White papers and conferences are a natural combination. If you’re looking for an excellent way to promote your company, an informative white paper can form the basis for a presentation at an industry conference. White papers and conferences build interest The people who run conferences are in a constant search for timely topics that will … Read more
I spent a few years working for an advertising agency at which every logo design and brochure had to pass a painstaking critical analysis. At the end of the day, one of the partners put whatever had been created in his briefcase, brought it home, and showed it to his wife. Not surprisingly, new members … Read more
Promoting white papers after you’ve developed them is critical to ensuring they provide the value your organization hopes to gain from them. After all, the work you devote to developing your white paper will be meaningless unless you’re able to put it in the hands or on the screens of the people who need to … Read more
I’ll be the first to admit that the ampersand (that familiar little “&” mark) can be handy now and then. But it’s one of the most-misused tools in the punctuation toolbox. The ampersand is a graphic replacement for the word “and.” Used properly in graphic design, it can even be a thing of beauty — … Read more
Creating white papers may be one of the most effective ways to convince people that you’re the right choice, if your company offers a product or service that’s complicated, innovative, or significantly different from what your competitors provide, or if it involves a lengthy decision-making process. White papers inform decision-making Put simply, if the people … Read more
Companies and organizations devote an amazing amount of time to agonizing over what their websites should look like. They review a host of different design approaches and spend hours trying to determine exactly how each page should function. Then they slap some content in place. What kind of content? “Take that stuff from our last … Read more
Did you know that public speaking is a bigger source of fear for most people than the idea of dying? Fortunately, most people die only once, but you may face multiple occasions in your career or civic life in which you’re forced to share important information in front of a crowd. There’s a lot of … Read more
We’d have a tough time surviving without quotation marks. A famous writer once observed, “Quotation marks allow us to identify what someone actually says, as opposed to simple statements being made by the writer.” Okay, I’m that writer, but the quote illustrates one of the primary roles of quotation marks. The other is to denote … Read more
Many people regard having to write as sheer torture. Unfortunately, nearly every job or business endeavor demands a certain amount of that torture. The good news is that there’s a simple trick that can make your writing easier and more effective. That trick is starting somewhere in the middle. If that sounds odd, consider that … Read more
Want to know how effective your copy is likely to be? To find out, highlight it in two different colors. Whether you’re developing a blog post, a brochure, a web page, or any other channel, take a few moments to highlight all of the sentences that are really about your customer and his or her … Read more