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Archives for April 2011

Model the masters

Make a mentor of your favorite writer Did you ever take your mom's toaster apart to figure out how it worked? You can do the same thing with writing. It's called modeling the masters: studying the best writing out there for technique, form and process, then incorporating what you've learned into your own copy. It’s the best way I know to polish your skills. To get … [Read more...] about Model the masters

Do tell

How to get stories in an interview “Who?” “What?” “When?” “Where?” “Why?” These questions are journalistic tools that can help us find stories — or condemn us to a lifetime of cranking out just-the-facts-ma’am pieces. To do more of the former and less of the latter, shift focus. When you’re interviewing for story, Richard Zahler of The Seattle Times suggests, reframe the … [Read more...] about Do tell

Polish your paragraphs

Encourage readership by making them tight When researchers for The Poynter Institute looked into what makes people read online, they found that one key predictor of attention was paragraph length. Researchers wrote: “The bottom line is that stories with shorter paragraphs got more than twice as many overall eye fixations than those with longer paragraphs. These data suggest … [Read more...] about Polish your paragraphs

LinkedIn best for B2

Beats other social media channels for customer acquisition LinkedIn is more effective at helping business-to-business (B2B) companies acquire customers than Facebook, Twitter or the company blog. That's according to the latest findings from HubSpot's 2011 State of Inbound Marketing report. The study surveyed more than 600 professionals about their company's marketing … [Read more...] about LinkedIn best for B2

Our brilliant clients

One of our brilliant clients just signed her entire company up for our Rev Up Readership newsletter. Now communicators and other professionals who write for business have access to the monthly writing tips via the company's writing wiki. They use the tipsheets to polish their skills, roll out the brand voice, improve their communications — even settle bets in the approval … [Read more...] about Our brilliant clients

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Jan. 31, 2025

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