors?
Certainly that is the case with profit-seeking entities like corporations. We monologue because we want people to buy our stuff. Same with churches: leaders broadcast what they want followers to hear and act on. Same with any organization.
3 Lessons and a Revolution
I’ve just finished my third run at teaching Social Media Marketing at Northwestern College and yesterday was my favorite day: when the students present what they learned from their social media excursions and community building activities. They learned:
- That the most tautly-orchestrated rhetorical strategy falls apart pretty quickly in the face of the opinions and interests of their audience. Students become completely captivated by hearing others respond to their words and ideas. These responses are especially enticing after years of writing papers only for the professor’s eyes.
- Try-Fail-Adapt was a motto we took from our texts and nearly universally adopted. This is the way forward with building communities using social media.
- That vague “interesting” titles and headlines don’t pull readers nearly as well as solid simple titles and headlines. And that putting a number in a headline produces a bit of magic. Something women’s magazines have practiced for decades.
One notion that threaded its way through the presentations was this subversive, revolutionary aspect of working with social media. When you look beyond today’s tools as just more broadcast channels and see that people are given a voice, the world starts to tilt differently. People with a voice. A voice that agrees with leaders. Or not. Voices that speak back to power. We’ve already seen those voices collecting around the Arab Spring, Putin’s Russia and our own Occupy movements. What will that look like as people slip into ownership of the church? Because it is sure to happen there as well. Will leaders learn to lead collaboratively and by pulling people toward them? Or will leaders rely on pulpits and authority structures for their power? And how long will that tactic last?
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Image credit: Neatorama
Take This Word to Rehab: “fellowship”
Old becomes very, very new
If it makes you think of blue-haired older women drinking tea and serving Jello salad in a musty church basement—like I did—then you need rehab.
A few of us are making our way through an ancient text: a very old letter from around the first century. The writer said he had seen and heard and touched a man claiming to be God. This writer, eager to connect with his audience, was also eager for his audience to connect with this Man (the writer said his “joy would be complete” if they also had “fellowship”). That’s because there was something about “fellowship” that was not just “nice” and way more even than “robust.” As one of our readers put it: “these first few lines are awesome.” The writer opened an invitation to some kind of life and some kind of relationship that was well beyond ordinary human experience. The open invitation hints at far more than idle conversation. The writer invites full-on partnership/participation/relationship with this God and God-Man and the other people known to both.
Which is awesome. And becoming more so every day.
I see the notion of “fellowship” changing before my eyes.
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Image: MyModernMet.com
Mega-Church or Micro-Brew?
What’ll it be?
Are beer wars an apt analogy for churches? Maybe so. Walk with me:
My friend and I are cooking up a book proposal for how the church can use social media. But a major disagreement stands between us: Do churches really want to go where social media leads? Groundswell (Li and Bernoff), which I use as a text in my Social Media Marketing class, makes a compelling case that the end-game of social media is people participating in product development, in customer support, in sales and—generally—in decision-making. Businesses using social media only to broadcast messages (the old marketing monologue model) will be left out of the real conversation as it continues around rather than with them. Many corporate overlords resist this new communication freedom and stay out of the conversation—until forced into it.
What about churches? My friend thinks the future lies with mega-churches that typically retain control of as many outward and linking messages as they can—for the sake of efficiency. I believe nearly the opposite: that we’ll see more churches that require less control of messages so as to actually invite people to bring their voices and contribute. I see as problematic the requirement of multiple overlords, presidents, governors, lieutenants, elders, council-people—you name it—just to keep the big ship moving. Multiple overlords tend to squash multi-directional voices.
Back to beer: There will always be Budweiser and Miller. But last time I checked, that’s not where the market growth was. The growth was in the micro-brews. My explanation for that growth: people realize they want beer that tastes like beer rather than water. Same with churches, there will always be a few mega-churches around, but the real growth will take place in smaller congregations where a definite personality develops because many voices are being heard and are actually participating in directing the community. Or perhaps growth will take place in those mega-churches that make a way for spectators to become contributors with voices.
And now back to social media. I contend that social media naturally leads to a democratization of leadership and a multiplicity of voices—two genetic traits not found in the DNA of most hierarchical mega-churches. But they could be in the DNA of smaller congregations (but, clearly, authoritarian leaders exist in any size organization).
At least two glaring problems to all this:
- I’ve oversimplified my argument by casting big as bad. That is simply not true. Very big churches can be very relational and very flavorful (to push the beer analogy). And there is clearly an attraction for churches that hold firmly and broadcast the Bible’s message of the God bent on reconciliation. Maybe big churches can also admit a multiplicity of voices. I just haven’t seen it.
- Even Groundswell recognizes that only a small percentage of any online population serves as creators. A slightly larger population functions as critics. But the great majority of folks online are spectators. Test your own population here. Maybe that’s the same population that fills up the back rows of any church or college class—those who prefer watching. So while I’ve noted that social media provides the opportunity to amplify one’s voice, few actually take advantage of it. Maybe that will change. Maybe it won’t. The truth is most of us are pretty happy to not lead.
What do you think? Does social media lead to a place churches really want to go?
Postscript: I believe the opportunity social media presents has a theological component that moves us closer to the creator’s intent for communication. More on that later.
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Jeff Nunokawa & People-Centric Scholarship
A recent New Yorker Talk of the Town feature showed Jeff Nunokawa practicing his scholarship on Facebook. Rebecca Mead’s article “Earnest” compared Dr. Nunokawa writing his first book in a windowless basement with the way he connects today with his Princeton students. His “meditations” get read because they are brief, accessible and located exactly where his audience spends their time—Facebook.
“…I like the social-media element—I want it to be sociable. It’s not that I don’t want to be a scholar, but this is how I want to be a scholar.” (The New Yorker, July 4, 2011, 19)
Something good is happening here. And the good thing is not that scholarship is dumbed-down or going away. Tightly controlled, peer-reviewed articles using insider-only language will continue as a means of advancing scholarship. But this good thing is a fresh emphasis on accessibility: making the connections so more people can get pulled into the excitement of understanding. You may call it low-hanging fruit. But this copywriter sees it as a ministry to the human race.
At the moment, the academy doesn’t reward this: popular retelling of scholarship is often not tenure-track stuff. But the institutional gatekeepers will not have the last say, as more people join these ongoing conversations.
Something good is happening. Something new. I welcome it.
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Image credit: Scott Dadich
Verbatim: Tell Other People’s Stories
In which I learn from my students
We see better together
We just finished our Social Media Marketing class at Northwestern College. One of my favorite assignments was when the students critique their own social media efforts: their Facebooking and Tweeting and especially their blogging. Each student established their own direction at the beginning of the class complete with written goals and objectives. All for the purpose of establishing a community in just a few short weeks.
Students learn great lessons. They learn about how details and minute specificity can help their work be found by search engines (that is, by people using search engines). There is always a moment of triumph when they get their first non-class participant. They learn that a number in a headline pulls in readers. They learn how commenting on other people’s work is another way of polite conversation that also helps expand their reach. Of course I am being reminded and learning afresh all the same things. My favorite learning this time:
“I began by writing about what interested me, but I’m learning to let my audience guide the topic choice by what they comment.”
This is a mature understanding. She went on:
“I’m realizing that this blog is not about what I know and can provide, but about what the community of writers can share with each other.”
Writing our commonality has a way of inviting others in. It is a way of telling a story together. We talked about “psychic income,” which we defined as the intrinsic reward we get from helping someone else and how that helps others participate to build the story and the community.
Her comment also speaks directly against the notion of a self-absorbed generation. Here’s a person learning to put the needs and interests of others ahead of her own. Not that she was any more self-focused than any of us: we’re all struggling to fathom how to set aside our personal, angsty issues to see what’s going on in others. Telling other people’s stories is precisely the beginning of drawing together a community.
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Photo Credit: xplanes.tumblr.com
How Could this Book be More Interesting?
I’m about to go fishing with my Listentalk book proposal (via www.ChristianManuscriptSubmissions.com). How could I make the summary (below) more interesting? Be honest. People respond to these posts by email, on Facebook and occasionally right here at “Engage.” Vent your spleen. I’m listening.
Listentalk: How Simple Conversation Changes Your Life Every Day
Why does one conversation make you scan the room for escape while the next sends you breathless to register to run a marathon—though you hate exercise? Listentalk: How Simple Conversation Changes Your Life Every Day shows how humble, mundane conversations have the power to turn our life direction every single day, by:
- Reminding us of the pivotal conversations that have shaped and sculpted our own lives. Like the chance comment to your 18-year-old-self from an acquaintance about a “school you should check out,” which sent you a direction that ended in law school, marriage and being appointed as a judge (true story).
- Showing how God purposefully composed the human condition so that while we are limited, we are limited together. Conversation has a way of bumping out our human limitations in extraordinary ways, so that my lack of understanding leads to a discussion that sheds light on a key topic but also opens an opportunity to pursue the work I love.
- Exposing the component parts of listening and talking so we can better understand how God speaks to and through us
- Providing practical insights into how we can listen and speak for powerful good every single day—including wise use of social media
Today’s incendiary and vitriolic talk leaves people feeling weary and soiled. Listentalk refreshes Christian adults, Sunday School classes, small groups and college students by reminding them of the wonder, curiosity and serendipity that have been part of the deep verbal connections that have shaped their lives. These deep connections have often sprung from the unlikeliest of mundane conversations.
Listentalk tells stories of conversations that both suggest and model an extraordinary set of expectations and outcomes for ordinary talk. Listentalk helps people see verbal, visual and other-sensory conversational episodes as the powerful shaping tools they are—and provides suggestions for making them even more powerful. Unlike possibility-thinking, self-help books, Listentalk is grounded in the nature and actions of the conversing God of the Bible who expected and realized world-changing outcomes from each conversational episode. Listentalk frees readers to see daily conversation in a very different light by inviting readers to reach out in trust to each day’s conversational partners—an ever-expanding set of partners due to changing attitudes (about communication, authority and the loss of gatekeepers) and developing technologies.
Listentalk offers a primer on navigating the growing social media space as redeemed conversational partners. Creating communities of target audiences is the new marketing strategy. Leading public conversations by reaching out with dialogue that gifts and blesses is not only supremely Christian, but supremely strategic.
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