Michael Banovsky

After much soul-searching, I’ve decided to get off my ass and do #carchat again. Help me make it not suck. Comments welcome.

“We need to make accountability, integrity—excellence—cool again.”

I’m pretty positive you (and your members) have been getting the wrong advice when it comes to social media and the Internet in general. 

It makes my blood boil when I read half-baked strategies for success online. I cringe when experts talk about personal branding. 

I have three questions for automotive writers in North America: Do you really know how to write for the web? And do you (or your publisher) know how to build traffic, visitor awareness, and capture the attention of advertisers? Do you, as freelancers, know how to create a portfolio of work that’s made for the Internet – and is not just a collection of re-hashed dead tree newsprint articles?

If I told you that Google (and other search engines) read every single word of your reviews to gauge relevance, would you spend some more time proofreading? What if I said a reader’s first click onto your article (or website) could be their last?

Would you tweak your headlines and introductions for precision and clarity? Would you insert links to guide your readers to relevant source material? Would you man up and do a better job?

Stories, once liberated online, can become hubs of information, instruction, and comment. They can generate not only boatloads of traffic (yay…) but earn you the respect and trust of your readers.

If you’re a freelancer, waiting for your editor to add links, subheads, and change the format of your work is like asking permission from your parents on which positions they’d suggest when you bed your significant other.

I envision a world in which automotive writers always provide the best information possible, if they wrote it or not. In which they not only give readers amazing stories but the tools necessary to make the best decisions for their needs.

Why? It’s our job.

Automakers (and writers) like to tout that vehicles are the second-largest purchase of a person’s life, after their house. And it’s a purchase many make every three to seven years. Frequency dictates that the more bad advice and bad writing your readers receive each time they read your work, the more quickly they’ll be able to tune you out. People are embracing forums, Facebook comment threads, and Twitter for a reason.

Honestly, I’d like to help. If you want me to speak at your federation or whatever, I will. I don’t have a car (or book test vehicles that often) so you’ll have to figure out a way of getting me there. I’m simply tired of the misinformation and bad advice swirling around the industry.

Special thanks to Brian, who told me not to bitch so much and actually try to help. (That’s his quote above.)

Oh, and if anyone wants to chat over email, I’m at michael [[ at ]] banovsky [[ dot ]] com.

So here we go:

First, read this, from “The Future of Journalism” on.

Second, I had no idea Phoenix was large enough to have its own “automotive media” association.

Third, why would McGuire speak informally about “historic changes now affecting journalists;” it’s pretty serious, no? Surely serious enough to have a formal discussion…

Fourth, buzzwords like “creative destruction,” “push,” and “pull,” should be banned from any meaningful discussion on “how the Internet works.”

Fifth, Facebook and Twitter aren’t important in and of themselves; they’re important in terms of what they allow people to express. People have been expressing and sharing the same information for years. Do you think people wouldn’t be talking about the World Cup if Twitter didn’t exist?

Sixth, the “Internet” hasn’t commoditized news, information, or opinion. People have. If people didn’t want to use programs and websites to do things like Twitter about the Gulf oil spill or set up a Volvo photo blog, they wouldn’t. If people were content to read just Road & Track, they would; obviously the places that pay “automotive journalists” to do the things they do aren’t cutting it for many people. Very few are being held at gunpoint to use the a computer (unless they’re in a Nicholas Cage movie.)

Aside: I’ll bet that more of humanity’s time has been spent on Facebook since its inception than humanity has spent—ever—on reading about cars. Once you run the numbers, the time spent by Facebook users over one minute of one day is about the equivalent to the average human life (in years!)…more than 75 times over.

Seventh, McGuire proves he’s an idiot that he’s mistaken, so I’ll quote:

an individual journalist’s influence—and maybe livelihood—increasingly depends on becoming “famous” and “followed,” which requires developing a “personal brand” through being published on the Web, blogging, and social networking activity.

— Professor Tim McGuire, Arizona State University

Eighth, (to the quote above) a journalist’s job is—and has always been, natch—to be relevant. They can be relevant to classic cars, architecture, homosexuals, Phoenix, Twitter, or whatever. To make a living as a journalist, they must at least be relevant. To develop a “personality,” they must be irrelevant. People read Perez Hilton because he’s ultimately irrelevant to their lives (yet) they’re making a conscious choice to consume his material. Lots of people thinking about you within a certain context gets you a reputation. Do they think about you because of your relevancy or irrelevancy? What would you prefer?

Ninth, the big failure, in my opinion, of dispensing advice to writers who struggle with the “Internet” is that they’ll still have bills even if they master Twitter. Can you write only for the Internet and get paid? Sure! Can you write only for print and get paid? Sure! You can be in the middle and make it work, but chances are that you’re not that great at what you do (so neither the Internet nor print needs you.) 

Tenth, I used to believe I had a “personal brand,” but realized it (and “me”) is really just a combination of “relevant” and “irrelevant.” Instead, I focus on my reputation. At the moment, my social media reputation has suffered because I’m developing my work (IE, paycheque) reputation. Balance is always important and never easy.

Another aside: I wrote out the numbers to prove that “firstly, secondly, thirdly, etc. are stupid and should never be used by a conscious writer. Twentiethly? How does that sound?