Welcome!

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

Refer to older posts…

Blogging services

HCI chat

impression.

You are making an impression…

Sigh. That’s my immediate response to a blog post I just read – sigh.

Doesn’t give a good impression of that blog or writer does it? Every time you write something that goes public, it affects how people view you – yet some people just don’t seem to get that. What’s worse is that this was a guest post on another blog so I assume they didn’t review it before accepting it. Silly as I closed the site after this post, and the rest may be great for all I’ll ever know…

I started reading the post in good faith but the poor expression made me skim the second half rather than read it which is never a good sign. I honestly only kept reading because I hoped the content would improve and justify it’s existence on a site I was reviewing. It didn’t.

Although appearing to be an article giving information, it was a poorly disguised ad for why company X is a good choice for design work – namely because they are young designers. I commented back as I don’t believe all young designers are good, nor all experienced designers lack passion.

Had I been given that article to edit or at least comment on, my suggestions for this article would have been:

  • make sure it all flows and that each sentence make sense
  • give balanced information (eg “while an older designer has experience, remember that new designers are keen to impress and may be passionate about their work” or “new designers have a lot to offer and you may find they charge less to get experience”)
  • introduce any specifics in the article, not just the heading (in this case the heading mentions web design but the article starts with ‘designing is a creative field’ – designing is more than websites)
  • use good grammar and punctuation (“give you the brand image as promised because; they want to earn a good name” does not need any punctuation in the middle and certainly not a semi-colon)

Just as I was leaving the page, I noticed the writer’s bio and sighed again. Nearly every word started with a capital letter (which is so annoying and completely unnecessary) and he claimed to be a ‘professional content writer’. With that example of his writing skills, he is not making a good impression for himself or the web design company paying him to write this article.

How do you respond to such poor examples of work?

The value of being a guru

Maybe its just me, but the business field seems to have more than its fair share of guru claims – that is, people claiming to be a ‘business guru’ or ‘marketing guru’ and the like.

Some people would think the guru title is a beneficial way to promote yourself and your business to the business community, thereby building a customer base and high profits. However, I think there are serious downfalls to the idea, and I would never call myself a guru; even if others were calling me a guru (and they aren’t as far as I know!) I would not use that on my website or in my marketing, at least because others may think I gave myself the title.

My newest article discusses the disadvantages and alternatives to calling yourself a guru to develop your business.

What do you think? Does someone calling themself a guru impress you so you respect what they say immediately? Or are you more cynical about them so that they have to work harder to impress you with what they say?

Would you call yourself a guru in your field (assuming you have a high level of knowledge)?