Bad Boys: Every Kid Knows When to Use a Comma

Filed Under Branding, Marketing, Successful Blog, Writing | 1 Comment

What I Remember

badboys of writing

I’ve been hearing a lot about a bad boy who’s been hanging around lately. Bad boys of writing are tapes in our head that tell us things that undercut our productivity. This particular bad boy is more of a nuisance than most because he thinks we should remember every detail about writing we learned in school.

The Every Kid Bad Boy says “What’s wrong with you? Every kid knows when to use a comma. Why don’t you?”

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NEW POWER WRITING FEATURE: An Editorial Makeover

Filed Under Branding, Marketing, Outside the Box, Successful Blog, Writing | 15 Comments

Why Powerful Writing Is Important

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One of the ways I work with clients is to help them improve their writing. It might not be fair or accurate, but people judge our ability to reason by how we express ourselves in writing.

Thinking . . . writing . . . business . . . thinking . . . we can’t separate them.

business thinking writing

Together they determine our place in society. Whether you blog, write for business, or only email, writing is critical to your future.

New Feature: An Editorial Makeover

I’m introducing a new feature — An Editorial Makeover. It’s a Content Edit — a Before and After — where you can look over my shoulder. Every editor edits differently. You won’t agree with all of my choices. That could make for great conversation.

I’m starting with a paragraph from my own work Bad Boys of Business: That’s Not “Real” Work.

Turn the page to see the first Editorial Makeover. Read more

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Bad Boys of Writing: Just Write and It Will Be Spectacular

Filed Under Basics, Content, Successful Blog, Writing | 17 Comments

Meet the Bad Boys of Writing

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Everyone knows them and hangs out with them. They are the bad boys of writing. Handsome and seductive fellows, they have weaseled their way into our thinking. They’re conmen really — conmen in the true sense of the word — they play a confidence came.

The bad boys take advantage of us because we wrote so much in school. They mess with our heads because we learned to write on cue. We confused the act of writing with the art and craft of writing. We don’t do that with wearing shoes, or living in a house or driving, but we do that with books and writing. So the bad boys of writing have a field day.

It’s time we showed the bad boys that we can beat them at their game.

Meet Bad Boy 1: Just write and it will be spectacular!

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6+1 Traits: Conventions –The 6+1 Secret Rules of Online Writing

Filed Under Branding, Marketing, Successful Blog, Writing | 14 Comments

Writing for Online Is Different

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Effective writing is writing that works. It follows a set of rules we agree on. We call those rules writing conventions, as in conventional writing. Where some writers can trip up is that they don’t realize that the conventions for writing for print are slightly different from those we use when writing online. The differences are small in nature, but big in impact. They can mean a reader stays to read or clicks on by.

Now I’m anything but conventional. Still I know the value of following convention to make my readers feel comfortable in knowing how to navigate through what I write. Read more

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6+1 Traits of Search Engine Relevant Content

Filed Under Branding, Content, Marketing, Successful Blog, Writing | 3 Comments

Get Relevant

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A 7-year-girl stands staring at a 27-car pile-up in which her dearest pet, a golden retriever, was thrown from the car onto hard pavement. The pup is in the road unmoving and ignored. A TV reporter — desperate for a Pulitzer — asks the child, “How do you feel now that your dog has died?”

The thoughtless question to the little girl is irrelevant to the story about the 27-car pile-up.

The reporter herself is irrelevant to the little girl. . . .

Unless the little girl caused pile up and killed puppy, her feelings (besides being obvious) just aren’t relevant.

Maybe that works on TV, but not the Internet. That reporter would have Google Page Rank Zero. Who’d do a Google search for a story on how that little girl felt? Read more

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