Words for Broadcasting
How difficult is it for you to write an email or a blog post, what about an article or a piece of advertising material? We all have to create different pieces of collateral for various reasons in business and there are some that you, as with me, are more comfortable doing than others.
For example a few years ago now I took an MBA while living in Australia, I still say to this day that it was the hardest thing I have done because I am not a fluid writer nor am I naturally focused on academia. My writing content and quality improved over my time of studying, to the point that when I completed my last assignment I was really very impressed with the quality of what I had created. The reason for telling this story is because I believe that I achieved a merit overall for my studies, but with the help of my wife proof reading my assignments (more so in the early days) I achieved a very good Distinction.
Since that time I have written a book, co authored another and written many newsletters and blogs alike, yet still I lack in confidence as to the quality of my writing. The reason being, because I write the way I speak which is not grammatically correct, but it is me. Do the sentences always flow correctly, are they repeating a message that has previously been stated or is it just waffle and makes no real sense? All these questions go through my head when I am writing – as they are at this exact moment in time.
This then begs the question for me, is the written word the best medium for me – should I be using my voice and just send out short podcast messages – A Ted talk for example at 18 minutes long is said to be between 1500-2000 words in total. This newsletter is between 600-750 words which if I did an audio version it would last approximately 5-7 minutes. Serious question – Would you prefer to receive a short podcast message to a written newsletter?
Other options are the video newsletters which I have produced for many years, but I started to fall out of love with the talking head to camera. Yes they can be very thought provoking and clever but are they particularly interesting to watch, and does anyone actually pay any attention to them? The biggest question here is who are these little videos for, my ego, my back catalogue of demonstrating I have lots of opinions or the audience because as a result of watching them they have gone away and achieved….. The jury is out here.
One other format I have been investigating is the ‘VideoScribe’ whiteboard picture drawing with voice over, you have seen the hand drawing pictures and creating the story while the voiceover and music plays on in the background. These are still unique enough not to be boring for the viewer I believe but they do take more time as I am not the creative artist and need to really get to know the software better. Of course I could outsource that, there are many companies in the UK and online who will do it for me, the fees range from very high to just $5 – we shall see.
What can you take away from this newsletter? How are you spreading your words? I am not focussing here on how you broadcast your words just how you create and turn them into a format that can then be promoted via social media or old school postal methods. The simple act of dictating a newsletter into your smart phone and then getting it transcribed stops you from having to think about any of the writing itself. I recently completed a 5000 word assignment of which the first 60% of the document was transcribed from an interview session speeding up the whole process enormously. If you need to some help just ask, happy to help where I can. For my future broadcasts what medium would you prefer to receive from me?