 Great photo by Matheus Bertelli. Special news! Sure, we’ve got a good blog article here, and we’ll get to it in just a second. But first, a little announcement, which segues to this article quite nicely:
We’re proud to announce that this article, these very words you are reading right now, are officially our tenth anniversary blog post. That’s right: We started publishing these in January 2015, and at that time, committed to publishing them twice a month. If you’re unaware—or simply curious—our cadence goes like this: At the top of the month, we publish articles focused primarily for our consulting/business-owner audience. At mid-month, we publish blogs focused a little more toward our “creative” audience, which includes ad agencies and other creative people we enjoy working with. Ten years! And we never missed a post. That’s 240 articles, if we’ve done our math right. And we’re not stopping now. Thanks so much for joining us for this great, long ride! Let’s dive into our latest topic. Why blogging shouldn’t be a New Year’s resolution If you watched any TV during New Year’s, you were surely inundated with ads for gym memberships. It’s as predictable as sunrise. Why? Because people invariably make a New Year’s resolution to “get in shape,” and those gyms are all too happy to cash in. Be honest. How many people have you known (you may be one of them) who made one of these resolutions, joined a gym, bragged to all their friends for the first month or two… and then kind of quietly quit thereafter? Getting in shape takes commitment. In that regard, it’s exactly like blogging. Or doing social posts. Pretty much anything that has to do with your marketing outreach. Not everyone is an Olympian or an NFL star. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t whip your marketing into shape. The good news: It’s much easier than doing squats or lifting weights. You might be surprised at the trick to all this. Ready? Aim low. What??? What???? You read right. This is counterintuitive advice if ever we’d dispensed any. Aim low. Allow us to explain. The attainable cadence The reason that so many people burn out on those January gym memberships is that they aim unrealistically high. So they over-do it. They can’t sustain that level of exertion. And so they just drop out. By aiming so high, they turn it into an all-or-nothing proposition. Which is exactly what you don’t want to do. So ask yourself this: How many blogs could I reasonably push out, every single month? Factor into your answer disruptions like client emergencies and vacation time. Now take your answer, and cut it in half. Really? Really. The resulting number should be laughably easy to attain. And that’s the number you want. For us, here at Copel Communications, we could probably turn these out every single week. But that’s pushing it. So we do it every two weeks, i.e., twice a month. And, as we’d noted above, we’ve never missed a beat. The calendar trick Surely, we’ve had our share of client emergencies, vacation time, and what-not. But the trick is to create what’s called an editorial blog post calendar in which you pre-select the topics you want to blog about. Once you have that in place (we do ours in the fourth quarter each year for the subsequent year), you can then use it to write your blogs in advance so that you always have a cushion for when those client emergencies and/or vacation dates arise. Think of it. You now have two cushions: 1) You cut your originally-intended cadence in half. 2) You have extra blogs, already written, in the pipeline, which you can publish with a single click. When you look at it—and do it—that way, there’s zero stress. And you hit the mark every time. Again, blogging is just one type of output. You can apply this exact same approach to all kinds of marketing and business-development outreach, including emails, webinars, videos, you name it. Who’da thought it would all start by aiming low? Need help with this or similar challenges? Contact us. We’d be delighted to pitch in.
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 Our long-suffering dog. Thanksgiving is a tradition. Writing an article about what to give thanks for? Well, we’ve been doing it for so long each November, that it’s also a tradition here at Copel Communications.
Before we list what we’re thankful for, let’s turn the table on you. What are you thankful for this year? It can be big. It can be small. It can be professional. It can be personal. The thing is, there’s always stuff to be thankful for. You don’t need a national holiday to remind you. Just like you don’t need to book a spa day to take care of yourself. Or hug your kids to remind yourself that you love them. Chime in. Leave a comment. It might make you feel better; rest assured that it will make us feel great. The little things Sometimes, it can be a tiny bit of tech that makes your day nicer. We recently upgraded our AirPods, and are thankful that we can finally adjust the @#$% volume without having to reach for a phone or ask Siri. Here’s another technical marvel: A remote-controlled training collar. Our dog has a habit of running out in the middle of the night to bark at the deer; a little beep and vibration from the training collar broke him of that habit. He might still be looking at the deer at 3 a.m., but he’s not barking at them anymore. So we’re thankful for a better night’s sleep. Clearly, we’re starting small. And non-professionally. Let’s shift gears. The bigger/business things In 2024, we’re especially grateful for the power of networking. Whether it’s via in-person gatherings, Zoom meetings, LinkedIn, or forwarding a colleague’s Pitch59 card, it’s opened up new business possibilities. More importantly, it’s connected us to some really nice people. People first, business second. If you don’t like that person, you won’t like working with them. More importantly, the opposite is just as true. We’ll still reach out to, say, second-level connections on LinkedIn, and simply say “hi” to people whose profiles look interesting. It’s better than spamming them with a message-bot. Many people are understandably jaded these days, but there are still plenty of people out there who will respond with a “Hi, it’s nice to meet you.” Again: People first, business second. Saving the best for last We can’t build much suspense here, because you know what’s coming. Aside from the Big Two (having good health and being lucky enough to be in the USA), we’re grateful for our friends and family. That includes the dog. He’s been a good boy. Have a thankful-for to share? Contact us or simply comment below. We’d love to hear it.  Great photo by Andrea Piacquadio. It’s that time of year again: Time for the annual year-in-review of our top articles from Copel Communications. We do two of these each December: one for our “Creatives” audience, and another for our consultants audience.
This one is the former. (We’d published the other one recently.) Here are the top articles we’ve posted for creatives, chock full of tips and tricks that you can put to use ASAP. Enjoy!
That wraps up this year. And so… Happy New Year! Any topics you’d like to see us address in 2024? Contact us and let us know!  Great photo by Andrea Piacquadio. Here we go again! Another year has zipped past… and presented us the opportunity to present you with a compendium of our top articles for consultants from this past year. If you missed any, here’s your chance to catch up. And if you have already seen, and liked, any of these, here’s your opportunity to revisit and brush up. Enjoy!
Have any topics you’d like to see us address next year? Contact us. We’d be delighted to hear from you!  Another great photo by Karolina Grabowska Turkey and stuffing are traditions, so why not a blog about what we’re thankful for? This is kind of an unintentional tradition here at Copel Communications, but the stuff we’re thankful for evolves each year.
We post this not just to share the love, but also to inspire. What are you thankful for? Is there stuff that we list below which you’d overlooked? More important, what have we invariably overlooked? Please chime in, in the comments. Creature comforts We’ll do anything and everything we can to get those creative juices flowing each day. That’s actually one of the perks of this job. We get to indulge ourselves in a cocoon-like office space, with everything desirable all within arm’s reach. Ready?
Saving the best for last You should be able to figure out where this is going. Everything we’d bulleted above, while great, is stuff. What are we most thankful for? Of course. It’s people. We’re talking about the great creative folk we have the good fortune to work with among our constellation of vendors. We’re talking about the fantastic clients we’re lucky to serve every day: they keep us challenged and stimulated, and always fail to appreciate just how much free education they shower upon us with their subject-matter expertise. And then what is Thanksgiving without giving thanks to family? It’s why we do anything, everything, that we do. What are you thankful for? Let us know directly, or simply add your thoughts to the Comments below.  Awesome photo by admiral-general-m-âââââ-godshepherdly. It happens every summer. Work slows down. People take vacations. If you’re still in a business-building mindset, it can be, well, a little maddening.
In this article, we’ll review some things you can do to be productive when others aren’t. To prep your business for the upcoming season of busy-ness. This article might not be for you. In that regard, it’s probably self-selecting: If you’re reading this, you’re still plugging at it. If you’re on vacation right now, this one will sail right past you. Mind you, we’re not judging here. You can fall into either camp; we don’t care. But between the summer preppers and the summer tanners, this article is aimed at the former. Down-time is your time Think back to the busiest part of this year so far. When you had so much work you’d wake up wondering how you’d get through that day. Now, on that day, think of all the things that you didn’t do. That you couldn’t do. Why not? You were too busy. Pretty simple. So now is the time to tackle all of those things you’d put off amid the rush of peak season. This is the time for all you cobblers out there to make your kids’ shoes. This is also a very good time to be selfish, in a biz-dev sort of way. Review what you’ve got, what you’re presenting to the world. Go through your website. Page by page. Remember all those little niggling details you’d intended to fix and/or update? Now’s the time. Ditto for your firm’s presentation deck(s). Weed out the outdated stuff. Make mentions of new, recent wins. For that matter, this is the best possible time to write new client success stories, a.k.a. case studies. (Need help with those? Contact us. We do tons of ‘em.) Pull together all the client-facing materials from those engagements. Use them to jog your memory. Steal from them, liberally, anonymizing as you go, to create all-new world-facing evergreen material. And what about your blogs? Are they looking sorely out of date on your site? Now’s the time to curl up with a nice cup of coffee or tea, and knock out a bunch of them so that you have a good backlog of evergreen material to push out on schedule. (Honestly: Do you think we wrote this July blog in July? Here at Copel Communications, we practice what we preach!) Speaking of blogs, you have a fully-populated editorial calendar for them, right? Well, if not, now’s the time to brainstorm your quarterly/monthly/weekly/whatever topics. (We have a good article to help you with that.) Get into production Blogs—which force people to (ugh) read—are just one way to push out your business. Some of the other ways are surprisingly interlinked:
And you can push them out just as diligently, using the exact same editorial calendar you’d created for the blogs. Of course, you can delegate as much of this responsibility and production as your comfort-zone dictates: The writing. The voiceover. The video production. The on-camera talent. And so on. There are other relatively self-indulgent things you can do during summer down-time, too. Take a good look at your office and your stuff. Is that desk chair begging for replacement? Could the walls use a new coat of paint? Good luck attempting any of those tasks during the busy season. If you can’t beat ‘em... And of course, there’s one other thing you can do during down-time: Relax. If you’ve accomplished even half of the things we’d listed above, you deserve a well-earned pat on the back and a nap. Heck, everyone else is taking time off. Things will get busy enough, soon enough. So enjoy the down-time. If you combine that with the productivity tips above, you’ll have the best of both worlds. And need help with any of those things? Contact us. We’d be happy to pitch in.  Happy Valentine’s Day! It’s all about love.
Today, fittingly, that’s what we’re going to talk about. But we’re not talking about another person. We’re talking about the heavy lifting of doing creative work. You—or the creative person you task with this—got into this business because they love it. That’s one thing that all creatives have in common. They have an intense relationship with their work. But like any relationship, this one can grow cold. Do your assignments simply feel like, well, assignments? If so, what do you do, on this day of chocolate and flowers, to re-kindle that old flame? Take hope. There are ways to do this. We’re here to help. Find new inspiration in old sources As a creative professional, you’re required to keep up with the latest trends in design, advertising, music, pop culture, all of it. People depend on you to be dialed in. For the purposes of this article, we’ll assume that that’s the case. So take a break from what’s new, and indulge your senses in what’s eternal. We’re talking about nature. We’re talking about looking out the window. Or better yet, simply walking out the door. Take a breather. Take a nature break. Soak in the beauty, the tranquility, and the relaxation. This is more than mere therapy. It’s also hugely inspiring. Study the veins in a leaf, or the shapes of the clouds. We wrote an entire article on grabbing inspiration from nature; check it out. We can dive down even deeper into this same category, with one sub-category of nature which we find extra inspirational: Birds. Yep, we wrote another good one on this topic, too; here it is for your enjoyment. (And here’s one more: On other overlooked sources of creative inspiration.) Update your retreat You can picture an MBA’s office in your head. Not hard. Now picture, in your mind, the office of the ultimate creative director. Pretty neat, huh? Now ask yourself: How does that vision compare with your reality? It doesn’t matter if you have a corner office, a tiny cubicle, or work from home. Your space is your space. And it needs to be your safe, comfy, inspiring spot. So “spa it up.” You can indulge massively, on the cheap. Treat yourself to a new chair cushion. Get yourself a whole collection of fancy coffees or (as in our case) tea. A little aromatherapy goes a long way; there’s everything from candles to simple hand lotion that smells nice. Don’t forget music. Even as we’re writing this, we’ve got some beautiful, relaxing, spa-style music playing, and it’s sure helping. The point is, anything that puts you in a more relaxed state will help unclog those creative juices. It can also be tech: Something as simple as a new keyboard or pen tablet. Here’s one: We found an inexpensive seat heater on Amazon, and installed it on our desk chair. It’s heavenly in winter. Makes us write better. Dive into the details Our last bit of advice is perhaps the simplest. Lots of times, creative work loses its luster simply because there’s so much of it. It’s overwhelming. It feels more like work, and less like fun. The way around this is via a subtle attitude adjustment. For every assignment on your desk, it has scores of details that you must knock out. Remember the days, earlier in your career, when you would enjoy every one of those details? Now’s the time to re-discover that passion. It’s not “I need to knock out this headline layout”; it’s “Let me enjoy the process of kerning these two letters so that they breathe perfectly together.” It’s not: “Let me slog through this video”; it’s “How can I have the most fun with this particular lapped edit?” It's not a change in the work. It’s a change in the way you approach it. If it helps, think of this, too: For every person—like you—who’s toiling, and earning a living, in creative services, there’s likely a hundred others who dream of doing it. Or talk about doing it. Or plan on doing it. But they don’t. You do. That’s quite an accomplishment in itself. So pat yourself on the back. Show yourself—and your work—a little love. Why not? It’s Valentine’s Day. Have a story or tip to share? Contact us. We’d love to hear it.  Boy did this year ever fly past! We hope you’ve stayed productive and healthy.
In what’s become a big tradition here at Copel Communications, we’d like to offer you our annual wrap-up of creative skill-building articles for the entire year. If you missed any of these, here’s your chance to catch up; if you already enjoyed any of these, here’s an opportunity to re-hone your skills. Enjoy!
Have a creative topic you’d like us to weigh in on next year? Let us know. We’d love to hear from you.  Each year, around Thanksgiving, we here at Copel Communications like to devote an article to things we’re thankful for. We’ve written about the creative use of “stuffing,” about the camera obscura and other unsung heroes of creative inspiration, and creative “turkeys,” to name a few.
This year, we’d like to talk about things that help keep the creative juices flowing. You know what we’re talking about if you, like us, toil in the ideation trenches: You’re constantly under pressure to invent wholly new things, and thus any little tricks or tips or devices you can find that lubricate the process are more than welcome. Well, here’s our little cornucopia. How many of these are you using now? How many are you under-utilizing? How many are, ideally, new to you?
Have any creative-lubrication tricks or gadgets you’re thankful for? Let us know about them! Meantime, here’s wishing you a happy and healthy Thanksgiving.  How to find and hire a ghost writer—or do it yourself
Halloween it still over a week away, but since it’s October, what better time to address the topic of ghost writing? People always seem to be impressed when we tell them that we do a lot of ghost writing. Maybe there’s some connotation to the term, implying that it’s being done for, say, a celebrity or politician. That’s not the case, in our case. Still, we do tons of ghost writing. You could almost argue that, aside from blog articles like this one, it’s all we do. Put it this way: Whenever you write something that’s ostensibly written by someone else, you’re “ghosting.” But does that mean you’re putting your words into someone else’s mouth? Dispelling the myths The answer to the above question is: “You’d better not be!” The whole idea of ghost writing is to help your “author” express their ideas, only better/faster/more efficiently than they could on their own. Every word should read as if it were written by them. This, incidentally, is why we tag ourselves as a “secret weapon” on our website. By reading this article, you know what we do. But most of the readers of the material we create don’t even know that we exist. And that’s the way it should be. Another myth about ghost writing is that it’s glamorous. We’ll admit that it’s fun, and intellectually stimulating, but “remaining anonymous in the shadows” isn’t exactly a red-carpet activity. It’s a job to be done. And done right, it’s all about helping your “author” to shine. In our case, “shine” means “drive in more business.” This isn’t some touchy-feely branding exercise. This is about helping time-constrained business leaders to get their thought-leading ideas, views, and sales pitches out to their intended audiences, for maximum impact and ROI. So, in case you hadn’t thought about it, our ghost writing encompasses virtually every kind of written communication medium. It could be a thought-leadership article. It could be a book. It could be a sales presentation or video script. It could be—and often is—an email, addressed to, perhaps a C-level prospect. Think about it: Do you honestly believe that our clients—these incredibly smart and busy people—want to spend the time organizing their arguments, let alone word-smithing the copy? They’ve got far bigger fish to fry. Hence the need for ghost writers. Finding the voice Here’s a neat story. We have a client—let’s call her Sue (not her real name)—who, like most of our clients, is downright brilliant. She’s also shy and soft-spoken. Yet we needed to create a piece for her, in her voice, that would sell. There was a mismatch of tone. But after speaking with her at length, and asking her about a certain topic she’s passionate about, that passion started to come through. Indeed, when we probed about specifics, she got even more heated and enthusiastic. And we realized: That’s the voice we need. It’s “Sue, Pissed Off.” So, interviewing her, we got all the facts we needed for this piece. And that’s a job unto itself. It’s important to respect her time and let her go down any rabbit-holes she likes, so long as they’re at least tangentially relevant, and take great notes. It’s not her job, incidentally, to organize these thoughts, or think about the end product’s structure. She just needs to “spout.” Our job—which isn’t easy—afterward is twofold: 1) We need to organize all of those random thoughts, and find the thread which aligns them into the most compelling possible argument. 2) We then need to make that argument in the “Sue, Pissed Off” voice. Is this “putting words into Sue’s mouth”? Hardly! Finding the fit Now let’s turn the tables. Let’s say you need to hire a ghost writer for, say, that upcoming marketing outreach piece that will have your byline at the top of it, or your signature at the bottom of it. What do you do? Well, you can find your list of candidates by whatever means you see fit, whether it’s a LinkedIn search, or through a site such as Upwork, or whatever. But this is not about just finding someone who can write well and will work within your budget. This is all about finding the proper fit. Can that person interview you well and tease out the information that’s needed for the piece and its tactical intent? Do you feel comfortable chatting—indeed, venting—to that person at length? And most importantly, can they empathize? Can they find, and “speak” in, the right voice that you want to project to the world, which will 1) best present your argument, while 2) ringing true as “you”? This is the crucial yet subtle compatibility factor that you really need to weigh, first and foremost, into your hiring decision. Staying on-message Unfortunately, after the interview is over, your work—as the putative “author”—isn’t done. You’ll need to review the draft your ghost writer submits, and check it not only for accuracy but for tone. Does it ring true? Does it “sound” like you wrote it? If you don’t feel comfortable, you’ll need to kick it back. Lest we remind you: Your name, not the ghost writer’s, will be on this thing. It’s personal. This is “you,” to the world. You shouldn’t feel uncomfortable about the product. To the contrary: You should be delighted. When you get a great ghost-written piece, you should be downright elated. We have clients who share our pieces with family and friends, they’re so excited by how they’ve come out. So that’s the bar you want to reach. Have a project you need ghost written? We can help with that. Simply contact us for a no-obligation consultation today. |