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
Most tips are simple!
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
Business profiles
No matter how descriptive your business name and tag line, not everyone will automatically know what you offer. And some will want to know more details anyway.
One way to explain your business well is to have a business profile.
The profile outlines the main purpose of your business; it will explain that you sell a certain type of product online, or that you serve businesses in certain ways or that you offer households a trade.
A profile can vary in length depending on how you use it, but it is usual to keep them under a page as people don’t want to spend too long reading about you.
Profiles can be written in different styles according to your business style and the particular market the profile is reaching.
What do I do with a profile?
A business profile can be a handy tool and used in a number of ways. Here are a few suggestions for you:
- Send it as an email or fax to people making enquiries about your business. It can even be added to an auto responder
- Send it when you are negotiating with a new supplier or joint venture partner
- A number of network groups and sites will make your profile available for other members to learn about your business
- Use it as an ad or editorial in a newsletter – shortened if necessary
- Attach it to media releases you send out as back up information
- Have it attached to websites where you are a contributor or expert
A maternal berth?
Sounding exactly the same, birth and berth are extremely different words and misusing them would lead to confusion…
birth: a beginning, especially relating to the beginning of life when a mammal leaves its Mother’s body
Parents see their baby’s birth as a turning point in their lives.
berth: a space for resting or sleeping, particularly relating to ships and trains. It can refer to a bed/bunk on a ship or train or a mooring place for a ship in a marina
The crew untied the ship from its berth on time for the departure.
Mary climbed into the top berth as the train sped past another village.
My tip for rememebring which spelling to use: a berth is a bed.
Online forms are part of your image
Yesterday, I wrote about an online form (on a major company’s website I will add) that only appeared to offer me any choices when filling it in.
It would be nice to say that was the only issue with their form but the whole thing looked unprofessional and inappropriate to me – not something they can be proud of and use to enhance their relationship with me. And let’s face it – if I am making a complaint, they really need to be impressing me to rebuild our relationship if they want me to continue as a customer. Continue reading
Genuine Choices
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!
Choosing valuable partners
A few days ago I wrote about having strategic partners rather than just using suppliers, and how valuable they can be for your business. For example, having someone who knows your business and has strong ethics can provide much better expert support with less involvement from you.
It made me think about what is important when choosing partners for your business, and how it is worth spending that time rather than rushing the process.
So what are some of the key things to consider when being diligent about selecting partners?
- price is important – it has to fit in your budget and you have to feel comfortable you are getting value for your money. It just doesn’t mean you always take the cheapest quote
- expertise – obviously if you are paying for a service/product, you want it done by someone who knows what they are doing. Ask for their qualifications and experience, look at examples of their work, ask around for others who have used that service, do online searches to learn about a business – don’t just rely on their assurance that they ‘are experts’
- quality – will get you get quality results you can be proud of? will the service meet your needs? will the results last for a reasonable time? It is worth paying more for something that will last as it is often cheaper than paying for it multiple times
- service – do you get good service from your partner? That is, do you get prompt responses, respect, your thoughts listened to and clear messages?
- value adding – does your partner offer information, ideas or extras that truly add value to your business in some way? For instance, if I write some web content for clients I often point out some additional links or improved navigation they could use and a printer I used for a client recently spotted an anomaly and asked for clarification rather than just printing as was.
- relationships – to be most effective, you need a good relationship with your partners. I don’t mean you have to send them roses on Valentines Day or remember an anniversary, but just have a good working relationship where you can both communicate clearly and openly to get the best results. A good relationship is more fun, saves time and increases the chance of getting urgent projects squeezed in, too. While you don’t have a relationship while selecting a partner, you can make an assessment about how you think you will get on with each other – if you don’t like someone at the start it is much harder to work well in the long-term
- intangible assets – not always easy to judge straight away, but think about how your potential partner meets your expectations and beliefs; are they ethical, do they pay attention to details, do they demonstrate integrity, do they show an interest in ‘being green’, will they respect your privacy and property (including confidential information), and generally be professional.
What else can you add to this list?
Valuing business partners
Do you have any partners in your business? I don’t mean a partnership business structure but partners for the business itself, such as a designer, writer or accountant.
I was reading recently about strategic partners often being chosen on price and too quickly. The article went on with “The diligent selection of long-term strategic partners is key to enabling the globally integrated supply chain and helps mitigate the risk of IP theft.”
A true partner (rather than just a supplier you use once for a quick fix) can be a valuable asset to your business and save you a lot of time. So I agree that choosing quickly and without care is not a good plan.
A valuable partner (compared to a any old supplier) can
- move onto projects quickly and with less fuss because they know your business and the guidelines (for example a designer already knows your corporate colours and brand) – this saves you time
- use their expertise to help your business as they are in a position to make suggestions
- be cheaper because they already understand your business and need less time to research and get the basics in place (for example, if I know your business I can write a media release straight away rather than spending time learning what you do)
- be trusted from experience so you can slowly entrust more complex projects and details
- have common references which can again save time and ensure clear communications (for example, telling a trainer you want the same format as last time but in a different office rather than explaining your full content needs)
- reduce the need to keep getting quotes to compare – even if it costs a little more to use a partner on certain projects, that cost is usually saved by avoiding this search/recruitment/retraining phase
- reduce the number of businesses you have to deal with – this saves time in contacts and accounts and reduces risk (dealing with unscrupulous people, intellectual property or other theft, etc)
I certainly appreciate my business partners – not only do they do great work for me but I can trust them to do so with minimal input from me and maximum expertise from them. So I will take this opportunity to publicly and wholeheartedly thank Ally, Jane (who doesn’t have a website), Michelle and Eva.
Have you thought about where your business would be without those partners?
Negative spam comments – why?
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!
Media release quotation marks part ii
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?
Make it clear what you do
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.
Recent Comments