The gist of the article was a that each type of content is different, and therefore should be written by different people. Not exactly groundbreaking. One thing that I said, though, which I guess not everyone agrees with, is that people should blog in their own voice, for themselves.

I got an e-mail from a professional copywriter who said that she often blogs and writes speeches for busy CEOs, and that they often are very happy because she can say things better than they can.

This was my response to her in my e-mail:

I understand your point about busy CEOs and such. My strong belief, though, is that (barring a gross inability to communicate [which is rare among successful leaders]) those busy people, from fortune 500 CEOs to small business owners, should find some of their other work to outsource before they give up expressing their own opinions/ideas/etc on their blogs and Social Media accounts-especially if Thought Leadership is an important goal. These are not press releases I’m talking about, or sales copy. This is not “Here’s how great the company is doing” PR blogging. I’m talking about giving the public a glimpse into the insight and inspiration that is driving the company. If the CEO/Founder/Owner/Director doesn’t have some kind of magic secret sauce unto herself that no one else (even a good writer) can copy, then why is she in charge? And why should the rest of us care?

You could get a lot of different points out of this. Certainly this exchange covers a number of issues, from what leadership should be doing, to the quality all for authentic communication, to the economic benefit of outsourcing.

If you read my blog long enough, you will start to get a sense of what I think about all of those topics.

But the one thing that I want to specifically draw your attention to, is the “secret sauce.”

Thought leadership is not about social media. It is not about blogging. It is not about networking. It is not about using the latest technology, or having an iPhone, or any of that other stuff that the media likes to talk about.

Thought Leadership is about the secret sauce.

Nobody subscribes to your blog or seeks you out at a conference or twitters with you based on your well-written press releases that tell the world about how great your company is, or how innovative you are, or what benefits the new features of your new gizmo will be most beneficial, or any of the other crap that corporate blogs like to talk about. People will not recognize you or your company as a thought leader based on good sales copy, or well-crafted corporate communications material, or any of the other things that you should be hiring professional writers to do for you.

Those things are important. You should have well-crafted press releases, and precise sales copy in your brochures, and carefully worded corporate communications. You need all those things.

But they are not Thought Leadership.

You are a thought leader because of your secret sauce. You’re a thought leader because you have something unique to say, something unique to contribute, something unique that no one else has. It could be your method, it could be your ideas, it could be your source of inspiration, it could be the peculiar way that you string words together. Whatever it is, it’s the thing that makes you qualified to be a CEO or a founder or an entrepreneur or a what ever. It’s the thing that makes you qualified to be a thought leader. If you have that, then you should be writing in your own voice. If you really truly have it, then it should be obvious that a writer, no matter how good they are, cannot simply copy you.

And if you don’t have it, then you are not a thought leader.

Is all this content, since it is all words, approximately equivalent? Should the intern or outsourcer you’ve hired to post links on Twitter be the same person who writes your weekly blog post?

Obviously, the answer is, “of course not.”

In The Social Bootstrap guide to DIY Thought Leadership, I discuss 6 different kinds of text content that a thought leader needs on their website: articles, blog posts, sales copy, information, SEO filler, and hidden text.

So, who should be doing what?

If you are bootstrapping, you’ll probably do all of them yourself. That’s actually a really good thing, because once you are ready to begin outsourcing or hiring, you’ll actually know what needs to be done.

Here is a breakdown of the different hats you’ll wear (if you do it yourself), or the different people you’ll hire (if you can afford it).

Articles

Straightforward informational articles, like “What Is a Living Trust?” or “Notes of the Melodic Minor Blues Scale” can be written by any knowledgeable person. It helps if the writer has subject matter expertise, but with things like Google and Wikipedia, that isn’t really necessary. What helps the most is the ability to explain things simply, and an understanding of online search behavior.

This is the sort of thing entrepreneurs frequently outsource to content mills. That’s understandable, since they don’t expect this to be “thought leader content,” but rather, they often think of this as primarily search engine schlock. That’s not the best way to think about it.

Your potential clients, whether they show up through a search engine or from a business card, are going to check out your website. They are very likely, if they’re in the mood to buy something, to check out lots of other people’s websites as well. Good informational articles are not primarily about search engines. Good informational articles are about those people who are trying to learn about your service or pop-ups, and who would buy your products or services if they were well-informed enough. Obviously this means that your product or service needs to be good enough that a well-informed buyer would choose you over anybody else. Assuming that your product or service is good enough, actually educating your buyers about estate planning, or piano scales, or what ever, is a huge benefit.

Therefore, informational articles should not just be something that you push deep into your site, hoping search engines will pick it up (they won’t), but rather something that people can find easily from the front page of your site, if they have a mind to be looking for it. And so therefore, good informational articles should be written well by someone who knows how to write well.

That might not be you. But, it should be someone that you hire or oversee. It could be a freelance writer, or an intern, or your husband-but a content e-mail or a bolt article purchasing site is not the way to go.

Blog Posts

You should write blog posts your self. Blog posts are the public face of your company, at least online. Blogs should be written by the person whose voice they are in. That is, employees should write blogs as themselves, not as you. And you should not outsource blog writing if you can at all help it. Blogging, and all social media, is about authenticity and interaction. If you can’t find time to blog, and are thinking about hiring someone else to do it, considering hiring someone else to do all the things you’re doing currently, so that you’ll have time to blog for yourself.

Sales Copy

Words that are directly a part of your sales funnel (“Buy now!” or “Sign up today for a free demo”) should be written by a professional copywriter. Blogs can ramble. Informational articles can be a little bit confusing as long as everything works out in the end. But sales copy needs to be efficient and effective.

Is there a difference between “learn more,” and “try a free demo?” How would you know?
A professional copywriter, along with deliberate use of Google Optimizer, will get results far and above what you will be able to do yourself. If you are selling things online, and you do not have previous verifiable success doing so, a professional copywriter who understands e-commerce and A-B testing should be an early investment.

Info

Basic information, like your address, your phone number, and even your name and occupation, you should be able to write yourself. As I mentioned in my book though, understanding how people structure searches in Google can help you turn basic information into yet another attraction marketing opportunity.

SEO Filler

You should have good basic informational articles that are easily accessible from your home page. Those are not SEO filler. SEO filler is when you have 10 or 15 different articles explaining “The Basics of Prenuptial Agreements.” Nobody who is searching for information on your site needs all the different permutations: Prenuptial Agreements for Beginners, Understanding Prenuptial Agreements, Newly Engaged Person’s Guide to Prenuptial Agreements, What Is a Prenuptial Agreement?, An Introduction to Prenuptial Agreements.

No, no. No human cares that you have 15 different versions of that article on your site. However, assuming they are different enough, Google prefers that sort of thing. You are creating more opportunities for someone to land on your site.

These don’t absolutely have to be as well-written as your primary informational articles. A content mill is an okay way to go (assuming they aren’t duplicating content, and assuming the content is written by native English speakers), but probably not the best way. Bulk article purchasing sites, especially like those that cater to attorneys, are especially not the way to go because you are usually buying a set of articles which they have also sold to 100 other professionals. There is no search engine benefit to duplicate content.

Your best option here is probably to hire freelance writers yourself through something like craigslist.com or elance.com. This takes a little bit more hands-on management than a content mill, but there is no additional profit margin above the writer. This allows you to either save money or spend the same amount of money and get higher quality writing.

Just make sure that before you hire or purchase, you have done good keyword research and understand how search engine optimization works.

Hidden Text

Hidden text is all the stuff on your website that humans never see, or at least never look for. URL structure, metadata, file names, hover text, alt tags, link titles…

If you retain an SEO firm or a web designer, all that should be their job. Otherwise (and even then) you should have an understanding of what all these things are, and you should have the ability to correct them.

The most important thing here is preplanning. You could always add another article later. You can reformat your information. You can try new sales copy. But it’s very difficult (well it can be) to change your URL structure after your website has been running for several months or years. It can be damn near impossible to change your file structure on your server. You will never ever go back and add alt tags to all of your images. The more of this that you can do ahead of time, the better.

Learn More, Teach More

You can learn more about text content for Thought Leadership in my book, The Social Bootstrap guide to DIY Thought Leadership, which you can purchase at Amazon or read free online. (See Chapter 5: Words, Words, Words)

Or, even better than learning more from me, is teaching me and other people what you already know. If you have a little bit to say, leave a comment. If you have a lot to say, write your own blog post and a link to it in the comments, so the rest of us can find it.

Today (Sunday, Dec. 20th) they are giving away a product which is perfect for Social Bootstrappers, Information Marketers, Thought Leaders, and probably all sorts of other people.

Cover Commander creates graphic images of books, CDs, DVDs, screen shots, etc. You know those pictures of a book with a CD next to it that they use on sales letters and conversion pages? That’s what this does! You can upload your own images for the cover, and then it puts it into a 3D picture with a shadow and a reflection and a picture of a CD. It’s Awesome.

Obviously, you could do this better in Photoshop, but you certainly couldn’t do it faster. And you can’t beat free. I’ve already downloaded and installed it.

You should, too.

If you missed the giveaway, you can buy Cover Commander here.
(Note: I am not an affiliate of Cover Commander)

Thankfully, as with almost everything in WordPress, as soon as I realized I had a problem, I was able to find someone who had already solved it for me. The Exclude Pages Plugin by Simon Wheatley adds a convenient little checkbox to the Page Edit page, asking if you want to include this page in page menus.

Fantastic.

Changing the Default Setting on the Exclude Pages Plugin

Most of the time when I’m using this plugin, it’s because I have some particular small group of pages I want displayed in navigation menus. I want the default to be “DO NOT include this page.” This makes me (and my clients who like to add pages and pages and ruin my beautiful navigation bars) have to think less.

Unfortunately, the default setting for the Exclude Pages plugin is “YES, include this page.” I wanted to change that.

If you’re using the Exclude Pages Plugin, and want to make the default setting an unchecked box, go into the exclude_pages.php file. (I did this right from the Plugin Editor inside the WordPress admin area.) Find the function called “ep_this_page_included” and change the first “return true” to “return false.”

Here’s what it looks like in the code:

BEFORE:

function ep_this_page_included()
{
	global $post_ID;
	// New post? Must be included then.
	if ( ! $post_ID ) return true;
	$excluded_ids = ep_get_excluded_ids();
	// If there's no exclusion array, we can return true
	if ( empty($excluded_ids) ) return true;
	// Check if our page is in the exclusion array
	// The bang (!) reverses the polarity [1] of the boolean
	return ! in_array( $post_ID, $excluded_ids );
	// fn1. (of the neutron flow, ahem)
}

AFTER:

function ep_this_page_included()
{
	global $post_ID;
	// New post? Do NOT include!
	if ( ! $post_ID ) return false;
	$excluded_ids = ep_get_excluded_ids();
	// If there's no exclusion array, we can return true
	if ( empty($excluded_ids) ) return true;
	// Check if our page is in the exclusion array
	// The bang (!) reverses the polarity [1] of the boolean
	return ! in_array( $post_ID, $excluded_ids );
	// fn1. (of the neutron flow, ahem)
}

Now, new pages do not display in menus by default, but can easily be turned on in their Edit page if you want them to.

Trying to follow Chris Brogan’s advice to Grow Bigger Ears and engage with people and all that, I have a series of Google Alerts set up so on keywords that interest me. So I followed one of them to a post about self-publishing by a writer on Live Journal. I felt I had something to contribute, so I wrote a comment.

That’s when life started sucking for me. There are only three options for identifying yourself as a commenter:

• Anonymous
• Open ID
• Live Journal User (Become a member!)

I hate being anonymous- might as well not post. Open ID…. well, apparently I’m not a geek, since I don’t know how that works or whether I have it (going to the Open ID website DID NOT clear things up). Only option left was “Become a member!”

I should have stopped at this point, but I had already invested some time and thought into my comment. So I forged ahead. I clicked on the link. Filled out TWO PAGES of forms (they apparently want to know what kind of music I listen to). When that was over, I was not returned to my comment- the login process deadended. I had to use the back button on my browser to find my comment. Which I submitted, finally.

Except, wait, no- I haven’t verified my email account yet, so I can’t publish my comment. So I go back over to my email, click on the verification link. The page loads slowly. Why so slowly? OH! You want me to watch a video ad for Best Buy? Classy. And I can’t X out of it for 3…2…1 I CLOSE YOU NOW!

I finally am able to post my comment. I’m so proud of myself, I could just spit.

If you are a blogger, writer, marketer, company, etc:
Do NOT put your primary presence somewhere it is hard to get to. LiveJournal, and places like it, are supposed to be obsolete in 2009. Why do you think they shut down GeoCities? No one wants to look at poorly designed websites cluttered with ads. And no one wants to go through hell just to post a comment. I would have abandoned ship early on, but I decided to see how far this would go (so I could write a blog post about it). Most of your visitors do not have my motivation.

If you are building a community, platform, service, etc:
Remove friction. Do not annoy me. Interruptive ads are not the best way to monetize.

If you are an advertiser:
NO ONE likes pop up ads. No one likes noise to suddenly start blasting out of their speakers. Stop it. Please stop it.

Bootstrapping, of course!

I hang out with a lot of lawyers, VC types, serial entrepreneurs, tech people, etc… When I go to networking events or roundtable discussions, I often hear people ask about getting funding. Sometimes they mean SBA loans, usually they mean venture capital- always they mean, “How can I build this business with other people’s money?” I think, implicitly, they are saying, “How can I build this business without putting my personal lifestyle at risk? And, oh yeah- I’m broke.”

Too often, the VC experts in the room indulge the asker by talking about what the capitalists are looking for, and discussing terms and so forth. The “entrepreneurs” take notes. They go to networking/educational events to learn about business plan writing, term sheets, all that stuff…

Not often enough does someone say, “IT AIN’T GONNA HAPPEN FOR YOU!”

• You can’t get an SBA loan unless you’re mostly established, which you aren’t.
• You’re not going to get VC funding unless there’s a clear, multi-million dollar exit strategy, which you don’t have.
• Even if you could get either one of those thing (which you can’t), you shouldn’t anyway.

An infusion of cash is more likely to ruin your business than it is to help it. Think about what happens when people win the lottery. Same deal.

Bootstrap it!

Spend very little, reinvest, don’t hire, retain control. Ignore the motivational gurus who tell you to spend money you don’t need to spend. They are usually suggesting you spend money on them.

I’m not saying don’t spend anything, but think real hard: An online startup needs a great website design, but probably could forgo the fancy letterhead and branded notepads. Spending 100 hours to learn PHP so you can build a little function is probably a waste- hire someone. Hiring someone to do basic data entry because you “value your time too much” is probably a waste- skip CSI:Miami and do it yourself.

And learn how to sell for goodness sake. Remember, the one, single reason for a business to exist is to sell something to someone. Large infusions of cash are likely to remove that understanding. Worse, hanging around VC startups and VC people can also skew your thinking on this matter. Complicated business plans obscure the point, too.

Bootstrapping forces you to realize that if you aren’t selling something you aren’t in business.

So, what now?

Stop reading blogs for the day and go work. By work, I mean, “Sell something.”
Use the money from that sale to buy/build the next thing you can sell.

That’s bootstrapping.

PS- I was inspired to write this post after reading this excellent post about Bootstrapping. You should read it too. It’s short, and has several great Bootstrapping tips.