Writing Archives - Deborah Beckwin | Content Strategist for Mental Health, Healthcare & Edtech

February 21, 2025

Interior of a church exhibition with lettering in white capital letters "what are we going to do with all this future?

Why I’m Not Using Generative AI

As a content strategist, copywriter, and marketer, keeping up with the latest tools is a part of what I do so that I can serve my clients better and more efficiently. But generative AI is not one of those tools. And that’s because I still get better results. I’m faster, I’m more accurate, I take less energy, and I’m ethical. Speaking of ethics, WIRED columnist Reece Rogers addressed a couple of questions on generative AI ethics, and I agree that there is currently no ethical generative AI app. You can read that article to get into the details of the why, but to sum it up, these apps requires inordinate amounts of data to get a somewhat-OK-but-not-really result. So let’s get into all the reasons why I personally will not use generative AI in my content. Generative AI hurts the environment. All that data requires a lot of computing power, and that computer power requires large data centers, and those data centers require a whole lot of cooling, and all that cooling requires a whole of water, a limited resource. Here in Washington State, many data centers are being built in Central Washington. Along with an increased demand for water, there’s the increased demand of electricity, which is already starting to cause deformations in how we receive electricity, meaning the flow of electricity won’t be reliable, resulting in blackouts and brownouts. I can tell you that I already experience blackouts and brownouts here in Seattle, more than I did in […]

May 29, 2024

A black and white photograph of a wall with the word YUCK painted in all caps.

How to Take the Ick Out of Marketing

Does Selling and Marketing Give You the Ick? When you think of sales and marketing, is your first reaction ick? Yuck? No thanks? We live in a capitalistic (or as some call it crapitalistic) society that inherently exploitative, and the more marginalized you are, the more exploitable you are in this system. At the same time, you have helpful products or services that you have to sell so you can support yourself and your loved ones. But the means to do that feel exploitative because capitalism is inherently exploitative. It may not even be about beliefs about money, which I will not get into here. It could just be that you don’t want to engage in such a destructive system. But, ya gotta eat! Keep a roof over your head. Take care of yourself A Necessary Reframe Let’s keep it all the way real. Marketing can feel, and is many times, manipulative. All of us are guilty of buying something we didn’t need because we felt cajoled or guilted or beguiled into the purchase. So of course, you don’t want to treat your clients or customers that way. And that’s a good impulse. But marketing really is just telling folks about what you have to offer and how you can help. All the other stuff that feels slimy — you do not have to engage in! Marketing Your Way Especially if you’re extremely online like I am, you are inundated with people trying to sell your something or influence you. […]

July 25, 2023

X Marks The Branding Hubris

Enter the Branding of the Billionaire Genius Myth Elon Musk is not a genius, no matter what the media has told us. This “genius” is destroying Twitter because greedy stockholders held him to his bluff to buy the company. As you probably know by now, Twitter is kind of being transformed into X (the announcement could be have been created via ChatGPT?), a company name that Musk has wanted since PayPal. I say kind of for a few reasons. When Musk tried to take down the Twitter signage on the San Francisco office, the SFPD shut it down. X as a trademark is owned by Meta, Microsoft, and many other companies. Close to 900 active trademarks are held in the US Patent and Trademark Office. The Twitter handle X is taken by someone else. Very interesting times indeed. These do not look like the branding moves of a genius. What’s in a Name? Billions of Dollars! The media propped this man up as some genius, but clearly he doesn’t know the value of the Twitter brand. Brand agencies and analysts estimate that Twitter’s brand value ranges from $4 billion to $20 billion. Twitter was created in April 2006, so to flush down all that value, starting from the iconic logo to some already copied, poorly conceptualized, inaccessible font. Inside Twitter HQ in San Francisco, it was down with the bird and up with the X: The co. is projecting the X logo in the cafeteria and changed conference room names […]

February 21, 2023

New Year, New You, What’s Bothering with You?

Are you still resolved? If you have New Year’s resolutions, you’re probably a little bothered right now. It’s week 8 in 2023 and according to a study, January 19th is when most people abandon their New Year’s resolutions. It’s also been reported that people tend to abandon their resolutions in the second week of February Research by Forbes states that 80% of us will abandon our resolutions. I can’t really remember the last time I’ve created an actual New Year’s resolution, especially around fitness. It just always felt like too much pressure. And now in the doldrums of winter, at least for us northern hemisphere folks, there’s nothing going on. No festive holidays (I don’t count President’s Day), bleak skies, cold weather. It’s so blah. Ditch your resolutions Well, if you haven’t ditched your resolutions and you’re toiling under them right now, I say ditch them. Not because you’re doomed to fail. Actually, at this point, if you still have your resolutions and you’ve made it over the two humps of destined failure. And no, I’m not going to tell you to create SMART goals or SMARTER goals or anything like that. I mean, that’s helpful for sure, but that’s not what I want to talk about. My journey actually started on Twitter, a little before 2023 started. Getting comfortable with yourself I follow a lot of journos and writers on my Twitter account and Andrea Grimes, a journalist based in Texas, wrote this lovely, vulnerable newsletter the day […]

November 25, 2020

Four Ways You Can Personally Connect With Your Audience

I wasn’t planning on writing today, but I really felt compelled to write about how to connect with your audience. That’s because I read Meghan Markle’s heart-wrenching personal essay in the New York Times Opinion section changed my plans. If you haven’t read it, go read it now and come back. I was especially compelled to write about her today because last night I finished the latest season of The Crown on Netflix. Holy frijoles, was that a wild ride through my childhood! Anyway, there are a few things that you can glean from this piece for your own writing, even for your business and beyond the takeaway message of just being kinder and more empathetic (that will also help your business). Be vulnerable. Meghan sharing her miscarriage in the first few paragraphs of this essay was exceptionally disarming. I was not ready. I knew this would be about COVID and just how tough it’s been this year with the title “The Losses We Share” (which, by the way, is doing double work there. She’s sharing about her loss, but she’s also talking about collective losses). This piece was the first time that she has publicly discussed it. And she started with an ordinary summer morning with her child which ended up heartbreak for her and for her husband Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex. It wasn’t just the emotions that she invited us to feel. It was all the sensory details. You probably felt like you were in her home […]

June 11, 2020

A Black Lives Matter protest outside of the White House. Proteters hold signs that say "WHITE SILENCE IS VIOLENCE" and "BLACK LIVES MATTER" A blog post "Protests and Pandemics: Support and Resources" by Deborah Beckwin

Protests and Pandemics: Support and Resources

What supports are you relying on in this uncertain time right now? Looking back at my last blog post, I can’t believe it was written in late March. So much has happened to me personally and globally that prevented me from writing here more frequently. But I am back. Still, frankly, it is extremely difficult to write about mental health in times like these, even though mental health is of paramount importance. Frankly, I’m feeling like this: It’s a bit absurd to keep going as if everything is fine, because everything is not fine. Since Memorial Day, after George Floyd was extrajudicially murdered over an alleged counterfeit $20 bill in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the U.S. has seen national unrest as we grapple with our bloody, racist history. And I’m sure the COVID-19 pandemic, with its resulting historic unemployment and economic impact, played a catalyzing role in mobilizing Americans, who inspired people across the world to look at their country’s colonial histories. So, you know, it’s a lot. And the protests have centered around police brutality of Black people, which has, in turn, propagated more police brutality. People are getting maimed by rubber bullets, and the use of tear gas (which can’t be used in international warfare according to Geneva Convention) during a pandemic of a disease spread through our respiratory systems — it’s especially cruel. I personally cannot watch all the videos of people being harmed by police because it’s traumatizing to watch. Children especially have been experiencing distress, from distance learning […]

March 26, 2020

An infographic by the TheCounselingTeacher.com (Sheltering in place)

Sheltering in Place: Healthy Ways to Deal with Anxiety and Isolation

The Mental Toll of the COVID-19 and Sheltering in Place As more cities, counties, and states begin sheltering in place due to the coronavirus pandemic (including my county), life in the great indoors is becoming our new normal. A lot of us are working from home, trying to learn how to create routines for ourselves and our children. But today we learned that close to 3.3 million people applied for unemployment insurance in a single week. On top of the work and employment concerns, we’re encountering empty shelves in grocery stores, enduring increasing amounts of cabin fever, and probably, most of all — we’re worried. There’s so much uncertainty — of how we’ll pay our bills, if we’ll get sick, if we or our sick loved ones will get better, or if that cough is due to seasonal allergies or something else. It’s OK To Be Worried So I’m not here to say you shouldn’t be worried. This outbreak is a serious matter. In the U.S., our infrastructure has been laid bare and low. Hospitals are scrambling to find masks, gowns, ventilators, and more medical professionals to keep up with the growing amount of people who need to be hospitalized. The economy has essentially shut down because need to keep physically distant from each other to help contain this virus (and not like everyone is adhering to those recommendations). It’s a scary time. Worry and anxiety about the present and the future aren’t feelings you should shove to the side. […]

March 13, 2020

Things to do 1. Own today printed frame beside teal headset

So You Have to Work from Home? Here’s My Experience.

The Coronavirus and Transitioning Into Work from Home Life The World Health Organization has just declared the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) a global pandemic. And it’s a little scary, and that’s mainly because of how the American federal government is responding (hint: not very well). So as many businesses and events are shutting down, you may have to work from home (WFH). Online and offline, many people are offering tips about how to transition as we’re trying to implement more social distancing. And I’m here to give my two cents of advice, too. But first of all, I want to say flat out that it will be a transition, but you can do it! I’ve worked from home starting in 2007 when I had knee surgery, back when remote work isn’t as popular as it is now. That was for two weeks where I had to be on crutches. And, I admit it was strange. I lived with three other young women. In the morning, they all would go to work or school for the day. And then, I was left with myself. I called myself “the cat lady without any cats.” because I didn’t leave the house except to go to physical therapy for two weeks. There were times I enjoyed the solitude, but after my knee was stable enough for walking, I was happy to go back to work because it was weird to be by myself for 8 hours a day. Fast forward to now and I’m […]

February 26, 2020

How a Religious Television Network Successfully Used a Predictive Text Meme

The other day, I saw this tweet from the Catholic TV channel EWTN and was surprised: “For Lent, I’m giving up…” (finish with predictive text) pic.twitter.com/BzAFz9tVt3 — EWTN (@EWTN) February 11, 2020 I was a little shocked that this got into my timeline from people who are probably closer to pagan than Catholic. But it caught my eye just like that Variety tweet did during the Oscars. I had to double check to see if this was the same EWTN (Eternal Word Television Network) I knew back from when I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. And it was! On the way to church with my family, through long winding roads up in the hills, we would pass by the TV station. I never would have thought that this most likely not well known religious channel would have a viral tweet. But they used a pretty common type of meme to do it: the predictive text meme. You can call it a sort of divination, or a just a way to have fun, but according to Know Your Meme, predictive text as a meme has been around on Twitter for a few years. So if you’re been on Twitter for any amount of time, then you’ve probably seen these memes before. But this was the first time I had seen a brand use a predictive text meme. And just like with Variety, I would not expect EWTN to use a meme or popular culture for their social media feeds. (They used […]

February 26, 2020

How Variety Used a Different Brand Voice to Drive Twitter Traffic

After being on and off social media since 1997, sometimes I’m still shocked at its power. I should have written about this on the 10th, but you’ll be reading this on the 26th, 16 days after this happened. ON Sunday, February 9th, I watched people on Twitter watch the Oscars. That’s because 1) I didn’t want to actually watch the very monochromatic Oscars and 2) it’s more fun to watch people watch TV than to watch TV. Still, despite the near whiteout conditions of the Oscar nominees, I was only rooting for two people: Matthew Cherry, whose film “Hair Love,” was nominated for Best Animated Short film; and Parasite, a Korean film up for a few awards including Best International Feature Film and Best Picture. Cherry won, which was lovely. And Parasite won four Oscars: Best Picture, Directing (by Bong Joon Ho), International Feature Film, and Writing (Original Screenplay). My timeline was intensely ebullient with each win. Seemed like everyone was hoping against hope that Parasite would win Best Picture. When Parasite did win, it was a Super Bowl type of synchronous excitement. Here’s a tweet that caught me off guard. #PARASITE FADSJKFDASLKJFALJKFASELJKDFSAKJLFDSAKJLADFXJKLFDSAJKDFASKJLASFDJKLFDASJKLFSDAJKLFJKL@#JK@RKWEFKJLFWEAJKL WE DID IT KIDS!!!!!!!!!! pic.twitter.com/cY2VaNAAwZ — Variety (@Variety) February 10, 2020 Variety as a publication has been around for eons and their Twitter page is usually quite sedate. They report entertainment news. The reports are not typically salacious. It’s Variety. So when this tweet came through, I lost it while everyone else was losing it. I couldn’t […]