A couple of weeks ago, in a coaching session with a business writing student, we had a series of interruptions. Over and over, the door behind him would fly open, and a tiny blur of noise and colour would barrel in. My student would pick up his three-year-old son, remove him, and return ­­– until
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We’ve all seen it – the social media or blog post that seems tone deaf to whatever’s going on in the world, that doesn’t seem to be ‘reading the room’. This is what happens when good content planning goes bad. Three months of posts have been written and approved, loaded into a content management system,
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If there’s a small child in your life – either your own or one you’re acquainted with, you’ll know that they can be the worst storytellers. “Last Tuesday… or was it Wednesday? No, wait… it was Thursday. Thursday afternoon. And I was at school with Luke, and you won’t believe what we did! We were
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In yesterday’s writing webinar, one of the participants asked how to deal with clients who can’t understand why the piece of content they’ve commissioned costs what it does – given that I had just recommended that emails should be no longer than five sentences. Clients, you see, look at the length of something, and assume
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After the success of the pilot 30×30 webinar, I’ve decided I’ll do five more, and then reassess. In case you don’t know what 30×30 means, these are 30-minute webinars priced at just R30 per participant – the price of a latte for me, essentially. And to try and keep them as accessible as possible, I’ve
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There’s a lot of talk about pivoting and agility right now as businesses struggle to keep afloat amid lockdowns and revenue streams that have either dwindled or outright disappeared. In addition to talking only to traditional business consultants – whose expertise relies on the very economic models that have now collapsed – why not also
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One of the important aspects of learning to speak, is not just to form the words, but to learn a vital skill called turn-taking. As we first start using our words, we also have to learn whose turn it is to speak in a conversation – and we do this by observing a number of
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A few weeks in to the Covid-19 crisis, external communications teams have run out of platitudes. They’ve pledged support to the measures in place to contain the virus, assured their clients of their continued service with additional hygiene measures where applicable, communicated any changes in the way they will interface with customers, scenario-planned for messaging
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On Saturday afternoon at about 2pm, I sent through an email to the customer service inbox of a large national retailer. I had some concerns, and I wanted to express them, and also make some suggestions on how they could be rectified. A cheery auto-responder arrived minutes later – as expected – but the phrasing
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If you want to write emails that people actually read, make them no longer than five sentences. Anything more than that, and you need some other form of communication – an old-fashioned call perhaps, or a meeting. People are so overwhelmed by email that they don’t even scroll down to read the lower paragraphs anymore.
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