As a successful business owner, you probably need to prepare a wide assortment of documents, including proposals, user guides, instructions, and technical manuals. In addition to materials for clients or potential clients, you may need to document internal policies and procedures as part of your disaster recovery plan or risk assessment, new-employee onboarding, and more. Most people simply cannot handle all of their company’s business activities on their own. Even if you are an expert on every facet of your organization, it involves a lot of time that you probably… Read more How Do You Know If You Need A Technical Writer? →
As a technical writer and a marketing writer, I think a lot about how to write sentences that are clear, direct, easy-to-read, and have a bit of flair. In marketing materials, technical proposals, and manuals every sentence must make an impact, and one of the best ways to accomplish this is to write using the active voice while avoiding excessive use of the passive. Phrasing like, “We will submit the report…” and “I sent the items this morning…,” that’s the active voice. “The report will be submitted…” or “The items… Read more Writing Matters—Sell Your Company & Your Product By Writing In The Active Voice →
If your website isn’t ranking well in the organic search results of search engines like Google and Bing, it may be time to overhaul your marketing content with well-written, information-rich white papers. It used to be that short, keyword-stuffed blog posts and indiscriminate link building were enough to get a site a high ranking in search engine results. But with the advent of Google’s latest Hummingbird algorithm and Bing’s new focus on grammar and spelling, that’s no longer the case. (See an overview of Google’s latest algorithm here and an… Read more Use Your Words: Improve SEO Efforts With White Papers →
In the Spring, I went to a Tedx talk in Bend, Oregon about our brains and the power of marketing. The 18-minute talk made clear exactly why it is that successful marketing writing focuses on benefits not features. Marketing writing is effective when it makes readers say “yes,” and the best way to do that is to stress a product or service’s benefits not its features. Features describe the product—what it does, how it works, etc. Benefits explain how those features solve a problem or ease a pain. Now to… Read more Market the Benefits Not The Features—The Neuroscience Behind The Marketing Wisdom →
Whether you do your own copywriting or technical writing, use outside writing services, or a combination of the two, do yourself a favor and create a company style guide. Style guides are documents that set standards for writing within your organization. They don’t seek to correct errors; rather, they focus on preferred usage when multiple options are available. For example, they detail how titles should be formatted, how acronyms are handled, whether to use a serial comma, etc. Save Time and Money and Boost Your Image Style guides are important… Read more In-House Style Guides: The Best Thing You Never Knew You Needed →
