Have you ever wanted to write about cars for a living? We designed a program to help aspiring auto writers accelerate their voices called Penmanshift. Our beta test, showed us we just didn’t have the time to fully devote ourselves to its development so we put it on a shelf. Why let a good thing go to waste, though? We’re sharing it with you because, well, it’s a look at how we approach automotive journalism here at GBXM|united. WORDS BRIAN DRIGGS Welcome back to Penmanshift. Last month, I introduced you to the program we created to help aspiring auto writers “accelerate their voices” and the first module of the program, detailing the principles of journalism excellence to which we here at Gearbox Magazine aspire. Our first loyalty is to you, our readers - our gearhead family - we remain independent and off the dole, and we strive to make the significant interesting and relevant. This month, I’ve got two modules for you - Understanding the Audience & Asking the Right Questions. These were the two main discussion topic in Week 2 of the Penmanshift beta. Let’s start with Understanding the Audience.
UNDERSTANDING THE AUDIENCE How can we be loyal to our readers if we don’t truly understand who they are? It sounds easy enough, but it can be damned tricky. Too broad a definition and you’re bashing your head against a wall trying to be all thing to all people (which is impossible). Too narrow, and you might as well just print your stories and hand them to your mom for display on the refrigerator. Penmanshift program objective: Upon completion of this program, you will be able to: speak, at-length, about your audience, its members, their wants & needs Something neat to think about; there are currently more than 7 BILLION of us on Earth. If just HALF of us are online, and you want to write about something that only appeals to 1-in-a-MILLION, that still means there’s over 3,500 people out there who will like it. It’s easy to think you need to scale to millions of hits and subscribers and all that, but I guarantee you, if I had just 3,000 subscribers paying US$36/yr for digital subscriptions to GBXM, I’d be doing this full time, have a paid, part-time assistant, and STILL re-invest $20 grand a year back into sponsorships, contests, and prizes. And that’s without any advertising at all! (See why we don’t do advertising?)
WHERE DO YOU START?
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First and foremost, we believe you should write for yourself. If you don’t enjoy writing, why are you pursuing a career in writing, anyway?Second, we believe you should write for your audience, but you knew that, right? The trick is understanding your audience and producing content worth their time. Do a little research into content marketing strategy and you’re likely to come across mention of the “Three E’s.” As you devise and develop your articles, we want you to keep these Three E’s (plus one) in mind. Every article you write should do at least one of these for your readers and, the more of them you can combine, the more powerful the story. Let’s get to it!
Three E’s + One Educate - Think of this one as how-to articles. When writing to educate (as I did when I sat down to draft all these curriculum posts in advance), you need to consider your audience. “Why does my reader want to do this? How will this help him do it right? What will it take for her to do it?” Are you working on an article which will help someone do something? Picture the successful final result in your mind’s eye, then work backward to the beginning. Once you’ve got the basic process down in its entirety, you can go back and add additional tips and contingency information if you wish to add even more value by enlightening your reader. Enlighten - Think of this one as nice-to-know or interesting articles. It’s similar to educate, but without the specific need or want to accomplish something based on the article. Where ‘educate’ might be a how-to on choosing the right tires for your application, an ‘enlighten’ piece might talk about various tire manufacturing processes or how companies get involved in grassroots motorsports. It’s a very subtle difference and one which pairs nicely with an entertaining angle or style of writing. Entertain - Think of this one as fun articles. Let your sense of humor shine through in the work. You don’t have to be so rigid (unless that’s your style), but think of something someone might want to read while bored at work. Entertaining content can bring people back to your work over and over again, because the experience of reading it is so enjoyable.