Writing, marketing and technology
Why is it that when I am busy, I am also more productive? I mean that I get more done in an hour when I am busy than I do otherwise. How come you get more efficient at doing something the more you do it? Even creative tasks? Why does work always take longer than [...]
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I used to make computer games and back then we had a saying about project management: ‘you can have any two of fast, cheap or good.’ It’s a choice that most people don’t want to make. Fast Most clients have a schedule: a campaign deadline, a business plan commitment, a product launch. Usually this is [...]
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Isn’t it the most annoying thing. You go to a shop to buy something and when you get there, the assistant is on the phone. With someone who was too lazy to leave the house. You’re left kicking your heels. From the shop’s perspective, it’s a perverse incentive for uneconomic behaviour. It’s the same with [...]
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I wrote a post two months back about when writers become lawyers. Sometimes writers are from Mars and clients are from Venus and we need some structure to the relationship. John McGarvey has produced a really nice plain English contract for copywriting. I do things a bit differently but we share the same objectives: Reducing [...]
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I really like this presentation from North Venture Partners. It works as a self-presenting presentation. The amount of text per slide is just right if you don’t have someone speaking over it and yet it still uses the kind of arresting images that I like to see on slides. (You’ll have to click the full [...]
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Every freelance writer has a story about the project from hell. Mine involves writing a 7,000-word in-house magazine in a month. By the third issue, thanks to unreasonableness from the client, it was 14,000 words in ten days. For the same money. There wasn’t a fourth issue. So how do you avoid situations where the [...]
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Does this ever happen to you? Your client calls and says ‘we need this done immediately – right now – like, yesterday!’ And you’re up to your eyeballs in other work. You don’t want to let your client down because the relationship is important and you don’t want to say yes because you’re really manic. [...]
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Freelance writing is the Stockholm syndrome erected into a profession. The terrorist holds a gun to our head and we love them for it. (Or more as a friend of mine said ‘we’re the battered wives of the media business.’) Why do relationships between writers and clients go wrong? Over-promising Too-high expectations Bad briefs Writers [...]
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Matthew Stibbe is CEO of Articulate Marketing and Turbine, the easy, online way to deal with office paperwork. He edits Golf Hotel Whiskey and writes the Forbes Aviator column.
Check out my new, free eBook, 30 Days to Better Business Writing, 71 pages of expert tips and advice to make you a better writer. Available on Kindle, paper and free online.