Tag Archives: writing

The Temperamental Writer’s Temperament

Since I have self-branded myself as the “temperamental writer,” it makes sense to explore what other people say about the writer’s temperament.

Curiosity

By Tom@HK – https://www.flickr.com/photos/gracewong/ – https://www.flickr.com/photos/gracewong/312922826/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9621314

Rob Bignell:

If there is an overarching temperament that is important to all fiction writers, curiosity about life and others arguably is paramount.

From https://inventingrealityeditingservice.typepad.com/inventing_reality_editing/2013/10/what-is-a-writers-natural-temperament.html

This also applies to non-fiction, Rob. Trust me.

Inquisitiveness (or not)

Zadie Smith:

Some writers won’t read a word of any novel while they’re writing their own. Not one word….Try to recommend a good novel to a writer of this type while he’s writing and he’ll give you a look like you just stabbed him in the heart with a kitchen knife. It’s a matter of temperament. Some writers are the kind of solo violinists who need complete silence to tune their instruments. Others want to hear every member of the orchestra — they’ll take a cue from a clarinet, from an oboe, even.

From https://advicetowriters.com/advice/a-matter-of-temperament-1

Perhaps I’m wrong, but in the world of non-fiction, writers MUST hear at least some members of the orchestra. To comment on the world around us, we need to know what is happening in the world around us. We can’t make up our own Narnia and write to it, because our audience lives in the real world.

Choleric, Melancholic, Sanguine, or Phlegmatic

 K.M. Weiland:

The first step in learning how to maximize your personality’s pros and minimize its cons is to figure out your basic personality type. One simple approach is that of the “four temperaments” approach (popularized by Tim LaHaye, among others), in which human personalities are narrowed down into four basic categories: choleric, melancholic, sanguine, and phlegmatic. 

From https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/whats-your-writing-personality/

Heck, I’ve already spent time figuring out my Jungian archetype. I didn’t exactly relish re-examining myself on the Tim LaHaye model.

But I reviewed Weiland’s summary of the four temperaments anyway, and decided that I exhibit some of the traits of the melancholic writer:

  • Natural bent toward writing
  • Detail-oriented
  • Precise
By Publisher: R. Prudent. Paris. – Own collection., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=52055282

The other temperaments vary greatly.

But what does this mean for firms needing content?

You can get any content marketer to write your words, but you’d be better off getting a curious, inquisitive, precise one who isn’t going to sit back and let a bot do all the work. (The whole “bot” thing is what riled up my temperamental nature in the first place.)

And by the most amazing coincidence, I know a content marketing firm that exhibits all of these “temperamental” capabilities.

My own firm, Bredemarket, that serves identity/biometric, technology, and local (California’s Inland Empire) firms that need blog posts, white papers, and other types of written content.

Authorize Bredemarket, Ontario California’s content marketing expert, to help your firm produce words that return results.

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Coldest Beer in Town

HK Food Store, Grove & 6th, Ontario, California.

Illogical marketing slogans like “coldest beer in town” are fascinating.

If you take a moment to think about it, every mini mart and liquor store in town has to chill beer to the exact same temperature before it freezes, so no store will have colder beer than any other store. (For the specifics, including the effect of ABV on alcohol freezing temperature, see Oxbow Tavern’s blog post.)

But liquor store marketers know that we DON’T take a moment to think about it. When it’s hot and we want beer, we want the “coldest beer in town.”

Well, while it was hot this morning, and while the HK Food Store was open (unlike the C & M Classy Mart a couple of miles northwest), I opted NOT to get the coldest beer in town. I wasn’t carrying a beer bottle opener, and I didn’t feel like breaking the law by walking down Grove Avenue with a beer bottle hidden in a paper bag.

My loss.

Quick Tech Takes on Speech Neuroprosthesis, AEM Dynamic Media, and Graph Databases in IAM

Yes, I’m stealing the Biometric Update practice of combining multiple items into a single post, but this lets me take a brief break from identity (mostly) and examine three general technology stories:

  • Advances in speech neuroprosthesis (the Pat Bennett / Stanford University story).
  • The benefits of Dynamic Media for Adobe Enterprise Manager users, as described by KBWEB Consult.
  • The benefits of graph databases for Identity and Access Management (IAM) implementations, as described by IndyKite.

Speech Neuroprosthesis

First, let’s define “neuroprosthetics/neuroprosthesis”:

Neuroprosthetics “is a discipline related to neuroscience and biomedical engineering concerned with developing neural prostheses, artificial devices to replace or improve the function of an impaired nervous system.

From: Neuromodulation (Second Edition), 2018

Various news sources highlighted the story of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patient Pat Bennett and her somewhat-enhanced ability to formulate words, resulting from research at Stanford University.

Diagram of a human highlighting the areas affected by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). By PaulWicks – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=130714816

Because I was curious, I sought the Nature article that discussed the research in detail, “A high-performance speech neuroprosthesis.” The article describes a proof of concept of a speech brain-computer interface (BCI).

Here we demonstrate a speech-to-text BCI that records spiking activity from intracortical microelectrode arrays. Enabled by these high-resolution recordings, our study participant—who can no longer speak intelligibly owing to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis—achieved a 9.1% word error rate on a 50-word vocabulary (2.7 times fewer errors than the previous state-of-the-art speech BCI2) and a 23.8% word error rate on a 125,000-word vocabulary (the first successful demonstration, to our knowledge, of large-vocabulary decoding). Our participant’s attempted speech was decoded  at 62 words per minute, which is 3.4 times as fast as the previous record8 and begins to approach the speed of natural conversation (160 words per minute9).

From https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06377-x

While a 125,000 word vocabulary is impressive (most adult native English speakers have a vocabulary of 20,000-35,000 words), a 76.2% accuracy rate is so-so.

Stanford Medicine published a more lay-oriented article and a video that described Bennett’s condition, and the results of the study.

For Bennett, the (ALS) deterioration began not in her spinal cord, as is typical, but in her brain stem. She can still move around, dress herself and use her fingers to type, albeit with increasing difficulty. But she can no longer use the muscles of her lips, tongue, larynx and jaws to enunciate clearly the phonemes — or units of sound, such as sh — that are the building blocks of speech….

After four months, Bennett’s attempted utterances were being converted into words on a computer screen at 62 words per minute — more than three times as fast as the previous record for BCI-assisted communication.

From https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2023/08/brain-implant-speech-als.html
From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaWb1ukmYHQ

The Benefits of AEM Dynamic Media

Now let’s shift to companies that need to produce marketing collateral. Bredemarket produces collateral, but not to the scale that big companies need to produce. A single company may have to produce millions of pieces of collateral, each of which is specific to a particular product, in a particular region, for a particular audience/persona. Even Bredemarket could potentially produce all sorts of content, if it weren’t so difficult to do so:

  • A YouTube description of the Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service, targeted to fingerprint/face marketing executives in the identity industry.
  • An Instagram carousel post about the Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service, targeted to voice sales executives in the identity industry.
  • A TikTok reel about the Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service, targeted to marketing executives in the AI industry.

All of this specialized content, using all of these different image and video formats? I’m not gonna create all that.

But as KBWEB Consult (a boutique technology consulting firm specializing in the implementation and delivery of Adobe Enterprise Cloud technologies) points out in its article “Implementing Rapid Omnichannel Messaging with AEM Dynamic Media,” Adobe Experience Manager has tools to speed up this process and create correctly-messaged content in ALL the formats for ALL the audiences.

One of those tools is Dynamic Media.

AEM Dynamic Media accelerates omnichannel personalization, ensuring your business messages are presented quickly and in the proper formats. Starting with a master file, Dynamic Media quickly adjusts images and videos to satisfy varying asset specifications, contributing to increased content velocity.

From https://kbwebconsult.com/implementing-rapid-omnichannel-messaging-with-aem-dynamic-media/

For those who aren’t immersed in marketing talk:

Fair use, from https://www.racers-behindthehelmet.com/post/first-historic-pole-position-and-podium-for-antonella-bassani-in-porsche-cup-brasil. Photo credits: Porsche Cup Brasil.

The article also discusses further implementation issues that are of interest to AEM users. If you are such a user, check the article out.

Graph Databases in Identity and Access Management (IAM)

I previously said that I was MOSTLY taking a break from identity, but graph databases impact items well beyond identity.

So what is a graph database?

By Originally uploaded by Ahzf (Transferred by Obersachse) – Originally uploaded on en.wikipedia, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19279472

A graph database, also referred to as a semantic database, is a software application designed to store, query and modify network graphs. A network graph is a visual construct that consists of nodes and edges. Each node represents an entity (such as a person) and each edge represents a connection or relationship between two nodes. 

Graph databases have been around in some variation for along time. For example, a family tree is a very simple graph database…. 

Graph databases are well-suited for analyzing interconnections…

From https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/graph-database

The claim is that the interconnection analysis capabilities of graph databases are much more flexible and comprehensive than the capabilities of traditional relational databases. While graph databases are not always better than relational databases, they are better for cerrtain types of data.

To see how this applies to identity and access management (IAM), I’ll turn to IndyKite, whose Lasse Andersen recently presented on graph database use in IAM (in a webinar sponsored by Strativ Group). IndyKite describes its solution as follows (in part):

A knowledge graph that holistically captures the identities of customers and IoT devices along with the rich relationships between them

A dynamic and real-time data model that unifies disconnected identity data and business metadata into one contextualized layer

From https://www.indykite.com/identity-knowledge-graph

So what?

From https://www.digitalcheck.com/postal-banking-no-need-to-play-the-political-game/

For example, how does such a solution benefit banking and financial services providers who wish to support financial identity?

Identity-first security to enable trusted, seamless customer experiences

From https://www.indykite.com/banking

Yes, I know that every identity company (with one exception) uses the word “trust,” and they all use the word “seamless.”

But this particular technology benefits banking customers (at least the honest ones) by using the available interconnections to provide all the essential information about the customer and the customer’s devices, in a way that does not inconvenience the customer. IndyKite claims “greater privacy and security,” along with flexibility for future expansion.

In other words, it increases velocity.

What is your technology story?

I hope you provided this quick overview of these three technology advances.

But do you have a technology story that YOU want to tell?

Perhaps Bredemarket, the technology content marketing expert, can help you select the words to tell your story. If you’re interested in talking, let me know.

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There’s a Reason Why “Tech” is a Four-Letter Word

By Tomia, original image en:User:Polylerus – Own work (Vector drawing based on Image:Profanity.JPG), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3332425

We often use the phrase “four-letter word” to refer to cuss words that shouldn’t be said in polite company. Occasionally, we have our own words that we personally consider to be four-letter words. (Such as “BIPA.”)

There are some times when we resign ourselves to the fact that “tech” can be a four-letter word also. But there’s actually a good reason for the problems we have with today’s technology.

Tech can be dim

Just this week I was doing something on my smartphone and my screen got really dim all of a sudden, with no explanation.

So I went to my phone’s settings, and my brightness setting was down at the lowest level.

For no reason.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

– Arthur C. Clarke, quoted here.
From https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202613

So I increased my screen’s brightness, and everything was back to normal. Or so I thought.

A little while later, my screen got dim again, so I went to the brightness setting…and was told that my brightness was very high. (Could have fooled me.)

I can’t remember what I did next (because when you are trying to fix something you can NEVER remember what you did next), but later my screen brightness was fine.

For no reason.

Arthur C. Clark, by ITU Pictures – https://www.flickr.com/photos/itupictures/16636142906, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=64344486

Was Arthur C. Clarke right? And if so, WHY was he right?

Perhaps it’s selective memory, but I don’t recall having this many technology problems when I was younger.

The shift to multi-purpose devices

Part of the reason for the increasing complexity of technology is that we make fewer and fewer single-purpose devices, and are manufacturing more and more multi-purpose devices.

One example of the shift: if I want to write a letter today, I can write it on my smartphone. (Assuming the screen is bright enough.) This same smartphone can perform my banking activities, play games, keep track of Bredemarket’s earnings…oh, and make phone calls.

Smartphones are an example of technologial convergence:

Technological convergence is a term that describes bringing previously unrelated technologies together, often in a single device. Smartphones might be the best possible example of such a convergence. Prior to the widespread adoption of smartphones, consumers generally relied on a collection of single-purpose devices. Some of these devices included telephones, wrist watches, digital cameras and global positioning system (GPS) navigators. Today, even low-end smartphones combine the functionality of all these separate devices, easily replacing them in a single device.

From a consumer perspective, technological convergence is often synonymous with innovation.

From https://www.techtarget.com/searchdatacenter/definition/technological-convergence

And the smartphone example certainly demonstrates innovation from the previous-generation single-purpose devices.

When I was a kid, if I wanted to write a letter, I had two choices:

  1. I could set a piece of paper on the table and write the letter with a writing implement such as a pen or pencil.
  2. I could roll a piece of paper into a typewriter and type the letter.

These were, for the most part, single purpose devices. Sure I could make a paper airplane out of the piece of paper, but I couldn’t use the typewriter to play a game or make a phone call.

Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1216813

Turning our attention to the typewriter, it certainly was a manufacturing marvel, and intricate precision was required to design the hammers that would hit the typewritter ribbon and leave their impressions on the piece of paper. And typewriters could break, and repairmen (back then they were mostly men) could fix them.

A smartphone is much more innovative than a smartphone. But it’s infinitely harder to figure out what is wrong with a smartphone.

The smartphone hardware alone is incredibly complex, with components from a multitude of manufacturers. Add the complexities of the operating system and all the different types of software that are loaded on a smartphone, and a single problem could result from a myriad of causes.

No wonder it seems like magic, even for the best of us.

Explaining technology

But this complexity has provided a number of jobs:

  • The helpful person at your cellular service provider who has acquired just enough information to recognize and fix an errant application.
  • The many people in call centers (the legitimate call centers, not the “we found a problem with your Windows computer” call scammers) who perform the same tasks at a distance.
By Earl Andrew at English Wikipedia – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17793658
  • All the people who write instructions on how to use and fix all of our multi-purpose devices, from smartphones to computers to remote controls.

Oh, and the people that somehow have to succinctly explain to prospects why these multi-purpose devices are so great.

Because no one’s going to run into problems with technology unless they acquire the technology. And your firm has to get them to acquire your technology.

Crafting a technology marketing piece

So your firm’s marketer or writer has to craft some type of content that will make a prospect aware of your technology, and/or induce the prospect to consider purchasing the technology, and/or ideally convert the prospect into a paying customer.

Before your marketer or writer crafts the content, they have to answer some basic questions.

By Evan-Amos – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11293857

Using a very simple single-purpose example of a hammer, here are the questions with explanations:

  • Why does the prospect need this technology? And why do you provide this technology? This rationale for why you are in business, and why your product exists, will help you make the sale. Does your prospect want to buy a hammer from a company that got tired of manufacturing plastic drink stirrers, or do they want to buy a hammer from a forester who wants to empower people to build useful items?
  • How does your firm provide this technology? If I want to insert a nail into a piece of wood, do I need to attach your device to an automobile or an aircraft carrier? No, the hammer will fit in your hand. (Assuming you have hands.)
  • What is the technology? Notice that the “why” and “how” questions come before the “what” question, because “why” and “how” are more critical. But you still have to explain what the technology is (with the caveat I mention below). Perhaps some of your prospects have no idea what a hammer is. Don’t assume they already know.
  • What is the goal of the technology? Does a hammer help you floss your teeth? No, it puts nails into wood.
  • What are the benefits of the technology? When I previously said that you should explain what the technology is, most prospects aren’t looking for detailed schematics. They primarily care about what the technology will do for them. For example, that hammer can keep their wooden structure from falling down. They don’t care about the exact composition of the metal in the hammer head.
  • Finally, who is the target audience for the technology? I don’t want to read through an entire marketing blurb and order a basic hammer, only to discover later that the product won’t help me keep two diamonds together but is really intended for wood. So don’t send an email to jewelers about your hammer. They have their own tools.
By Mauro Cateb – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=90944472

(UPDATE OCTOBER 23, 2023: “SIX QUESTIONS YOUR CONTENT CREATOR SHOULD ASK YOU IS SO 2022. DOWNLOAD THE NEWER “SEVEN QUESTIONS YOUR CONTENT CREATOR SHOULD ASK YOU” HERE.)

Once you answer these questions (more about the six questions in the Bredemarket e-book available here), your marketer or writer can craft your content.

Or, if you need help, Bredemarket (the technology content marketing expert) can craft your content, whether it’s a blog post, case study, white paper, or something else.

I’ve helped other technology firms explain their “hammers” to their target audiences, explaining the benefits, and answering the essential “why” questions about the hammers.

Can I help your technology firm communicate your message? Contact me.

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When Writers Talk: Hanging on the Telephone

I self-describe as a “you can pry my keyboard out of my cold dead hands” person who likes to use physical or virtual keyboards to communicate. But what about using a telephone handset (when used for voice rather than data purposes)? That’s a different matter entirely.

By Jonathan Mauer – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=50534668

If you have a personality that gravitates away from verbal communication, you sometimes find that you need to get out of your comfort z…I mean, you need to stray from your normal routine and use your non-preferred communication method.

I just did that earlier this week, and refrained from sending an email or other written message, instead choosing to use good old-fashioned voice communications to contact someone. And it worked, showing that voice and written communication do not have to compete with each other, and can complement each other.

This post takes a look at how writers function, both in textual and verbal environments, and what can happen when writers stray from their normal routine (or comfort zone).

The flip side of my written compulsion

I’ve talked before about my compulsion to write. Whether on a piece of paper, a typewriter (yes, I’m that old), a computer, or a smartphone, I am very accustomed to putting words to a text-based medium.

Writing compulsion, or writing obsession. Designed by Freepik.

Maybe I’m TOO accustomed to typing words into devices.

  • I communicate to a number of different people on WhatsApp, but recently took a break from non-business WhatsApp communications for a few days—probably to the relief of my friends who saw my FREQUENT written comments at ALL hours. (“Not a text from John again…”)
  • Which reminds me; I have to ask my younger German daughter if she has returned from her out-of-country trip.
  • And I also need to ask my artist friend if she has set up her art room yet…

It may not surprise you to learn that my VERBAL communications are less frequent. While I’m not mute in front of crowds, I gravitate toward written rather than verbal communications when I have the choice.

This preference is not uncommon, and Highly Sensitive Refuge speculates that there is a reason for this.

If you have noticed that it’s easier and more enjoyable for you to write rather than speak out your emotions, thoughts, and experiences, you might be a highly sensitive person (HSP). Highly sensitive people are the roughly 30% of the population who are wired at a brain level to process all information more deeply. This makes them more sensitive to the world around them, both emotionally and physically.

In other words: if you’re a highly sensitive person, you’re experiencing the world very differently than others do. You think more deeply, feel more strongly, and have a lot going on in your head. That can make it hard to get your words out — unless you have the time to sort them out in writing.

From https://highlysensitiverefuge.com/do-you-prefer-writing-to-speaking/
By Eleven authors named in the source journal article. – Greven, Corina U.; Lionetti, Francesca; Booth, Charlotte; Aron, Elaine N.; Fox, Elaine; Schendan, Haline E.; Pluess, Michael; Bruining, Hilgo; Acevedo, Bianca; Bijttebier, Patricia; Homberg, Judith (March 2019). “Sensory Processing Sensitivity in the context of Environmental Sensitivity: A critical review and development of research agenda”. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 98: 287-305. Elsevier. DOI:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2019.01.009. “This is an open access article under the CC BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY/4.0/)”.This SVG file contains embedded text that can be translated into your language, using any capable SVG editor, text editor or the SVG Translate tool. For more information see: About translating SVG files., CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=96282736

I’m not sure if I am a 100% match to the descriptions above; for example, I believe I have a LESSER awareness to environmental subtleties. However, I certainly tend to be sensitive about some things. (Are my WhatsApp friends tired of my incessant messages?) And you already know that I enjoy the process of working in my brain through drafts 0.5 and 1.0 of a piece of content.

But there are drawbacks to staying within your comfort zone.

Excuse me. Sorry, but there’s something going on in my head that I have to address.

Why I’m tired of the phrase “comfort zone”

I’ve decided that I’m tired of the phrase “comfort zone,” in the same way that I’m tired of “game changer,” “thinking out of the box,” and (shudder) “best of breed.”

There’s nothing inherently wrong with the phrase “comfort zone.” Unlike the other phrases above, the literal meaning does not radically differ from the common usage. But “comfort zone” has reached an oversaturation point.

Google search results for the phrase "comfort zone." About 65,200,000 results (0.59 seconds).
Google search results for the phrase “comfort zone.”

Now I’ll grant that some of these 65,200,000 search results are non-psychological and refer to air conditioning and other things, but the phrase “comfort zone” is used an awful lot.

I wasn’t sure what would be better. So I asked my buddy Google Bard.

Sure, here are some succinct, less jargony alternatives to the phrase "comfort zone": Normal routine Safe space Known territory What you're used to Your comfort bubble
From https://bard.google.com/share/3ef66dd50a4d

In my view, a couple of these (“safe space,” “your comfort bubble”) are just as bad as “comfort zone,” but “normal routine” and “what you’re used to” are much better and less jargon-y than “comfort zone.”

So I’ll use that instead.

OK now, where we were?

Returning to the flip side of my words obsession

Sorry about that.

But there are drawbacks to straying from your normal routine. Sometimes written communication just doesn’t cut it. (“Doesn’t cut it” is another piece of jargon I should eliminate. But one per post is enough.)

I don’t know how many times I’ve had this exchange with coworkers, friends, and family.

PERSON: Did you resolve the issue with Jane?

ME: I emailed her a couple of days ago but haven’t heard back.

PERSON: Why don’t you pick up the phone and call her?

ME: I’ll email her again. Or maybe I’ll text her.

PERSON: CALL HER!

ME, IRRITATED: OK, I’ll call her!

From a meaningful apocryphal conversation. Not put to music…yet.

When I strayed from my normal routine, good things happened

I thought about this during a recent interchange with one of my Bredemarket clients.

I had emailed a question to the client, and the very busy client said they would get back to me with the answer. After a while, I emailed the client again. And again.

At this point I started to get worried. (Maybe I am sensitive. A bit.)

But before I jumped to the wrong conclusion, I decided that I had better pick up the phone and call the client.

Not that day, but the next day. I mean, you can’t be rash about things like that.

So the next day I did pick up the phone and called the client…but the client wasn’t available.

A few minutes later, I received an email with an explanation for the delay (the busy client had been even busier than usual due to unanticipated circumstances), AND the client provided the answer to my question. Everything was very good.

All solved by a simple phone call.

Maybe I should do this more often.

Hanging on the telephone.

“Not a phone call from John again…”

Which Words Should Your Marketers Use? My Four Suggestions.

I’ve talked about the words “why,” “how,” and “what” and their relation to writing, but I haven’t talked about the word “which.”

Not in relation to sandwiches, but in relation to words.

If you are a marketing executive, you know that the words you use in your marketing content can make or break your success. When your company asks employees or consultants to write marketing content for you, which words should they use?

Here are four suggestions for you and your writers to follow.

  1. Your writers should use the right words for your brand.
  2. Your writers should use the right words for your industry.
  3. Your writers should use words that get results.
  4. Your writers should be succinct.

Your writers should use the right words for your brand

Your company has a tone of voice, and your writers should know what it is. If you can’t tell them what it is, they will figure it out themselves.

Your company has a particular writing style—hopefully one that engages your prospects and customers. Regardless of your writer’s personal style, they must create copy that aligns with your own style. In effect, they put on a “mask” that aligns the words they create with the words that your company needs.

Your writers should use the right words for your industry

Similarly, your company provides products and services in one or more industries, and your copy must align with the terms those industries use, and the way industry participants express themselves.

For example, a writer who is writing content for the biometric industry will use different terms than a writer who is writing content for art collectors because of the differences in the two target audiences.

  • Biometric readers (the people, not the devices) care about matching accuracy measurements, such as those compiled by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in its Face Recognition Vendor Test, or as measured in agency-managed benchmarks. (Mike French’s example.) They often respond to quantitative things, although more high-level concepts like “keeping citizens safe from repeat offenders” (a public safety-related benefit) also resonate.
  • Art collectors care about more qualitative things, such as not being scared of handing over their dream to a commissioned artist whose work will inspire affection. (Well, unless the collector is an art investor and not an art lover; investors use different terminology than lovers.)

So make sure your writers get the words right. Otherwise, it’s as if someone is speaking Italian to a bunch of French speakers. (Kaye Putnam’s example.) Your prospects will tune you out if you use words they don’t understand.

Your writers should use words that get results

There is one important exception to my suggestions above. If your company’s current words don’t result in action, quit using your current words and use better ones that support your awareness, consideration, conversion, or other goals.

If you start talking about your solution without addressing your prospect’s pain points or problems, they won’t know why they should care about your solution.

For example, let’s say that the message you want to give to your prospects is that your company makes wireless headphones.

So what?

The prospect doesn’t care about wireless headphones per se. The prospect cares about the troubles they face with tangled cords, and how your company offers a solution to their problem of tangled cords.

Features are important to you. Benefits are important to your prospects. Since the prospects are the ones with the money, listen to them and talk about benefits that change their lives, not how great your features are.

Your writers should be succinct

I have struggled with succinctness for decades. I could give you countless examples of my long-windedness, but…that wouldn’t be appropriate.

So how do I battle this personally? By creating a draft 0.5 before I create my draft 1. I figure out what I’m going to say, say it, and then sleep on the text—sometimes literally. When I take a fresh look at the text, I usually ruthlessly chop a bunch of it out and focus on the beef.

Now there are times in which detail is appropriate, but there are also times in which a succinct message gets better results.

Selecting your content marketer

If your company needs employees or consultants to write marketing content for you, make sure they create the right content.

If your company’s views on content creation parallel my own, maybe I can help you.

If you need a full-time employee on your staff to drive revenue as your personal Senior Product Marketing Manager or Senior Content Marketing Manager, take a look at my 29 years of technology (identity/biometric) and marketing experience on my LinkedIn profile. If you like what you see, contact me via LinkedIn or at jebredcal@gmail.com.

If you need a marketing consultant for a single project, then you can reach me via my Bredemarket consultancy.

The Adobe Exception to the Temperamental Writer’s Hard and Fast Rule

When I originally wrote “The Temperamental Writer’s Two Suggestions and One Rule for Using Generative AI,” I included the following caveat:

So unless someone such as an employer or a consulting client requires that I do things differently, here are three ways that I use generative AI tools to assist me in my writing.

From https://bredemarket.com/2023/06/05/the-temperamental-writers-two-suggestions-and-one-rule-for-using-generative-ai/

It’s good that I included that caveat.

The Bredemarket Rule, Item One

If you read the post, you’ll recall that some of the items were suggestions. However, one was not:

Bredemarket Rule: Don’t share confidential information with the tool

If you are using a general-purpose public AI tool, and not a private one, you don’t want to share secrets.

By Unnamed photographer for Office of War Information. – U.S. Office of War Information photo, via Library of Congress website [1], converted from TIFF to .jpg and border cropped before upload to Wikimedia Commons., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8989847

I then constructed a hypothetical situation in which Bredemarket was developing a new writing service, but didn’t want to share confidential details about it. One of my ideas was as follows:

First, don’t use a Bredemarket account to submit the prompt. Even if I follow all the obfuscation steps that I am about to list below, the mere fact that the prompt was associated with a Bredemarket account links Bredemarket to the data.

From https://bredemarket.com/2023/06/05/the-temperamental-writers-two-suggestions-and-one-rule-for-using-generative-ai/

Now I happen to have a ton of email accounts, so if I really wanted to divorce a generative AI prompt from its Bredemarket origins, I’d just use an account other than my Bredemarket account. It’s not a perfect solution (a sleuth could determine that the “gamer” account is associated with the same person as the Bredemarket account), but it seems to work.

But not well enough for one company.

Adobe’s restrictions on employee use of generative AI

PetaPixel accessed a gated Business Insider article that purported to include information from an email from an Adobe executive.

Adobe employees have been instructed to not use their “personal email accounts or corporate credit cards when signing up for AI tools, like ChatGPT.” This, the publication reports, comes from an internal email from Chief Information Officer Cindy Stoddard that Insider obtained.

From https://petapixel.com/2023/07/06/adobe-limits-its-employees-use-of-generative-ai/?utm_source=tldrai

Specifically, the email apparently included a list of “Don’ts”:

  • Don’t use personal emails for tools used on work-related tasks. This is the one that contradicts what I previously suggested. So if you work for Adobe, don’t listen to me.
  • Don’t include any personal or non-public Adobe information in prompts. This is reasonable when you’re using public tools such as ChatGPT.
  • Don’t use outputs verbatim. This is also reasonable, since (a) the outputs may be incorrect, and (b) there are potential copyright issues.

But don’t think that Adobe is completely restricting generative AI. It’s just putting guardrails around its use.

“We encourage the responsible and ethical exploration of generative Al technology internally, which we believe will enable employees to learn about its capabilities as we explore how it will change the way we all work,” Business Insider reported Stoddard wrote in the email.

“As employees, it’s your responsibility to protect Adobe and our customers’ data and not use generative Al in a way that harms or risks Adobe’s business, customers, or employees.”

From https://petapixel.com/2023/07/06/adobe-limits-its-employees-use-of-generative-ai/?utm_source=tldrai

What does this mean?

So my suggestion to use a non-corporate login to obfuscate already-scrubbed confidential information doesn’t fly with Adobe. All fine and good.

The true takeaways from this are two:

  1. If you’re working for or with someone who has their own policies on generative AI use, follow their policies.
  2. If they don’t have their own policies on submitting confidential information to a generative AI tool, and if you don’t have your own policy on submitting confidential information to a generative AI tool, then stop what you’re doing and create a policy now.

Why Writer.com Approaches Generative AI Writing Differently Than I Do

About two weeks ago, I asked myself the question “How Soon Will I Have to Change My Temperamental Writer Generative AI Suggestions/Rule?“

Perhaps that time has come.

Perhaps not.

What are my temperamental writer generative AI suggestions and rule?

If you haven’t seen my June 5 blog post or my June 13 LinkedIn article on this topic, here is a brief recap of how I use generative AI in my writing:

Designed by Freepik.
  • Suggestion 1: A human should always write the first draft.
  • Suggestion 2: Only feed bits to the generative AI tool.
  • An ironclad rule: Don’t share confidential information with the tool.

This post will focus on the first suggestion, although the ironclad rule will come up in the discussion also.

There are several reasons why I believe that a human should write the first draft, and the generative AI tool should only be used to improve the draft. Two of these reasons (I won’t get into the ego part) are as follows:

  • Iterate on my work to make it better. For me, the process of writing itself lets me tweak the text throughout the written content. In my view this makes the first draft much better, which makes the final version even better still.
  • Control the tone of my writing. One current drawback of generative AI is that, unless properly prompted, it often delivers bland, boring text. Creating and iterating the text myself lets me dictate the tone of voice and eliminates the need to rewrite the whole thing later to change the tone.

However, there is one drawback to my method. It takes a lot longer.

  • If you submit a prompt to a generative AI tool and receive results in a minute, and if you tweak the prompt four times to make it better, you’ll have a complete first draft in five minutes.
  • Using my method, I don’t create a first draft in five minutes. It usually takes me between 60 and 120 minutes (not counting “sleep on it” time) to crank out a first draft the old fashioned way.

Let’s look at a different way to use generative AI in writing.

What is writer.com?

The Content Marketing Institute recently hosted a three-day series of webinars on content marketing called ContentTECH 2023.

From ContentTECH 2023.

One of the sessions, “Generative AI FTW: Must-Have Use Cases and Requirements for Success,” was presented by Alex Wettreich (LinkedIn, Twitter) of Writer, which promotes itself as providing the “AI platform built for the enterprise.”

This isn’t your general-purpose generative AI tool that throws everyone’s prompts into the same data warehouse. This is truly a tool for your enterprise:

Unlike other large language models, Palmyra, our family of LLMs, is built for business….

Ability to self-host: Offered as self-hosted option. Own, host, and customize your own version of our LLM.

From https://writer.com/platform/

Guess what this means? All of my personal concerns about sharing confidential data with a generative AI tool are eliminated. Read Writer’s Terms of Service:

7.1. Ownership.  All data, information, files, or other materials and content that Customer makes available to Company for the purpose of utilizing the Service (including, without limitation, training data, prompt inputs, and drafts) (“Customer Content”) shall remain the sole property of Customer. Customer shall retain all intellectual property rights in the Customer Content. Company does not screen Customer Content, is not responsible for storing or maintaining backups of any Customer Content, and is not responsible for the content of or any use by Customer of the Customer Content.

From https://writer.com/terms/

Now that we’ve talked about the basics of Writer, let’s see how it creates content.

What is writer.com’s generative AI writing process?

With Writer, the generative AI tool writes the first draft.

[W]hat we did at Writer was simple: customers already had their style guides built into Writer — their writing style, terminology, and must-have language. We used that plus samples of customers’ best blog posts, help articles, headlines, email subject lines, ads, and more. Writer can create first drafts that are significantly better than other tools because the content is modeled off your best content and trained on your voice.

From https://writer.com/blog/generative-ai-capabilities/

The training data is important. A marketer who uses Writer is guided along the way.

“Create a unique, consistent, and relatable voice that shines through every communication touch point — at scale. Your marketing team doesn’t have time for the copyediting (or scolding).”

“Keep your editorial guidelines up-to-date and easy to access. From punctuation to capitalization rules to grade level and specific terminology, put all your guidance in one place.”

“Make your core messaging easy to repeat. Keep company voice, terms, and boilerplate consistent, no matter who’s writing.”

From https://writer.com/use-cases/marketing/

But is Writer’s output as bland as the reputed “style” from other generative AI tools? If it is, then you won’t save any time by using Writer, since you’ll have to rewrite everything to fit your tone of voice anyway.

Now I haven’t tested Writer, but Trello has. And it sounds like Trello’s tone of voice has been preserved even when the bots write the content.

From trello.com.

Trello avoids the “professional voice” trap traditional software companies fall into (aka stodgy, robotic tone) by treating the person who reads their content like a coworker….With phrases like “go from Trello zero to Trello hero,” you can see that the writers at Trello had permission and encouragement to have fun while writing help content, and that fun translates to a delightful experience for users….

Leah Ryder told us, “With the 10-year anniversary of Trello around the corner, combined with major developments in-product with the new Views feature, it seemed like the right time to update and align our brand and product towards our shared goal of empowering productivity for teams everywhere.”…

Trello’s brand refresh was 1.5 years in the making, and it took a tremendous amount of strategic leadership, partnered with cross-team collaboration to make it happen. It couldn’t have happened without ten years of defining and committing to rule-breaking brand principles. Over the next decade, there’s no doubt the product will change as it adapts to user needs, but with strong brand principles in place, Trellists can always expect a sense of joy built into everything Trello creates.

From https://writer.com/blog/trello-brand-refresh/

The guidance provided by Writer ensures that Trello continues to sound…Trello-y, even after Trello became a small part of Atlassian.

What does this mean?

So if Writer and Trello are correct in their assertions, it IS possible for a well-designed generative AI tool to create a first draft that does NOT require extensive rewrites. Or, if you control your data warehouse, fact-checking. This preserves the ability to save time, since you don’t have to rewrite bland text or correct inaccurate text.

Of course, you have to buy Writer. As of today, Writer’s price for a team of five or fewer people is $18/user/month. Talk to them if you want a larger offering for your entire enterprise.

The people who review for G2 have identified alternatives to Writer, including some well-known names such as Grammarly, Jasper, and Notion. As time goes on, the major players such as Microsoft will incorporate AI into existing and new products, but whether these tools will allow tone of voice specification and privacy preservation remains to be seen.

Let’s see how long my “human drafts first” suggestion lasts.

Why Your Business Needs an Obsessive Content Marketer

Compulsions and obsessions can be bad things, or they can be good things if channeled correctly.

What if Bredemarket provided me an outlet to chnnel my compulsions and obsessions to help your business grow?

Compulsions and obsessions

I recently wrote a three-post series (first post in the series here) that frequently used the word “compulsion.”

I almost used the word “obsession” in conjunction with the word compulsion, but decided not to make light of a medical condition that truly debilitates some people.

I used the word compulsion to refer to two things about me:

Writing compulsion, or writing obsession. Designed by Freepik.
From https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bredemarket-identity-firm-services_daon-is-a-frost-radar-leader-for-biometrics-activity-7077377129717379073-JDXW/

While compulsions and obsessions can certainly be bad things, when harnessed properly they can provide good for the world.

Like a butterfly.

Animotion on embracing an obsession

When people of a certain age hear the word “obsession,” they may think of the 1980s song by the band Animotion.

From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIs5StN8J-0

Unfortunately for us, 90% of the song deals with the negative aspects of a person obsessing over another person. If you pick through the lyrics of the Animotion song “Obsession” and forget about what (or who) the singer is obsessing about, you can find isolated phrases that describe how an obsession can motivate you.

  • “I cannot sleep”
  • “Be still”
  • “I will not accept defeat”

But thankfully, there are more positive ways to embrace an obsession.

Justin Welsh on embracing an obsession

While Justin Welsh’s July 2022 post “TSS #028: Don’t Pick a Niche. Embrace an Obsession” is targeted for solopreneurs, it could just as easily apply to those who work for others. Regardless of your compensation structure, why do you choose to work where you do?

For Welsh, the practice of picking a niche risks commoditization.

They end up looking like, sounding like, and acting like all of their competition. The internet is full of copycats and duplicates.

From https://www.justinwelsh.me/blog/dont-pick-a-niche-embrace-an-obsession

(For example, I’d bet that all of the people who are picking a niche know better than to cite the Animotion song “Obsession” in a blog post promoting their business.)

Perhaps it’s semantics, but in Welsh’s way of thinking, embracing an obsession differs from picking a niche. To describe the power of embracing an obsession, Welsh references a tweet from Daniel Vassalo:

Find something you want to do really badly, and you won’t need any goals, habits, systems, discipline, rewards, or any other mental hacks. When the motivation is intrinsic, those things happen on their own.

From https://twitter.com/dvassallo/status/1547230105805754369

I trust you can see the difference between picking something you HAVE to do, versus obsessing over something you WANT to do.

What’s in it for you?

Welsh was addressing this post to me and people like me, and his message resonates with me.

But frankly, YOU don’t care about me and about whether I’m motivated. All that you care about is that YOU get YOUR content that you need from me.

So why should you care what Justin Welsh and Daniel Vassllo told me?

The obvious answer is that if you contract with Bredemarket for your marketing and writing services, you’ll get a “pry my keyboard out of my cold dead hands” person who WANTS to write your stuff, and doesn’t want to turn the writing process over to some two-year-old bot (except for very small little bits).

Regarding the use of two-year-old bots:

“Pry my keyboard,” indeed.

Do you need someone to obsess over YOUR content?

Of course, if you need someone to write YOUR stuff, then I won’t have time to work on a TikTok dance. This is a good thing for me, you, and the world.

As I’ve stated elsewhere, before I write a thing for a Bredemarket client, I make sure that I understand WHY you do what you do, and understand everything else that is relevant to the content that we create.

As I work on the content, you have opportunities to review it and provide your feedback. This ensures that both of us are happy with the final copy.

And that your end users become obsessed with YOU.

So if you need me to create content for you, please contact me.

Feel free to share YOUR favorite 1980s song if you like.

Even if it’s THIS song that your favorite temperamental writer detests.

From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDgHXiWgKlE

Pilots, Co-Pilots, and Marketing and Writing Services

I’ve always been amused by this bumper sticker saying.

"God is my co-pilot" license plate.
Flickr, david__jones, “God is my co-pilot.” Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

The phrase “God is my co-pilot,” taken from pilot Robert L. Scott Jr.’s World War II autobiography of the same name, superficially appears to depict a fervent religious devotion.

By United States Air Force – https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Biographies/Display/Article/105661/brigadier-general-robert-l-scott-jr/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=92651184

But look at it again.

Military pilots have a huge reputation for supersized egos. Not that I necessarily have a problem with egos, but this must be recognized. And the phrase above bears it out.

  • Scott is the pilot, in charge of things.
  • God is the co-pilot, subservient to Scott’s every command. Heck, since Scott runs the show, God might as well be a mere passenger.

But this is not only a religious issue.

Who controls artificial intelligence?

If you’re going to employ generative artificial intelligence (generative AI) to create your written work, you need to decide who will be the pilot, and who will be the co-pilot.

  • You could send the prompt off to your favorite generative AI tool and let it shape the words you will communicate to your customers. In this case, the tool is the pilot, and you’re just the co-pilot.
Designed by Freepik.

(The perceptive ones among you have already noted that I treat text and images differently. In the image above, I clearly took the co-pilot’s seat and let Freepik pilot the process. My raving egotism does not extend to my graphic capabilities.)

This concept of AI as a co-pilot rather than a pilot is not just my egotistical opinion.

GitHub Copilot. From https://github.com/features/copilot

When GitHub implemented its generative AI coding solution, it named the solution “GitHub Copilot.” The clear implication is that the human coder is still running the show, while GitHub Copilot is helping out its boss.

But enough about generative AI. Heaven knows I’ve been spouting off about that a lot lately. Let’s turn to another topic I spout off about a lot—how you should work with your content creator to generate your content marketing text.

Who should pilot a content marketing project?

Assume for the moment that your company has decided NOT to entrust its content marketing text to a generative AI tool, and instead has contracted with a human content marketing expert to create the text.

Again, there are two ways to approach the task.

  • The first approach is to yield all control to the expert. You sit back, relax, and tell your content marketing consultant to do whatever they want. They provide the text, and you pay the consultant with no questions asked. The content marketing consultant is the pilot here.
  • The second approach is to retain all control yourself. You tell the content marketing consultant exactly what you want, and exactly what words to say to describe your best-of-breed, game-changing, paradigm-shifting, outcome-optimizing solution. (That last sentence was painful to write, but I did it for you.) The content marketing consultant follows your exact commands and produces the copy with the exact words you want. You are the pilot here.

So which of these two methods is the best way to create content?

As far as I’m concerned, neither of them.

Which is why Bredemarket doesn’t work that way.

Can two people pilot a content marketing project?

By Alex Pereslavtsev – http://www.airliners.net/photo/Transaero-Airlines/Boeing-777-212-ER/1984464/L/, GFDL 1.2, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16594678

Bredemarket’s preferred content creation process is a collaborative one, in which you and I both control the process. While in the end you are the de facto pilot since you control the purse-strings, Bredemarket emphasizes and follows this collaborative approach.

Throughout this collaborative and iterative package we both pilot the process, and we both contribute our unique strengths to produce the final written product.

Are you ready to collaborate?

If you have content marketing needs that Bredemarket can help you achieve, let me know and we’ll talk about how to pilot a content marketing project together.