Ann Handley > Quotes

“Any fool can make something complicated. It takes a genius to make it simple. —Woody Guthrie”
― Ann Handley, Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

“As content strategist Jonathon Colman, who works for Facebook, told me: “Start with empathy. Continue with utility. Improve with analysis. Optimize with love.”
― Ann Handley, Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

“In an online world, our online words are our emissaries; they tell the world who we are,”
― Ann Handley, Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

“Your customers don't buy your product to do your company a favor,” Eghbal said. “They're doing it because your product makes their lives better. So if you want to sell something, you need to explain how you're helping them.”
― Ann Handley, Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

“The truth is this: writing well is part habit, part knowledge of some fundamental rules, and part giving a damn.”
― Ann Handley, Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

“A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper. —E. B. White”
― Ann Handley, Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

“Assume the reader knows nothing. But don't assume the reader is stupid.”
― Ann Handley, Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

“If you aren’t having fun creating content, you’re doing it wrong.”
― Ann Handley, Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business

“Your awesome site isn’t awesome. Getting your stories into the hands of the people who need them is awesome.”
― Ann Handley, Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business

“I use what I call a ‘writing ladder,’” David told me. “If a tweet resonates—it gets a bunch of RTs and at replies—then I consider it good blog post fodder. If a blog post resonates, I'll explore it with a riff in a speech and maybe another blog post or two. If a series of posts on the same topic resonates, that's my next book.”
― Ann Handley, Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

“So, before you begin the writing, be sure you know the purpose or mission or objective of every piece of content that you write. What are you trying to achieve? What information, exactly, are you trying to communicate? And why should your audience care?”
― Ann Handley, Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

“If you want to be a writer you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot,” Stephen King writes in his book On Writing.”
― Ann Handley, Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

“Good writing serves the reader, not the writer. It isn't self-indulgent. Good writing anticipates the questions that readers might have as they're reading a piece, and it answers them.”
― Ann Handley, Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

“When we say to be authentic, we mean you should make it clear that your stuff has the stamp of an actual person or actual people and that that person or those people have the qualities (a point of view, a personality, a sense of enthusiasm for the subject, and suitability to your audience) that make for a compelling approach to content as a solid foundation for the start of your relationship with your audience.”
― Ann Handley, Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business

“Brain Pickings by Maria Popova, a self-described human-powered discovery engine for interestingness.”
― Ann Handley, Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

“Today, I see my business as a content marketing company. In other words, my entire goal is to give more valuable, helpful, and remarkable content to consumers than anyone else in my field, which will in turn lead to more sales.”
― Ann Handley, Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business

“Empathy—like writing—isn't a gift. It's a discipline. It takes some intentional effort and diligence to develop enormous empathy so that you can apply it to your writing.”
― Ann Handley, Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

“Because at some point, you do have to rush your own art. Otherwise, your art sits on its butt on the couch eating chips and salsa. However”
― Ann Handley, Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

“Brevity doesn't mean bare bones or stripped down. Take as long as you need to tell the story. (The length of content is dictated by the kind of content you're creating.) The notion of brevity has more to do with cutting fat, bloat, and things that indulge the writer and don't respect the reader's time. Keep it tight.”
― Ann Handley, Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

“quality content means content that is packed with clear utility and is brimming with inspiration, and it has relentless empathy for the audience:”
― Ann Handley, Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

“Consider Pawn Stars, a popular show on the History Channel, and compare it with Antiques Roadshow, which airs on PBS.”
― Ann Handley, Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business

“As writing teacher Don Murray said, “The draft needs fixing, but first it needs writing.”1”
― Ann Handley, Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

“Start telling the stories that only you can tell, because there'll always be better writers than you and there'll always be smarter writers than you. There will always be people who are much better at doing this or doing that—but you are the only you,” author Neil Gaiman said in a 2011 podcast.1”
― Ann Handley, Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

“Shed the obvious. There's no need to include in this article, in this post, in regard to, I've always felt that, we are of the opinion that…You get the idea.”
― Ann Handley, Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

“Typos happen, of course. And keep in mind that a robot spellchecker can't catch all of them. Consider this alarming blunder in a recipe printed in The Pasta Bible, issued by Penguin Australia in 2010: the book recommended seasoning a dish of tagliatelle with sardines and prosciutto with “salt and freshly ground black people,” according to a news story in the Guardian. No recall was made of the books in circulation, but the publisher destroyed the remaining 7,000 printed copies, at a cost of $20,000.1”
― Ann Handley, Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

“because you've kicked to the curb the dumb notion that only an anointed few have the chops to be good writers.”
― Ann Handley, Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

“They're applying a variety of tactics—blogs, videos, webcasts, podcasts, and the like—12 tactics on average for B2B companies, 13 for B2C. They're using, on average, six social media platforms.”
― Ann Handley, Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

“Very often, the people you think of as good writers are terrible writers on their first drafts. But here's their secret: They are excellent editors of their own work. So”
― Ann Handley, Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

“By constantly engaging in debate on marketing subjects in all of these different venues, you avoid stagnation, he notes.”
― Ann Handley, Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business

“What matters now isn't storytelling; what matters is telling a true story well.”
― Ann Handley, Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content