writing

Refer to older posts…

repeat the boring stuff…

Published 23 March, 2011 | By TashWord

Do you get bored with hearing the same stuff a number of times? What do you do about repeated information?

As I wrote a few days ago, some repetition of stuff is necessary to succeed – either because it takes a few goes to really understand it or the timing wasn’t right initially or even just as a reminder that it is still important.

I agree with Jack that looking professional is important – and that includes care with grammar, spelling, effective links and care of details. So I write about those topics quite often, which may seem boring to some I know, but I do try to cover a range of topics within clear and professional communications.

Given the amount of poor writing I come across every day, I see there is a need for a repetition of grammar and spelling tips, too!

If you are good at grammar and spelling – my apoliges for repeating what you already know! But why not take this opportunity to tell me what other topics you would like me to write about?

Posted in business info & tools, grammar & details, writing | Tagged grammar, repetition, spelling, topic | 2 Comments

Growing your blog readership

Published 17 March, 2011 | By TashWord

Starting a blog may have sounded like a great idea (and it often is!) but is maintaining it harder than you expected? What do you find particularly hard about it?

I think a key to having a useful business blog (personal blogs have different measures of success so it may be very different) is frequent posts. From personal experience, I know the number of people viewing my blog are higher when I post every few days than when I miss a week or so – even when the popular posts at any given time are not the most recent ones.

So here are a few tips from me on building a good business blog that people will keep reading:

post regularly – if it suits your style, choose particular days to post so it becomes habit which also helps your readers know when to look at your blog
remember that posts don’t all have to be long – the occasional short one can be effective for variety and to maintain the frequency
link to other information from your blog – previous posts of your own, your own website, blog posts by other people, relevant websites. This gives people further information, shows your commitment to sharing information (rather than just chasing a sale) and also has search engine advantages. Note this doesn’t mean having a big blog roll…
encourage a community within your blog – ask questions, answer comments and share other input (for example comments from people you met in real life)
how much do you promote your blog? Just having a blog and writing in it won’t get you hundreds of readers – you need to let people know it exists which you can do in many ways, including joining blog carnivals, commenting in related blogs, using keywords effectively, getting listed in directories, adding your blog URL to signatures and business materials, and being a guest blogger.

If time is a big hurdle in your blog development, consider delegating some of the tasks so it builds momentum without relying on you as much.

If finding things to blog about is causing you worry, set aside an hour or so and brainstorm potential topics. That list can then be used any time you need inspiration.

If you have been blogging for a little while and are worrying about its popularity, think about these points:

a niche or tips blog will have fewer readers than a blog associated with a major newspaper or movie star so don’t judge your success against blogs that are totally different to yous
depending on your topic and style, people may read your blog but not comment – either your audience is not the type of people who want to comment or perhaps your topic just doesn’t inspire comments (for example, a controversial news story will generate discussion but if you are giving 5 tips on how to care for your lawn, not as many people will have anything to add)
in a business sense, a successful blog could have a number of purposes – building credibility, developing trust, sharing expertise, bringing in more website traffic – so look at more than the number of comments as a marker. Other factors such as number of new leads, visits to your main website and number of time-wasting emails may show you the effectiveness of your blog

Back to my original question though – what do you find hard about maintaining your blog? Let us know and you may just get some solutions to rocket your blog success!

Posted in blogging, writing | Tagged blog, information, readership, useful | 5 Comments

Most tips are simple!

Published 7 March, 2011 | By TashWord

Most is a term of quantity – ‘She scored the most goals’ and ‘He ate most of the cake.’

Almost is a measure of qualifying something else – ‘We are almost there’ and ‘You’re almost to the top.’

Although the two words are similar in sound, they are very different and should not be used in the same way. A simple way to remember the difference: Almost is nearly all done

Posted in writing | Tagged almost, meaning, most, qualify, quantity | Leave a comment

Genuine Choices

Published 23 February, 2011 | By TashWord

I have just been to my ip provider’s website to lodge a complaint after 2 days of emails not arriving. Their online complaint form has many fields (too many in my opinion but I’ll let that go!) and most are marked compulsory.

One questions, marked as compulsory to answer is “Would you like ABC to contact you? Yes Email Address”

In other words I have to say yes I want you to contact me in order to submit the form! Why bother asking if I have no choice but to agree to it?

So if you are preparing any sort of form or questionnaire, make sure you give people a choice rather than pretending to give a choice. If you are not going to give them a choice about something, be honest enough to say there is no choice – anything else just makes you look foolish and/or deceitful.

Use your words and questions wisely!

Posted in business info & tools, writing | Tagged choice, form, question | 1 Comment

Negative spam comments – why?

Published 18 February, 2011 | By TashWord

I get a lot of spam comments coming into this blog – I take it as a compliment that they see my blog as worthy of their effort to get included in it. Generally, the spam gets filtered and deleted automatically, but occasionally I look through the comments.

Most of the spam is along the lines of “Thanks for great information” – presumably on the assumption that I will be flattered and approve it 🙂 Sometimes, it is a question like “who made your blog look so good?” Either way, the links and names not matching emails help give away the true nature of such comments.

Tonight, however, I just read a spam comment that was highly critical of my blog*. I just don’t understand their thought processes – who is going to be sucked in to approving spam that attacks them? Obviously someone who has a lot of spare time if they can send out comments with no chance of being approved to earn them links!

Am I missing something? Have you come across similar pointless comments in your blog?

At least the next comment I read was honest “I am desperate for back links so am putting comments in your blog.” I didn’t approve it either, but they had more chance of success!

*Apart from the obvious link and name clues, I know it was spam rather than a genuine complaint because it accused me of whining in that post, yet the post was a pair of definitions in my Monday Meanings section!

Posted in writing | Tagged blog, comments, critical, link, spam | Leave a comment

Media release quotation marks part ii

Published 15 February, 2011 | By TashWord

Last week I wrote about a media release not using quotation marks correctly. Unfortunately, I have just read another release from the same PR company (written for one of their clients) and they have actually misused quotation marks again – breaking different rules!

Samples of the release (identifying features adjusted for the sake of their client):

“We’re fine tuning the offer for them.” XYZ managing director Fred Nerk said.

“There’s lots of ducks that need to be lined up in terms of how the groups support the plans”.

“Now they’ve thought ‘hang on, we need to provide for this”.

The rules they don’t know are therefore…

while what the person is saying may be at an end, a full stop is not used at the end of speech if it is followed by details for the speaker. Apart from anything else, they have created XYZ managing director Fred Nerk said.as a stand alone sentence which is incomplete. A correct example is ‘I am working on it now,’said Mary.
punctuation goes inside the quotation marks, except if the punctuation is part of the surrounding sentence rather than part of the quoted material
if a speech includes a quote, two full sets of quotation marks are required, and generally the second set will be different to the first (i.e. if one quotation mark is used, the inner set will have double quotation marks). So a correct example is “I spoke to the officer in charge who said ‘this is a major catastrophe,'” said the reporter

If we add in the incorrect spelling of the client name (yes, really!), typos and words like ‘throught’, this media release is a very poor return for the client’s money. To me it shows an absolute lack of respect to their client and is unprofessional.

Media outlets will often use a media release as the basis of any reports and they obviously don’t expect to have to spend time correcting silly errors like this. If they have two equally promising stories to run, the better presented media release is likely to win so I would be very cross if a PR company sent out a release about me in that state.

Would you expect a PR company to get the writing elements right, or would you be comfortable checking it for errors yourself?

Posted in business info & tools, grammar & details, writing | Tagged errors, media release, quotation marks, rules | Leave a comment

Make it clear what you do

Published 12 February, 2011 | By TashWord

What does your business do? Would I be able to answer that question after reading your website or brochure?

You may be surprised that many businesses do not clearly state what they don on their website. Some just assume everyone knows, others try to be clever and use fancy words and others appear to like being mysterious and/or aloof. And that’s not counting those sites that try to tease and get your details before they really disclose anything – I just can’t trust that sort of site.

Why do I think it is important to be clear about what you do?

make life easy for your potential clients – clarity saves them guessing or searching for the information
using the appropriate words (i.e. keywords) will help search engines find and rank you
save yourself being contacted by people who are after something you don’t offer
it builds credibility – you are open and honest rather than trying to be impressive

Some people argue that effectively hiding information throughout the site means people have to read more pages to find their answers (for example the home page, about us page and services page to find out if you offer what hey want). My answer to that is that many people won’t bother and will look elsewhere, and even if they do, is wasting a client’s time showing them much respect or valuing them at all?

So how can you make this clear?

add an informative tagline to every page of your site
make it the first sentence on your site for real clarity
use commonly accepted words to describe your services at least once – if you use unusual terms by choice, perhaps simplify it on your about us page
have a list of your services if there could be doubts. For instance, a beautician might list she offers waxing, facials and manicures but not pedicures and a legal firm might list they do contracts, employment agreements, family law and business advice (the implication being they don’t do criminal law)
note who you service. My tagline is ‘for all your business writing needs’ which clearly shows I write for businesses rather than writing fiction or being a journalist
be specific “we help people” doesn’t say much but “we help homeowners prepare for sale” and “we help families care for their elderly loved ones” are much more informative (to humans and search engines)

So maybe look at your materials again and think about whether you are clearly stating what you do.

Posted in web content, writing | Tagged clear, describe, specific, website | Leave a comment

Think about the order of information…

Published 11 February, 2011 | By TashWord

Getting frustrated may be part of life, but I don’t find it particularly enjoyable. It’s even worse when it could have been avoided so simply, too.

There is some software I am considering purchasing to use for a client as the freeware doesn’t have al the features I need. There’s a question I need answered first so I looked through their FAQs which didn’t answer my question.

They suggested asking intheir forum so I did. Only to discover, in small print in a directory listing not linked to originally, that the forum is old and questions unlikely to be answered. I wish they had made that clear elsewhere – or stopped people being able to ask questions instead of wasting my time.

So, then I used their contact form – filling in name and email and a nice message explaining what I needed. Form worked nicely but the next message was “You can’t contact us directly anymore”. Again, why not tell people that before they fill in your form? Why waste their time and, presumably, cause more emails to come to their inbox?

Whatever their reasons for not providing customer support, I don’t think there is any excuse for not putting messages in place to save people’s time. It would cost them nothing to have put the message before the contact form instead of afterwards, but would save aggravation for customers and give them a much more positive image.

So remember the sequence of messages can be critical for efficiency and estalishing good relationships.

Posted in business info & tools, web content, writing | Tagged customer service, message, sequence | Leave a comment

Getting creative

Published 9 February, 2011 | By TashWord

Do you consider yourself to be creative? Do you take any steps to inspire or nurture your creativity?

I must admit I haven’t thought about creativity for a while, but was recently inspired to think about it by Michelle Grice’s post about musical inspiration.

I believe creativity is important to help us solve issues and stay interested, and it doesn’t have to be creative in any specific way. Many people say “I can’t draw/paint/sew/sculpt so I’m not creative” but I disagree with that as a narrow view of creativity.

The people who thought of liquid paper, sticky notepads and tea bags were all creative – and for all we know they couldn’t draw, sew or sing either!

Developing creativity is fun, and it can help you see things in a different way, find solutions to challenges and grab new opportunities. I think doing anything out of the ordinary and basically avoiding being in a rut will develop creativity, but here are some more specific ideas to get you (and me!) started:

move to some energetic music – don’t call it dancing if that will limit you, just move!
grab a pencil and draw your favourite holiday – interpret that in any way you like!
do some mind teasers – pictures hidden in a see of dots, conundrums, riddles, and so on
think of a different ending for the last movie you saw or book you read
spend 5 minutes looking at some artwork online – look at the colours, think about your responses, follow your instincts
think of how to make your Christmas break up suit a theme – maybe Knights & Damsels, The Jungle, Fairies & Elves or Hollywood inspires you with decorations, costumes, menus and more. It never has to be done, just imagine it
let your mind follow some music without focussing on any lyrics
imagine you just won $5million – what would you spend it on? where would you go? how would you resign/leave your clients?

What other ideas do you have for getting creative?

And for today’s brain teaser… if four men take two hours to dig a hole, how long will it take eight men to dig half a hole?

Posted in writing | Tagged creative, ideas, imagine, rut, solve | 4 Comments

Quotation marks for speech

Published 8 February, 2011 | By TashWord

Do you remember learning about talking marks at school? I remember thinking of them as commas up in the sky:)

Over time, I learnt they are called quotation marks and that there are a few simple rules associated with their use. One of the rules about quotation marks is that you don’t close them until the person finishes speaking.

It isn’t often I come across examples of this in business writing – it’s generally more relevant for fiction or story writing. However, I did come across a media release recently which completely ignored this rule (and a few others but that’s a different story altogether!)

How do we use this rule? I’m glad you asked!

John said ‘It is hot today.’

John has finished speaking so we close off the quotation marks – easy.

John said ‘It is hot today and I would like to go the pool for a swim. The pool is just around the corner.

‘I wonder if Mary and Susan would like to come too? I will call them before I leave.’

In this example, John’s speech is divided into two paragraphs but he hadn’t finished speaking so I didn’t close the quotation marks. For clarity, however, I opened them again to show he is still talking (and I hadn’t just forgotten to close them!)

However, if John’s talking was interupted by text, we would close the quotation marks:

‘It is hot today and I would like to go the pool for a swim. The pool is just around the corner,’ said John.

‘I wonder if Mary and Susan would like to come too? I will call them before I leave.’

Posted in grammar & details, writing | Tagged close, paragraph, quotation marks, speech | 1 Comment

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