How many times have you asked someone, “What do you do?” only to get a pretty much incomprehensible answer? For some reason, people tend to get lofty when they try to think of a boilerplate phrase to introduce themselves and their business. Unfortunately it’s very easy to get caught up in words like “optimize,” [...]

Not long ago, I heard Pamela Dell of the Boise Metro Chamber of Commerce deliver a delightfully to-the-point talk about marketing. She took the whole daunting subject and broke it down into three steps:

Make time.
Have fun.
Follow up.

How can you [...]

A well-educated, sophisticated client of mine whose practice serves her own well-educated, sophisticated clients brought up an interesting question about headlines this week. She had learned in an online marketing course that capitalizing every word in a headline — regardless of grammatical correctness — is a good way to get people’s attention, and she wanted [...]

Just read a colleague’s post — http://www.webinknow.com/2007/08/the-gobbledygoo.html — that makes my day. David Meerman Scott’s updated manifesto makes me feel so, well, validated. Having written more than my share of jargon-ridden pieces — always under tactful protest, having tried to point out the futility of using worn cliches instead of language that actually means anything [...]

In public speaking as in writing, it’s all too easy to go on and on and on. As a Toastmaster, I know that the biggest challenge in giving a speech is to keep from running over your alloted time, so I’ve worked hard to edit down my speeches to their core messages and to keep [...]

My all-time favorite piece of copywriting is the tagline, “Got milk?” It is beautiful in its brevity. It is immediately understood, perfect for its time, and has become one of those sayings so well known that many of us borrow it shamelessly in hopes that it will do for our product — or subject — [...]