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I hope you find my writing and business tips and observations useful. My business and blog are dedicated to helping businesses communicate clearly and reach their potential. Read, subscribe to my newsletter, enjoy!Tash

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Add the little touches

Published 9 June, 2011 | By TashWord

This week I have come across two very different examples of customer service.

First, I went to a website and found a problem so wanted to contact them. Finding their contact page was easy enough but it had four compulsory field titles (name, email, subject and message) but only three text boxes so there was nowhere for me to actually type a message. Worse, there was no ‘submit’ button either so I couldn’t send a message to them.

Yes, their focus is on getting online sales rather than answering specific queries but the lack of care about letting me contact them left a sour taste in my mouth.

Separately, I have unsubscribed from two ezines this week (yes, my emails are mounting up so I’ve been sorting and unsubscribing this week) where I was pleasantly surprised by the final unsubscribe page. In different ways, both sites gave me the opportunity to report the people sending me the ezine as spam – in other words, they were asking if I was unsubscribing because I never asked for their ezine.

To me, that is honest and upfront. It gave me the impression that they care about doing the right thing and not wanting to spam people. Many people don’t care about someone who unsubscribes as they are gone, but by treating me nicely they have left me with a good feeling about them.

Have you tried using your contact form and unsubscribing from your own newsletter or blog subscription? If not, perhaps it’s time you give it a go…

Those little touches to your website and customer service leave a lasting impression on people. What sort of lasting impression does your website leave?

Posted in writing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Using quirky blog content ideas

Published 7 June, 2011 | By TashWord

Sometimes it is interesting to use a totally different idea to create your blog post. Instead of using case studies, hot news items or client work, for example, you can write a post based on a movie or TV show, something you ate, an overheard conversation or even a product name.

Why use something quirky?

  • it’s more fun for you to think outside the box occasionally
  • it gives you a broader topic range to work with
  • you may just show a little more personality than usual, or a different aspect of your personality, that will help people feel they know the person behind the blog and business
  • using real life situations and examples is a great teaching tool

You may use a quirky source but write a straight blog post, of course, or you can introduce your post with “Hey I saw a movie last night and was reminded…” or “My friend was telling me about … and I had to share…” or “I know I usually only write about the latest news but today I’m going to share a story…”

What quirky ideas have you blogged about? How did it work? Share the links to your posts in the comments – you may just inspire someone else’s quirky ideas, too!

Posted in blogging, writing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Telling people is a key step

Published 6 June, 2011 | By TashWord

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, if I don’t tell you something how can I expect you to know about it let alone share the information?

image source: 123rf

Have you heard the expression ‘build the website and people will come to you’? It isn’t the entire story as no matter how great your website is, if no one knows it exists you will not get many visitors to the site.

There are many ways to increase your business profile, and various people will tell you that you MUST do certain things to further your business. Having a blog, joining Twitter and Facebook, putting videos on YouTube and having a LinkedIn profile can help a business, although to varying degrees for each business.

However, what is often not mentioned is that you have to promote those things in order to get the benefit of them. It’s great to tweet about new products and share valuable information but if no one follow you and your clients don’t know you are on Twitter, it’s pretty much a waste of time. Likewise for all those other social media options.

So remember to let people know about your blog, website, twitter account, Facebook profile and so on if you want them to build your business profile and website traffic.

How have you told people about your social media presence? What has been the most effective for you?

PS If you don’t already know, my twitter name is TashWord and Word Constructions is on Facebook.

Posted in blogging, business info & tools | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Keeping you updated…

Published 5 June, 2011 | By TashWord

Over recent weeks, I have been doing various things in the background for Word Constructions. I’m quite pleased with my progress, although it is still a fair way from finished, but if I don’t tell you what I’ve done you may never know!

Before that distracts me onto a new blog post, let me tell you some of what has been happening at Word Constructions…

I have released two eBooks for sale, both of which are aimed at business people interested in learning about writing to further their business. A style guide template will be added soon and I have another eBook or two underway so keep an eye on the eBook page of my site plus the top menu to the right of all blog posts.

I have joined Twitter and started tweeting – this is a great way to know when I post something new here in the blog. It will also have occasional bits and peices about writing and business. If you’re on Twitter, drop in and say hi!

Posted in About Word Constructions | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Highlight the important information

Published 3 June, 2011 | By TashWord

Let me guess – you’re busy. You don’t have time to read everything you ‘should’ or want to read. You often skim read things to decide if you will bother reading it in full.

Guess what? Many (if not all) of your clients are also busy and tend to skim read anything you send them, no matter how much effort you have put into every tiny detail.

Solution? Make sure the important information, and key attractors, are prominent and easy to find.

How can you make the important things stand out?

  1. make use of sub-headings
  2. put important things first – and by important I partially mean what people will be looking for. You can put things first by having those words at the top of the page or just more prominently. For example, putting tickets in larger font for a notice stating ‘Buy your tickets from the left cashier’ or write ‘tickets available this way’ will be more effective than ‘the left cashier is the only place to buy tickets’
  3. use white space around key points (for instance, in an invitation, leave the date, time and address lines short and uncluttered)
  4. use a bold font for critical information for people to skim across

Posted in writing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Remember the flood levy…

Published 1 June, 2011 | By TashWord

For the coming financial year (and only that year we are told), a flood levy will apply to many Australians. The levy is to help rebuild the infrastructure for the communities hurt in the floods, fires and Yassi earlier this year.

Everyone with a taxable income over $50,000 will pay the levy – unless you are exempt because you are receiving a Government Disaster Recovery Payment for a 2010-11 natural disaster. You can find out how much the levy will be for you on the Treasury’s flood rebuilding site.

If you are self-employed, you probably pay tax via the PAYG system rather than regular deductions from your pay. Your annual letter outlining your PAYG instalments for the year will include the levy in those calculations. If you are an employee then your employer will deduct the levy along with your normal tax. You need to inform your employer or the ATO if you are exempt but earning over the threshold.

If you also employ people, you will need to add the levy to your usual deduction schedule. That is, for employees earning over $50,000, you will need to deduct an extra 0.5% or 1.0% with their tax – starting with the first pay after 1 July 2011. Businesses do not pay the levy, it is only for individuals.

So are you prepared for this levy? CE2DTMFHHKHT

Posted in bit off track, business info & tools | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Calling all customers!

Published 31 May, 2011 | By TashWord

Have you heard of a call to action? Have you got any idea what marketers and the like are talking about when the use this term?

While many people find marketing a bit wishy-washy or over-the-top at times, things like a call to action are important to understand for anyone trying to promote something ( a business, a blog, an event, and so on).

So, what is a call to action? It’s simply where you tell people what you want them to do. Examples are ‘buy now’, ‘call us for a quote’, ‘visit our website for details’, ‘visit us on the day’, ‘book here’ and ‘enter your email to subscribe’.

Adding a call to action generally gets much better results than just giving information. A call to action reminds interested people to actually do something and makes it easy for them in that you have told them what the next step is.

For simplicity, one call to action is enough in most ads and emails although a secondary (unspoken) call may be included such as ‘call us on 1234’ being followed by a URL.

Does all your marketing material include a call to action?

Posted in marketing | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Spelling premier

Published 30 May, 2011 | By TashWord

premier (adjective): first, especially for rank, time and importance
They supply only the premier business resources.

premier (noun): a political leader of prominence
Each Australian state has a Premier.

premiere (noun): the first public performance, usually relating to a play, music or movie
He was very excited to be invited to the premiere last week.

While premiere is very specific, the word premier can be used a number of ways – the adjective premier could even be use to describe the first performance although accepted usage indicates premiere as the preferred option.

Posted in Monday Meanings | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

What uses up bandwidth?

Published 27 May, 2011 | By TashWord

If you’ve tried reaching my blog or website in the last day or so you may have experienced some trouble unfortunately. I know I wasn’t happy to see a ‘exceeded bandwidth’ message when I tried to log in to post yesterday and again today.

Knowing I was well under my host limits a few hours earlier, I was surprised by the message and have contacted my host. Especially as the second time showed about 12,000MB of bandwidth used in less than 24 hours!

Figuring out the bandwidth issue

A laptop covered in chains and a padlock

Securing computers is important but not always easy…

No one has accessed the back end of my site or ftp (but I have changed passwords anyway!) but my host found that someone (and let me add that it is very restrained of me to just write ‘someone’!) in Washington has been using my bandwidth. I should say ‘had been’ as that ip is now blocked.

My host has been great at trying to help me and extending my bandwidth to keep the site live while the issue was researched, so thanks Lucie at Multimediart.

My question however, is how is someone using up so much bandwidth on my site? No unexpected files have appeared on the site and apparently no one unauthorised has logged in so I’m confused. Do you have any idea what this person was doing?

Does anyone have any suggestions to share so we can all avoid this sort of distraction and time-wasting in the future? I’d really appreciate any help I can get!

 

* Image courtesy of 123rf

Posted in About Word Constructions, bit off track, business info & tools | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Match questions and answers…

Published 27 May, 2011 | By TashWord

Recently I wanted to make a complaint to a company and was directed to their online form (hmm, is it telling that their products come with a prominant page about how to complain??) and saw this as the opening sentence:

“already been attended to by phone or other means would you please advise YES/NO”

How does it help them to know I will (or won’t) advise them on whether my issue has already been dealt with? Wouldn’t the better question be ” Have you already told us about this issue? YES/NO”

Whenever you give people a choice of answers in a survey or form, you have to give answers that actually give the information you are after. Remember that the words ‘would you’ are what people will try to answer, so put them at the start of your question or don’t use them at all.

Generally, use active verbs and phrase questions as simply as possible to avoid confusion and misunderstandings.

PS I could go on to say how important it is to get your promotional materials right – and not use old materials after you make changes. My original complaint was about their promotional brochure offering 4 things in a set but their website offering two things for the same price. Putting these two issues together has totally destroyed that company’s credibility and I don’t trust a thing they say now – and won’t be returning there.

Posted in bad writing examples, writing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment
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