Birbitat for Birbmanity!

It's Birdhouse day!

It's that glorious time of the year, friends! That one special day wherein I take the amazing and incredible step of rebuilding the rotten-ass birdhouses using any crappy old chunk of wood I happen to have around.

Neat!

This year, I retired two birdhouses which were well beyond repairing. But, fear not, I did use the salvageable parts in the reconstruction of the other two. I am currently in the process of cutting a 22-inch log with a 14-inch chainsaw, so I've got a lot of wedges around the yard. I have also been cleaning up, throwing away, and burning old wooden things on my property. This means I have all manner of metal clips, screws, and even a stairrail mount at my disposal.

Birdhouse Reveal

We bought these in Boulder Junction over the years from a guy who made these crazy birdhouses. When they start to fall apart, I rebuild them. But here's the thing: Not only am I not a very good craftsman, I also don't really try. Through the careful application of half-of-my-ass, it's time for Birdhouse Reveal 2026:

Rescue No. 1

Playmobile Chalet

I give you the newly rebuilt Playmobile Chalet. It's not really a Chalet, but don't tell Playmobile Archer. He's not been himself since his leg broke.

Rescue No. 2

Trashpanda Farmhouse

Reconstructed from shit that was laying around in the yard, I give you the Trashpanda Farmhouse This is an impressive, meaty birdhouses that is move-in ready for any self respecting neighborhood bird.

Stay of execution

Baby Powder Manor

Note: I did leave Baby Powder Manor in place this year due to the current tenants constant shrieking: "We want more bugs, mom!" and "Throw up in our mouth!"

So many good musics.

Heres a thing for when I'm writing a lot, which is a thing that is happening right now.

I've got myself a membership at VideoHelper.com and it's amazing. So here's why you care:

1. It's an incredible collection of really good video production music.
2. You set a mood, and click play, and you're suddenly listening to 30-and 120-second scores built around that mood.
3. Also, mostly no dialogue-- so you don't end up including lyrics in your prose. I'm looking at you, The Hold Steady.
4. There is no Number 4. But this is a pretty good example of what's so great about this site. Amazing music with a goofy description that nails the tone of each piece.
5. The clips are pricey. But that's because they're good. But you can just stream them. You don't have to buy them. Unless you use them. Which you can totally do, if you have $500 sitting around for 15 seconds of unbranded internet content you want to score.

But if you're stuck and looking for inspiration, or just want to change the musical mood you're currently stewing in, VideoHelper is pretty great.

You need a Voice and Tone Guide. Trust me you do.

Your firm needs a voice and tone guide, a collection of technique, positioning, and words and phrases that anyone in your company can use to create work that is on-brand.

This is you: > Voice and Tone Guide!!? I’m not going to sing anything!

This is me: > Not with that attitude you're not.

But the fact is, your company's brand is stronger when everyone has agreement on how they speak and react to the outside world, and to each other. That's what the voice and tone guide is for. Trust me. This isn’t one of those wonky “marketing is everyone’s responsibility” tools. This is ground zero of controlling your brand and ensuring that your staff knows how to represent your company's brand.

This is you: > No. You should just write my letters for me.

This is me: > I can’t. I’m too drunk.

Why am I so drunk? Because I read your letter to the pheasant hunters who want to use your company’s property on the weekends. It drove me to drink. You can’t call people with guns names like that. And as a rule, you should avoid describing the company’s property as a “valued real estate asset” to anyone.

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“Pheasant in the grass” by Alistair Young 
is licensed under CC BY 2.0

See, if you’d had a Voice and Tone Guide, you would have known what words, phrasings, and positioning to use when you wrote your letter. You would have known to position the response to the hunters around the safety and support of our clients. You would have known to offer the hunters alternative solutions because we’re well known as collaborators and supporters of the hunting arts. You could have used one or two of our stock letter templates to get you started, and most of the work would have been done for you. You would have known to use “hunter-first” language.

You would have known. You could have known. But you didn’t. And now there is a group of angry pheasant hunters running around town telling people that your company “kicked them off the land” because you told them “they are not safe people” and that they would damage the "real estate."

I’m not the only one who thinks you should have a voice and tone guide. Here is a list of five links that are almost literally the first five links that Google give you:

1. Mailchimp’s vaunted Voice and Tone Guide
2. Buffer pays homage to Mailchimp’s Voice and Tone Guide
3. A simple tool to guide tone of voice
4. Rocket Media complains about the popularity of Mailchimp’s guide, kind of.
5. Harriet Cummings ‘Finding Your Brand’s Voice’ is the best of these articles.

Enjoy those links. I’m going to make some coffee and try to sober up. I have a make-good letter to the local Pheasant Hunters Society that I have to come up with now.

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Hey: Just so you guys know, I'm not really drunk-- but I do really write voice and tone guides for companies. Hit up PrettyGoodContent.com for details.

Grammarly: The grammar robot that works for you.

I am a professional writer.

I use Grammarly.

This is you:“WHAT? But you should have impeccable grammar and never make a single typo! What do you need Grammarly for?”

Well, let me disabuse you of the damage your terrible third-grade teacher did to you. It’s ok if you don’t have impeccable grammar and never make a single typo. Nobody does. Not even some of the finest proofreaders I’ve ever worked with can make this claim.

I get your apprehension, though. Grammarly’s advertisements make it look like Grammarly is just for dingdongs who use the wrong “their” on their OKCupid profiles, but it’s much more than that.

As a professional, (and as a former leader of a creative department of seven) I use Grammarly, and I encouraged my staff. And I encourage you, too.

Even if you don’t think you need to, Grammarly can show you just how wrong you are about what you think you know about your writing. You probably have no idea how often a passive phrasing, redundant word, or overused, meaningless modifier appears in your writing. But Grammarly does. And it takes great delight in pointing them out. And then you can decide to fix them. Or decide not to fix them.

See, that’s the part that most people forget about writing, and what your horrible third-grade teacher didn’t tell you. Writing is a series of choices. Each rule of grammar is a specific technique for expressing a thought or idea. It’s the writer who gets to make those choices. Do I want to end a sentence with a preposition? Do I want to use the word “really” as a modifier, even though I know it’s pointless? That’s all the part of writing that comes into what is narcoleptically called “prose stylistics.”

And this is where Grammarly can help. Grammarly identifies what and where you have the opportunity to make different choices with your writing—choices that maybe you’ve forgotten are choices. Grammarly gives you a chance to take a look at your writing and learn a little bit about yourself. And then adjust your habits, accordingly.

That will make you a better writer. And that is what I love so much about Grammarly.

And as a bonus, and this is my favorite part, Grammarly sends you a weekly update on how you’re doing.

I wrote a lot of words last week. And that's just the ones I put in @Grammarly. pic.twitter.com/JjS2RmTA3A

— heygabe (@heygabe) March 6, 2017

I also made a lot of corrections last week. And those are just the ones I put into @Grammarly pic.twitter.com/e0M6FxhUb0

— heygabe (@heygabe) March 6, 2017

I used a lot of words last week. But Not so many, really, when you think about it, @Grammarly pic.twitter.com/tE2hcn6rOj

— heygabe (@heygabe) March 6, 2017

Those are some of my favorite emails to get every week, because at the end of the day, what I’m getting out of Grammarly is a pretty great robot pal who tells me that I’m smart. And remember how I feel about robots? That’s pretty important to me.

Differentiate yourself, Meat Bag!

Last week, I goofed around a little about messing with code in online application systems. And we had a good chuckle together, but there was, actually, a touch of a method to my madness.

In most cases, humans never see the first layer of your resume onion. Most online resume parsing is being done by robots. Well, here's the thing:

I, for one, welcome our robot overlords.

Once you've become a commoditized meat bag by the robots, you have to change your whole game if you want to stand out. All the fancy font choices and nifty designs you've got on your resume are meaningless to the robots who are reading your documents. The robots only see text, interpret according to a vague set of rules and don't care if they get it right.

Let me show you what I mean:

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I made this resume for a job wherein I already had an interview scheduled. I knew who I was going to meet. I wanted my resume to help me tailor a conversation about why I was qualified for the position I was chasing. And it worked great; I got the job! But that's because I was working with humans.

This is how the robots see this exact same resume. 

I sent my resume off to one of those "we evaluate your resume" services. Granted, their whole job is to make you feel like your resume is garbage and that you are garbage unless you give them $125. So take this next screenshot with a grain or two of salt.

There is so much wrong with this summary. Not the least of which Is that Apple was neither my most recent employer nor was it even a professional position. Everything about this summary misrepresents me. Everything.

So what are we supposed to do with that? Well, you can fight the robot. Tell the robot your wrong. Try to hurt the robot's feelings. Give it a logic puzzle that will burn out the robot's circuitry. But most of that won't work. You have to adapt. Edit. Talk to the robots. Win the robots over. Find out the robot's secret language and learn to speak Robot.

But ultimately, you can't beat the robots. There are more of them than there are of you. But here's the one secret trick, and if you read all the way down here, you deserve this:

Robots suck at networking.

I mean, they get networking but they don't get human to human interaction. And that's where you win. Because you're human. And you get to interact with other humans in ways that robots cannot. Ultimately, your best shot to beat the robots is not to play their game. Pick up the phone. Send the hiring manager an actual letter. Put something sassy in their application system. Find a way to differentiate yourself. Becuase just being good isn't enough. You have to be memorable. The robot is going to lump you in with 55 other human meat bags with 10+ years of mostly clerical experience and disregard that you're an award-winning journalist and writer. The robot doesn't care that you're charismatic and engaging. But that hiring manager does. Hit them up on LinkedIN.

Make them remember that interaction by being so incredible that you stand out among the other meat bags

Ultimately, your only other choice is to toil in the robot's underground sugar caves.

And that's just fine by them.

Lets all take a little break.

“You’ve been working really hard. You should take a break.”

If someone told you that, would you believe them? Would you allow yourself a few minutes of respite-- an actual break?

For so many people, break time means just stopping looking blankly at the section of their screen called “office” and instead looking at the section of their screen called Facebook. And that’s no good.

You should take a break. You deserve a break. A real break. Stand up from your desk—even if your watch hasn’t told you to yet—and walk around a little. Go outside. Go down to the atrium. Every company has an atrium; you just haven’t found the one at your company yet. Use that funny little bathroom that’s tucked in behind the stairs in the old part of the building. (True story. Can’t talk about it here.)

The point is, taking time off from working on your work doesn’t mean doing something else that is like work, but isn’t. Checking your personal email is a shitty way to take a break from checking your work email. Taking a break – a really good break— makes you a more productive worker.

Here are five quick links to some internet articles I just googled that say the same thing.

1. Fast Company, People Magazine for Entrepreneurs, says you should Stop pretending you’re too busy to take breaks.
2. Taking a break at work makes you a better employee, according to Health.com, which (according to their fine print) is practically Time Magazine, and is not intended to constitute medical advice.
3. The Huffington Post, creeping ever closer to becoming Buzz Feed for adults, has Five Very Good Reasons to Take A Break At Work Today.
4. There is a great infographic about the importance of taking breaks at work published on Lifehack.org, who is hoping you’ll confuse them with Lifehacker.
5. Want to know how taking time off is the secret to increased productivity? You’ll have to check out this Entrepreneur Magazine article, which is written from the unique perspective of a rich white businessman.

I'd like to make this list longer, but frankly, I'm ready for a break.

Just sending happy little emails

Early on in my career, I was something of a Bob Ross of email marketers. Don't get me wrong, I love Bob Ross, but, just like how he would sometimes paint "Happy Little Clouds," sometimes, I was just sending "Happy Little Emails."

Like Ross' little clouds, my emails were fluffy and pretty and made me and my bosses feel good. At the end of the day we made little reports we could show off. We were so proud.

Don't get me wrong; I looked at the analytics-- in all cases, I had a pretty respectable readerships and click through rate-- but what I didn't have was any kind of inbound or follow-through marketing strategy.

And that's where the real power lies in email marketing, right? I mean, I know I'm preaching to the choir here. None of you would ever send out a huge smash of emails to everyone on your list just because.

Of course not. That would be crazy.

The problem is, people do just that all the time. If you've ever had your email address fed into the spam machine by a group of angry script kiddies (long story) you know just how large of a problem this is.

Five ways to be a better email marketer

So what are responsible inbound marketers to do? Here are five suggestions for how we can be better stewards of our email marketing efforts.

1. Don't buy Lists. Ever. And refuse to work with those who do.
2. Understand how email works. Not just server to server, but understand the peering and reputation systems at play behind the scenes.
3. Segment, Segment, Segment. Don't send email to people who don't want it. People who already bought your product probably won't want to see that email that tells them you're having a sale on the thing they just paid full price for.
4. Understand your audience Not just to the demographics of your audience, but understand all the ways your audience wants to interact with you, and what your unique value proposition is to them. If you don't have audience personas written down somewhere, you're probably not really marketing.
5. Take a class or get a certification. You probably don't know as much about this as you think you do, and this stuff is changing all the time.