21 Amazing Business Writing Resources
February 17, 2008
Get your writing wrong in your business letters, blog, or website and your customers may not get the message. Worse still they may not even read it at all. And the great news is, anyone can improve their business writing skills. Check out these great business writing resources and make your business writing rock.
The Four Keys To Reader Comments And Conversation: Liz Strauss shares the secret to getting readers to participate in your blog.
Get Featured In National Newspapers and Magazines: In this amazing article - Jonathon Fields explains how to get your business featured in national newspapers and magazines and make mega bucks.
On Homer Simpson and Copywriting: Walt Goshert explains why it’s important to picture Homer, to get customers to read your marketing message.
Writing Dirty: Skellie explains how to write dirty, without being rude to spice up your blog posts.
In Five Ways To Put Some Heart into your business writing. Joanna Young explains how to inject some human qualities into your business writing.
Get Attention: Writers Digest explains how to grab your reader’s attention with the opening paragraphy.
How Long Should It Be? Should you use a short headline or a long one? Does your sales letter need to go on forever, or is brevity better? Copywriting genius Brian Clark explains in: The Long and Short of Copywriting.
Emails Hitting The Spam Box? Michael Fortin explains how to increase your email open rates.
Outsource Your Blog: Free your time up to concentrate on your blog writing. Brad Brown explains How to outsource your blog.
Use The Best Selling Words: Check out this article by Laura Spencer, to discover the top 25 top selling words to use in your business writing.
Get Your Press Release Blogged About: So, you’ve written a great press release. Search Marketing Gurus explain how not to pitch your press release to bloggers.
Write Without Fear: Men With Pens share 3 can’t fail steps for writing without intimidation.
Need to Write An Ad That Rocks: Check out this article by Bob Bly on how to write a good advertisement.
Writing To Double Your Profits: Leading copywriter - Clayton Makepeace shows business owners how to double their profits in 12 months or less.
Bencivenga Bullets: The free copywriting tips newsletter of America’s top copywriter, Gary Bencivenga.
What Is Good Content? You want the best content in your blog right? Maki from Dosh Dosh explains how to write content that will drag thousands of subscribers to your blog.
And What If Someone Steals Your Writing On The Internet: So, you’ve written some great content for your blog or website and you want to protect it. But how do you find out if someone has plagiarized your work? Barbara at Blogging Without a Blog shows you how.
Is Your Blog Serving It’s Purpose? Does your business have a blog? Is it serving it’s purpose? Christina at Self Made Chick offers 5 excellent tips to ensure that it does.
Edit Your Writing: Leo from Write to Done explains how to edit your writing to ensure that it’s clear and concise.
71 Amazing Blog Writing Tutorials: Daniel at Daily blog tips has 71 brilliant resources for blog writers in this post.
Features V Benefits - The Showdown: You may have heard that you need to show your customers benefits, not features in your business writing and advertising. Marketing wiz Naomi Dunford explains the difference.
Do More With Less: Great writing tips from Syntax.
3 StumbleUpon Mistakes To Avoid
February 16, 2008
Do you use social networking in your business? Recently I began using StumbleUpon - a great social networking site, which allows users to network and share great content they’ve discovered. And I’ve benefited from a huge increase in website traffic from StumbleUpon. But, I’ve also made some newbie mistakes, and here’s three you should try to avoid:
Stumbling Too Much: StumbleUpon is addictive and in my first few days, I stumbled way too many posts. The trouble is, when you stumble too fast, you bury all the posts you’ve just stumbled. And the post authors miss out on the benefits of being stumbled, as nobody gets to see their posts.
Accidentally Deleting Votes: You can vote the profiles of other stumblers. But, it’s hard to keep track of which friends you’ve voted as the pics keep moving. And if you click to vote someone you’ve already voted, it removes your original vote. So, if I voted you, and the vote has gone, I’m sorry.
Stumbling The Same Site Frequently Can Get You Banned: One of my readers also joined StumbleUpon. The trouble was, he tried to cheat and paid someone to stumble his blog pages. He also decided to stumble a heap of my pages in a row. And this was bad news for me, as someone marked one of the pages he’d voted as spam.
Now, StumbleUpon can actually ban the voter and the recipient if you vote the pages of a website too many times. So, I was pissed off, as I don’t want to be banned because someone else has decided to abuse the system. And I’ve emailed StumbleUpon to explain those stumbles had nothing to do with me, so I’ll just have to hope I don’t get banned.
Check Out These Great Stumble Upon Resources To Avoid Making Your Own StumbleUpon Mistakes
Skellie Explains how StumbleUpon Works in This Great Article.
Maki at Dosh Dosh Explains Five Ways To Grow Your StumbleUpon network.
Caroline Middlebrook Shows How the StumbleUpon Voting System Works.
Copyblogger Explains How to Write High Impact Content For StumbleUpon.
RobDogg Shows What Happens When Penguins Spam StumbleUpon
Terence Chang has some great info on StumbleUpon and how to avoid getting banned.
Do you use StumbleUpon? What StumbleUpon Mistakes have you made? And have you got any great StumbleUpon tips or advice to share?
Are Your Customers Reading Your Message?
February 15, 2008
From business letters, to web pages, blog posts and thank you notes; most businesses spend a heap of time writing. And unless you have a big budget, you’ll do most of the writing yourself. But, don’t get it wrong or your customer will switch off.
Some Basic Tips To Make Your Business Writing Readable
Brevity: Don’t write 2000 words when you can get your message across in a paragraph.
Jump Right In: Your customers don’t have time to read a long introduction.
Ditch the Adverbs: Check out these sentences. Can you see why the “ly” words add no value to your writing?
Seemingly most people dislike reading long paragraphs.
This phone charger is absolutely useless.
It’s incredibly difficult to get people to subscribe to your blog.
Spelling And Grammar: These common errors cause confusion.
Mixing up their, there and they’re. Use them as follows:
They washed their car.
Wash your car over there.
They’re washing the car.
It’s and Its
It’s my dog. (it is)
The dog ate its dinner.
Keep Your Writing Simple: Don’t use fancy words for the sake of it. The following sentences mean the same but the second one is easier to read:
The bodacious woman wore an ostentatious dress, which was felicitious for the occasion.
The bold woman wore a fancy dress, which was apt for the occasion.
If you’d like to read the second part in the series of business writing tips, click here to subscribe in a reader.
And if you’d like extra help with your business writing, why not get a critique from Joanna Young at Confident Writing. Click here to see her special offer.
Do you struggle with your business writing? What mistakes do you notice in the writing of others? And do you have more tips to help others improve their business writing? Please share in the comments section.
Authenticity in Business and Other Lies
February 14, 2008
Have you ever been given the following business advice before - “be authentic”, or “all you need is a competitive” advantage? It’s all a huge lie, and there are a few more “business lies” that are frequently spouted by the so called “gurus”. Read on to discover what they are.
Be Authentic: This is an overused phrase and I see it on business sites all the time. Anyone who tells you that you must always be authentic in business is a damn liar. It’s impossible. You’d need to be a saint.
People can and will be a pain in the butt and if we were completely authentic, we’d tell them. And we’d lose a lot of business.
Picture this - one of your best customers has appointed a new manager. He’s an obnoxious prick and you wish you didn’t have to deal with him. What do you do - tell him exactly what you think of him and risk losing the work, or “be nice” and put up with him?
I’m sure there’s some self proclaimed saints who would argue otherwise. But the smart thing to do is put up with it, if you want to stay in business. So, I would advise you not to be authentic - be as authentic as you can be.
Anyone Can Do It: Another overused phrase. You see it a lot in business book titles. And the author never actually believes that anyone can do it; they say that so they sell more copies. Maybe if they put in brackets: (It Probably Won’t Be You) it would be more honest. But honesty doesn’t sell business books.
All You Need Is A Competitive Advantage: You do need a competitive advantage but this is not all you need. You need to keep an eye on your competitors all the time, because they’ll be keeping an eye on you. And if you become too complacent, you’ll wake up one morning to discover that they’ve had several better competitive advantages for the past 12 months.
Image by Dom H UK
Be The Best And Customers Will Come: This is another big fat lie. The average human being doesn’t have a radar that enables them to find “the best” of anything. If we did, we’d never have a bad meal, or buy a mediocre product. Make sure your product or service is good and spend the bulk of your time marketing it. You’ll get far more business than your excellent competitor with poor marketing skills.
No Publicity is Bad Publicity: Yet another ridiculous cliche which has come back to haunt many foolish business people. The truth is, some publicity can be so bad that it will kill your business. Just ask Gerald Ratner. Sixteen years ago, he was fired from the family business for telling the media that Ratners sold crap. The publicity ruined him - Ratners is no more and Gerald is still feeling the pain 16 years on.
Are you a saint who believes you should always be authentic in business? Do you agree, or disagree with any of these points? Or can you think of other snippets of useless advice that you’ve been given on business?
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