writing

Refer to older posts…

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

Communicating burning messages

Published 27 October, 2011 | By TashWord

Driving home form a meeting on Monday night, I heard a radio program about treating burns. The content was interesting enough but one comment in particular made by Lara Harvey (BSc, MPH, PhD Student) really stood out for me.

From a survey, they have determined that most people learn first aid (and specifically first aid for burns) from first aid manuals/books (43%) and the internet (33%). {I am in the minority to have done many courses apparently.}

However, if you do a burns treatment search, the answers are not consistent. That is most sites will tell you to treat a burn with water but they vary in how long you need to do so for. {Glad to say that I teach cubs the time experts want people to know!}

Lara asked (and I’m paraphrasing as I don’t recall her exact words) “How can we let people know something so important if there is an inconsistent message out there?”

I often write about the importance of consistency within a business or brand, but there is a broader issue of consistency within an industry or topic. It only takes one person to write the wrong fact for that message to get spread and potentially cause trouble – in this example, the trouble of not cooling a burn for long enough, but it could damage an industry’s reputation, give customers unrealistic expectations or have people using products inappropriately.

There are no rules for the internet – anyone can set up a website and put whatever content they like on there. If they make it look good and promote it well, they may just get it seen by many people and influence them even if they don’t have the appropriate knowledge to start with.

Likewise there are no updating rules – a knowledgable person could upload great information but maybe it is now out of date. How does the average internet viewer know the information has changed?

So do you have any suggestions as to how consistent messages can be reported on the net?

How did you learn about treating burns and other first aid treatments? Do you think it was effective?

ADDED NOTE: The correct first aid for a burn is to put it under cold water for 20 minutes. Running water is best (although jumping in a pool or other big volume works well, too) but even a bucket of water is better than nothing. Ice and creams are not necessary and can make things worse. Severe, chemical and large burns need medical attention. Only remove clothing if it is not sticking to skin. Keep the patient warm and offer them water to drink.

Posted in bit off track, web content, writing | Tagged burns, consistent message, first aid, internet | 1 Comment

Your industry writer

Published 25 October, 2011 | By TashWord

As a professional business writer, I sometimes am asked if I have experience writing content for a specific industry.

While I could give a yes/no answer to each person, depending on the industry they are asking about, the reality is that being an experienced writer is more relevant that my industry knowledge.

different industries - engineer, dentist, dressmaker, accountant.

I am not an engineer or dentist, a seamstress or accountant, yet these are some of the industries I have successfully written for

Don’t believe me? Well think about these points:

expertise in multiple fields (e.g. writing and science or superannuation) is harder to find – and should be unnecessary as the client is the subject expert and the writer is just making it read well
someone outside of the industry can provide more clarity about how customers will perceive information (For example, people in superannuation and insurance talk about ‘benefits’ in a way that the general population doesn’t, so as a writer I change ‘benefits’ to ‘payments’ for clarity)
a writer’s job is to communicate a message clearly and effectively
good writers know how to research, and to read information to find the relevant points to put into a message
a lot of business content is actually generic and doesn’t need a lot of industry knowledge – website home pages, ads, media releases, profiles and brochures are about the business and marketing so a lot of technical information isn’t used
experienced writers are used to meeting guidelines and choosing words carefully so can manage even in tightly regulated industries – just tell the writer any rules and then use your usual due diligence checks. Good writers can use words well but avoid misleading people so may meet the regulations quite easily anyway

In comparison, we need some trees removed at home. We want a professional tree lopper who will do the job safely and appropriately – I don’t care if they’ve chopped down the same type of tree before. Likewise, I don’t insist on a hairdresser who only does long, wavy hair or a graphic designer who has experience with other writers’ websites.

If you need writing help, you will find it much harder to find a suitable professional if you limit it to those with industry experience. Concentrate on finding a good writer and providing them with the relevant facts for a project (or at least reliable sources of information).

Do you disagree?

* Images collated from Microsoft Clipart

Posted in About Word Constructions, writing | Tagged communication, experience, industry, regulations, technical | 1 Comment

Check your titles

Published 24 October, 2011 | By TashWord

I saw some You Tube videos this morning with my son and one stood out for all the wrong reasons.

As the video started, a title screen showed “Here’s are friend”. After rereading it, I decided it was meant to be “Here’s our friend” and the lyrics within the following video confirmed my assumption.

The associated description included some more gems, such as “go’es” and “cellerbrate” and “there” instead of “their”.

In this case, it was not a business and professionalism probably wasn’t a major concern for the video poster. However, if you are going to the trouble to make a video and put it online for people to view, surely it’s worth the time to get the title correct?

Errors in content are not desirable but major errors in a title destroy credibility and may prevent anyone moving beyond the title so having good grammar and spelling in a title is important.

Have you seen poorly written titles that stopped you using that resource (document, video, etc)?

Posted in writing | Tagged credibility, spelling, title | Leave a comment

Is your website shallow?

Published 17 October, 2011 | By TashWord

What is the content like on your website?

A new term around at the moment refers to shallow website content, meaning content that meets any minimum expectation without any additional information or resources.
Consider the contact us page on most sites – there is very little content other than contact details. That is shallow content – although highly appropriate for a contact page!

Imagine that level of information on other pages of a site – for example, I followed a tweeted link today to a blog post that was purely a title and a link. It can be very frustrating for a person wanting to learn something if a page gives so little information, but shallow content has worked in the past for getting search engine results.

One of Google’s plans, apparently, is to make information-rich pages rank better than such shallow pages. I say bring it on!

So before Google makes that change, maybe now is the time to build up the content on your website. Even adding depth to one page a week or fortnight will improve the experience for your site visitors, so what have you got to lose?

So, is your website shallow? Are there obvious questions people would have that you are not answering?

Posted in web content, writing | Tagged information, search engine, shallow, value, website | 5 Comments

Answer the question when replying

Published 13 October, 2011 | By TashWord

One simple way to improve your business communications is to ensure that every email you send in reply to anyone (staff, suppliers, customers and even friends and family) actually serves you both well.

So if someone has taken the time to ask you a question, make sure you answer it, and answer it clearly, when you reply. Sounds obvious but as it often doesn’t happen, it is worth checking before you hit send…

read their email again – did you miss a second question? Are you sure you understood the real question being asked?
does your answer stand alone? That is, did you give a full answer that anyone could understand – there is nothing worse than an email “Dear Fred, the answer is yes. Regards, Barney”. “Dear Fred, Yes we do deliver to Devonport. Regards, Barney” is much more effective as Fred doesn’t have to remember or think about what his question was.
is your answer as simple and clear as possible? “Yes we do deliver to Devonport” is much better than “Yes, we deliver to all major cities in Australia” (is Devonport considered a major city?) or “Our delivery areas are all listed on our website and we cover most parts of Tasmania and Queensland” (how is Queensland relevant? Why couldn’t you give a direct answer?)
if you can’t answer the question, say so rather than be obscure or ignore the question. I know I would prefer to hear “I’m not sure but will find out for you” or “we haven’t done that before so I’ll have to ask my manager to call you back” rather than having to ask again or risk making a guess.

Not only are clear replies to questions a good communication strategy, they can save you (and those you email) time and frustration.

Posted in business info & tools, writing | Tagged answer, clear, question, reply | Leave a comment

The grammar of blog headings

Published 6 October, 2011 | By TashWord

It may seem like a strange blog heading, the grammar of blog headings, but I was asked the question so here is my answer!

The heading or title of a blog post is usually the first thing someone will see and has a huge impact on whether anyone reads the actual content of the post, and therefore on the success of that blog post. Making it enticing is worth spending some time on, and you don’t want to undo those efforts by using inappropriate grammar and spelling.

So what is the correct format for a blog heading?

Do not write it all in capital letters – that is considered to be yelling and therefore arrogant, plus it is harder to read anyway
Unless you have a formal and old-fashioned brand style, use sentence case rather than title case for the heading – that is, use as few capital letters as is necessary
Use basic grammar and punctuation rules such as a capital letter for a noun, match plural/singular nouns and verbs, and put apostrophes in the correct places
Check all words are spelt correctly
Make sure the title makes sense. Titles can sometimes have fewer words than an equivalent sentence (e.g. ‘the grammar of blog headings’ is fine for a title but in the body of a post I need to add more such as ‘the grammar of a blog heading can impact on your credibility.’) but include enough words to convey the meaning (I couldn’t use ‘The grammar blog headings’ for instance)

Have you noticed bad grammar in any titles? How did that impact on you reading that blog post (or article)?

Posted in blogging, grammar & details, writing | Tagged blog, grammar, heading, title | 7 Comments

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