Writing, marketing and technology
WHAT Free half-day seminars with Matthew Stibbe, writer-in-chief at Articulate Marketing. I want to help you get the most from your marketing copy: Print – writing for case studies, press releases and marketing collateral Online – writing for websites, blogs and social media WHY Make your marketing more effective Get better work from your agencies [...]
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Most of my clients are very reluctant to talk about the prices of their products and services. On the other hand, it’s something that readers really want to know. I’m not making this up. Readers expect price information. This is why journalists and reviewers always give prices. Look at any magazine. (Wired, for example.) If [...]
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Want to be laconic? Easy. Don’t say much and keep to the point. I’m reading a book about Sparta at the moment (Plutarch’s On Sparta ) after I listened to the In Our Time broadcast about it. I know I’m quite chatty and so I’m always impressed by laconic people. I remember asking a taciturn [...]
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Back when I used to be a programmer, I quickly learned that you could get a much bigger performance boost by changing the algorithm – the underlying structure of the code and data – than by optimising the code. For example, you could rewrite an inner loop in assembler rather than C and get a [...]
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Interruptions kill productivity. But background noise can slow you down in less obvious ways: Fatigue. Noise makes you tired. Just as shouting over loud music in a bar strains your voice, your brain has to work harder to filter out unwanted information. Poor concentration. It’s more likely that your brain will latch onto some background [...]
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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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I met René van der Meer last year when I was in Amsterdam. He writes Aanhetwoord.com, a website about journalists, the working methods and ambitions. It’s a great resource for Dutch writers and I was very pleased when he published the interview he did with me. Of course, we mostly spoke in English during the [...]
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I saw this at Hammersmith Station today and I thought it was really cool. As a writer, I like the way they have used plain text and typographic conventions to convey a really subtle message about efficiency. It also works on different levels of detail: the gag, the key message and then the whole text [...]
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Procrastination is a big problem for writers. The Economist takes a view, based on research and economic theory: New-year irresolution. What seems to work is pre-commitment. Homer tells the story of Ulysses. He wanted to hear the sirens’ song but wanted to avoid being lured to his death by it, so he tied himself to [...]
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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.