DMR #21: Bryan Collins – What is the most common business writing mistakes that writers make?

David: What does it take to be a productive writer? What is the most common mistake that business writers make? And if you produce more quantity, does that not reduce your quality? Those are just two of the questions that I intend to ask today’s special guest, Bryan Collins. Bryan, welcome to DMR.

Bryan Collins
Bryan Collins

Bryan: Thanks for having me on.

David: Well, welcome. Bryan is a writer who lives an hour or so outside Dublin, Ireland – and right now he’s just published his new book ‘A Productive Writer’. Bryan, do you think a great writer should focus on creating great writing only or can a great writer also be a great social media marketer too?

Bryan: That’s a very good question, David. I’d say that if there’s two things that a writer needs to do today – particularly an online writer – they need to spend firstly time creating great content and writing and they also need to spend an equal – if not more time – marketing and sharing that content.

There’s no point going and locking yourself into a cave and producing a great piece of work, and then leaving it sitting there and hoping that somebody comes along, sees how great it is and tells all her friends.

You’ve to put your work out there because there’s so much noise now on the internet, there’s so many people producing high value content, that you need to go out and you need to tell people stories about your content, about your writing, how it’s going to benefit their lives and how it can even change them.

I think Seth Godin even says that all great marketing is storytelling and great writing is storytelling too, so there’s definitely … great writers should do both.

David: Does that mean that a great writer can’t just focus on the writing and that it’s not possible to rely on other people to do the social media marketing on their behalf? Do you think to work best on social media it actually has to be the writer that does the interaction on social media as well?

Bryan: If you are Stephen King or if you are a John Grisham … a massive publishing house behind you then you can probably go off and do whatever you want. I think the rest of us maybe have to go off and spend some time marketing our writing. I think even Paulo Coelho has over a million followers on his Twitter handle.