Archives for August 2010

Links distract readers; embed them anyway Laura Miller has joined the growing movement toward delinkification. Instead of embedding links in the body of her columns, the senior editor at Salon is listing them at the bottom. Links are a distraction. Always have been. That split second we spend asking ourselves, “click?” draws our attention away from the copy and makes it … [Read more...] about Chain reaction

Build bridges from one idea to the next Internal, or small, transitions move your copy from paragraph to paragraph, from sentence to sentence, from idea to idea. These are the nows, the laters, the after thats; the howevers, yets and buts; and the thuses, the stills, the neverthelesses. These copy connectors keep your story from feeling like a series of fits and starts, … [Read more...] about Mind the gaps

Too many options paralyze people Here’s a famous story among persuasion researchers and Malcolm Gladwell fans: When a researcher offered shoppers 24 types of jam, many customers stopped by for a sample, but only 3 percent made a purchase. But when the researcher offered only six kinds, 30 percent of shoppers ended up buying jam. “When people had too many choices, they just … [Read more...] about Help readers choose

Create content that goes viral on Facebook “Make everything a conversation instead of a one-way megaphone, and go out of your way to be interesting and valuable.” — Kelsey Childress, writer and SEO specialist, Awen Creative Talk about viral: Every time someone becomes a fan of your Facebook page or comments on, clicks the “like” link on or shares your post, that action shows … [Read more...] about Will you be my friend?

Vet your slogan with RhymeZone.com They might have seen it coming. Nope, not BP of the Gulf Coast oil spill. But Sarah Palin, Michael Steele and other supporters of increased domestic oil drilling of their slogan “Drill, baby, drill.” Don’t get me wrong. “Drill, baby, drill” is actually a fabulous slogan. “Slogans are fabulous when they use few words (two! one used … [Read more...] about ‘Spill, baby, spill’