Why is a copywriter telling people to stop caring about how they sound? Here's why: because when you think your business should sound one way, and you put all of your resources into "sounding" like something other than yourself, you lose an opportunity to tell your unique brand story with authenticity.

C.S. Lewis once said, "[N]o man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it." This piece of advice applies to creating almost any kind of content, especially copy for young, small businesses still searching for their true voice. In short, when you try too hard, people can tell.

If you're a new company, or an old company just setting up your presence on the web, and you're writing the copy yourself, don't bother with making your language "pretty" at first. Tell your story in the simplest of terms, and after you've completed an entire draft, go back and do some "wordsmithing" if possible--edit for style and clarity and see what you come up with. This exercise will be helpful even if ultimately you decide you need a professional copywriter to take the reins. By giving the copywriter the story of your company from your perspective, you'll give him or her insight into your business. A copywriter will take your story and run with it, finding new and eloquent ways of highlighting the "big ideas."

I'm not saying that you shouldn't take risks with your copy--in fact, I'm a strong advocate for finding new ways of communicating with your customers. But it's important to know when your copy is at odds with your overall strategy. For example, sometimes people become preoccupied with sounding "clever," or "tech-savvy," but if you're a luxury home builder, sounding anything but professional and trustworthy on your website might hurt your business, even if you're appealing to a young, trendier market.

If you're just starting out trying to tell your company's story through a new website or on a social networks such as Facebook or Twitter, think of what C.S. Lewis said, and just tell it like it is. Maybe it requires a few tweaks by a talented copywriter to bring it all together in the end, but the bottom line is that you should always be yourself.

Frito Lay's new "Only In A Woman's World" promotion is a good example of advertising that, curiously, looks down on its target market--women. Get full commentary on the campaign by heading over to Womenk!nd's awesome blog and checking out my guest post, "Frito Lay's Uninspiring Ad Campaign."

Seth Godin's recent blog post, "The difference between PR and publicity," outlined the difference between simply generating publicity and telling your brand's unique story. Godin stated that "[p]ublicity is getting unpaid media to pay attention, write you up, point to you, run a picture, make a commotion," while true "PR" is actually about telling stories--specifically, your brand's story. I couldn't agree more.

So how do you craft your brand story? If your company has been doing its homework, you've likely collected customer testimonials or found a way for your customers to share their success stories with your product/service. You've also been paying attention to the common themes present in your organization over time. You can create great marketing campaigns with this kind of material because it tells you exactly how your product/service speaks to customers on a human level. It seems like a no-brainer, but it's often hard for people to notice subtle themes like this. Bottom line: it's important to give the creative people that work for you--full-time staff or contractors/freelancers--access to material like this in order to craft your brand story.

What else can you do to further your PR efforts? Collaborate. As Godin points out, you won't get the results you want if your PR team can't work with stakeholders/leaders on the project. This is especially true when it comes to copywriting (what I do). It doesn't mean you've got to duplicate your efforts, but you should view copywriting as more than just finding some words to fill a space. Trust your copywriter to get the message across. If used properly, and in tandem with a full-scale effort geared towards creating a good brand story, copy can be a very powerful tool in your marketing strategy.

Good writing is just one part of the puzzle, though. You also need to move beyond the press release to engage people on multiple levels. Godin doesn't see press releases as the route to good PR, either. He's not alone. Cameron Herold, speaker and former Chief Operating Officer of 1-800-GOT-JUNK, also points out the problem with press releases in his presentations about getting free PR. Herold's take is simple: you shouldn't be sending out press releases all day, hoping a reporter will see your story and run with it. Instead, he implores companies to generate their own leads by suggesting specific angles to reporters--essentially planting the seed of a real story--and then letting the reporter take it to the next level.

Here's Cameron Herold giving a presentation about this:

"Happy Holidays, here are my medical records. Keep them safe, ok?"

Can't you just see it now? That look of joy on a loved one's face when you decide to let them in on your medical history, courtesy of Google Health? As of yesterday, all that joy is just sitting out there, waiting for you to grab it. That is, of course, with the launch of a new feature on Google Health, as TechCrunch reports, that allows you to send links to loved ones which grant them access to your medical records.

This new feature is just the tip of the iceberg for Google Health, which launched on May 19, 2008, with very little publicity. Google Health is easy to use, like many other Google tools. The website says you can "[o]rganize your health information in one place," and "[g]ather your medical records from doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies." If you didn't already have enough to do online, you can now manage your health records there, too. I wonder if there's a feature coming that would allow you to upload medical info onto your Facebook page? Hmm, now there's a thought!

If Google Health and this special new feature don't get you excited, let me just say: you're not alone. I will admit here, for the record--no pun intended--that I hate the idea of Google Health. It seems simple enough on the surface, but as we continue to add information to online services without really knowing where the content ends up (or, who "owns" it, as the recent Facebook fiasco brought to our attention), it gets very complex. How do we control where our info goes? What if the information ends up in the hands of people who use it to penalize you for not maintaining a certain weight, cholesterol level, or perhaps using too many physician resources? It sounds far-fetched now, but there isn't much to prevent that from happening in the future.

I know that most people don't think about these things, and if they do, it's not that big of a deal. After all, all of our information is out there already, many say. What's more, they point out, Google Health promises they'll never sell your info. One commenter on the TechCrunch article named "courtney benson" probably summed up this view of the situation best when she said,

"Google has more information on people because all those "free services" that they provide are collecting data...They know your credit card numbers, bank accounts, who you know, what you say, where you go, where you live, what you like, what you dislike, and on and on. That's why they are laughing all the way to the bank..."

It may be true that Google has all of this information anyway, but why add medical records to the host of information they've retained about you over the years (don't lie, you know your Google Picasa photo album is rife with incriminating photos)? We're not discussing something meaningless here, like a bunch of status updates on Twitter--it's your health, a sensitive topic.

At the very least, I think it would be wise to take a proactive approach to understanding Google's policies about health records. While they say they'll never "sell" them, what if they "give" them to another tool within Google, and your information is shared that way? It's time we really think about whether the benefits of the service outweigh the drawbacks.

What do you think of Google Health and sharing medical records online? Are our records easily accessible without this service even entering into the picture? Enlighten me.