THINKing » Writing

Word

Harry Hoover — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 22:39:00 +0000

It is true that I am sometimes a grumpy curmudgeon, however, I also know a little about word usage. So, please let me help you so that you won’t look like an ignoramus when you attempt to create an act of literature.

Let’s start with homonyms, that is words that sound similar but have different meanings.

accept and except – accept is a verb meaning to receive with approval, except is most often a preposition meaning excluding.

- I graciously accept this honor.

- Everyone being honored was there except for me.

peak, peek and pique – a peak is a high point, a peek is a quick look and pique is a state of vexation. Now, let’s use them in sentences.

- I hiked to the mountain’s peak.

- I took a peek into the package.

- Their unruly actions will pique Bob.

they’re, there and their – they’re is a contraction of they are, there is in or at a place other than here, and their is of or relating to them.

- They’re going there to see their grandmother.

its and it’s – its means belonging to and it’s is a contraction of it is.

- It’s not my fault that the car has a dent in its fender.

your and you’re – Similar to its and it’s. Your means belonging to you and you’re is a contraction of you are.

- You’re going to pick up your car.

affect, effect – affect is a verb meaning to influence or cause change, effect is usually a noun meaning the result or outcome.

- The sorry state of the economy will affect everyone.

- Wine has a beneficial effect on health.

principle and principal – principle means a law or basic truth, principal is the head of an organization or a sum of money.

- That principle of common law was well known by the company’s principal associate.

We’ve tackled a few of the most egregiously used ones in this post but here’s an online list of some additional ones you should review.

7 Strategies For Employee Communication Through Social Media – Part 2

Harry Hoover — Thu, 19 May 2011 12:30:27 +0000

We talked in Part 1 about the first four strategies for utilizing social media as an employee communications tool:

Establish Clear Ownership
Use Protected Twitter Accounts
Use RSS Feeds
Develop An Internal-Only Blog

Here’s Part 2:

Bring Social Media Reports To Regular Meetings

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In some companies, social media (whether in the form of blogs, Twitter, RSS or Facebook) is an island unto itself, a hermetically sealed, back-room “experiment” that no one else in the company interacts with or hears about. This is a mistake! The whole point of corporate social media is to improve communication and performance throughout the company.

Whoever is in charge of corporate social media should be bringing reports to regular company meetings and contributing insights based on what was learned. This can be employee tweets, blog comments, shared stories – literally anything that sheds light on how the company can change or improve in some meaningful way.

Obtain Executive Buy-In

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Social media will not go very far in a corporate setting without buy-in from top executives. Absent this key support, whomever is in charge of social media will constantly be fighting an uphill battle, struggling to make suggestions or changes on the basis of an initiative only they (or at most, a few non-senior managers) support. Left to continue this way, your social media communications program will stall and stagnate.

Don’t make this mistake. From day one, let it be known that everyone, from the CEO on down, is fully behind the social media initiative (both in spirit and in terms of resources allocated.) Only then will the company embrace social media as a lasting fixture instead of a passing fad.

Not For Entry-Level Employees

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Finally, it must be noted that social media is not suited for entry-level employees or interns. Whomever is responsible for the initiative should be, if not a senior executive, then at least someone with a long history at your organization. Someone who thoroughly understands its culture and has interacted with all of the various departments in the past.

The reason this is so important is that the entire organization must be on board. If one or two departments are not committed to social communications and refuse to participate, the entire initiative has failed. Moreover, the job of running and monitoring your internal social media channels is very comprehensive – someone fresh out of college or with only a few months experience at the company will likely be overwhelmed.

Editor’s Note: today’s post is from guest author, Bryan Cochand, a freelance writer for Adobe. Adobe’s Online Marketing Suite helps businesses with their search marketing efforts.

7 Strategies For Employee Communication Through Social Media – Part 1

Harry Hoover — Tue, 17 May 2011 12:30:27 +0000

Social media has come a long way in the last five years. Once used to kill time and stay entertained, the social web is now deeply ingrained in the day-to-day operations of businesses large and small. Communications is no exception – in fact, it’s one of the premier uses of social media in the corporate environment. Instead of relying on outdated bulletin boards and impersonal memos, tech-savvy executives are now using online tools to communicate more quickly, more personally and more effectively.

Here are seven strategies for implementing social media communication in your company:

Establish Clear Ownership

(source)

One of the biggest problems companies have when implementing social media at the corporate level is that no one department has clear ownership of it. Who’s responsible? Is it marketing, HR, senior management, or perhaps a newly anointed person/department? There is no one “right” answer, but the old saying applies: when it’s everyone’s responsibility, it’s no one’s responsibility.

When a company’s social presence is run by different departments, it invariably falls short of its full potential. Each week sees the birth of new “initiatives” and experiments, rather than the continuation of one solid direction or approach. As a result, social media fails to become the rich communication channel it has the potential to be. Pick one person (or department) to be in charge and give them authority over the channel.

Protected Twitter Accounts

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One of the quickest ways to immediately leverage social media for corporate communications is Twitter. But there’s a twist: established businesses shouldn’t sign up for the same public Twitter accounts that individuals use. Rather, executives will want to use what’s known as a “protected” Twitter account (explained here.)

Basically, a protected Twitter account is one where only approved followers (employees and colleagues in this case) can see your Tweets. Once established, your protected Twitter account can be used to share anything of company importance: memos, reminders, event invitations, etc. You can even go a step further and establish protected Twitter accounts for each department. This way, everyone gets tweets that are very pointed and relevant to their job duties without getting overwhelmed by things outside of their purview.

Corporate RSS Feeds

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RSS feeds offer another way to rapidly disseminate information across the company. RSS (which literally stands for “really simple syndication”) enables executives to create “feeds” that employees and co-workers subscribe to via tools like Google Reader. What can you syndicate using RSS? Actually, just about anything you wish.

Today’s RSS technologies permit you to syndicate text, videos, audio files and virtually anything else you can send along in an e-mail or instant message. The benefit of using RSS instead is that you can create the content once (say, a reminder or memo) and effortlessly blast it out to everyone in a completely streamlined and trackable format.

Internal Company Blog

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If you aren’t ready to experiment with Twitter and RSS yet (or even if you are) a much simpler way to bring social media into your communications program is just to set up an internal company blog. This is distinct from any customer-facing blog you might have. Rather than publishing PR stories about the company, your internal blog is meant to convey information that’s meaningful to employees and executives.

A major plus of having an internal blog is allowing employees to comment on each post and paying attention to what they say. This is a priceless form of feedback – encourage people to freely and candidly share their thoughts on company blog posts. Furthermore, use these responses to drive new initiatives or employee programs based on what you learned.

More strategies in Part 2. Stay tuned.

Editor’s Note: today’s post is from guest author, Bryan Cochand, a freelance writer for Adobe. Adobe’s Online Marketing Suite helps businesses with their search marketing efforts.

How To Write Tweets That Get Noticed

Harry Hoover — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 14:00:40 +0000

Editor’s note: Today’s article is by David Murton, who has been helping companies build and maintain their online relationships with customers since 2006. He also is a professional writer and webmaster with a particular interest in the open source Drupal platform.

Tweets are about connection. People sign up for Twitter with purpose: They want to tell everyone who they are. And, they want to build an online relationship with people like them, who can respect them. Tweeters build their followers and who they follow in hopes of igniting that social connection.

The goal is to write the perfect tweet, a tweet that can reach everybody, can be retweeted again and again, a tweet that will expand the tweeter’s reputation. How can you possibly write a tweet like this? It’s simple when you consider and understand two important rules: readability and retweetability.

Readability

Obviously, you need to learn how to write and to be read well. Find your voice and go with it. Need help? There are plenty of writing schools online that teach the skills you seek. Twitterers will notice your superior writing instantly. Just take note, writing one or two great tweets isn’t enough, you have to be consistently excellent to keep your readers engaged.

Think of your Twitter page as your business page. How can you provide value? First, you need a headline (your link) that grabs reader attention, that entices them to click and read more. Next, you deliver with quality content. Don’t make your reader regret reading. Sell your tweet by appealing to the reader. Close the deal by giving them something they can bite into. Remember to always be honest.

Know this: it’s not all about you. You don’t tweet for the sheer joy of writing. You tweet because you want to be heard. Write to your readers, give them something they can relate to. Combine your personal life with your professional interests. Be open about who you are and your purpose. Most importantly, be open to the ideas of others. Don’t bore your followers by always talking about one thing – branch out, be a part of the conversation.

When people read your tweets, they judge your writing abilities. Poor writing can lead to no feedback and no followers. Only celebrities have the luxury of being grammatically inept. You must watch your grammar, have perfect spelling, use correct punctuation and contractions, and always start sentences with a capital letter.

Retweetability

Keep your tweets under 140 characters. Short tweets are more retweetable because they leave room for the retweeter’s name and possibly a comment. Leave about 25 free characters for this. Doing so will make it easier for your followers to share your tweet.

Provide a link. This could be a blog, news article, youtube video – anything that reiterates your point. You want to share worthwhile information through your links. Giving your readers some place to go, to learn more, helps to solidify your ideas or thoughts. Linking to a known source will enhance your own credibility. Remember to always give credit to the source.

Use your manners and thank people when they retweet your post. Ask politely when you want to be retweeted. Tweeters who are kind and gracious are likely to be noticed and retweeted. Conversely, being a contentious tweeter may get you some attention but won’t get you respect.

Stay connected and retweet others. Twitter is more dialogue than monologue. In order to be heard, you can’t just talk out loud, you have to talk to someone. When you do retweet another post, leave a comment and tell everyone why this tweet meant something to you. Shorten lengthy tweets in an intelligible way that doesn’t affect the original tweet.

Build your online appearance with you bio or URL. Spell out your full name so people know who you are and provide a link to your site if you have one. Write your bio in the first person and include only the finer points of your character and your purpose. Upload your picture right away because Twitterers like to see who you are. All of these things will give you credibility. Do them well and you will seem more human in this digital world of the web.

Playing Both Sides Of The Table

Harry Hoover — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 21:58:34 +0000

Editor’s Note: this is a guest article from Danny Wong, who manages Media Relations for Blank Label Group, and he helped to co-found the group’s startups Blank Label, Thread Tradition, and RE:custom. He’s also played on the other side of the table writing for outlets like the HuffingtonPost, ReadWriteWeb and TheNextWeb.

How to Become a Member of the Media & Play on Both Sides of the Table

The marketers that have adapted to the times are the ones that are empathetic to all parties when it comes to messaging, meaning the businesses and their customers, the sponsors and their audience, and especially the companies and the media. Marketers that look to leverage the media in more creative ways than the out-dated press release have decided to join the ranks of the writers and have learned to appreciate the media more, understanding how they could better handle their interactions with the media.

Marketers Become Bloggers

In marketing, one of the hotter trends is strategic content creation for the purposes of education, engagement and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). But when marketers become the content creators, they start to understand some of the basic principles of writing, which include knowing your audience and creating relevant and useful content for them. With those principles in mind, they’re more careful in how they pitch the media to try to garner stories and attention for their business, making sure, more often than not, that their pitching a writer whose audience would appreciate the reading the story.

Marketers Join the Media

After marketers establish their business’ blog with build credibility with quality content, they can be considered “thought leaders” in their space, giving them leverage, making it easier for them to then start writing for niche blogs. Then after building a writing portfolio, they can move onto write with more established websites and news outlets to further demonstrate their extensive knowledge for the industry they work in, adding more credibility for their business since external contributors are always afforded a nice little byline to plug their bio including detail about their associated companies.

It’s All About Networking

So after getting yourself established as a thought leader through your business’ blog, then writing posts with niche blogs, and then authoring stories on more established and widely read publications, you become connected with the influentials in the media who are more receptive to you because you’re “one of them.” Of course, you try to stay very professional, making sure your efforts to grow your business don’t interfere with you contributing value to the publications you write for. But you will have valuable connections that will be more willing to help you in growing your business because of the relationships you have. There will also certainly be disclosures noting your association with a publication if they decide to publish an editorial story on you, but in most cases, that’s purely just standard practice and readers enjoy the story nonetheless.

Getting Better at PR

While now you’ll have all this established credibility and a stronger network, you’ll also have improved your communication skills with the media because as a writer yourself, you’ll know how to craft better messages to get your point across and sell the better points vs. the weaker ones. As mentioned earlier, you will be more empathetic to what audiences want to hear and what writers write about, so you’ll know how to craft stories to be relevant in a pitch for a writer, and when it’s at all appropriate to pitch a story.

Content Focused

Harry Hoover — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 18:20:14 +0000

Blogging experts often tell you to hyperfocus on a topic if you want to build a following. We have been thinking a lot recently about our blog’s content. (We’d love your thoughts, as well. So, feel free to jump in.)

As you know, we write about creativity, marketing, advertising, PR, social media strategy and tactics, and throw in a little self-improvement for good measure. That’s sort of broad, don’t you think?

Until we took a close look at the Analytics, we thought so, too. But we’re beginning to think that – after five years – this approach may have staying power.

Our home page gets the most traffic, but when we drill down to top landing pages, we find something interesting.

From a categorical perspective, our top 6 landing pages are:

Creativity (Self Improvement)

Social Media (Blogging)

Advertising

Marketing (Self Improvement)

Social Media (Blogging)

PR (Journalists on Twitter)

What do you think? Are we too broad? Are there topics you’d like to see us give more focus in 2011? We would love to hear from you.

Top Five Blogging Lessons

Harry Hoover — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 13:35:40 +0000

We’ve just completed our series based upon the presentation I gave for the Charlotte Chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators. So, I wanted to provide you an easy-to-navigate post, linking all the articles.

Blogging Lesson 1- Blogs Are Here To Stay – When I started blogging in 2005, I thought that it might just be a fad. Boy, was I wrong.

Blogging Lesson 2 – Strategy First – Just as you would when planning any type of communications program, you need to answer a few questions before you leap head first into blogging.

Blogging Lesson 3 – Content Is King – You can blog all day long, but unless your content is consistently great, your blog will become roadkill on the information highway. What must you do to have great content?

Blogging Lesson 4 – Stay Focused – You need to stay laser focused or your readers will wander off.

Blogging Lesson 5 – Blogging Is Worthwhile – There are multiple reasons that blogging is worthwhile, ranging from demonstrating thought leadership to building your network.

Blogging Lesson #4 – Stay Focused

Harry Hoover — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 18:28:00 +0000

Today, we’re looking at the fourth lesson I have learned while blogging since 2005 – Stay Focused.

Remain On Topic – Stay laser focused on your topic. When readers visit your blog, you want them to have an idea of what they are going to find there. So, don’t write one day on agriculture and the next on advertising – unless you can find some effective way to tie them together.

Be Consistent - If you are going to blog, you need to approach it with consistency. There are millions of blogs out there, but only a handful are kept current. Only about 12% of the US internet population blogs and keeps those blogs updated at least monthly. That is not often enough if you want to build your readership. Also, maintain consistently good quality content.

Post Regularly, Frequently – I’m not saying you have to post very single day, but you need to set some sort of schedule so that readers get into the blog’s rhythm. When they come to the blog, readers have the expectation that they will find something new. Fulfill that expectation and your readers will be loyal. Additionally, frequent posting results in higher search engine indexing and in more backlinks. How frequently? That’s your decision, but I can tell you that if I post at least four times per week, my traffic volume takes off.

Be Responsive – If you have a blog you need to make a commitment to real time response. When someone makes the effort to post a comment on your blog, you owe them the favor of a rapid response, even if it is only, “thanks for your comment.” A blog is supposed to foster conversation, but too many people preach from the blog pulpit instead of trying to carry on a dialogue. Another element of responsiveness is to take advantage timely topics. If a topic is trending on Twitter, the blogosphere is jumping on a subject or it is in the news, you should jump on it if you have something worthwhile to offer.

Do you have any blogging lessons to offer? Tell us about it.

By the way, here are our first three lessons:

Blogs Are Here To Stay

Strategy First

Content Is King

THINKing » Writing

Word

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Bring Social Media Reports To Regular Meetings

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Establish Clear Ownership

Protected Twitter Accounts

Corporate RSS Feeds

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Readability

Retweetability

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Playing Both Sides Of The Table

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