Messaging Matters: Writing for Humans and Robots with Maddy Osman

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thank you good evening I saw you bouncing your head today you guys dancing along to it

a little bit but it's this time at night and you're you're mountain right that's 6 p.m so you're like anything you can do

to kind of keep yourself going so yeah a little music good evening welcome to the messaging

matters show I am your host Todd Jones and uh I am coming to you we are going

to talk about writing for humans and writing for robots oh yeah uh and uh I

have my special guest today is Maddie Osmond who's the author of that book and we will be discussing that Maddie

welcome to the show thank you for coming on how are you doing tonight I'm doing great thank you so much for having me

it's always nice to to talk shop you know somebody who who gets it and you

know somebody who who lives in that world too yeah

um it is and I like to say we just come on here and geek out about whatever it is that we're talking about I've geeked

out about uh brand manifestos uh Community I've geeked out about uh

Facebook or well cookies and that kind of stuff not not actual cookies but you

know right cookie marketing the non-tasty kind yeah the non tasty gun we

geeked out about a lot of things I actually have some ideals for next year I do have uh uh this is a little

housekeeping here I do have someone scheduled for next month I will be working on

um getting that it will come at a different time we're not going to do 7 p.m because she lives across the planet

and it would she would be like three o'clock in the morning there so we're not gonna do that

um and she's a Content marketer as well so um we'll have her on and then

um I have in mind some folks already for next year I'm kind of shooting for the stars because I got some content Heroes

I'd like to have on and uh by the way I'm supposed to tell you hi for somebody

who's that Andy crestadina did I say yeah yeah

Andy uh and I were chatting on LinkedIn um and uh he sent me his well I bought

his book the new book They're not really new and it's like I said dude this was like a college textbook so it's huge but

um I told him I said I had I'm having uh Mandy on because madion I think he has a thing in your a testimonial in your book

he does he is actually the front page test right so he said well tell her I

said hey which I guess means that he probably wouldn't gonna be able to watch live which is fine he's he's a busy man

you you have actually the thing I like about some of these testimonials you have some of my heroes in here you got

Kaylee Moore many of my heroes as well yeah so uh Jimmy Rose I know Jimmy uh so

yeah Aaron Flynn um I think Joe casabona at the end so you got some of my heroes in here and so

this is the book um what up it's called writing for humans and robots and the subtitles the

new rules of content style so we're going to discuss this book and and just

set up the Fountain of expertise from uh Maddie but before we do that

um I don't know if everybody knows her very well and probably that everybody in the world in the world but maybe a few

people know who she is but let's uh let's ask I'm gonna ask you some questions uh kind of fun uh hopefully

you might hit me I don't know but um so let's start with this what is your do

you have a favorite musician or song um it's a good question

um I really like this is kind of like a hype not a high school this is like a

college love that that won't quit Foster the People and I think my favorite song

of theirs is Houdini okay I knew you would come up with somebody I never heard of so um which is

okay different generation right uh but one of

the songs I was listening to before we came on was um by B and C and uh and I was listening

to the version in which Jonas Brothers does so um that guy so I do know that group a little bit so

um I'm a little behind on some of the people that are out today and I tend to gravitate back to my era which is 70s

80s so yeah huh solid era so yeah a very solid era

um so yeah okay so this is the next one is uh caker cookies

cookies for sure I never really liked uh like buttercream frosting like really

thick buttercream like it's always a little bit overdone so cookies you like that on the cookie the butter

cream frosting that's what takes me away from cake oh frosting in general yeah too much Super

Rich um chocolate Cake's pretty good and the wedding cake is pretty good but yeah

it's hard to beat a good cookie right what's your favorite kind of cookie probably just standard chocolate chip

something gooey you know like not like a super crisp cookie something that kind

of falls apart in your hands a little bit Yeah okay all right you have a place around there where you live that you

like to go get a good cookie or you should want to bake them I just bake them to be honest but I do

like crumble cookies one of my really good friends Sam she has delivered them

to my house for a couple recent special occasions so now I'm

they just opened up in Conway actually I believe so I've yet to try it out but they're like super thick cookies and

they're really big we actually had like a get-together recently and one of the

guests brought like a bunch of the cookies and we ended up just like cutting them up into like four pieces because then everybody could taste all

of them and like honestly it's like it's just a lot of cookie yeah well you know as we head into the holiday season

that's you know cookies or people get together and eat sweets so that's my

love language sweets do you have a favorite sport

no no I don't know where I saw it it might

be in the book I think you use it as an example you said I don't like football but if I did my favorite team would be

the Denver Broncos [Laughter]

question because I used to have a horse back of the day uh so that's like that's like the dreams that I never achieved

um and then Winter Olympics I really love watching any sort of figure skating solo partner the dance the ice dancing I

just think that it's so incredible the uh well the ice skating gymnast those

guys and gals are amazing so yeah

um I tend to be into the traditional sports like in America which was basketball and football and dirt track

racing which you know everybody loves right so uh I don't know if you've ever been to a dirt track racing or not but I

think they have those up in Iowa yeah they actually have um if you're talking about like the like the dirt

bikes we have a track that's like 20 minutes away from us so I'm actually talking about dirt stock car which is uh

a lot of every rural town in America probably has one anyway absolutely but

we had we have several of them I grew up in an area which is kind of uh known for dirt truck racing and so if you've if

you know anything about NASCAR uh the stock car uh Mark Martin was from my hometown so

um he's retired now so he hadn't raced in a while but anyway I used to watch him race when he was getting started as

a teenager so cool anyway okay um when you aren't writing and putting

out killer content and all that jazz um what do you like doing um I've definitely picked up a lot more

Hobbies during the pandemic I think work used to be my hobby which is really sad

but it's true um so nowadays and I've always liked to read which helps my work which is it's

kind of nice that it works out that way but it is also like not that it's

not that it's like work to read but it's like I am always like overly thinking

about you know a how somebody puts a sentence together or

what does this word mean you know so I get a little bit lost in the Nuance sometimes but like purely for fun

hobbies I think are things like I really like baking um I've been taking like a lot of master

classes over the past like two years um so that's been a really great way to

learn just new like cooking techniques in general um your hobby is learning

my hobby is I honestly like a book that has had a really

big effect on me is the artist's way and it's all about like for those who

haven't read it there's basically two uh techniques that the author who's

um like a Hollywood producer who's who's had success what she did to kind of like

um to to Kickstart her own creativity and one of them is writing daily morning Pages which I'm not super consistent

with but the idea is that you just like write like three pages you kind of like get anything that's in your head get it

on paper you kind of like address your own inner sensor in that way and I think

for me too it's a way to sort of like think about and like plan my day um and and just like address like any

like worries I have and just like get them on the page so that they're not in my head anymore um but then she also talks about doing

like a weekly artist date which is something that you do by yourself for yourself it's something that's like

outside of your Norm um so like I did an artist say a couple weeks ago where I went to go see a movie

by myself I went to go see um don't worry darling and it's mostly because I just like didn't feel like

waiting for my husband but it was also because um I was like it's kind of a unique

experience just go and see a movie like without somebody going with you you know like it really like it's like you're

you're kind of there you're like really focused um but anyway like some of the other things that that book I think inspired

is is just the idea of like letting your inner artist out to play and so what that means literally for me are things

like um learning more about like hand lettering and calligraphy um you know and it's just like I feel

like visuals and like typography like that factors into what I do with content

so it's like I'm not doing it for work but it also like does kind of come back

to it and then um the other like big thing that I've been doing over really like the pandemic is uh watercolor and

kind of just like learning um there's this one Creator Sarah cray she runs

this website called let's make art and I think she's actually based in Arkansas or maybe it's Missouri

um somewhere around there but um she does videos where you can follow along so

basically I just bought like all the paints that she uses and so now I could do all the videos but she

peaches so yeah that's something where you you really I would like to get into

my inner art again too but that's um maybe one day

um we always say that and probably run out of time so um but that's great actually

um that's kind of like journaling I guess are you doing writing that physically in the morning okay yeah well

you know I usually I'm an efficiency person it should be journaling but I like to do it in Google Docs or like

Evernote or something like that just so that if there is something that relates to work for example I'd be like oh yeah

you know just search it here it is gotcha okay one last question and we'll get on to the book um by the way I think

uh we have at least one person watching this Ron Waterbury uh from Minnesota so Hey Ron uh he should crumble cookies are

great so four days of calories in one so oh my gosh that's the problem yeah yeah

uh coolest or best place you have visited um I'm gonna it's hard to answer that

but I'm gonna say Barcelona Spain that's where I studied abroad I studied in full

immersion all my classes were in Spanish I lived with the Spanish host family I did a Spanish internship and um I just

like you know I I wish like I could live there forever but unfortunately my uh

student visa expired so uh what degree did you do in college I did a ba in

marketing and um I actually like one of the hard things about studying there is I did it

as my last semester and I had to take operations Management in Spanish and I was like sure I was gonna fail that and

like have to do another semester but luckily um what's kind of interesting in in

Spanish just educational system is there's not a whole lot of like homework

in college it's like you know you show up for the class so attendance might be part of it you might have like a quiz or

two here and there but it's really like you have like a final and that's like your whole grade but they let you take

it twice like it's normal most students actually take the first one to fail it so they know what all the questions are

and they can take it again because they think you have to fail it in order for you to take it again so guess I guess

you failed it the first time um interesting but then they actually let me take it for the second time in

English and I easily passed it then a little sympathy for you I guess I

guess I'll take it you know all right we have both actually put the book up for

you to see um so I recommend you go onto Amazon and getting a copy of it or you go to our

website which I have down there I think everybody can see writing for humans and robots.com

um if you are a business that has a Blog and you have more than one writer you

absolutely should consider getting this book for reasons we'll talk about um even if you don't

it still could probably make you a better um content writer um and do a better job with your blog

um first thing I want to talk about is your journey to get to writing this book because I know that's a big deal right

um you talked about how you wrote um for and had several

editors you worked with over the years who helped you improve and and learn

about this and then also the other thing I thought was really interesting is that I believe you said your dad was an

entrepreneur and your mom was an English teacher yep so you were doomed or

hardwired to be an English freak [Laughter] my mom like I think I say it in the book

she like corrects me as I'm speaking Yeah that's not proper grammar

I'm like Mom but you know you know print then exactly yeah my dad had a background in

um um well he studied to be a DJ at one point so he was very he was way better

than I wasn't speaking uh I I often say he would have been a great voiceover in today's world but when I was a kid like

a little guy he was a DJ on the AM radio so he would correct our speech but

anyway talk about that Journey for you though going from the time you started in the

business to when you decided to hey I want to write a book shame yeah I think

um you know a lot of things kind of led me to content throughout my

college Years and shortly after and um I kind of had this realization that

you know I did these other things website design social media and I was like but I feel like content is what I

love and I think that's the thing that like I could do better than a lot of people and

I can create processes around and I think in terms of thinking about well

how am I going to change my business from like Maddie Osmond like freelance marketer or whatever you want to call it

to like Maddie Osmond like content creator which at the time for me you

know I thought that I was kind of like burning out a little bit I was kind of like just getting to that point where

it's like I like enjoy writing but having like all these different clients

all these different topics I just don't think I can do this forever and so I need to be thinking about well what is

like the next step and so that's when I thought really lasering on content and then by

doing that I can create like a scalable process and then you know the next thing I had to figure out was like well if I'm

gonna have other people like writing for me like as like Maddie Osmond's brand or the blacksmith or whatever I need to

like communicate to them what my writing process is and what my writing style is

and so that was the Genesis of the blacksmith style guide which is really

um a document that is to some extent built off of AP style as like the Baseline foundational style rules so if

you look at it you'll recognize a lot of AP style rules like we we literally say like per AP style we do this

um and then the book came about because during the pandemic in the first year I

always knew that I wanted to do nanowrimo National novel writing month which happens in November every year and

it's just a goal where you can work with other people to um accomplish writing the goal is 50 000

words and it's typically for fiction writers but I was like that's okay I want to write a non-fiction book and

um yeah so you know I kind of like I knew I wanted to do nanowrimo I had

the style guide you know the skeleton of it ready to go and I was thinking well

what can I write that is gonna like add value you know that that I have something to say about and I was like

well why don't I just expand the style guide add a lot more context to it add a little bit more process around it

um more examples so that it's really clear what you should do versus what not

to do like like taking the rules and actually applying them to real like writing situations that have come up I

mean a lot of the examples in the book are literally edits that we made to like client content for example

so um yeah I mean I think that that's ultimately what brought about the book

is is just the fact that I knew I wanted to write something the pandemic was the perfect opportunity because I didn't have anything else to do and then

um the fact that I wanted to scale up my agency and I really wrote this book for my team but I figured that I could write

it in a way that it was useful to other people too so it started with the ideal of the

locksmith style guide and you're kind of expanding on that is that what I understand that's pretty much exactly it

okay um yeah well I've kind of got a similar story but we're not quite theory on that

um because I did create the website copy framework which needs to be updated but that's a different discussion so what I

really like about one of the first things I noticed is you have it in three parts you have the writing for humans

writing for robots and then putting it all together um and so it's very technical but it's

also very practical um which technical should be practical but sometimes it's not sometimes it's not but you you do real I think you do a

really good job you do the examples really well we talked about one earlier about the Denver Broncos whatnot

um so what would you say I mean

in this day and age I feel like Google is is making their system to where

writing for humans is writing for robots we're probably not quite there yet right right but and I know she put writing for

humans first because I I really think that that's what should do but I want to get your thoughts on that

yeah no I think that Google has always kind of said in like the different guidelines that they make available to

us which of course represents like a microcosm of like how the algorithm

actually works right they're never going to give us like all of the factors they're just going to kind of drip out

the most relevant you know especially as it relates to providing like a great reader experience and so

um yeah I think I think like one of the earliest things I remember reading from Google's perspective was like right for

the human like focus on great content and like everything else will kind of fall around that and it's it's

oversimplifying it to say it that way but it's like it it really begs the

question of like when you're creating a piece of content it's like did you write it for you you know it may be your ego

or maybe like just like your brand and like you know really focusing on sales versus like education

um in a place where education might have been more important um like who did you write it for and

also you know like part of our process because we're we're writing content that

is designed to be found in relevant search is you know exploring things like search intent and why did this person

use these words what were they hoping to see on the other side of things and and

sort of just yeah like following that seeing where it goes and and making sure that the content reflects what it is

that they wanted to learn so yeah just just as with balancing between humans

and robots there's also The Balancing Act between the reader and the brand and I think there is a way to create like a

win-win and then win if you count the search to situation

um so so yeah I think I think it's like it's over simplifying things to say like

just create great content or create great content for humans or whatever but it is like a good guiding voice to have

in the back of your head that like who am I writing this for why am I writing this what did they expect to find here

and then um yeah I mean I think that there are certain things too that we do in terms

of like our sort of like on-page SEO process where it's like you know make sure to use the primary keyword here

here and here and the reason we're doing it is is not even necessarily because they think that Google needs that it's

it's kind of like a backwards compatibility thing where I think that Google is becoming increasingly more

sophisticated about context especially I think like the Bert algorithm update which for those who are unfamiliar

basically is just making it so Google can read a query both like the normal way of reading but also like backwards

and all of the words in relation to the words that they're next to and each other

um ever since that algorithm update I'm I honestly doubt that we need to use keywords and key signal areas at all but

I'm gonna do it because I haven't like fully confirmed that and because I think Google's still testing a lot of things

and so it doesn't hurt to be backwards compatible but sort of like keyword usage I think there could be

you know how when you're quite not quite sure what you're thinking but you write it out and then it crystallizes I think

in some sense it's like a confirmation right oh this article really is about

this keyword um or maybe clarify it's like you know what maybe I should focus a little bit

more on this keyword um right you know obviously and really

we still use keywords right in 2022 but I mean Google's looking for phrases

really anymore I mean kind of like an anchor I think yeah kind of what you're saying like like Google might still

understand what it's about but that just that like confirms it yeah and so you

know um just like now I tell people it's like well it's not really keyword anymore

it's key phrase because when people search rarely do they search one word we

you know we're putting in well now you get to search uh suggestions from Google

and you see their questions or their phrases and you know so the search intent is pretty important in that

regard um but I do say especially for somebody who's not very technical maybe not in this space like just make sure

you're writing for the human first but what I like about the robot section from what I can understand is you don't throw

a bunch of hacks in there it is very technical practical information like you know

um you know put the keyword here in the H2 you know little things that we should be

doing uh to help Google but I always tell people it's like you remember I

think it's um uh show me the money the Tom Cruise movie I

can't remember what's called Help help Google help help me help Google help Google help

Google you know I'm like in other words don't hide from Google what you need you

know help Google out a little bit so I think the technical section or the the

robot section you know it's not about hacks it's not about tricks it's about practical technical things so let me ask

you I have a few questions or a few comments I guess you might say um

what is the difference between an SEO title and a page title sure yeah it can

be the same thing for sure um and I have heard and I think I wrote it in the book too because it really

stuck with me um somebody that I used to work with said something about

you know we were just talking about like should they be different do you want a different one for this piece or something like that and he said

something to me like well wouldn't that sort of like mess up expectations when that

person sees one SEO title you know that they're gonna click and the search engine results page and then they get to

that actual Blog Page and you know the title is something different like like

doesn't that almost like hurt expectations and like like maybe even create some mistrust like right off the

bat um I think that one way to think about it is like are like the title should be

fundamentally the same really right um it's just different terminology because for search again you're trying

to like incorporate that keyword you know for us that like backwards compatibility because we're just not

sure where Google's algorithm is at today and maybe next year it's not going to matter but today it does

so it's like thinking about that but the page title the difference is that you

know it's not constrained by things like keywords except again if we're caring about fulfilling expectation on the

other end of you know clicking that page title um so I think like you do have a little bit more of like creative Liberty with

putting that together and you know making it maybe more conversion oriented at least in terms of like getting people

to continue reading and um so yeah I mean I think that it is a

practice at the Blogspot that we do different page versus SEO titles

um but I do think about that in the back of my head like does it fulfill expectations because if not if it if it

feels fundamentally different then we've done something wrong yeah so in the book I remember you said

um you make sure you have the key word in the SEC SEO title but not necessarily

have to in the page title so when I'm looking at an article that I'm writing in WordPress which I know not

everybody's doing it in WordPress and there's different platforms out there and so forth

um regardless of like whether it's on one of my sites I generally use yoast for the SEO uh one of the other sites

one of my client sites they use rank math there's similar SEO sections so if

you're looking at that on the back end whether it's WordPress or something else and I'm sure you you have used multiple

uh content Management systems but how do you know I with with yoast or rank math

you can actually make an SEO title specifically differently than the page

title is that similar in other systems or um because I don't you know I've never

really maybe written a blog post in Wix or something else can you do that in

other platforms is that what you're talking about I mean you're yeah I think most can at this point

um I think your point is good which is that it's probably easiest to to do that without a lot of like technical

experience like going into the back end or whatever with the tool like yoast or rank math

um Wix Wix since you brought it up I think is a really interesting sort of

case study to to watch because I think a lot of people have a lot of negative

opinions about it several years ago that sort of persisted even after they've made a lot of major changes one of the

things I'm most impressed about with Wix is um really like their foundational

um sort of like technical SEO situation Wix is really a platform I

think for beginners you know small business owners who just want to get a website up that looks decent and

performs decent and all that um I think that WordPress is more customizable and I think there's a lot

more sort of like Integrations and stuff that work with it naturally because it's open source versus a closed platform but

I'm incredibly impressed with like the strides that Wix has made with their

platform and making some of I mean you know the fundamental basic sort of SEO

things accessible to a small business owner and I think that like WordPress does have

I think we are right as WordPress users maybe be fearful of like what the

immediate future looks like when there is a tool like that that is quite frankly a lot less steep of a learning

curve or the beginner so does does uh Wix have a way to to make a specific SEO

title versus yeah I'm not sure about that um but I do know that there's other

things like it has sort of like an automatic connection to Google search console I mean you still have to like

you know connect it or whatever but it's like it's a lot easier to manage than that same functionality and WordPress I

mean it's just like little it's a lot of little things and I'm pretty I'm pretty sure they give you that ability

so in order to to do that like if I'm going to make a descriptive more

descriptive title maybe that's a little bit more eye-catching and then I want to put keyword and SEO title

um that's pretty something you can pretty much do in almost any platform I think so yeah I mean I think most

platforms have adapted to understand that yeah there is like a difference between like the SEO stuff you do and

the like the on-page stuff you do okay just kind of curious and I I was I guess

they kind of I caught my attention like okay um put your keyword in the SEC SEO title

and I think the big thing for me the takeaway for me is I don't really have to put the I don't have to force the

keyword in the page title right uh although I still think it's probably a good idea

um so that's that was kind of a huh it's worth testing I think yeah okay next

thing um I wanted to talk about is self-editing and I think he had a really good section on self-editing I really

need to go back and like look through that but uh the thing that kind of caught my attention and I think it

reminded me of Joanna weeb um I was on one of our Tuesday tutorials

tutorial Tuesday or whatever and we were talking about writing headlines and she's a stickler for writing as many

headlines as you can for one thing and she said you need to write 50 headlines I'm like

and I put in the Q a and it's like even for blog posts and she said for

everything and I'm like oh my gosh but you know most people like well you know we're doing good if we do 25 right

anyway you said for self-editing yeah chin right 10 10 is a the minor probably

the most realistic yeah the most realistic exactly you said with self-editing and I really like this and

I I can't remember exactly how you put it but read through it five times and you gave practical reasons for it

um can you can you talk about that a little bit absolutely let me see if I can find that chapter so I can just kind

of like read them off here but um yeah I think like whatever

it's got it yeah it's gonna be early on here um what ultimately comes down to is the

fact that you only like even in writing this book it's like I had to do separate passes

for different things like formatting versus spelling and grammar versus

um do all the visuals have like a you know caption or whatever and so I think

that's most of of what it comes down to first pass flesh out unfinished sections

so that's like uh that's like your rough draft your rough rough draft second pass

edit for spelling and grammar that makes sense third press read your content out

loud I've never done that uh although I'm not working a tool to read it to you

yeah so that's it that's it but but I always like I know that it takes at

least three times for me to catch everything uh fourth pass validate creating a content by asking yourself is

this something I would find read find interesting I probably don't do I'll probably stop after the third pass to be

quite honest with you and then the fifth one which is a segue to the next uh well no it's not the segue to the next thing

but it's pretty close um check for and I really like this potential if unintentional plagiarism

because I think 99 of the people well that may be a little high the majority of people doing what we do

don't set out to plagiarize stuff of course no it's I don't think it's an intentional thing when it happens

I mean you get kicked out of college for that kind of stuff right and um so anybody who's ever done College knows

that and you're like well of course I know not everybody's done college but plagiarism is just a it's a taboo no no

right so I like that you said it unintentional because you know sometimes we get things in our

brain we don't know where they come from and we spill it out and so yeah I think that's a good thing but I really like

the five passes like I said I probably only do three um but I need to do better job of

getting the fourth and fifth one so I really like that and um self-editing is

always hard to do for me um and sometimes you're solo and you

have to set edit I try regularly to get somebody else to

read it if I can oh for sure because and that's the best right because they

always see something that I don't and some people are better at catching these

little things and and and we as the author read what's supposed to be there right well yeah and it's like you read

something like I do this all the time where I read it and I read it based on

like what I think I want it to say but then I actually like yeah just like put in a totally wrong

word that just looks right but I'm just like like even when I read normal books I feel like I almost like skim a little

bit sometimes and like usually I'll catch myself and I'll go back but you just that's how you read your own

writing you kind of skim it you're almost like looking for certain things one thing that I've heard that um is

definitely not something I invented but um that can help you to like overcome your own bias for your own work is like

when you're doing your edits like change the font like your Google doc or whatever or like make it a different

color uh you know something like that it just like it makes it look like somebody else's then so you can be a little bit

less caught up in your own bias I do think I mean I do a better job

catching things when reading somebody else's stuff that I do mine so I mean and that's not just reading and

self-editing but that's why I think a lot of business owners need a third person outside their business to come in

and take a look so that's a good value Point um the next thing I want to talk about I

have a couple more things and um um copycat content and you brought that

up and I'm not sure I was I was later in the in the book as well I believe uh page 150.

um I thought that was interesting can you talk a little bit about copy cat content uh-huh

yeah 151 yeah so so copycat content is this

phenomenon that I think is very much inspired by the current search engine results page trying to

rank in relevant search situation a lot of companies investing in content and um

hiring writers that they probably don't pay very well to like you know be

curious and like investigate and um they end up creating basically just a

slightly better version of everything that's already ranking you know maybe they add a new section or they kind of

switch things around add a couple new insights or something like that and

um you know it's I think the problem is ultimately that it just like doesn't add

value um Mark Shafer like many years ago coined the term or idea of content oh

man now I'm gonna yeah yeah I want to say content saturation but I know what that's not yeah it's like oh my God now

I'm gonna forget it but it's it's just like there's already this huge amount of content that I already exist we we

continually consume more and more content like every year you know like between TV and articles and even like

going to a play or something I mean there's just so much social media Doom scrolling and so it's like I feel like

we have this like ethical command really to not just like

to add to that without a purpose and I don't think that it's enough of a purpose to just add a new section or

something like that and so yeah there are ways that you can get around that I

agree you don't want to talk about that but the guys from grow and convert call it a Google research paper and I think

that's a great term because that's what people are doing they're basically writing their own reach search paper using the top results of Google I think

journalistic skills help people get beyond that um because being inquisitive asking a

different question looking at it from a different angle um I have what I call my REO framework

and it's it's basically relevancy this is pretty simplistic but

it's it's kind of a thirty thousand feet reminder to myself relevancy you want your content to be

relevant engaging you want to be engaging you don't want to be dull and boring and the last one is original

originality and that plays into the copycat copycat content so how can what

your writing be original um so are you saying something different and me personally I won't go after some

of those topics because they've already been exhausted by people yeah yeah

they've already been exhausted and so often by writers better than me and so I will do something totally different

um I get some freedoms at Maine WP to do that so I'm excited uh sometimes I do

something that doesn't even have anything to do with trying to rank it's just uberly engaging so I've done a

parody of the Night Before Christmas uh for banewp uh I do q and A's and I do

them a certain way I don't do a standard q a where everybody gets the same question but I did one with Santa Claus

last year you and even Santa Claus I like to do stuff that's off the wall different and fortunately Dennis lets me

do that so I'm thankful for that but um I do think that people do the copycat

content and what what advice would you have for somebody maybe who's right

hiring a freelance writer to write some content for them to help their writer

not do that sure yeah um well I think one thing you said is

really it's a really good thing for people to think about which is just like try to yeah like try to like take it

from a different angle even like whether that's like you know a fun cutesy thing or maybe it's like a contrarian angle

maybe everybody's saying this and you're gonna go the opposite way you know you're gonna kind of like Shake It Up

and challenge it um I think angle is a good way to think about not creating copycat content

because it's like you can still like weigh in on the same topic or whatever but maybe you just you just switch the

frame a little bit so I mean I'm trying to think of a good example let's say

um I don't know there's always like all the drama about Olivia Wilde and Jason

Sudeikis and uh whatever blah blah and so it's like well maybe would it maybe

it would be interesting to like hear from like her kids and what they think about that that's like an extreme

um and she probably wouldn't let that happen but but that would be like a a totally different narrative than all the

other like narratives about this you know latest celebrity drama

um so I think it's stuff like that I think a big and like not easy but just

like available option is to interview subject matter experts whether that's on

for example like the client that you're working with their team whether that's using a a tool a platform like Haro help

a reporter out to reach you know a network Beyond yours or maybe it is maybe there is somebody in your network

who would be a great subject matter expert and I think like the benefit to them of participating is you know having

something they say published in a place where you know Their audience might be reading that or maybe it's a totally new

audience maybe getting a backlink like you think there are like it's like you're kind of asking for their time and

in some cases they might want to be compensated for that but in many cases I think that just by creating a win-win

where it's like I'm gonna promote you you know you're gonna get a backlink like I'm gonna you know create some like

social and you know nice images so that this is like a good thing to share I

think I think that is a really excellent way to go about creating content in general because it also

um it exposes you to new ideas that you might not have found in your research and that's really the biggest reason why

you should do it I think almost every time I've asked somebody to share their expertise in an article like that I

don't think I've ever had anybody decline me and where it's only if they're like really busy honestly yeah and I've been

surprised that some of the people that accepted my requests so um you do talk in the book about doing

uh expert roundups um which I thought was good it was actually example of doing list posts but

you do and you have it in your style guide too I think about how to do expert roundups so expert roundups are good for

a lot of different reasons it's actually a reminder to me to consider doing that again I haven't done one in a while but

um it's a good reminder um I'm gonna end with this question and um I think it's uh probably the most

important question is how important uh and who should have a style guide a a

Content style guide love that everyone yeah because it's so important um yeah

yeah yeah you mentioned something earlier today which is like you know anybody who works with like more than

one writer I think that like like I should have made a style guide for myself even before I started to build

out a team you know think about expansion because because the first style guide basically it came about the

blogsman style guide came about when I hired my first editor and I was like well I need you to be me you know so

we're gonna have to we're gonna have to collaborate on this and it was basically like okay whenever you know like you

added something and then I look at it and I add like something that you didn't you know realize that I wanted you to do

for example like let's let's drop it in this document you know and so started

very rough um you know I I would say that even before that like I took a stab at like

okay here's how we do headings here's how we do links you know like here's how we do visuals and then it started as a

skeleton we did edits so it got fleshed out with a lot more you know context

examples and just kind of like working through things that happen time and time again you know I think another thing is

like when you work with certain writers you you kind of like get to this point without a style guide where you're just

editing the same thing over and over and over again and part of it is like well if you never tell them that that's a

problem right you don't know because that's just their style like it's it's that like they're making egregious

mistakes or something like that it's just that's their style and this is my style and it's different

um so I think that I think the main benefit of a style guide is that it prevents

having these edits over and over and over again and it's just like demoralizing to you know keep keep going

into these documents and being like why am I editing this again and it's like because you didn't tell anybody that

like that's right so um yeah I think everybody should have one I think it's your to your other

point earlier not a whole lot of people do so that's the challenge but

um it really is a time and effort saver over the long run so it was just

listening to what you said it sounds like um it didn't happen overnight you started it it kind of evolved so I if

I'm a if I'm a business and I have a Blog and I say I'm going to tackle the style guide and I'll buy me a copy and

if you're going to do that I would recommend getting the physical copy of it the ebook's great but you're gonna

need a copy a physical copy of it uh I I fun fact first time I bought this I

bought the ebook but I meant to buy the physical I had to go back by the physical so I bought two dogs anyway

um and uh and I got it a long time ago and I thought I'm I got you know a month to read this and then I started getting

sick and with Ragweed and stuff so anyway I had to hurry up and get through

it in the last week to get to the interview but anyway um you know if they get a copy of the

book and they get ready to tackle it you know it's it's not gonna happen overnight that's that's just something

it'd take you a while to do that years and multiple people to

um and that's the thing it's like you have to start somewhere

and like like if you see my style God like don't let it like overwhelm you

because just like understand that it took years and I mean we're still updating it today you know whenever

something new comes up and it's like I really want to make a rule about this because I feel like we've already we've

already like made these edits before um we're still adding to it it's it's a

working document you have to start somewhere and starting somewhere and having something is infinitely better

than like Reinventing the wheel every single day on every piece of content you create now when you get the book you

give us a copy of a bare bones to start with is that what I understand is that what you shared with me on LinkedIn or

is that a full flesh that one's a full flesh out one so the bonuses that come

with the book um which you can find either like at the beginning of the book or there's an appendix at the end with links and stuff

like that um the bonuses that come with the book are um first of all oh yeah I think I do

have no actually yeah it's just a fully like fleshed out one I do give a template for

like a social media version of your style guide that is both blank and filled out

um so yeah like mine's mine's pretty filled out but I think the benefit of using that is sort of like a template

for yourself is like you can look at it and be like okay we do that yep agree

with that and then you can also say actually this one we're the opposite of that and then it's like but you kind of

have like the prompt to to make that decision versus like trying to come up with you know all this stuff from

scratch does yours live in Google Drive is that what you you lit yours yeah yeah

for now it's a Google doc we are working on a couple of projects um one is like

the nicely designed pdf version so almost like an e-book um and then we're also making an online

version of the style guide that's kind of like you know it like an e-book that lives on the page versus like a

downloadable PDF so that's that's the next iteration of it I want to make it accessible to anybody who wants it you

know beyond the book beyond the Google Doc which you know it's like more than 10 people are in there it just starts to

freeze which is a bad experience so I'm thinking about um Conway scene like I said a couple

student writers this year and you know they're they're the the second girls

about hers she just turned hers in today her first one in today so we'll actually have two out

um about both the girls and they did a great job but I need to do one and I'm thinking how do I what's the best way to

share and I have a tendency to put something like that in notion but I'm thinking it might be one thing to put it

in there and like work on it but then transfer it to a Google Drive where they can access it real easily I think both

of them can access it with Google Drive so notion's interesting because we did

we did have a version of it in notion for a while because I basically wanted to create

like a channel and the blacksmith slack but like whenever there's a style guide update I would put it in notion

and it would ping the channel you know here's this new update so notion could be a good place for it I ended up not

wanting to update it in both places so that's well I would think um you know I have an account for me and I

don't have team members on it so Google is probably a better spot to put it I

think in that regard elaborate you know just like just like writing in general it's like you can add suggested edits

you can add comments it's yeah you know it's easy to update

without like messing up formatting so I mean that's that's what we've been doing since we created it so probably what

I'll do I think um you know and and there may be a lot of um uh people in in

the digital Community WordPress what not are listening this who who have blogs for their company

um I think that's the next step for many of them probably is uh buy them copier book and getting started on their style

guide do what do it or we're gonna haunt you

hey uh thanks for coming on the show and geeking out with me about uh stuff that

I don't geek out about enough and uh helping us learn a little bit more about this kind of thing absolutely my

pleasure always always happy to talk about this stuff and um you know like if

anybody here wants to geek out about it further I'm at Maddie Osmond on Twitter always always open to a conversation

about content yeah and the website for the book is writing for humans and robots.com right

a free chapter there as well if you're not if you're not totally sold yet it's uh it's my favorite chapter which is

about word choice and being really thoughtful about that which I think is is the best way to open it up really

and um the company website is the blogspith.com is that right yeah that's right so if you want to see examples of

our portfolio clients and process and things like that and you can Google

Maddie and find her anywhere um I will let you know that she used to be a gymnast so that that's that's what

the Google search results say about the other Maddie the other Maddie yeah yeah

you were more of an equestrian girl than uh than a gymnast girl yeah yeah very

good thanks for joining us tonight on the messaging matter show and be sure to check out uh the website uh writing for

humans androbots.com get a copy of uh get a free sample of the book from the

chapter from her website or just skip that and go straight to Amazon and buy it

um I think the price is worth it if you hired Maddie to come to a style guide for you it costs a whole lot more so uh

I would go ahead and just get the book so there you go pro tips

all right