Social Media: Participate or Perish?

Is social media a fad? No. It will continue to evolve and change, but it’s here to stay, as this video powerfully illustrates:

How should you keep your skills current, as social media becomes integral to moving information in business?
At this point:

1) Make sure you list yourself on LinkedIn, and keep your profile current. Your employees [...]

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Trim Business Writing Redundancy

Redundancy is very common in business writing. Trim bloat by omitting modifying words that merely echo the primary word. There is no need to repeat yourself:

Replace: free gift with gift (if it’s not free, it’s not a gift)
Replace: basic fundamentals with fundamentals
Replace: absolutely necessary with necessary
Replace: forward planning with planning
Replace: after the conclusion with conclusion
Replace: [...]

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Business Email Productivity Tips

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Recent research confirms the volume of email continues to increase.
The technology marketing research firm Radicati predicts that this year the average office worker will send and receive about 199 emails per day! That is nearly 200 separate messages, each requiring your focus and action. Even if you can quickly delete an email after skimming it, [...]

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Condolence Letter Tips

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Today is the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks here in the United States.  Thousands of people lost their lives, and many more hearts were broken by family, friends and co-workers lost.
I am sometimes asked if a condolence letter is necessary, or even suitable, in a business relationship.  It’s an easy answer. Yes. Reaching [...]

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Sales Letters: Gain Attention First

“Advertising is a business of words, but advertising agencies are infested with men and women who cannot write.”
~David Ogilvy, Advertiser
AIDA is an easy to remember acronym for writing persuasively. It reflects the writing elements needed to help you make a sale:
A = Attention
I = Interest
D = Desire
A = Action
In business sales letters, the first step, [...]

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Business Email: Is a Conversation Better?

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This month’s newsletter explained a very effective, but often overlooked, technique to disentangle yourself from convoluted, unfocused, irate or too lengthy emails. Shift the business email to a conversation.
Simply respond, “Let’s discuss over the phone. What is your number and when is a good time to call?”
A wise client who works in the financial services [...]

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Business Email Productivity Tip: Gmail Tasks

If you use Gmail (which I do for both my business and personal accounts), a new Tasks feature will greatly help you manage email overload. I’ve been testing it out for a few weeks. It’s fantastic for keeping a clear inbox, critical to managing email overload.
The task features are very basic, but that’s what I [...]

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Terminations Double for Social Media Gaffes

Don’t friend your boss on Facebook, and then complain about him or her, or your job. Ever.
The latest social media scandal is being reported by The Next Web. This gaffe is epic:

It’s simple to prevent these gaffes from happening:

Don’t post anything in social media (Twitter, Facebook, your blog, Friendfeed, LinkedIn) that you would not want [...]

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No Spin Mission Statement

Net Insight developed a fun and clever tool which illustrates the meaningless business-speak that is so often used in a corporate mission statement.

Click on the “play” button in this Corporate Mission Statement Generator, and watch business jargon phrases spin randomly into an automatically created statement.
I ran the generator twice, and received these results, full of [...]

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Top Ten Irritating Phrases

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Researchers at Oxford University recently compiled a list of the top ten most irritating phrases. This list is very useful to business writers because we certainly want to avoid using them, and they illustrate the morphing nature of language.
The researchers who compiled the list monitor the use of phrases in a massive language database, called [...]

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