Christine Taylor's Core Copywriting

Merry-Almost-Christmas

I woke up today and it’s nearly Christmas. Unbelievable.

All right, so I have my trees up as I decorated the day after Thanksgiving. But the fact is that December 25th sneaks up on me every year!

I’m traveling to Yakima, Washington to spend the holiday with my Dad and sisters. My Mom, who always loved a party, will be joining us from heaven. Safe journeys for all of you who are traveling this season.

Review Your Rates, Then Raise Them

I just had an eye-opening experience. Also a forehead-slapping one. I hope that my story will help you, especially if you are an independent copywriter.

Here is the lesson: REGULARLY REVIEW YOUR RATES. Then raise them.

I belong to The White Paper Source Forum and tuned into a discussion on case study rates. (The Forum primarily discusses any and all topics around white papers, but also talks about other types of marketing writing.) One of the independent copywriters, Gordon Graham, reported that a standard rate was $750 to $1000.

I charge $500. Why? Because I always have. Is that a good reason to charge $500? No, it's a god-awful reason. Here is what I wrote:

Wow, I'm glad to hear about the price range on the case studies. I have done large case study programs for a couple of clients and gave them a price break on the case studies accordingly. However, I now realize that I've been slapping the same discounted rate on all my case studies! Didn't even think about it! Hmph.

I can't believe I didn't revisit my price range earlier. Tomorrow I'm sending out that e-mail to my case study clients. Don't let this happen to you -- review your rates regularly and revise accordingly!

When Spinning Makes You Dizzy

Storage Networking World is going on as scheduled this week in -- drumroll please -- Orlando, Florida. (Florida being the temporary home of one of the most powerful hurricanes on record.) I was scheduled to fly out there today (Monday) and stay until Wednesday, but no way am I doing that now.

Computerworld puts the conference on, and they do very well with it. They stand to lose a lot of money if many vendors and attendees pull out. (Intel has already begged off.) So SNW is putting out a regular "don't worry, be happy" series of emails on the effects of Hurricane Wilma on Orlando. Granted,  Orlando is not in Wilma's direct path. But here is Monday's news from Orlando:

111 mph winds. Torrential rains. Tornado watch. Airlines are canceling their flights into Orlando. Disneyland theme parks are closed. City Hall is closed. Mayor urges citizens to stay off the streets.

Here is SNW's take on it: They've canceled today's golfing event because of "moderate" wind and rain.

Excuse me?

Look, I don't blame them for not wanting to lose their shirts on this conference. And I don't expect them to send out emails telling everyone to stay the heck away. But they're spinning the hurricane so hard, they're spinning right into outer orbit.

When your company or a client company spins bad news, a little goes a long way.

Cemetery of Cliches

If there is an old cemetery of worn-out clichés somewhere, then I've been grave-robbing. I can't think of any better phrase at the moment than "When it rains, it pours."

The fall has always been a busy time for me, and this fall busier than most. And since I know from experience that December and January are pretty silent, this is a good chance to save extra money. To exhume yet another hoary cliché, I'm the mouse socking away her harvest for the lean months.

My question to you is: in your business -- whatever that might be -- are December and January indeed silent as the grave? Or do you find that consistent marketing (or maybe just your normal business cycle) are quite busy enough, thank you! I'd love to hear from you.

Seasons

School starts tomorrow for my newly minted 4^th grader. Up here in the mountains the sky is blue, the air is crisp and the clouds are fluffy. I love Wrightwood. But do you know what I love more? Autumn and wintertime! Warm sweaters, blazing fires, snow and ice… it’s all good. Here’s to enjoying all of the seasons, whether they’re seasonal changes or the seasons of our lives.

Warmly,

Christine

Microbusiness: Flying Under the Radar

Dawn Rivers Baker, editor and publisher of The MicroEnterprise Journal, recently emailed me a great comment on my recent post on microbusiness. Dawn wrote:

Hi Christine,

I was originally going to post this as a comment on your blog but it wound up being so long that I decided to email you instead.

Yes, getting good numbers on microbusinesses is a pain in the keester. The National Federation of Independent Business is the source that many people look to for information about small businesses but their data is slightly flawed. They survey their own membership for their data. That's problematic because, even though the majority of the organization's membership is composed of microbusinesses, those micros have higher average annual revenues that the overall microbusiness population.

Then, too, the NFIB is clearly a pro-Republican organization, regardless of what they say about their non-partisanship. Microbusiness owners as a group, on the other hand, probably more closely reflect the public at large in terms of their political views. That is particularly true in light of the way the demographics of small business ownership have been changing over the last ten years or so. Given all that, their membership is "meaningfully different" (as one university statistics professor put it to me) from the general population of microbusiness owners and they probably don't speak for the majority of small business owners.

On a more general note, most small business surveys don't weight their results to account for the fact that 90% of all U.S. firms are microbusinesses (as you and I both define them). That is going to make a difference to the results.

Is anybody doing this research? No. At least, not yet. The National Association for the Self-Employed has started regularly surveying their members, and the views expressed are probably as close as you're going to get -- except for the fact that they are conducting non-scientific, web-based surveys that are not exactly worded carefully to ensure the results are not biased.

As for your last question -- without specific research, I'm guessing here but the numbers say that micros don't especially want to grow their organizations (although they are perfectly willing to grow their revenues). The most recent firm size class data released by the SBA Office of Advocacy and the Census Bureau indicate that, in 2002, all the growth in the number of U.S. firms was microbusinesses. All of it. The numbers of non-micro small business and of large businesses actually shrank between 2001 and 2002. In fact, if you look over the long haul, microbusinesses as a percentage of the number of all U.S. firms has been steadily growing for about a decade, while the number of non-micro small businesses has been declining and large firms are more or less holding steady. As the director of economic research at Advocacy put it to me, "The middle is shrinking."

What that says to me is that there are a lot of micros out there who are finding that they can make enough money to enable them to live the life they like without having to saddle themselves with a larger organization than they feel comfortable with. Then, too, I believe most microbusiness owners avoid doing things with their businesses that will move them from being producers to being administrators.

I recently wrote a white paper that covers this topic and more, called The Microbusiness Way of Growth: how microbusinesses substitute operational efficiency for scale and sacrifice organizational growth for revenue growth...

My thanks to Dawn for taking the time to write down this great information. Those of you who are microbusinesses yourselves, or who consult or sell to them, will find Dawn's newsletter and blog a great informative source.

No, I'm Not Big

I recently ran across an interesting post from Anita Campbell at Small Business Trends. She pointed out some interesting surveys about small business optimism. The surveys had conflicting findings. I left her the below comment:

Hi Anita,

Thanks for the heads-up on small business surveys. I'm interested in finding numbers on this segment (of which I am a member) and I'll take a closer look at these.

One of the difficulties I sometimes have in pulling out useful information is that governmental definitions of "small business" are REALLY far from my reality. A manufacturing firm can have 1000 people and a large yearly revenue and still classify as a small business. That's far different than my perspective of a micro-business, which I'd define as 5 employees and under. (I know the definition varies.) It must be hard to get good numbers on this fluid segment...

Although I work with large companies and agencies, I'm a micro business -- an independent professional -- and plan to stay that way. If you're an independent professional or have less than 5 employees, do you want to grow or stay just the size you are? (Referring to your business and not the numbers on your bathroom scales of course!)

Recovering from Silly Mistakes

Yesterday I pulled two silly manuevers -- I confused a very good client with a big fat competitor  and I put in the wrong URL for my blog when I made a comment on a well-known blogger's post (David St. Lawrence of Ripples). Way to build business.

I'm sure that Patrick, my long-time client contact, thought I'd been drinking (I hadn't, I was just tired). Fortunately the mistake was confined to an email I had sent to him, and since we've worked together for years he was very nice about it. And David was kind enough to take the time to tell me about the bad link I'd put in to my blog and offered to delete the original comment so I could replace it with a new one and correct link.

I appreciate their kindness and I am taking a lesson: slow down, concentrate, and don't try to do everything at once.

A Red Letter Day

Today is a red letter day -- I'm JANE's Smart Woman Online this week, and I got my first blog comment from a Smart Man!

Jane, aka Yvonne DiVito, honored me with an interview which you can read at http://windsormedia.blogs.com/lipsticking/ ("Smart Woman Online: Christine Taylor"). I'm delighted at the opportunity to contribute to Lipsticking, one of my favorite blogs.

And my first comment on my brand-new blog came from Kevin Barefoot of Barefoot White Papers at http://www.barefootwhitepapers.com/. He also picked up part of a recent posting that reminds vendors that customers aren't their only white paper audience. Journalists are an important part of that mix too.