EP. 5- “I’m Not A Writer” & Other Lies You’re Believing w/ Ann Handley from MarketingProfs l Expert Quick Tips

Welcome to do this not that, the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately.

You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins, and pitfalls to avoid. Also, dig into life, pop culture, and the chaos that is our everyday.

I'm Jay Schwedelson.

Let's do this not that.

I am so excited for this episode of do this not that.

We have Ann Hanley here.

She is the bestselling author of this amazing book everybody writes in second edition. I love this book. IBM named her one of the seven people shaping modern marketing.

She is the world's first chief content Officer of marketing Profs, which, if you don't know it, you should check it out. Is the leading marketing and training company with more than 600,000 subscribers. And welcome to do this not that.

I am so excited to do this and not that with you.

Amazing. Thank you. Today we're going to talk, we're going to do some rapid, quick tips about writing and AI and all of that.

So before we just jump into some quick tips, let's talk about AI in general. Fan. Not a fan.

Fan.

Fan. Why? Like, why does Anne Hanley, who writes books and things like that, like AI not think it's doomsday?

So I needed to walk through that scenario myself. I needed to figure out, figure out why isn't this doomsday. I'm a writer. I should be terrified about a robot that writes for me.

But the more you study and work with and learn about AI tools by wading directly into them, you realize pretty quickly that AI tools and platforms are not an opportunity for us to outsource all of our writing. Instead, it's an opportunity for us to use these tools to help us create future faster and better.

In fact, I talk about AI tools not as AI writing tools, but as efficiency accelerators, because that's ultimately what I think that they are.

I like that efficiency. I need that, like, in my life. I need to be an efficiency accelerator.

Who doesn't, who doesn't need that? Yeah, right.

I mean, I'm like an efficient decelerator or whatever. Yeah. So that is. Which is terrible.

So let me ask you, let's just jump into like an AI slash writing question for a second, because I would never describe myself as a writer. Okay, you're obviously a writer, but I'm in marketing, so there's always a certain amount of writing I have to do.

And I found myself saying, oh, I don't really need to write anymore. I'll just go to ChatGPT and have it write for me. Is it important to keep writing even if you're not a writer?

I mean, should we all keep writing, or is it okay now just to kind of put that to the side and let the robots do it for us?

Yeah. Well, first of all, I would challenge your thinking around I am not a writer. You said it twice in within a few sentences.

And I actually think that if you are in marketing, if you are a communicator, you are a writer. I think part of the problem with writing in general, setting aside AI for a second, is that we've built it up into our heads to be this, like, thing.

Like, you are either a writer or like Anne Hanley or like, someone who writes or, you know, you're just somebody who doesn't write. And I actually think that that's a false conversation right there. It's sort of unnecessary to think about it in that way.

Instead, I think it's much stronger for us to realize that we are all communicators. We are all writing. You're writing emails and social posts and posting to LinkedIn. I know.

I see it because it gets a crazy amount of engagement on there. And why does it get that crazy engagement? It's because it's j. Like, I hear your voice when I read your posts.

And so you are absolutely a writer, just like everybody here listening to your podcast is a writer.

And so the way that I think that we can use those AI tools is to figure out those soft spots, you know, that soft underbelly that you feel insecure about as a writer. Right. Why do you define yourself as not a writer is because, well, I'm terrible with grammar. AI can help you with that.

I have a really, really hard time with a first draft. I have that fear of the blank page. You know, I just seize up. I get claws over the keyboard. You know, AI can help you with that.

It can help you get over that first draft hump. Right. First draft, like, fear of the first draft, fear of the blank page. That doesn't exist in an AI world. And so what is your problem?

I think AI can help you with that.

And the reason why I believe that we should start with the problem that we have as communicators and then layer AI on top of it is because it really does keep you in control, and it keeps you at the center, which is so key.

So I feel better about myself. That was like a therapy session, so I appreciate that. But I'm curious about Something. This is totally off now.

I'm going off the track, but I don't care. You're a great writer. You know how to write books. I feel like you could have gone into any, any avenue. You could have written about travel.

You could have written about amazing historical things. Right. I feel like you. You could have done any of that. And I think that one of the things for people in marketing is they sort of fell into marketing.

Very few people, like, grew up and say, I want to be a B2B marketer that works on promoting engineering content or whatever, so you can write about anything. Why is Anne hanley writing about B2B content marketing and all that? How? Why?

So first of all, thank you. Second of all, I fell into marketing too, just like so many of us did. Yeah. I didn't write in my diary when I was 8 years old.

You know, I want to grow up and be a B2B marketer that's able to split test with the best of them. Like, I didn't ever want to be that.

And the reason why I didn't write that was because I hated keeping a diary when I was a kid, even though I'm a writer now. Why is that? It's because I always wanted to, to have an audience. I was impatient to have an audience.

I didn't see the point of writing in a journal or a diary or any of those things that little girls do or even grownups do. Like, I didn't see the point in that. It's like I've already lived, that I've already experienced it. I don't want to write it down.

Instead, I want to tell other people about it. That was always in my brain. And so when I was eight years old, I launched a newsletter, a neighborhood newsletter.

Literally wrote it longhand and then gave it to my dad. He brought it to his office, he xeroxed it, and then I hand delivered it all around the neighborhood.

Neighborhood in everybody's mailboxes, which I found out later, by the way, putting something in someone's mailbox is a felony. So anyway, somehow I escaped the law. Fast forward a number of years and I went into journalism.

In school, I started to be a journalist because, again, yes, I love writing, but I love audiences. I love helping people, informing people. That's the genesis of writing.

The Internet was happening like a dog's age ago, right? The Internet was happening.

And I realized pretty quickly that, you know, what newspapers and magazines that I was writing for, they're all moving online. So I'm going to get there too.

So all that to say, the audience has always been so critical to me and I don't know that I would still be in marketing. I don't know that I would still be publishing newsletters if it weren't for the dawn of two things, content marketing and social media.

Because what did that do? That gave us the mechanisms, the tools to build audiences in real time and communicate with them in real time.

Well, I think whoever has an original Anne Hanley hand delivered newsletter, I feel like that could be sold on ebay for some serious money. There's got to be a collector's item. We need that in a frame on a wall.

I wish I still had it. I wish I still had it.

I have a whole lot of writing that I did, you know, from that period, total aside, I'm just going to chew up all of our time together right now. But a childhood friend of mine from my middle school days recently reconnected with her.

She had saved not any newsletters from me, but lots and lots of notes. You know, this is in a pre cell phone, pre texting era. So what we used to do is write notes back and forth all day long.

And it's so awesome to have now that analog archive of all of these notes that we wrote back. And for this, like, oh my God, like it's incredible.

That's got to be cringy though. You do you not read something be like, oh, no, yeah, I don't.

I didn't have that reaction actually. I had more like, wow. Like I was a little unhinged. I will say that. But in a good way. Like in a good way.

I also, like, it's funny how when you look back on your childhood. Maybe a lot of us here can, can relate to that. But you look back on your childhood and I sort of had a, a kind of vanilla interpretation of it.

Like so many decades later. I look back, I was like, yeah, I was good kid. You know, I just like rode my bike around the neighborhood and I was like, oh no, no, no.

Like I was literally like an unhinged, like hellraiser. Like what? I blocked all of it. So there it is, black and white. It was right in those letters.

All my notes were like an original like opt in language. I would hand a note to like a girl, be like, do you like me? Yes or no? And I think I probably, knowing me, would have been pre checked with a yes.

You know, I feel like I was destined to do this for a living.

That's so fantastic.

No, it's like, it's so funny because it's like, yeah, I think a lot of us fell into marketing, like to go back to your question, but like when I look back on like the signs were there all along, like what other 8 year old is writing a newsletter to her neighbors? You know, narcing on the, the people who let their dog roam around the neighborhood and he's like getting into everybody's trash.

You know, it's like, I'm narc that dog. I talk about how our other neighbors got a new car and then I snarkily point out that it was used. So who does that?

You're like the original version of like the Gossip Girl show. You know, you like the, all those.

All those breadcrumbs for, for marketing were there because you know, over communicating sort of truth telling, creating stories around things, you know, all of that. So, so let's do one more quick.

Tip before we get into some chaos. I have a random question because the listeners of this, they'll be like, well, everybody knows Ann and she has this big newsletter.

How do I get started? And I don't know a lot of people. I have 100 followers on LinkedIn or 100 connections.

When is it okay to, let's say, start a newsletter in your voice and to get it out there? What is the threshold you need to reach to just start going down that path?

I mean it's that whole cliche of like the right time, the best time was yesterday. The second best time is today. You know, just do it, just get it out there.

And honestly, if you have 100 connections on LinkedIn or maybe you have five people on your email list, like, good for you. That's an Opportunity. When I relaunched my own email newsletter, I already had 3,000 people. And you might be thinking, well, good for you.

Like, you had 3,000 people on your list. But you know what happened, Jay? I was terrified. I was terrified to. To communicate with 3,000 people because it was paralyzing.

I don't know what these people want from me. Like, I don't know what to do. It felt like the stakes were super high.

I wish I had five people because that would have allowed me to send that first scary email and not worry about it. And so I think, take that opportunity to build your voice and get yourself into a position where you are a stronger communicator, stronger writer.

You start to figure out what your niche is, like how to communicate with your audience. That takes time. It doesn't happen overnight like that.

And so I think just embracing that opportunity that you have to be very, very under the radar is fantastic. It's a little bit of a cliche advice, but I'll give it anyway. Think about that one person who you're trying to help.

Think about that one person you're writing to and just write to that person. Just pretend that you don't have five or five thousand people on your list. Just think about that one person.

And that, to me, is the only way to really make an email inherently personable and to make it feel like it could only come from you to one person at one time. Because the more specific you are, weirdly, the more universally you'll appeal. And I think that's true of email for sure.

It's also true of marketing more generally. But in email, I think we really need to embrace that idea.

That's cool. I'm going to take that in. That idea of specificity and marketing to that one person. I think that's incredibly helpful for everybody that's listening.

So let's just jump into this last thing. This last thing is we have a segment that we talk about here that we do.

It's called, since you didn't ask, this has nothing to do with business or marketing or any of that. So let me ask you a question. You travel a lot because you're speaking everywhere. You're doing whatever. Whatever.

What are some Ann Hanley travel hacks? Like, you got to do this. When I go through security, I do this. Or I get my hotel room, I wipe down the remote because everyone's disgusting.

Oh, yeah.

What are the Ann Hanley handful of hacks that. That we need to know to live a better life?

Oh, my gosh. Yeah. That's Amazing. Let me say real fast. I always book the first row on an airplane, not the second. It's got to be the first.

And a lot of people say I don't like that because you don't have an under space seat in front of you, but.

Right.

Yeah. Is that you? You don't like that for that reason?

That's me. I don't like that.

Yeah, I actually really like that a lot, so. And I like the fact that the flight attendant usually hands you your bag at the end of the flight so you could just get right off.

You don't have to fight anybody. So that's good. That's why I always book the first row. What else? Hotel rooms. Yeah, I'm with you on the remote. It's pretty gross.

Or sometimes what I do is you take the plastic out of the ice bucket. If you don't have a, like a wipe, you take the plastic out of the ice bucket. You like put it like a sheath over the.

Becomes like a remote condom, if you will. I use that. I deal with like the jet lag or change in hours a lot.

So I'll be going to bed and it's still light out because in my mind it's like midnight even though. Or my body, it's midnight even if outside it's like five o' clock in the afternoon.

Take a hanger from, you know, like a pants hanger from the closet, you know, has those little clips on it and hold those blinds together right there so there's no light coming through because the light really will just throw me off. Totally watch hgtv.

We talked about this previously, but it is very calming for me to watch HGTV when no matter where I am, because I can be in Dubuque or I can be in Dubai and I can find hgtv and somehow it centers me and it reminds me of home. So. Yeah, that's a couple of quick tips right there.

Let me tell you something. That ice bucket thing with the plastic for the remote and the hanger tip is fire. Mean. Most important thing anyone's ever said on this podcast. Easily.

Wow. I mean, I skipped all of the, you know. Yeah, get pre check, you know, get clear if you can get.

I mean, yeah, everybody knows that stuff, but like the little things like that. And I think sweating the small stuff is my mantra as a marketer and it's very much my mantra as a traveler too.

Little things that I do to make myself more comfortable. Just small things like that I just think could be a game changer.

Well, Another thing that's a game changer. I want everybody here know this, okay? Ann has an incredible event coming up. It is called B2B Forum. I have been to this event.

Not just because I'm staring at her on the screen right now, but this event is everything. If you are in B2B marketing, you've got to go to B2B form. It is going to be in October, is going to be in Boston.

The URL for the event, the web site address is mp b2b.marketingprofs.com so mpb2b.marketingprofs.com this thing is going to sell out. Okay, please go and check it out. I'll be there. Ann will be there. It's going to be a lot of fun.

So b2b forum and thank you so much for being on the podcast today. Appreciate you.

Oh my gosh. I appreciate you so much. Thanks for having me. Don't you have a special secret code that you can share with your audience?

Thank you for reminding me. I have a code. It's called Thanks J. Thanks, Jay. If you use that code at checkout, you get a discount. So go to mpb2b.marketingprofs.com Register use.

Thanks, Jay. You'll get a discount. We'll hang out. It will be awesome.

There you go. Yep, this is what we do. So yeah, please join us. It's a very special event so I really would love to see you there.

Give you a high five and just say hi.

Amazing. Thank you.

Thank you.

You did it.

You made it to the end.

Nice.

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