Ann's Recent LinkedIn Posts

Last call for Christmas delivery — but not last call for em dash justice — I WILL LEAD THIS CHARGE INTO 2026! ✊🏼 Today’s your final day to order from my pop-up fundraiser to support animal rescue if you want your em dash merch under the tree by December 25. We’ve raised more than $2K *AND* defended the honor of a much-maligned punctuation mark that has been canceled by modern marketing and frankly does not deserve it. Pop-up fundraiser here: >> https://lnkd.in/evfiC7YZ << BONUS! There are Easter eggs hidden in the product descriptions. If you spy one, share it in the comments. I’ll pick a few winners & gift you either free merch from the store OR a handwritten/hand-doodled note from me. (I can’t decide between the two… how does Santa do it? Let me know if you have a vote.) Look how happy these faces are! Be like these faces! PS The merch store stays open through December 31 — so you’ve still got time to treat yo’self in the new year. PPS Thank you. Love you.

Maybe you, like me, read Matt Shumer's viral piece about AI eliminating 50% of white-collar jobs in the next 1-5 years and maybe you, like me, thought… Oh. Isht. It’s well-crafted, detailed, and structured to make you feel like you're getting the inside scoop from someone who knows. (And that everyone else is sleepwalking into disaster.) It's also designed to make you panic. I did at first. And then I didn't. So I wrote this in case it helps you, too.

What I wish CES celebrated in Vegas this week instead of Legos with sensors and a bone-conduction lollipop that plays music through your skull: > A phone that's intentionally boring > A New Year notebook that really does change everything > The perfect pencil > A book with no reading goal attached > A walk with zero data capture > Sleep without a score > A meeting without a notetaker > Cooking without a screen timing out > Sentences you wrestle with yourself > A conversation with zero notifications popping up > Friction on purpose > Patience as a feature, not a bug > The off switch > Presence without proof > A measure that never becomes a target Happy new year, everyone. I hope all your wishes come true this year. #CES #CES2026 #innovation #realtalk

You should shoot more video, they said. Video is great for engagement, they said. It's foundational to the marketing mix, they said. Non-negotiable, really. FINE. Let's do this. Reader, I filmed this video no less than 7 times. I checked and re-checked that I was in portrait mode. I uploaded it. YouTube rendered it... sideways. 🫠 This is why I write.

You know what’s great about marketing? It stays literally the same ***all the time,*** as consistent as the calendar. KIDDING. Marketing changes faster than a writer’s relationship with the (beloved) em dash in the age of AI. Change is what makes Marketing fun... and also challenging. This week’s brand-new challenge ---> XEO. What’s XEO? It's next-gen SEO. >>> Traditional SEO asked: How do I rank higher in Google? >>> XEO asks: How do I become the best possible answer—wherever the question is asked? I got you. We teamed up with our friends at Search Engine Journal to bring you a 100% hand-rolled, lovingly-crafted program on how we actually *thrive* in the brave new world of XEO. I'll pop the reg link in the comments. I'll be there at the kickoff session with the one and only Marketer's Marketer, Andy Crestodina. P.S. Now that I'm thinking about this Marketing speed-of-change thing... I'm curious where you've felt how much things have changed? Either over time or in the past 10 minutes. ;) P.P.S. I should've mentioned that this program is free. Because it is.

Heads up! Someone is impersonating me. A scammer is using my name, title, and credentials to send fake “partnership proposals” — in some cases to authors — that will almost certainly end in a request for money. (Or crypto.) >>> These emails are not from me. <<< For the record: ·      I do not blindly solicit partnerships. ·      I do not offer book promotion services. ·      I do not close emails with “warm regards” like I'm a dental office. ·      I do not write emails like an off-brand robot writing like HELLO HUMAN PERSON NAME! ·      And not a single em-dash...? I mean.. come on. Try harder, scammers. (Side note: First Grammarly was “inspired by” me. Now this. Ahhhhhh... what a time to have a name on the internet! 🎉 ) I’m sharing this in case you’re an author, agent, publisher, publicist, or perhaps a human with an inbox who got this weirdly flat, flattering email, too. A few things simple, smart reminders in this Age of Grift: ·      Check the sender address, not just the display name. ·      Be wary of vague partnership language or generic praise. ·      Pause at anything that feels slightly off, overly urgent, or strangely polished but hollow. ·      When in doubt, verify through a known site or official channel. (Like this person did, which is how I got the email at all.) This specific scam cuts deep. Writers are already navigating enough uncertainty without this kind of predatory nonsense layered on top. To my fellow writers specifically: Two good resources for staying current on scams targeting writers are Authors Guild Scam Alerts and Writer Beware. And to everyone: if you’re ever unsure whether outreach from “me” is legitimate, you can always contact me through my website or message me here. The larger point — the one that wears me to a nub some days — is this: every scam like this makes trust a little harder. And isn’t trust already in insanely short supply...? If you’ve seen a version of this scam — or another one we should know about — add it in the comments so we can help each other out.

Friends: 35% of us say we'd spend our *own money* to avoid burnout travel days. THIRTY! FIVE! PERCENT! That’s actual data from SAP — not vibes. Think about that: we’re willing to spend our own dollars so we don’t have to gate-check our humanity. I’ve been feeling this shift for a while — in my own travel and in what I see in others. So I partnered with SAP Concur to explore this and wrote about what I’m calling the "Reset Era" of biz travel (inspo from Taylor Swift's doc coming out this week!)… and why speed is no longer the metric that matters. If you travel (or send your team into the world), this one might change how you think about “efficiency.” Would love to hear your experience — or the flight that absolutely BROKE you! ➡️ The Surprising Metric That Defines the Future of Business Travel #sponsored #SAPconcur P.S. Would also love to hear from anyone else who takes their dog as a +1 on business trips?

Maybe you saw this WSJ piece about companies desperately seeking “storytellers” to create emotional connections with customers. Can we chat about it? I am 1000% glad that companies are waking up to storytelling. But! Good writers have *always* been storytellers. (I am resisting putting that last sentence in ALL CAPS, because it’s the holidays & I’m in a jolly mood.) The idea that “writers produce copy” while “storytellers build systems” misses what strong writers actually do. We don’t just plop out pretty words onto some content conveyor belt. We find the emotion. Share the meaning. Highlight the WHY. We build the architecture. We connect the insight to the audience, the moment, the business need. All of it. The real issue isn’t that companies need a new role. It’s that they’ve undervalued the one that’s been there all along.

Conan O’Brien told a joke at last night’s Oscars about the movie F1 getting a sequel titled CAPS LOCK. It was extremely niche humor that landed as either hilarious or incomprehensible — depending on how well you know your keyboard. Writers and programmers loved it. The room in LA mostly slow-blinked like… huh? Conan shrugged. “Some jokes are just for me,” he said. It was a throwaway line. But it holds a truth for all of us here. Here's what I mean: We’re taught to lead with the audience. Know your reader. Write for them. I’ve literally written 3 books about how audience-obsessed you and I should be. So yes… the audience matters. But *so does the writer*! (I wish I could natively bold that last line here on LinkedIn.) The audience won’t care unless first the writer cares. The best work begins as something the writer genuinely loved making. You can feel the difference... whether it's joke on an Oscar stage or a social post from a B2B company. The delight in the work matters. Which brings us to AI. (You knew I’d get there, didn’t you lol?) And why I believe so strongly that we should not outsource a first draft to AI. If you need more than me (and Conan) telling you: Recent research shows that when we hand the first draft to AI and jump straight into fixing-it/editor mode, our intrinsic motivation drops. Not our output, but *our delight in making the thing*. (Second line I want to bold. Or possibly cross-stich on a throw pillow.) When making things gets faster and easier, that delight matters even more. The robots are very good at helping us produce things… and not nearly as good at helping us care about them. Without that joy and delight and connection, the work hollows out... as do we. * * * “Some jokes are just for me.” If you’ve ever kept a line, joke, or idea in something you made because it delighted you (even if nobody else noticed) you know exactly what Conan means. I do it all the time. One of my metrics for anything I write is this: AMYL. (Always Make Yourself Laugh.) It seems like a silly and indulgent metric. But it’s actually not. It’s how I preserve the joy and connection to the work. It's how I keep the delight. Just me? Or maybe you have you own version of that, too?

Friends! A "Would-You-Rather" game: Would you rather fill out an expense report... or have a cavity filled? Turns out: 24% of us would choose *dental work* over *paperwork*. That’s actual data from SAP Concur. Which sounds ridiculous… until you’ve spent your Sunday night hunting down that one lunch receipt... deciphering which code this belongs in... getting logged out just as you hit SUBMIT... bargaining with the expense portal like you're in the 5 stages of grief. < CUE SCREAM > For years, I thought my Sunday Scaries were about Monday. Turns out, they were about something else entirely: the annoying cleanup from the week before. So I partnered with SAP and dug into why something like expense reports have quietly become the emotional labor of modern work—and why systems that steal weekends are shaping how we feel about our jobs far more than we admit. If you travel for work—or if you lead people who do—this one’s for you. 👉 What’s Actually Behind the Sunday Scaries? P.S. And now I’m curious: What triggers your Sunday Scaries? P.P.S. And where do you land on the cavity/reporting question? #sponsored #SAPConcur