So You Want To Be A Columnist

Garth Beyer

You’re a writer, a great one at that.

(At least you better be if you’re looking to go into this field!)

But getting that first writing position can be difficult.

What I’ve learned about getting writing jobs isn’t the “tell me what to write and I can write about it” mentality. Far from it. As I have heard repetitively from different organizations and agencies, if a major editor is going to tell you what to write about, they might as well write it!

First things first: don’t go into a writing job seeking topics to write about.

Have them prepared.

The big risks of writing isn’t the criticism you may will get after being published; the risk is in deciding exactly what to write about, in having to judge the audience, and in diving in without anyones confirmation of your idea.

Back in the day you may have been given prompts, but now there’s too much creativity and flexibility with audience’s desires.

How To Get A Second Meet Up

Garth Beyer

We meet a lot of important people: Idols, Influencers, Administrators, Deans, and so on…

Typically, after meeting them, we fly on the cloud quote of, “You won’t believe who I met!” And that’s it. Rarely does one continue to say, “and I am meeting them again for lunch in a couple of weeks!”

To get that second meet up with someone, all you have to do is ask a question – and no, it’s not “would you like to meet up again?” [insert “ain’t nobody got time for that” meme]

You want to ask a question that the other person won’t be able to answer right away. Not only that, it must be one that they will want to think deeply about and get back to you on.

It seems simple, but it’s devilishly difficult to 1. Put in the emotional labor in such short of time to understand what the person is truly passionate about and 2. To craft a question that they have never thought about related to their passion.

In achieving this task, you create an instantaneous bond. People who are of high influence are always more attracted to those who give them more challenges than they are attracted to their supporting fans.

 

Stay Positive & It Works Out Best When You’re Both

Garth E. Beyer

Questions are a big deal.

Two Important Notes I Need To Make

Garth Beyer

I watched Oscar-nominated actor James Cromwell get arrested on the UW Madison campus the other day. I’d like to amend my Pen and Journal post and add a video camera!

The second note is a little explanation/realization of why I haven’t been writing so much on PR. It’s definitely not an excuse, although it has a lot to do with excuses.

In the past, after any presentation I’ve watched, any PR guru that I met with, or any dinners I’ve had with PR professionals, I have wrote about the lessons they provided, suggestions, and bits of advice they gave me.

The reason for the recent lack of my writing isn’t because I’ve stopped learning from the universal sphere of PR influencers or that I’m not passionate about sharing with you all that I learn. No. It’s that you can’t keep coming back to my blog to read about what you should be/could be/must be doing if you want to be a PR professional.

As of lately, every PR professional seems to be reiterating all the same pieces of advice, nuggets of knowledge, and lessons they learned. (Of course, they present it in different unique ways, but the gist is still the gist.) PR is something that you can research a bit, but then you have to go out and do it.

Preparing to enter the world of PR is 10% research and educating yourself.

The other 90% is going and entering it.

The Possibilities

Garth Beyer

People live, not in their concept of what is true, but of what is possible. Repeating: of what they think, see, and feel is possible.

This is what makes it damn difficult to encourage people and communicate to them their potential. Not only that, but it interferes with all forms of learning and communication. For example, one reason for the change in what is reported in the newspaper industry is the inability for people to associate so closely with facts.

We now base our knowledge sources by their relatability, their story, and their entertainment. Is this wrong? No, but we need to acknowledge the altercations it presents. We are growing up with a worldview of what is possible, not what is true or proven.  We may now believe what is false, is still possible. A sure sign of this complexity is your current inability to follow it. For that reason, let me simplify it the best I can.

There is a saying that once you have eliminated all possibilities, all you have left is the truth. The thing is, we now have an infinite number of possibilities

It’s a lot to live up to and understand. But in order to build a connection with someone, you have to understand what they believe to be possible, not true.

In longsight, as Mark Twain famously stated, “Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.”

 

Stay Positive & Fiction? Possibilities? Truth? What’s The Difference, Really?

Garth E. Beyer

Baby Steps

Garth Beyer

When things get to be too much, break them down. It’s all about baby steps, right?

Wrong.

There’s a complete misunderstanding of what baby steps are. We can take big projects and break them down into small steps to make the overall task easier.

That’s just it though: to make it easier. Not easy, which is the majorities general concept of baby steps. Short tasks can motivate us more, but cutting tasks down to a small size to where it becomes easy, does not excite, passion or promise.

 

Stay Positive & Cut, But Don’t Crop

Garth E. Beyer

What May Be Interesting To You

Garth Beyer

is extremely likely to not be interesting to others. That’s the largest problem that aspiring marketers, writers, artists, speakers, and storytellers alike are faced with.

Yesterdays story about running with the UW Womens rowing crew may have only been interesting to me and I felt like it needed to be shared. That doesn’t mean that it was interesting to others (you).

I went out with friends last night and you would think everyone had attention deficit disorder because no one would finish listening to someone tell their story, no matter how excited they were to tell it.

When you are trying to reach people, connect with people, win people over, you have to discover a way that your story is interesting to them.

And that requires a lot of emotional labor. Well worth it though.

 

Stay Positive & Interested

Garth E. Beyer

How To Grow A Tribe (Not Numbers, Quality)

Garth Beyer

It’s 6 degrees out and I decided to go for a run. While out, running through town, I saw a cluster of black, red, and white colors moving up Bascom Hill. Heading that way myself, I came to find that it was UW Madison’s Women’s Rowing Crew.

When I go out running, I always hit Bascom Hill once. This time, I found myself trekking up it 3.5 times with the crew. After 3 times some of the crew were stopped while others were finishing up. As I was running past those standing, I shouted, “You guys [should have said ladies] are kicking my butt!”

After that, a few girls hollered and a stampede started. They all started running with me and with all the other girls who were finishing up. The pride these girls had, the encouragement they handed each other, and the determination each had to finish as a team was insurmountable.

That alone is a less than good tribe.

They didn’t stop there though. What makes a good tribe is being open to the influence of others, connecting with like-minded individuals (me) or tribes. Even more so, what makes a great tribe is placing yourselves where you can have a challenges from inside and outside the tribe.

Building a tribe isn’t about unity, about definitive togetherness, or about exclusion. The best way to grow a tribe from within, is to grow from out, from the surroundings, from all the people around you. You’ll never know what challenges you’ll get … or give.

 

Stay Positive & Inclusion Isn’t Vital, But Awareness Is

Garth E. Beyer