So, you’ve hired a writer straight from advertising school. They have all the right credentials, they show great promise, and you think you’ll start them off on the company blog. You set reasonable deadlines, you think – a blog a week – you give them some topic ideas and breif them, and send them off
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A lot of press releases come to me for review with this opening sentence: “Large Corporation X today announced that …” And here’s the thing: an announcement is not news. Companies announce things all the time. The thing you’re announcing? That’s the news. Take the announcement out of it. You save on words, and gain
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Do you want to hear my three top tips for shortening sentences? Oh, well, here they are anyway. 😉 1. Cut out irrelevant words and information. Be brutal. You don’t need those filler phrases, and you should only be communicating the most important information. 2. Break up long sentences into smaller parts. Learn to love
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I was recently asked to review a complex business proposal that contained – supposedly – an elevator pitch. It came with a plea for help – the writer was struggling to cut it down from a page and a half, to a page, and I had to explain, as kindly as possible, that there was
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I see a common mistake in press releases, which is to start off quotes with the name and fancy title of the company spokesperson, and only after those many and boring words, to get to the quote itself. Try flipping the script – usually what is being said (if you’ve done your job properly) is
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I was reviewing an incredibly complex strategic communications plan today, and the more I read it, the more unsettled I became. There was too much explanation going on in the key messaging and carefully crafted narrative – the kind that makes you start to wonder what risk the writer is trying to mitigate. I couldn’t
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If you’re writing your own content, it can be tough to come up with ideas over a long period of time. You may start to feel as if you have no new ideas left. The trouble is, everyone wants to write long, substantial pieces. But given the goldfish-like attention span most people have when it
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If you want to craft great content, take a tip from journalism and spend a lot of time writing the introductory paragraph of your piece. Write it well enough, and the rest of the piece will be easy. The intro is crucial – the headline is the first hook, but if that intro doesn’t deliver
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When I’m writing content for people, they’re often surprised by the questions I ask. Some are so simple as to be verging on being “stupid” questions – to them, what I’m asking seems obvious. But that’s just the point. Just because something is obvious to you, doesn’t mean it’s obvious to everyone. And here –
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I’ve been dealing with a company in order to have some promotional material printed, and while I get emails from them about all kinds of things, I’m so frustrated with their communication that I’m cancelling my order. Too many companies confuse answering emails with communication – as paradoxical as that might sound. What do I
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