Symbar Bytes

Killer tips to make your writing - and your business - better

[symbarbytes-blog]

Why hobbies are awesome and why you should get one

September 15 2015

I’m a hobby person. I love hobbies. I love fishing, playing music, writing, reading, bike riding, and playing video games. I have lots of down time and my hobbies fill that time.

When you’re doing hobby stuff, you’re using your time as productively as you possibly can. You’re growing a skill or getting an experience or learning something and that makes you better. If you’re not working, the only thing you should be doing is hobbying. It’s your off-work work and it gives you the same ‘happiness-in-productivity’ thing work does.

When I meet clients I ask them what they’re into. I ask because it helps me to get to know them better; because if we’ve got something in common that makes the creative process easier; and because it helps me get inside their brand and their target market by extension. Most of the time I get cracking answers, but sometimes I get nothing. Because the client has nothing.

Me: “So what do you do with your downtime?” Client: “I don’t really know. I don’t get downtime.” Me: “Yeah, it’s really hard. But if you do unwind, what do you do? Any notable hobbies or interests?” Client: “I don’t know. I like watching TV.”

I’m not knocking on people who work really hard. All of my clients work really hard and some of them genuinely feel they don’t have time for hobbies. Working hard is awesome and crucial, but from what I’ve learned in the corporate realm ultimately you need balance to be balanced.

Hobbies help you empty your mind

Hobby-doing is a form of meditation, plain and simple. When you’re practising your piano scales or crafting your 600-page epic, your mind is focused in a very specific way. There are thousands of studies out there touting the therapeutic benefits of creative activity. Fantastic, because it’s easy to unplug. Listening to an audiobook or chipping away at a tough sudoku is as easy as pulling your phone out, so you’ve got no excuse. “Not enough time” isn’t something Bill Gates says, so it won’t work for you either. Throw out “too busy” at your own peril.

Hobbies make you more creative

People who devote time to their hobbies are more creative because they spend more time in tune with the creative part of their brain. Practising a skill builds your capacity for lateral thinking. You’ve heard people say “the inspiration came to me out of nowhere!”? They were hobbying when they became inspired. Whether they knew it or not, their mind was free. Don’t agonise over a work problem at home – let your hobbies realign your consciousness and await beautiful solutions.

Hobbies give you stuff to talk about

I’ve played guitar for a decade, so that gives me a decade’s worth of social fuel with like-minded people. When I meet new people, I ask about their hobbies. If they have unusual or interesting hobbies, they have something they’re comfortable talking about. If they’re comfortable, together we’re building a relationship. That relationship will be awesome because it’s based on a mutual love of hobbying itself as well as whatever hobbies we’re mutually into.

Don’t kid yourself – you’re not that busy. EVERYONE has time for hobbies. Hobbies make you cooler. Knit, paint, read, draw, whatever. It’s time spent as well as it can be.

[symbarbytes-blog]

Is it better to have a perfect blog or a finished blog?

14 September 2015

Most writers are perfectionists. At Symbar we’re certainly perfectionists. We want our writing to be perfect all the time. That’s a good thing to want but it has a lot of drawbacks. We’ll sit for hours on end in the glow of our computer screen backspace-type-backspace-type-backspace-typing to ‘perfect’ a section of writing and sometimes we won’t even get there. That’s the thing about perfectionism: It’s in the next sentence. It’s around the next corner. It’s one webinar or book or learning experience away.

It’s really not, though. I’ve worked on scores of blogs, built them from the ground up, and handed them over only to watch dozens of writers kill them in the futile pursuit of perfection. For staffed or freelance writers working on a long-term project, perfectionism is one hell of a back-monkey. You’re striving for perfect within your own writing yourself, and your supervisor is striving for perfect within your writing, and often you’ve both got different ideas of what perfect is. That’s a prime recipe for frustration and failure right there.

So perfect sucks. You should get rid of perfect. Blogs don’t need to be perfect to fulfil their purpose. They don’t have to be perfectly written – Nobody’s ever going to write their blogs like David Foster Wallace did, and trying is an unsustainable practice – and they don’t have to be perfectly presented. I’ve seen blogs on ugly dawn-of-the-internet websites pull thousands of readers every week. That’s because all that a blog needs to succeed is research, passion, and consistency.

Research

This one’s deceptively easy, and doesn’t really take that much time when you make it into a habit. Basically, you want to know your audience and you want to know what you’re talking about. You want to know your audience intimately. What do they care about (besides your product or service)? What keeps them up at night? What do they do with their spare time? What do they do for a living? What’s their English reading level? If you know your audience you can cut straight to them every time you write. You won’t bother crafting beautiful sentences because you know your readers will only find them frustrating. You can leave sentences out because you know they’ll fill gaps with their own assumed knowledge. And if you know them and write to them like you know them, they’ll respond better over a longer period of time. This stuff’s vital to good long-term blogging. Also know what you’re talking about. If you’re not sure about stuff, defer to people (even other bloggers) who know about that stuff. Don’t make stuff up, don’t plagiarise, and don’t leave them to figure stuff out for themselves. If you’re going to try and educate your audience, really educate them. There’s nothing wrong with credited content curation – again, if you don’t know, put your readers on to somebody who does. Just make sure you credit the owner of the content.

Passion

Love what you write. Have fun. Find interesting and off-kilter angles for your blog posts. Think of your blog as a lunch-room discussion with mates. Keep the conversation open, lively and multi-faceted. Ask questions to uncover interesting ideas and perspectives. Your readers are your mates – that’s the mindset you need to be in to ensure you’re writing in a passionate way. Passion beats perfection EVERY TIME. Passion fosters beautiful mistakes and mistakes create humanity and humanity sells. Beethoven thought so too:

“To play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is inexcusable!”

Consistency

Once you know your audience and have nailed your tone, blog all the time. Blog daily, weekly. Keep your audience tuned in to your brand’s ongoing story. If your writing is passionate and relevant, a few spelling mistakes and formatting issues WILL NOT MATTER. Look over any writing you’ve done and you’ll find mistakes. That’s okay – they were just as insignificant then as they are now. A consistent, passionate, heart-felt message to the right people will resonate no matter what. No matter what.

[symbarbytes-blog]

How to avoid office politics and still be likeable

11 September 2015

Anyone who has ever worked in an office will tell you office politics suck. Managers wage war against each other, employees feud and back-stab, somebody kisses somebody’s butt, and nobody wins. Nobody ever wins. It’s probably natural for disagreements to occur when people spend 40+ hours together. You can’t be that awesome sociable person all the time. You might get on somebody’s bad side, somebody might get on yours, and sometimes you won’t know how to handle it. It’s not easy to assess a situation dispassionately and make good decisions to neutralise conflict when your reputation is at stake.

Back when I worked in a traditional office environment, I’d often get caught in the middle of bad office battles. My job was awkwardly divided between two departments, and the heads of those departments were locked in a perpetual power struggle. Neither would discuss their issues with the other openly, so they tried to recruit me and others to engage in guerilla ops. I was asked to sabotage, undermine, and ambush my colleagues and superiors. It sucked. I just wanted to do my job and stay out of everything. I was trying to be THAT awesome likable guy. I mostly succeeded, but I made some enemies unwittingly. If you don’t do a manager’s shoddy bidding, they’ll assume you’re working for the other side or are against them or are untrustworthy etc. I was glad to leave that place behind.

Here’s how you can preempt such situations and stay clear of office conflict.

Don’t ever trash talk.

It can be tempting to trash the manager your other manager or colleague is inviting you to trash, but it never goes over well. The person tempting you into trash-talking with their trash-talking is trying to see how trustworthy you are. Yup, that’s right: They’re trashing, they’re bad, but they’re trying to see how bad you are too! It’s not just about them venting about the manager. It’s a way they can see if you’re capable of trash talking. And you never know - they might be a double agent. They could be sent to diss their manager by that very manager to see if you diss too. So don’t. Best case scenario you feel that uncomfortable “I just crapped on someone who can’t defend themselves” feeling; worst case you get narked on and end up in the dog house. Don’t do it.

Be honest and fair.

Dissing colleague/manager: “So what about Carly’s hair? Why’d we let her run that function if she can’t even curl it properly?” You: “I met this really interesting exec at the function. He runs his own chopper business, and he’s interested in a partnership. Do you want his details?”

Dodge, duck and ignore vitriol at all costs. Change the subject just enough so that you’re still contributing to the overall thread started by the disser but not actually contributing to the dissing. It’s a subtle art but when it’s executed properly it will diffuse the attempted dissing seamlessly. You look like a good employee, you’ve not dissed anyone, and you’ll likely send the disser away to trap another hapless employee.

Sometimes, you’ve just gotta come out and say it.

This one’s the hardest. “So what about Carly’s hair? Why’d we let her run that function if she can’t even curl it properly?” “I’m happy to talk about the function, but I don’t want to talk about any of my colleagues that way. I like you all and I’m not about to devalue somebody’s contribution.” This seems excessive and kind of sanctimonious, but it’s going to do less damage in the long run. Your colleagues always respect assertiveness. They may not like it at the time, but they’ll never return to you for a bag-out session if they know you’ll openly object and make them feel bad about themselves. If you’re cards-on-the-table honest you’ll have nothing to worry about. Come what may, your strict adherence to honesty will be so clear even your managers will not believe anything said against you. So if a disser tries to recruit you for dissing, you blindside them with assertive honesty, and they try to dob you in to a manager for dissing because you told them off, it’s extremely likely the manager will know who the real disser is.

That’s because, sooner or later, the good people are separated from the bad like day from night. Be honest, open, and don’t trash talk, and you’ll emerge from your office battleground unscathed. Good luck.

[symbarbytes-blog]

3 things you can learn about blogging from Dollar Shave Club

10 September 2015

Dollar Shave Club is just that - a club. You feel it’s a club. You join and get a killer product, but it’s not about that - it’s about belonging. It’s about feeling like a man, about sharing in that good ol’ feeling of well-shaved masculinity. When Dollar Shave Club communicates with people, they communicate in a way that perfectly echoes its brand identity. Their content is light-hearted, off-kilter, blokey, and slightly audacious. If their brand was a 20-something professional dude who likes cars and movies and nose-picking (yup), he’d be blogging the way Dollar Shave Club blogs. That’s their brand, and that’s why people like it. Dollar Shave Club have found their niche. It’s both specific and broad. Even if you’re not going after the same market, you can pick up a few things from the way they blog. 1. They write about stuff that’s fun - and not directly related to shaving

From nose-picking to office buzzwords being coy euphemisms, Dollar Shave Club blog about stuff that their target market cares about. You hear about their office codeword decryption techniques and you plan on using them for laughs around YOUR office. You read about nose-picking (yep) and you laugh about the times when you...picked your nose, basically. So their content is fun, but it’s delivered in a fun way, too. Check this out: The cliché: “Bandwidth”

What it means: The amount of time and/or manpower needed to complete a task. What it really means: The amount of time and/or manpower needed to complete a task that is too menial to be completed by the person who originally received the assignment, and thus, it’s foisted upon a person of a lower pay-grade. Almost always used in the form a question, though it’s more like a command disguised as a question. (Example below.) Typically followed up with an excuse such as “I have back-to-back meetings,” or “We all need to pull our weight around here,” which is code for “I’m probably going to take a three-hour lunch today” or “My tee-time is 2 p.m. and cannot be changed.”

Is their assessment of ‘bandwidth’ true or correct? No. Is it funny? yes. Will it resonate with their target market? Absolutely. 2. When they blog about shaving stuff, they nail it

Ever wondered about the right way to shave neck hair? What about the right time to change razor heads? Dollar Shave Club have got you covered. Their FAQ and helpful tip-type blogs are quick, easy to follow and easily digestible. You learn a little bit about shaving you didn’t know and get back to your life.  Often when they blog about the technical stuff they also enlist the help of known specialists in the field of shaving - famous barbers, groomers, what have you.

3. Their brand comes across as super personal 

Their head guy, Michael Dubin, is really their head guy. He stars in all their ads, he blogs for them, he appears on their social media, and he does awareness rounds with known content creators who share Dollar Shave Club’s target market. In a totally unprecedented - and totally awesome - move, he even appeared on a well-known gaming podcast (a podcast Dollar Shave Club had sponsored for months up to that point). Michael Dubin knows that his personal brand will bring Dollar Shave Club lasting success fast.

[symbarbytes-blog]

Pick a dynamite personal trainer with these 3 tips

9 September 2015

I go to the gym...sometimes. Me and my personal trainer have an...interesting relationship. His name’s Kyle and he pushes me to my limits. He’s a good personal trainer for that reason (and many others) and it took me a while to find him. There are LOTS of personal trainers around your local area. Most of them promise the same promises and offer the same services, but few rise above that tired advertising chatter. Kyle’s one of those trainers, and I used these three secrets to find him.

1. Know your goals and make those goals clear.

Trusting a personal trainer to help my semi-flabby form wasn’t easy. Bad ones will say ‘heck yeah!’ when you tell them you want to slim down with cardio instead of buff up with weights, but then they’ll put you on the path to crafting an intense lifting rig. They have their formulas and expertises, and sometimes they won’t want to cater to you because it’s more difficult for them to fit your mould than it is to make you fit theirs. If you don’t like the weight regiment, a bad personal trainer will chalk it up to you being unfit. That’s not always the case. If you want to do cardio, make it clear you want to do cardio.

If you’re not sure what you want to do, tell your personal trainer what you want to get out of personal training and work it out with them. If you say “I want to get fit” and they jump straight to a specific program, it may not be the right one. Get them to detail their plan and explain how it will help you achieve what you want.

2. Find out about their credentials.

This one can be tough. If they look fit and you don’t, you’ll feel out of your depth asking them if they’re qualified to train you. But just because they look fit or buff, doesn’t mean they’re a good trainer, instructor, or teacher. It doesn’t mean they know what’s best for you. So ask them these kinds of questions:

- What are your qualifications? (obvious, but yes) - How will you motivate me? - How do you develop a workout plan? - Can I talk to a current client about your services? - Are you flexible with times/dates/session durations?

3. Watch out for personal trainer-isms. You may have to do a free trial session to unearth these unhealthy isms. Good personal trainers focus on form and constructive motivation, and bad ones rely on tired isms likely borrowed from that Al Pacino speech at the end of Any Given Sunday. Men’s Health is across these, too.

- “Push through the pain!” Wrong. Kyle says pain is not good. Discomfort’s good, but pain is not. Pain is a precursor to injury. - “Go hard or go home!” You’ve got to go hard in a constructive way. Maybe it’s just me, but I need tailored motivational cries. I don’t like to be told simply to ‘go hard’. Motivation’s a big deal, so the ideal trainer will do it right. - “No rest. Keep going, man. Keep going!” Don’t get me wrong; an intense workout is great. But if you need to rest between sets, rest. A good personal trainer allocates rest between sets because they have a sound, scientific knowledge of thresholds. If you don’t get adequate rest during an intense workout, you’ll be doing more harm than good.

Happy hunting!

[symbarbytes-blog]

5 ways small businesses waste money

9 September 2015

When it comes to deciding how money should be spent, small business owners have it tough. This is especially true for start-ups: You’ve saved some money or secured some capital, and you need to decide where that money goes. You don’t want to waste money intentionally - nobody does - so you scratch your head for a while and make what you think are, at worst, well-informed decisions.

Sometimes those decisions are no good. That’s okay from a learning perspective, but the lessons are often costly. You might invest in the latest tech for your service or product, but you might find that tech doesn’t quite cut it. 

At Symbar we’ve seen lots of businesses struggle with budgeting for resources and essentials. They’ve gotten frustrated and upset and reach out for any guidance they can get. That’s okay with us - we’ve made the mistakes and learned the lessons. So here are five that continue to trip up spirited small business owners.

5. Unnecessary or complex tech

A while back now we did some copywriting for a local Hawthorn DJ. He’d just started out in the live scene after completing a general music degree. He had the skills and the musical chops behind him, but he wasn’t sure what to buy to make his DJing happen. So he did the understandable thing - he bought top-of-the-range decks, insanely expensive studio monitors (speakers) and a bunch of fancy controllers right out of the gate. He wasn’t sure how they worked - he didn’t have the training, or even the need for them (as he found out later) so it happened that he wasted thousands. He ran out of steam quickly, didn’t get the success he anticipated he’d get in his anticipated timeframe, and quit. The gear was sold for less than he bought it for. And it sucked. It doesn’t matter what kind of business you run - you always need to do heavy research into tech. If you can, find out what your contemporaries and colleagues are using. If you’re a financial planning firm, don’t spend tens of thousands of dollars on a computer server setup meant for a 50-person operation. You’ll feel tempted by the ‘buy it nice or buy it twice’ philosophy, but hold off. Sometimes it’s better to build up better tech once you’ve truly justified the need for it.

4. Food and accommodation costs

You might be thinking, “hey, if I send my employees interstate for a work function, all their expenditure is deductible!” You might be right, but you still need to spend money. And if it’s an unsustainable amount of money, it’ll bring you unstuck in the long run. It’s common for small electrical firms to send their employees interstate and give them free reign for meal and entertainment. Wrong move. Set their expenditure at a limit - a reasonable limit so they don’t starve or get dysentery - and you’ll be able to keep your costs low. If everytime you send someone out from HQ and their costs are tracked and manageable, you’ll put yourself in a better position when your business grows and your cash flow allows for extra splashing.

3. Bad advertising/marketing decisions

It’s common (and totally understandable) for new start-ups to rush into advertising and marketing as soon as their website’s live, but this approach is fraught with danger. Too many businesses waste money on LinkedIn and Facebook ads without working out their communications first. Too many businesses jump into their local paper’s classifieds without assessing the market and the potential for a return. Sometimes the risk is low, but sometimes it can be unexpectedly high. If you blow $500 dollars a week on advertising runs and come up with nothing, you’ll have wasted money and risk getting fed up with the lack of leads and giving up on your business altogether. Advertising doesn’t respond to flights of fancy and the ol’ post-and-hope mentality. You need to do a lot of planning to put yourself at good odds of attracting the right people to your business.

2. Not getting rid of underperforming or redundant people

Small family businesses have difficulty with this one. Start-ups should run like a tight ship, and that mandates intense frugality. So if one of your team is cutting it, or if they’re knowingly phoning it in, you need to cut them. Useless staff members - even if they’re family - are a secret, silent drain on resources. They’ll never tell you they think they’re redundant, even if they do think they are. Again, this is tough when you’re dealing with friends and loved ones, but before you start up a business you should consider the possibility some may have to leave.

1. Not keeping track of expenses

These days lots of start-ups set themselves up to operate with low or no overheads. That’s an advantageous position, but if you’re not careful you can become cavalier about your spending and blow out your budget. Being cash flow positive is easy when you’re asset positive but if you don’t plan and track the money you spend you’ll find you spent more than you thought. And you will. Make no mistake. Budget or face the consequences of a shoddy balance sheet. If you don’t have the expertise to track expenses properly, that’s totally normal, but consider investing in an accountant or tax agent who can do it for you. That’s a cost you can always afford.

[symbarbytes-blog]

Why team building is crucial for your business

9 September 2015

A few years ago now I was recruited to help a Melbourne music magazine get off the ground. A guy named Matt had held it for about fifteen years but hadn’t found the right editorial team to turn it into a viable commercial operation. It’s pretty common that print-based mags run out of steam quickly and that’s mostly because people run out of patience quicker than the time it takes to monetise, but Matt was convinced we were fit to make something great. I was a younger lad with one of those powerful gut-fires, and he figured while I was living with my mum and dad I could do without remuneration for a while. I agreed to his terms because I wanted to write pretty badly and had a part-time thing at a local Woolworths deli.

So about seven months later I began to run out of steam. Matt could see I was busting my arse to put our thing on top and rewarded me when he could. We’d go out for beers, go see shows (with free tickets we scored through the fledgling magazine) and eat expensive steaks on his dime. We were about four or five solid hungry writers and to this day I appreciate the effort he went to keep us happy. Matt was a cool guy with a simple philosophy: “My workers should be high work output, high maintenance.” That is pretty cool, right?

Most employers out there would prefer their employees be high work output, low maintenance. Get your work done, get paid, and don’t ask for much. Heck, that’s one of the quintessential problems with the 9-ta-5 office grind! People hate the idea that they’re giving their lives away for naught but a pay packet. It’s said out there that the best organisations get more out of their employees when they’re paid more. That seems like an obvious truth but it’s quashed on the daily. And while it may not always be practical to pay your employees as much as they’d like (or need), giving them little extras here and there can do a lot. That’s where team building comes in. Every month at Matt’s mag we’d have a team building day. Sometimes it was a steak ‘n’ chips event, sometimes it was a live show, and sometimes it was something truly special. Matt worked for Frontier Promotions during the day. That year Frontier was bringing Queens of the Stone Age out to Tassie for a once-off show. Matt’s other home was Tassie so he had a big part in it. One faithful February, he came in with a proposition. “Hey guys, how would you like to fly out to Tassie for a few days, see Queens and the sights? I’ll pay for everything. You know, just as a thank you.” We were STOKED. Queens of the Stone Age are my favourite band of all time. I almost cried at the thought. I never expected to see them. 

“Oh yeah, and you can meet the guys.”

(This is a snap I took during the soundcheck).

Very long story short, the trip was awesome. I got to bond with my team, meet some of my musical heroes, and see a bit of Australia I hadn’t before. It was an incredible experience with incredible people, and it was something unique to add to my life’s story. Maybe that’s the most important part of rewarding your employees with extras. A team-building trip doesn’t have to be as extravagant as a fly-away with the stars, but it gives them a unique opportunity to feel appreciated. I reckon there’s nothing better than the genuine recognition and thankfulness of a superior. It’s an appropriate display of humility and it renewed my resolve ten-fold.

You don’t have to be overly chummy with your employees, but remember that you ARE a team. Treat them and they’ll treat you. I left about a year later to pursue another job offer, but Matt’s magazine thrives to this day. We gave all of ourselves to that project and we received a lot back. It just goes to show: When it comes to your employees, money is DEFINITELY not everything. 

[symbarbytes-blog]

3 things I learned about life while interning at a major metropolitan newspaper

3 September 2015

Back in journalism school (about five years ago now) I had a run of internships with a major metropolitan newspaper (I won’t say which one, but it began with an H). Lots of people say internships are inherently skewed against interns because the of the little-fish-HUGE-pond dynamic. Having come out the other side, I’d say there’s merit to that contention, but it was still a formative experience and I learned a lot. Here are some of the bigger lessons. 1. Don’t take things personally It’s so easy to take things personally. So easy. In bullet-paced corporate environments journalists tend to be short and swift with their words. Few are friendly on the face of it, and they will tell you exactly what they think. There’s simply no time to mince words when deadlines are constantly looming, and if your ego is fragile, as mine was, you’ll take a beating. 

The beating was good for me. I quickly learned to prioritise and better value my time as well as other people’s. I asked for honesty and got it, and I appreciated it. I got precious advice most writers would kill for, and I didn’t squander it or reduce it to nil by thinking it made me worthless. Turns out, when I first walked through the big glass-panelled doors at H, I wasn’t an expert. It hurts to find out, but you’ve got to see it as solely for your betterment. No one is attacking your self-worth. No one is trying to bring you down. Those big shot journos want you to succeed as much as you do. They’re cruel-to-be-kinders and you’ve got to forget about yourself to hang with them. You’ll be glad you did.

2. Sometimes, you’ve got to do the crap jobs

And you should always do the crap jobs with a smile. Someone’s always paying attention. I was interning at the same time as a student from a rival university. He was one of those spoiled brat types; he didn’t want to do admin stuff and he didn’t listen to anyone on the editorial floor who wasn’t a decorated journo. While I happily accepted the job of doing vox pops down by Fed Square, he folded his arms and wandered off. My photos and voxies made it into the next edition, and he didn’t come back for his second week. He wanted to do the big stories and left with clipped wings, while my diligent voxy-ing got the notice of the news editors. They requested me for another internship later that year. Accept every job as an opportunity and don’t go in thinking you’re above anything. Because you’re not.

3. Ask so many questions you risk annoying people

My tutors told me that internships generally aren’t paid because the experience is invaluable. When they said experience, what they really meant was ‘being close to influential and accomplished people.’ I met and worked alongside some of Melbourne’s best journos and editors, and I was sure to ask them anything and everything I could. Wherever you work, the best way to get noticed by your betters is to ask intelligent questions. Curiosity is THE MOST attractive quality in an up-and-comer. Curiosity speaks to passion and passion walks hand in hand with humility. If you’re curious you’ll ask questions, demonstrate your passion and enthusiasm, and show your superiors you’re humble enough to ask for help and guidance. Anybody who’s anybody got there by learning from others. If you’re the one to ask questions instead of keep silent for fear of looking like a dick, you’ll come out with precious information no one else will have.

[symbarbytes-blog]

What True Detective taught us about ‘show don’t tell’

2 September 2015

Season two of HBO’s True Detective proved to be just as divisive for the writing community as it was for everyday viewers. It had a complex story with lots of facets - crucially typical of crime dramas - but at Symbar we simply can't decide whether it was told right. To reiterate, we’re not saying the plot itself was bad - just that it may have been told in too cryptic a way.

There’s an age-old principle of good storytelling called ‘show don’t tell’. Good stories immerse audiences. You’ve got to let your reader/viewer in, lay a solid foundation, and let them build on it themselves. Sometimes, you’ve got to deceive them or selectively reveal important pieces of information. Readers/viewers must figure out your story world themselves to truly enjoy the story. If you reveal too much - if you tell and don’t show - you’ll insult their intelligence and ruin the catharsis they’ll feel after having connected with your story and seen it through to the end.

The ‘show don’t tell’ principle applies to dialogue, visuals, music, everything. Good storytellers know everything they write - and show - communicates a message. They can control and harness that message, and in doing so, they make the storytelling experience itself a kind of dance between sender and receiver.

Example of telling, not showing - Skyfall

The James Bond films have fluctuated in writing quality over the years, but Skyfall represents a pretty concerted effort. Unfortunately Hollywood makes questionable choices all the time, and in Skyfall you get what we call a ‘scene title spoiler’. Here’s what it looks like in the movie:

So you’re introduced to some flashy metropolitan locale, and you’re not sure where it is or what it is. All you know is that it’s important. You’re CURIOUS. The movie has you at the beginning of a story thread.

Then the scene title spoiler pops up and answers your question. It’s London. It’s MI6. Wow. Curiosity spoiled. Audience intelligence insulted. How does a scene title spoiler add anything to the story? Simply, it doesn’t. Instead, why not go inside the mystery building and show off its inner workings? Instead of telling us cheaply WHAT the building is, why not let us figure it out by observing its employees and reading its internal directories and lunchroom memos and idle computer screens? If we see holstered guns and well-dressed people speaking in a certain language or accent, we’ll surmise it’s in a certain place at a certain time for a certain purpose. If you don’t tell the audience your scene is taking place in London’s MI6 headquarters but show them instead, they’ll feel smart and IMMERSED in the story when they’re left to figure it out themselves. It’s just good storytelling. Example of showing, not telling - Interstellar

Christopher Nolan is the premier advocate for ‘show don’t tell’. His movies are ‘showy’ to varying extremes, but as a rule, he’d prefer to leave something unexplained than explain it. In Interstellar, the main character ‘Cooper’ doesn’t have a first name. Or a second name. We’re not told where his corn farm is, what happened to his wife, or why dust threatens to destroy his world. We’re not told he’s an ace fighter pilot - in an opening and EXTREMELY FAST cutaway scene we see a flashback to him piloting a futuristic-looking jet craft and figure it out for ourselves. Nolan doesn’t want to bog us down with information about characters and worlds - if it’s not explained, it’s not vital. If it’s not vital, it becomes part of the world’s lore and that’s left to the viewer. So True Detective (season two). Good showing, not telling?

Lots of people now have said True Detective’s character dialogue is inscrutable and hard-boiled to the point of supreme pretentiousness. We’re inclined to think some of the long-winded exchanges between characters are overblown, but its cypher-like approach to disseminating information makes for an interesting case study. Take this section of dialogue between two of the show’s main characters, Raymond Velcoro (Colin Farrell) and Ani Bezzerides (Rachel McAdams): Ray: “You know that expression about flies and honey?”

Ani: “The f*** do I want with a bunch of flies?”

Ray: “You don’t have any flies, you can’t fly fish.” This conversation is all about Ray’s tortured platitude (you can’t metaphorically fly fish without metaphorical flies) but it’s not clear whether it reveals anything important or subtextual about Ray or Ani. It doesn’t show us - despite the platitude - that Ray is wise and pithy. It may tell us that he’s experienced as a detective (he’s reduced said experience to an easily dispensible fishing metaphor), or it may tell us that he sees himself as more experienced than Ani, his junior. Ani’s petulant, aggressive response tells us she’s brash, petulant and aggressive. But, as ElectricLiterature writes, the writing could be working harder to show things. “Kurt Vonnegut once said, “Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.” I think that’s a little narrow, as sentences can also add atmosphere, world-build, or do other things. But certainly in good writing every line should do something. This is especially true in the tighter narrative economy of a TV episode screenplay. My biggest personal gripe with True Detective is not the stock dialogue or even the nonsense dialogue, it’s the amount of functionless lines.”

It could be that in writing cryptic dialogue, True Detective’s writers are trying too hard to show and not tell. If your characters reveal too much via conversation in a mystery drama, your mystery drama will lose its most crucial component: Mystery. At least if nobody knows what your characters are saying, they’re probably going to stay curious long enough to look online for a transcription. For your own communications, the big take away point is this: Don’t explain so much as to insult your audience, but don’t explain so little as to make them feel out of the loop (and thus, unintelligent). You need an even sway. Just avoid writing like this: Ray: “You pull off that e-cig. Not a lot of people do.”

Ani: “This place gets a day-today influx of 70 thousand people, right? Where do they live?”

Ray: “I tried once. It felt like it was smoking me. A real cigarette wouldn’t make you feel like that.”

[symbarbytes-blog]

Things I learned kayak fishing Port Phillip Bay

31 August 2015

I’m an enthused amateur angler at best, but I’ve done a fair bit of fishing in and around Port Phillip Bay. Me and Jack (a close mate and stalwart fishing partner) are solid 9-to-5ers during the week, so we go on land-based expeditions whenever it’s not too cold and the wind’s favourable. This year we’ve covered Sandringham, Brighton, St Kilda, Port Melbourne, Portarlington, St Leonards, Portsea and Corinella with little to moderate success. Most of the time we bounce jigs for squid and soft plastics for flatties - bait is fine, but you need to work with lures and I like that.

It’s a long-known truth that pier fishing is kind of a pain in the ass. When you’re operating from a pier, you’re fishing ground that’s constantly harvested - at best, the pickings are slim. You’re competing shoulder-to-shoulder with other anglers looking to thread their jig in between two lines you’ve already cast. Sometimes we’ve thrown in Halco twisties and picked up stray salmon; sometimes we’ve tossed in cala and landed undersized pinkies and tiny gummies; sometimes we’ve slapped piers and crossed lines and gotten frustrated with strangers. Too often we’ve gone home with nothing. That’s fishing, as they say, but after a couple of years grinding away on jetties we wondered if there wasn’t something better out there. Jack first floated the idea of kayak fishing. “We can go where boats go, but we won’t need a boat!” The thought was sweet. A happy medium. The way he sold it, kayaks are the perfect solution for thrifty anglers; get out further on your own portable pier and avoid the nautical rigmarole of boat ownership. Down at Schnapper Point in Mornington there’s a Kayak hire place (ask for Ben) with two Hobie Mirage Outbacks on rotation. You can hire one for about $50/day and paddle around past red rocks on your right and the newly renoed pier on your left. Just out from red rocks there’s a known squid hotspot for yakkers. Having flicked jigs there twice now I can say summarily it’s not ideal to drift weed beds unsheltered in 15 knot winds, but the real estate is promising.

Yakking is an experience, though. It’s you, a watertight engineering marvel, and 360 degrees of unobstructed fishing opportunity. The Hobie Outback comes with a pedal propulsion system, so you can pedal your way around at decent speeds instead of oaring. It’s designed for specialist fishing; getting in close and working structures. As experienced anglers will know, fish like structures. With yaks, you can get amongst the markers and hidden reefs seldom fished by boats. It’s a simpler, quieter way to fish. I’ve fished the Ovens and Buckland rivers out past Porepunkah for trout, and yakking requires a similar level of concentration. You’re learning to seek out the best spots. It’s not about wetting lines and hoping for the best, especially when you can attack an installation from multiple angles. The first thing I learned on a yak was that pier fishing had made me lazy; you cast out and land where you land and hope and pray and check your baits and rebait and recast and hope and pray. For the most part, that’s all you can do. It’s 80% optimism and 20% skill. On a yak, much like stalking trout along a rocky stream, you spend 80% of your time setting up an ideal vantage point and 20% of your time working a lure over a targeted area. The fish are hard-caught. And presumably much tastier. I’ll let you know about that part. Digressing, yesterday’s yakking adventure left me with something of a realisation. Lots of small business owners take the land-based approach to their marketing strategy. It’s not that they’re lazy, just that they spend too much time toe-to-toe with competitors given that the prospects for a return are slim. Business content shouldn’t be delivered in a cast-and-hope way. You could cast out 100 metres from a pier with a 15 foot surf rod, but there’s very little chance you’ll hit a populous space of water. In fact, there’s a good chance you missed a few reef systems 20 metres further out from where your bait landed. Consider the yakker, who invested a little bit more in their delivery strategy and can actually go out to that spot you missed 120 metres from the pier. Not only that, they can move around the system and ensure their targeting is on point. They might even see the fish. They’ve worked harder, and smarter, for it. If you’ll allow me to distort this metaphor a little, think of us as your kayak. We’re your better delivery system. All the pier-based anglers don’t want to invest in a better delivery system, because they figure they’re at the waters edge and they have all the tools. They don’t. They’re missing a mandatory quotient – an in-depth understanding of how communication works. We’ll get you out there, and we’ll show you how to target the fish you’re after. Our words are your kayak.

[symbarbytes-blog]

3 inspirational YouTube stars you should follow

30 August 2015 YouTube has lots to offer. It used to be that if you wanted a dose of old-fashioned specialist knowledge, you’d have to pay for it. No longer. Want some expert advice to get your business ideas cooking? Follow these guides. 1. WoodysGamertag

Despite his name, Woody isn’t all about games. With decades of real-world experience as a software architect, accountant and engineer, he’s an all-purpose font of entrepreneurial wisdom. Woody earned his stripes on YouTube as a gaming commentator, but over the last three years he’s moved slowly into the business realm. These days, most of his videos are about being a better person. His secrets to success are genuinely helpful, and they aren't pie-in-the-sky pearls. Check out this video for some inspirational words.

2. Guy Kawasaki

As a brand ambassador, Guy’s been everywhere and done everything. He’s a silicon valley veteran, and spends his days teaching everyday folks how to be better businesspeople. His words are worth solid gold, and he dispenses them freely.

3. Kane Minkus

Kane’s a great speaker with a lot of experience. He’s a former record company exec, has worked with the likes of Richard Branson and Bill Gates, and offers entrepreneurial mentor programs. He knows his stuff. A lot of what he does is presented infomercially, but there are some great lessons to be learned from him.

[symbarbytes-blog]

The one reason people won’t pay for writing

August 28 2015

Any professionally-inclined writer will tell you there’s not a lot of money in writing. Newspapers are dropping scores of journalists on a weekly basis, amateur wordsmiths continue to flood the blogosphere, and publishers are taking more than ever from traditional novelists. There’s too much supply, not enough demand, and people often can’t distinguish between skilled writers and casual labourers with naught but opinions and a keyboard. That’s why world-leading websites like the Huffington Post can build their business models around free, ‘open-source’ content. The writers get no money for their work, the curators absorb the return, and nobody says boo. If a writer isn’t happy with not being paid for their work, it doesn’t matter: Two more will rise up to take their place. With sites less credible than HuffPo, it’s more likely good writers will be replaced with bad ones on a whim. When it comes to business, the artistry of the written word is irrelevant. Take Buzzfeed: Top 10s and 20s win the day, regardless of how good the accompanying writing is. The written word - the sculpted, designed, formulated written word - is not valuable anymore. And it’s because with writing, the work is never done. If you make fruit mince pies for a living, you know exactly when your work is done. You know when the pie is crafted, you know when it’s finished baking, you know how many you have to make in a day. You make your pie quota and you KNOW you’re doing awesome. You don’t make that quota? Not so awesome. You exceed that quota? You’re doing extra awesome! Same if you’re an electrician. You work according to plans, or you work to fix a specific problem. You know what the problem is, and you know what you have to do to fix the problem. Once the job is done, you know. If the job doesn’t get done, you know why. Writing is NOT the same. Every single sentence ever written could’ve been written a million other ways. How is a writer supposed to know which way to write something? Sometimes, you write-delete-write-delete-write-delete for hours and hours until you think you’re satisfied with a piece of writing, but the feeling remains - the ultimate sentence could still be out there. The ultimate paragraph could still be out there. The ultimate word could still be out there. You may write 500 words for your news editor, but there’s no telling you wrote the RIGHT 500 words. Your news editor could completely disagree. Or maybe you wrote too many words - 560, perhaps - and you still don’t know if the piece is done. What if nobody reads your article? Was it because it was just bad, or was it because one sentence or word or paragraph or title was bad? With a poorly made pie, you can quickly diagnose what went wrong. With writing, the answer is potentially unanswerable. How do you truly know when you’re done?!

If that last paragraph sounded a little frantic, then good. That’s how writers think. That’s how writers think whether they’re struggling or working at some big shot news outlet. They believe their work is perpetually unfinished, and everyday people reading it feel it too.

Say two electricians approach you for a job rewiring your new house. One charges $180 an hour. He’s friendly, tidy, has top-of-the-range tools and takes his shoes off before he comes inside. He promises to deliver a certifiably good job and comes with a host of recommendations from industry reps and householders.

The other shows up in ratty coveralls. He has no car and only a few tools. His boots are muddy. He smells. He makes “no promises, mate,” but his work is completely free. Which would you choose? The former, right? Hands down. You wouldn’t mind paying for a superior service when you can CERTIFIABLY SEE it’s a superior service. Who wants a smelly, unprofessional, unequipped man in their house who ‘makes no promises’? Surely you see the parallel here. It’s easy to tell a good sparky from a bad one, but people find it hard to tell a good writer from a bad one. Writing is done online these days, too, so it’s even harder. On the internet, anyone can masquerade as the $180-an-hour top-notch sparky, and because everyone is top-notch, nobody is. It’s a playing field so unfairly leveled employers are forced to go with the cheapest option. After all, if the elusive ‘best writers’ out there aren’t sure themselves when their work is finished, how can I be sure they’re a good investment at all?

There’s good news, though. There is a form of writing which is guaranteed completion and fulfilment for writers, readers and stakeholders: Copywriting. Copywriting is the ultimate mix of creativity, maths, facts, and science. We write stylishly but according to formulas and patterns. This formula comes into play here; that formula there. Based on decades of testing on everyday people - you’ve been the guinea pigs since advertising was invented - we know when words are needed and we know when words aren’t. Most spectacularly, we know exactly what to say. Our art isn’t left to chance - with our copywriting service, there are no better words/sentences/paragraphs out there. If we write them, endorse them, and put a seal on them, we believe in them. Our writing ends up done. Truly done. Always. That’s why it’s worth something to people.

[symbarbytes-blog]

3 expert websites you should follow to make your business better

27/08/2015

Small business owners should have an intense information diet. If you want to be successful in the online content marketing arena, you need to keep yourself constantly updated on tricks and best practices. Figure out where to look, and you can pick up daily tid bits on copywriting, marketing, advertising, and blogging. Here are three of the best (in no order):

1. Business Insider At Symbar, Business Insider is the consistent favourite for business-related content that’s as humourous as it is informative. On any given day you’ll learn about anything from the laws of human attraction, to research of cognitive biases, to memorable quotes from the great thought leaders of our time. You’re guaranteed to pick up tips to help your small business in little ways, everyday.

2. HubSpot There are no two ways about it: HubSpot is the content marketer’s mecca. Their main thing is CRM software, but they’re also all about giving out helpful advertising and marketing tools to everyday folks like you and me. There you’ll find Top 10s, e-books, and social media marketing templates available for free. The premise is: Come for the valuable goodies, stay for the long-term one-on-one programs. HubSpot’s information stuff is more bloggy than the straight news you get from Business Insider but it’ll help you with the trickier parts of your business marketing plan. 3. Content Marketing Institute We have the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) to thank for tip-offs on browser-based tools like the Headline Analyzer. There are so many handy plug-ins and resources to find, and you can spend hours combing through their archive of advice curated from and by field experts. If your content marketing skills are growing steadily, you’ll want to subscribe to their daily e-newsletter. The stuff is in-depth enough to have exclusive value, but simple enough to consume and implement right away.

[symbarbytes-blog]

How to write awesome birthday card messages

August 25, 2015

You know how it is - if you’re a cook, everyone you know needs a good cook. Same goes if you’re an electrician. We copywriters have our relational burden, too: We cop the task of freelance-writing birthday card messages for friends and family. Instead of badgering the writers you know for pellets of cushy sentimentality next time a birthday rolls around, use this simple guide to melt hearts.

1. Be honest. My dad only ever wrote simple, two line messages. He was a man of few words when it came to expressing himself on paper, but I remember every single one. This year’s message went like this:

“Have a happy birthday. You deserve it. I love you. Dad.” You deserve it. Simple, but I could tell he really thought I deserved it. People often gush and over-idealize to the point of insincerity, but not dad. Take a lesson from him. Keep it simple. Less is more.

2. Recall a specific event you shared with the person, and use it to illuminate one of their best features.

Here’s one I wrote for a close mate a few years ago: “I remember when we first met. We got paired up for that dumb alka-seltzer parachute experiment. I wanted a square parachute, but you insisted on a round one with a little hole cut in it. We won the comp using your design. It was then that I realised I was dealing with one determined, logical, manually-gifted dude. Cheers to that!”

Everybody loves shared memories, and everybody loves being praised for a specific trait they have.

3. Use quotes from someone they admire. There’s a good chance Hallmark has beaten you to the punch on most of these, but here are a few good head starts:

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” - Wayne Gretzky “Fall down seven times. Stand up eight.” - Chinese proverb “The things that we love tell us what we are.“ - Thomas Aquinas So reach out in love to the significant people in your life, and go beyond the usual ‘best wishes’ and ‘happy returns’. You’ll end up leaving a bigger deposit in their emotional bank account.

[symbarbytes-blog]

10 copywriting stats that will surprise you

22 August 2015

As copywriters, we’ve seen too many businesses fail when they don’t need to. We’ve seen businesses fail because they don’t see the value of copywriting; we’ve seem them fail because their marketing communications fall flat; we’ve seen them fail because they didn’t invest in getting their message exactly right. It can be discouraging when your communications don’t achieve the desired effect. It’s not always easy to tell why, but here are some stats to give you some idea as to where you went wrong and how you can get it right. 1. Three quarters (74%) of web browsers pay attention to the quality of spelling and grammar on company websites. (RealBusiness) 

2. More than half (59%) would avoid doing business with a company who made obvious spelling or grammar mistakes. (RealBusiness)

3. Shorter copy tends to perform better on Twitter, with tweets between 100 and 115 characters most likely to be retweeted. (Dan Zarrella) 4. The average reading age in Australia is about 8. Use common words (known as plain English) to be understood by most people.

5. On average, 8 out of 10 people will read headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest. (Copyblogger)

6. On average, visitors only read 20% of the content on a web page (Nielson Norman Group). 

7. People scan-read web pages in an F pattern. As a result, they read the third word on a line much less often than the first two words. 

8. A/B test your email subject lines to see which are most effective. One company found adding the words ‘Hell yeah’ increased their open rate by 23.88%. (Content Verve) 9. By changing the call-to-action from “Order Information and Prices” to “Get information and prices” a real estate website increased their conversions by 14.79%. (Content Verve) 10. Facebook found people were twice as likely to “like” a page than “Become a fan”, so changed the buttons on pages. The take-away point is: Small tweaks make a big difference.

[symbarbytes-blog]

5 easy ways to become an expert on camera

August 21 2015

Video is the biggest thing in branding right now.

YouTube, Instagram, and Vine are on top of the content world. They're reigning because video is more fun to consume and easier to share than traditional forms of content like text and images.

Your should already be using video. It's the best way to market your products and services, give an audio-visual snapshot of your brand identity, and foster good SEO growth. For a lot of small businesses, though, the thought of appearing on video is terrifying. It's not easy to be on camera. It's even harder to be a convincing, compelling, articulate brand ambassador. Here are 5 tips to help you get better at talking on camera.

1. Wear clothing you feel comfortable in If your brand identity has a professional bent, wear a suit that fits well. If you can have a bit of fun with your dress, do that. You'll feel more confident and that will show. There's no use wearing clothing you don't want to wear but feel you have to. 2. Practice good posture

Slouching affects your ability to breathe, and thus your delivery. You won't appear confident and you'll be difficult to frame. If you have to strain to be in the right position, reframe your shot. You need to sit or stand perfectly straight - after all, brand ambassadors are visually perfect. 3. Use your natural voice Even if viewers don't know you, they'll know if you're not using your natural voice. Don't try and sound like a TV reporter or game show host. Just be you. It doesn't matter if the video style is formal or professional - be comfortably you. 4. Don't rush This is one of the most important rules. If you feel like you're speaking to fast, slow down, and then slow down some more. You may be talking slower than what feels natural, but it's guaranteed to be an ideal pace for viewers, and it won't seem so strange when you listen back to yourself. 5. Do something totally random and distracting before you jump in Access another part of your brain to dilute your nerves and focus your thinking. Do some jumping jacks, or sing, or shake your fists about - then jump straight in to your delivery. The kinetic energy will distract your brain and cut out nervous energy. Empty your mind and the right words will flow - guaranteed.

[symbarbytes-blog]

Here’s how Facebook’s ‘Notes’ function will help your business blog

August 18 2015

Facebook’s long-underused ‘Notes’ function will soon be revamped into a blog tool allowing users to create long-form posts similar to the ones you see on blogging platform Medium.

A spokesperson today said Facebook is “testing an update to Notes to make it easier for people to create and read longer-form stories on Facebook.” The update will allow users to add resizable cover photos to their Note posts to make them more distinguishable from status updates and other news feed content. As with all Facebook content, Note posts will be fully sharable with the public, friends and family.

It’s speculated Facebook is hoping to bring over people from other popular blogging sites such as Tumblr and Wordpress. Because Facebook is already a fully-functional business marketing tool, an operational and customisable blog may present as an attractive alternative to pricey premiums for fancy blog real estate. How can it help my business?

If you blog on Facebook straight to your followers, you’re removing one degree of friction between them and a personal experience with your brand. Writing Facebook blog posts in a chatty, informal (even behind-the-scenes) way will start building a healthy brand perception right before their eyes. They won’t have to click onto other websites to read your painstakingly created content – generally, they don’t anyway – so you’ll hit them at home. That’s what consumers of today ask for: Content delivered straight to them; stuff that’ll help them but is easy to find and easy to consume. It may be a few months before you’ll be able to post Notes, but you should start planning a blog schedule for it now. If your business doesn’t currently have a blog or resource centre, this is the perfect (and likely easiest) opportunity to get started. If consumers won’t have to go far to read it, you won’t have to go far to write it. Better for everyone!