I have bad news for you: your content will never be perfect. It can be excellent. It can better than all of your competitors’ content. It will never be perfect. Why? Because first, writing is a craft, not a science – you can tinker with something almost indefinitely, and you will always be able to
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I have a colleague who’s noticed an interesting thing – his Gen Z kids don’t distinguish between digital and traditional media. To them it’s all media, and those of us in the business of content need to take note. Consumers aren’t worrying about where they read or watch something. They simply consume the content, and
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There’s a common mistake local influencers and content writers make – and I can spot it a mile away. Many don’t “localise” the content – they retain words, spellings and phrases that aren’t used in South Africa. When I see that, I simply plug the text into Google, and up pops the original. Localising content
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So, you need a report written, and you approach a #writer with a table of contents. Don’t expect to get a useful cost estimate out of them. A table of contents is a good starting point, a kind of skeleton to hang everything on, but you need to add some meat to that framework to
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I received a speech for review the other day, with the customary acknowledgment of all the dignitaries present at the beginning of the sppech, followed by that phrase you hear so often in South African speeches: “All protocols observed.” Here’s why you shouldn’t be using it. It’s become customary to use this phrase in South
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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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The end-of-year madness is almost upon us, and there’s a mad scramble to wrap up this year’s projects and start planning for next year. In the mess of looming budgets and deadlines and feeling like there just aren’t enough hours in the day, suddenly you realise there’s also a whole lot of content you’re going
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It’s time. Gather around, public relations practitioners and other marketing types. Bring your friends in content, and while you’re about it, bring the journalists and editors too. We need to have a serious talk about thought leadership. Why? Because for a term that is bandied about with reckless abandon, there is very little consensus about
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From time to time I produce content for a client that gets feedback along the lines of, “You’re a natural!” Or, “Wow! You’re so talented!” There’s always a faint air of suprise at my ability to express what they want to say in exactly the right words, or admiration at my “gift”. This is like
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“I’m sorry this letter is so long; I didn’t have time to write a short one,” is a quote variously attributed to Cicero, Blaise Pascal and Mark Twain. Whoever said it hit the nail on the head – writing something short that has both impact and depth of content is much more difficult than banging
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