What do great books, movies and marketing campaigns have in common? A great story. With the plethora of advancing technology—including one that limits our thoughts to 140 characters or less—it’s ironic that the hottest trend in marketing might be the ancient art of storytelling. A great story can entertain, inspire, ignite and even move people
Did you know the phrase, “content is king” was used by Bill Gates way back in the 1990s? Isn’t it interesting that 15 years later, we’re still talking about it as if it’s a new phenomenon? Well it isn’t. In 2015, marketing prognosticators think content will be bigger than ever, which is why companies have to
Producing marketing content that connects with your target audience is a balancing act. You want to convince prospects that your company offers the best services or products. Yet, continually pushing overt sales pieces may disengage the audience. The right mix involves generating content that grabs their attention, provides relevant information and persuades them to contact you
Don’t you love it when someone takes something old and tries to say it’s brand new? For years, Subaru touted its “hill-holder” clutch as a clever new feature that allowed drivers of its manual transmission vehicles to start off on hills more easily. The truth is, Studebaker invented the hill-holder clutch decades earlier and introduced
I wonder if anyone truly realizes the vast amount of information available via the Internet. In my experience, it seems that if a thought, idea, event or reference is conceivable, someone has posted it online. Even with the most esoteric topic, hundreds and even thousands of people have written about it. When wise King Solomon
Many of us are still producing printed documents in plain old black and white. Yet, the alternative, color printing is more affordable and available than ever, and at a high quality. There are several benefits to adding color to your documents: 1. Color can provide visual cues that direct the reader’s attention to certain parts
On Thursday, the humor-parody site the Onion posted this status update on Facebook: BREAKING: Witnesses reporting screams and gunfire heard inside Capitol building And then it didn’t post anything for 10 minutes—an eternity in cyberspace after posting a headline like that. If you headed to the Onion’s website, you saw a story about a dozen
Regardless of how you feel about the death of Osama bin Laden earlier this month, there’s no denying that it’s the single largest news story to ever hit in the age of 24-hour cable news and social media. It may sound like an odd question, but what impact does bin Laden’s death have on how
Trade Press Services (TPS) recently worked with a technology client who appeared to be the only provider in the marketplace. This created a professional dilemma. When writing for business publications, our mandate is to provide educational content that will help readers solve problems or perform better on their jobs. It is not to unabashedly promote
Lynn Gaertner-Johnston recently posted in her Business Writing blog the following question: Does the five-sentence e-mail work? She says that a participant in a business writing program told her that he never produced e-mails longer than the magic five sentence length. To me, this sounds like Twitter, text messaging or other abbreviated, modern forms of
Election day is almost here, and it can’t come soon enough, can it? Democrat, Republican, independent, Whig, Tory…whatever your political preference, we’ve been bombarded by political ads on radio, TV and in print that are only slightly less annoying than they are insulting. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEINBjHHvHE[/youtube] What are the lessons to be learned for communicators, whether you’re
A recent article in Wired magazine describes a new revenue source for at least one newspaper—legal settlements and court-awarded fines levied against websites that use copyrighted news stories illegally. The article describes how Steve Gibson, founder of Las Vegas-based “Righthaven,” is going after websites that have allegedly stolen content from his first and only client
A recent posting by Mitch Winkel on the eMarketer blog discusses a new media trend: going “hyper-local” in an attempt to lure in consumers who have abandoned the traditional newspaper as a source for local news. Hyper-local news is content that covers a very specific, finite geographic area, often a single community or even a
Why use humor in business communications? Done correctly, humor can add personality and life to an otherwise dull or routine project. Anecdotes, humorous quotations or clever observations can help to win over a reader and make them more receptive to your message. In fact, many business books contain cartoons scattered throughout them designed to reinforce the
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF5cDusxRlQ[/youtube]
How do you know if you’re a good writer or if what you’re reading represents good writing? Most people believe that good writing is subjective. They think it is an art, not a science, which is to say that it’s imprecise, follows loose guidelines and is open to interpretation. This approach is in direct contrast
William Safire once said, “Avoid clichés like the plague.” That’s humorous yet sound advice, presuming one knows the definition of clichés. According to Weber State University, they are “old coins of language: phrases that once made a striking impression but have since been rubbed smooth by repeated handling.” There are several types of clichés, which
You may know what “editorial” means (that’s on the opinion page in the newspaper, right?), and you probably know what advertising is (the annoying stuff that interrupts my TV show!) But what the heck is “advertorial”? And why do you care? Advertorial content is the Frankenstein monster of journalism. Part news, part opinion, and part
