TashWord

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Tash is a professional writer who loves helping people communicate clearly and effectively.

Price your message in context

Published 30 November, 2011 | By TashWord

At about the same time as I learned about aiming your content at your target audience, we looked for and bought another house and I learned another lesson from real estate agents.

In this case, the lesson was to understand your product specifically in the selling context.

First, the story… We found the house we wanted (and still happily live in) and decided to go for it at auction. The agents had shown disinterest in selling us the property (there was no way they would open it up outside of the allotted inspection times for instance) which is symptomatic of the whole situation.

We won the auction – yah!

The price was great – still a lot of money but cheaper than we would have expected. A house in the same block but on a main road and in bad condition sold for $500 more just a week earlier.

Signing the paperwork, it was obvious the owners and agents were very happy with the price as it was well above reserve.

Good to see a win-win for everyone.

Of course, the agents were less happy when they heard about the $500 more house near by. And were last seen driving towards it to see for themselves.

The point was that the owners had used non-local real estate agents who obviously thought our suburb was “lower” than the houses they usually sold so they devalued the property. They hadn’t done any research in the area so did not know the value of the land or comparisons with house styles in the area.

Our win but a valuable lesson – if selling, use someone who knows the product in the context of how it is being sold.

It’s like knowing you won’t get the same price for something at a school fete as you would in a craft shop in a tourist area.

Do some research to know your product, the context and what prices the market will accept.

Adjust your content to match, too – for example, ‘excellent value’ will work in many contexts, ‘exclusive touch of luxury’ will be out of place and ineffective at a school fete and ‘bargain bin’ does not inspire high prices.

Have you seen prices skewed because someone hasn’t understood the context or target market?

Posted in business info & tools, writing | Tagged context, message, price, understand | 2 Comments

Cheap writing services

Published 27 November, 2011 | By TashWord

I was just reviewing the Love Santa blog for my client, including cleaning up the spam folder. In amongst the other spam was one offering a writing service based on one cent per word ($5 for a 500 word article!) from (apparently) US residents.

It annoyed me on a number of levels:

who would think they will get quality results from a $5 article? Those prices are just cheap and nasty
implying that because someone lives in the USA they have good English and can write professionally is just ridiculous – what about immigrants for starters? And even those who speak and understand good English may not be any good at writing it
nobody should be paid such low wages and my conscience wouldn’t let me buy such work. A 500 word article on a topic I know well would take me at least 20 minutes – and I write fast. A topic that requires more thought and some research would obviously take longer. So at best, they are offering $15 an hour and not many would make that much is my belief.

As a business person, I also don’t think much of their marketing. If promoting your services to a blogger, why not offer blog writing instead of article writing? Promoting your service will generally do better if you give some benefit or value to your offering, not just listing a very cheap price.

How about you – would you grab such a cheap offer if it was presented to you as an unrelated comment in your blog?

Posted in writing | Tagged cheap, good English, quality, service, writing | Leave a comment

Aim your content at your target

Published 23 November, 2011 | By TashWord

Whether it’s content for a blog, a newsletter, a website or anything else, it is going to produce the best results if the content and writing suit your potential buyers (your target audience).

Sounds simple, yet it isn’t always done…

Earlier this week I read a post by Paul Hassing which reminded me of when I was selling my house a few years ago. Aiming to sell the house, we tried an agent with an apparently different philosophy to most real estate companies. However, he didn’t like my cute little house (for one thing it didn’t have picture rails like our neighbour’s house did!) and couldn’t sell it. We swapped to a woman at another company who was great and sold it for an extra $20K to the same person the first agent had spoken to.

I think one factor that helped her do a much better job was her enthusiasm for the house – at her first visit she was imagining what people could do in the home and the type of furniture they’d like, and so on. She looked for what was good about the house, thought about the type of people it would appeal to and came up with ideas to feel them on the lifestyle it would give them.

The first agent didn’t like the house himself so couldn’t imagine any extras to sell to potential buyers. Agent two used passion to understand and sell to her audience; agent one saw it as a commodity and tried selling it without emotion, imagination or real interest.

So when writing content remember to pitch the message at the right people and help them picture how the product or service will fit into their lives. Targetting the right people may reach fewer people but it will get more action from those people.

Have you seen real estate agents pitch the wrong house to people, or excite people by pitching the right house to them?

Posted in business info & tools, writing | Tagged content, passion, pitch, target | 2 Comments

Don’t over generalise

Published 21 November, 2011 | By TashWord

When writing content, generalising can make it simpler to present your message but it can also create issues.

Approximations work most of the time (‘about one thousand’ or ‘approximately half the people’) whereas a generalisation is making a statement about an entire group (such as “all self-employed writers write good web content”). The problem arises if the generalisation is too general to be completely accurate or useful.

Be careful of generalisations – you can look silly if they’re wrong

Some people will read a generalisation without thought, others will focus on the fact there are exceptions to your statement and others will take offence at being included (or excluded). Maybe you don’t care about annoying the pedants of this world, but there may be more of them than you expect in your target audience, and offending people is not often a good plan.

Todays I read a blog post which included the following generalisation:

Whatever size company you are with, you need to establish the roles of Chief Content Officer, Managing Editor, Content Producers, Chief Listening Officer and your Content Creators.

While the blog post as a whole was great, this statement stood out to me because it excludes sole traders. “Whatever size company you are with” pretty clearly indicates that the following information applies to all businesses – but if you’re in a small business, you are not going to have more than five roles within the communications area and may not even have five roles in total! I found this statement frustrating as I can’t assign such roles to different people and this post gave no indication of how to blend the roles if required.

What generalisations have you come across that have stood out for you? Do those experiences come to mind when writing content so you don’t generalise inappropriately?

Posted in writing | Tagged accurate, content, generalisation, generalise | Leave a comment

Breaking it down

Published 18 November, 2011 | By TashWord

Breaking big issues into smaller pieces makes things manageable because:

it less daunting to look at small tasks than one huge task (remember the elephant – I can eat one bite but putting an entire elephant in my mouth is overwhelming!)
you then can earn a series of achievements to feel rewarded and satisfied, and see your progress. Working on one huge task means you have to do a lot of work before you can see results
finishing small tasks can sometimes be fitted into small time slots such as between meetings or while you’re waiting for someone to arrive
you may be able to get others to do parts of the job. For example, when I manage a client’s annual report I break it into content and design first so I can outsource the design work before breaking the content aspect into sections. I also get my admin support to arrange the printing and to review the designer drafts for any missed corrections.
you can set deadlines for small tasks and therefore make sure you are on track for the big project – it is hard to know how close you are to finishing and meeting deadlines if the job is just one big task
you will feel less stressed and overwhelmed, you will feel more in control and capable. Feeling good is a worthy aim in itself, but it also makes you work more efficiently and effectively so you will probably finish the project sooner, too

What projects have you found easier once you’ve broken them into manageable pieces?

Posted in bit off track, business info & tools | Tagged break it down, project, smaller tasks | Leave a comment

Break it down

Published 16 November, 2011 | By TashWord

There is an old saying that I like: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

Whenever there is a big issue in front of you, your best chance of success (and completion for that matter) is to break it down into manageable pieces and work your way through those pieces.

So I liked another of General Cosgrove’s quotes:

I find complex issues drain energy from people. Many can be overwhelmed. Young people may not know how to attack the beast. Breaking down problems is critical.

Is there a problem you’re facing that you could break into bits? Maybe finding someone to help you break it down would help?

Posted in bit off track, business info & tools | Tagged breaking down, complex, pieces | 1 Comment

Being a leader

Published 11 November, 2011 | By TashWord

Last night at cubs, I spoke to the pack council ( a group of older cubs given the responsibility of leading groups of their peers) about leadership.

Leadership skills

Asked ‘what is a leader?’, their answers included:

someone who sets a good example
someone willing (and able) to help others
someone who does jobs to get things done for the group
someone who doesn’t have to be at the front or look like they’re the leader

In a coincidence of timing, I just read a summary from the current ASFA National Conference* and noted two prominent speakers discussed leadership.

Alexander Downer is quoted as saying that consultation is important but “leaders had to have courage…[and] implement their plan.”

General Peter Cosgrove followed on with “sometimes you can opt-in, sometimes you can opt-out, but sometimes leading is unavoidable…Leaders were able to continue to lead even in times of turmoil.” The summary also states General Cosgrove ‘pointed to the importance of professionals to lead saying that no matter how daunting and overwhelming, professionals had to ask the rhetorical question “if not you to show leadership, then who?.. You are in position, you can’t avoid responsibility.”’

That’s leadership from the young and publicly experienced – what do you think leadership is? Is leadership a role or behaviour? Are you the leader in your business?

* ASFA is the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia and they run an annual conference for leaders in the. super industry

Posted in bit off track, business info & tools | Tagged courage, get things done, leader, responsibility | 1 Comment

Understanding is important

Published 8 November, 2011 | By TashWord

Do you think there is a significant difference between understanding a task and being able to do it with skill?

I would never pretend to be able to write and design a PDS for example – I hire a professional designer for the design aspects of the job – but I understand many aspects of making it effective (such as using white space and images to make it appealing, avoiding ‘orphans and widows’, being consistent in fonts and headings, and adjusting things to work with page breaks and spreads).

Likewise, when dealing with an architect, I can state functional uses of a space and know that they will match function, materials, space, appearance and reality (i.e. not every idea is really feasible!) I understand the project and outcomes but leave the expert to draw up the plans.

Marketing and social media

A recent IBM study about marketing professionals showed that only 12% consider social media expertise as critical to their personal success in the next 3 to 5 years. Ross Dawson points out the concern with this figure – how can marketers maximise social media for the business they market if they don’t understand it?

I know I understand social media and its power much better since I started using it. I even remember wondering about the value of blogs and making time to read blogs – until I started this blog and realised it’s potential and how useful other blogs can be.

I think it is ok to get someone else to write your blog posts or monitor your mentions on social media. But understanding these media yourself is important. Why?

if you understand, you can check the people you hire are doing their job
if you understand, you can fill in if your expert is absent for a little while
if you truly understand, you can find ideas and inspiration to maximise use of these media (for example, instead of just tweeting and reading tweets of those you follow, have you searched for leads on Twitter?)
if you understand, you can integrate your brand and message throughout your business – including running campaigns across multiple media

What do you think – do you have to understand something before bringing in an expert to do the task for you? Should marketing people, in particular, understand social media?

Posted in business info & tools, social media | Tagged expert, potential, social media, understand | Leave a comment

No to under construction sites

Published 5 November, 2011 | By TashWord

I honestly thought most people online know that an ‘under construction’ website is not a good move. Search engines don’t give any credibility to sites with nothing more than a ‘coming soon’ message and people don’t like wasting their time on such sites.

As I posted about in my ‘starting a website’ series, it is very easy to put a simple web page as a temporary site while a full site is being developed. This way you can get onto search engine lists, provide some interest and begin marketing efforts.

So I was very surprised this morning to visit a site I had received an email about.

The homepage has a nice background but twice stated ‘under construction’ as well as ‘temporarily unavailable’ and ‘coming soon’ – that’s a lot of repetition in eight short sentences (one of which was ‘please be patient!”) Other than the business name as a heading, there was no information about what the business does and no real content.

Given I was making a decision about the company, this wasn’t good marketing for them. They didn’t include contact details but at least there were links to their twitter account and email.

Oh, there was no twitter user name or email address attached to the links, so their credibility fell further.

However, the biggest shock was when I clicked on the link in the footer which I assumed was their designer but thought may give me some information. It wasn’t their designer but a site selling ‘under construction’ themes for blogs! People are spending money on pretty backgrounds to put up words that may hurt (and certainly won’t help) their online reputation.

If you’ve been online for a while, does this shock you as much as it does me?

If you are looking at getting your business online, please don’t waste your money on a template or designer offering under construction pages. A plain page with an introduction and contact details will work much, much better.

What did you do while your site was being developed?

Posted in blogging, business info & tools, marketing | Tagged crediblity, information, template, under construction | 5 Comments

Doing the same thing for how long?

Published 3 November, 2011 | By TashWord

One definition of insanity is to keep doing what you’ve been doing and expect different results.

Robin Cangie makes a similar point with “it’s not the metrics. Your marketing just sucks“.

So if you’ve been using Facebook for your business for 6 months and got nothing in your business to show for it. Does it make sense to keep posting on Facebook every day – or is it time to look at other options?

Maybe your Facebook campaign isn’t working because

your target audience doesn’t use Facebook
your messages are too social and not enough about your business industry/expertise
your profile is all about you and not helping customers
it leads to a website that isn’t good at converting leads to sales
one of many other possibilities

Measuring marketing (whether social media or otherwise) is important, but not more important than running good marketing efforts in the right place at the right time (yes, the 4 Ps of marketing still apply).

Every time your marketing results are less than expected (or desired), you need to decide whether the poor results are due to a short time frame (looking at results too soon can be misleading), inaccurate measurements, a poor campaign or something else. From that, you can decide to continue the marketing, adjust it or stop it.

Going back to our Facebook example, something has to change. Maybe it is move to another social media channel (where your audience actually spend time) or maybe it just needs a new approach.

“There’s no point flogging a dead horse” applies to marketing, too. However, you must give each campaign a chance – no additional sales after a week on Facebook doesn’t mean Facebook is a poor strategy for your business. Sometimes it is a slow process to see results from our actions.

How do you judge when something has been tried long enough to move onto a new strategy? Or do you just keep trying the same thing even when there is little chance of success?

Posted in business info & tools, marketing | Tagged adjust, marketing, measuring, results | Leave a comment

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