My trial by fire as a writer came from a high-wired Technical Communications professor…a moonlighting novelist who loved coffee and hated Latinate -ize and -ization suffixes with equal passion. With our latest assignments pinned on the board, he’d read the first sentence of each one aloud, confront the writer, and demand,…
Whether you’re reworking your website or building a new site from scratch, you can be sure of one thing: your audience is going to come in asking – “So what? Why does this matter? Why should I care? What does this have to do with me?” And if you can’t…
I’m really beginning to wonder if it’s in the water. Over the past few weeks, I’ve heard the questions from one business owner after another: I really need a website makeover…my site is an expense that’s not bringing me any business… I need to update my site content…it doesn’t reflect…
You know the “Oh, how…er…interesting” moment. It happens when someone at a networking mixer introduces himself saying something like this: “I’m John Doe, and I’m lead widget wizard with United Widgets International.” What is United Widgets? What do they do? What does he do? How can you connect with him?…
So you’re a loyal regular at all the networking mixers and business builder groups…you’ve handed out your cards at more events than you can count..but have you stood at a podium to offer an educational talk about your field of business to the general public, and fielded their questions? If…
How many times have new clients asked to speak to me about setting up their new website, and then asked, “Can’t you just take the content from our brochure and put it up on the website? We like the way we have the wording and we just need it online,…
When you choose an identifier for your business, you’re immediately faced with the question of defining it for your clients…and for yourself. What does XYZ mean, and who are you in relation to it? For example, what is copywriting? I’ve often been faced with this question at networking gatherings. I…
When you’re setting up your website, it’s the most natural thing in the world to think it’s about your business – your mission, products and services, history, success stories, etc., etc. After all, this is what your customers want to know, right? Actually, no, it’s not. Unless your visitors entered…
Whether you’re running a brick-and-mortar shop, a sleek office in an industrial park, or a website, you have one goal in running your business: GET TRAFFIC!! It doesn’t matter whether “Traffic” means literal feet passing through your doorway, telephones ringing, email alerts pinging, or visitors following links or entering keywords…
My 22-year-old son is graduating from college as a Mechanical Engineering major this May, into one of the wickedest job markets in the history of the country. He looked over at me this morning as he was skimming through yet more online listings, and said, “Mom, I just saw a…
If you’re like me, you probably grit your teeth and groan inwardly when you hear a barrage of corporate-speak, loaded with cliches like “leveraging the synergy to take it to the next level” and other conglomerations of nebulousness. What is this person saying, anyway, you wonder, and what exactly is…
