Wednesday, September 21, 2016
Sunday, May 22, 2016
Social Media Tip of the Day. . .
Only a small portion of your social media posts should be direct advertisements. Post things that will inform, amuse, uplift and help your site visitors and they will keep coming back.
Monday, April 18, 2016
Nintendo social media game
The new Nintendo social app is very large, at 500MB the game took half the available memory of the Samsung SH1200 that was used to test the app. After customizing my avatar, I was ready to uninstall the game, finding the process tedious, boring, and un-game-like. Finally the Q&A session broke my will to continue, after quitting the game it was uninstalled and cannot be recommended.
Monday, April 4, 2016
Friday, August 20, 2010
Call to Action
For Social Media Networking or Social Media Advertising sitations. Your clients also want you to help persuade site visitors to buy, sign up or take some sort of action. In order to do so, you need to use persuasive language. Use active verbs (“kick the pollution habit for good”); plant catchy slogans (your employer may already have some of these in mind); and try appeal to a variety of readers.
For example, the owner of one small fleet of boats might be convinced to try the aforementioned catalyst via the morality argument (“If you don’t care about the planet, no one will.”) The next site visitor might pooh-pooh that kind of rationale but be excited about the potential financial savings fostered by the product.
For example, the owner of one small fleet of boats might be convinced to try the aforementioned catalyst via the morality argument (“If you don’t care about the planet, no one will.”) The next site visitor might pooh-pooh that kind of rationale but be excited about the potential financial savings fostered by the product.
Monday, August 9, 2010
KEEP IT SIMPLE
Delivering the message in a way that makes sense to readers means using accessible language and defining anything that is obscure for non-experts. You don’t have to dumb down your writing, but you do need to use common sense. Reading your own work aloud will often help you identify areas where you can simplify.
Back to my engine catalyst example: Let’s say in my first draft I wrote that the government is monetarily penalizing gross polluters. Upon reading through my article, I might decide to use the word “fined” instead of the awkward and multi-syllabic phrase “monetarily penalizing.” I also should probably define what constitutes gross pollution, unless I’ve already included the information earlier.
Making your text accessible also includes some visual tricks. Reading text on the web can be hard on the eyes. You should make your paragraphs shorter than you would for printed material, so that there’s plenty of white space allowing site visitors to rest their eyes. Let them take in a thought or two and then chill out a second before moving on.
Subheads are also helpful. These are little headlines, usually bolded or set off from the rest of the text in some way, that identify the topic at hand. They look good, typographically and they help readers who want to skip through the article and scan for the information they need. You can check out the subheads I used on this article for an example.
Don’t forget to edit your work as closely as possible. Look for spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors and double-check that names are spelled right. Get a friend or family member to read through your work.
Are you dyslexic or a legendarily bad speller? It doesn’t mean you can’t be a writer, but you do have to make sure you compensate for this. Get two friends to read through your work. Use spell check, even if you won the regional spelling bee when you were in school, because we all make mistakes. Spell check is included in nearly every word processing program and on most blogging platforms. It'll save your life.
Make sure your work is clean, whatever you do, because if your client doesn’t notice your mistakes, their site visitors will. Errors mean a loss of credibility which means a loss of customers. Period.
Back to my engine catalyst example: Let’s say in my first draft I wrote that the government is monetarily penalizing gross polluters. Upon reading through my article, I might decide to use the word “fined” instead of the awkward and multi-syllabic phrase “monetarily penalizing.” I also should probably define what constitutes gross pollution, unless I’ve already included the information earlier.
Making your text accessible also includes some visual tricks. Reading text on the web can be hard on the eyes. You should make your paragraphs shorter than you would for printed material, so that there’s plenty of white space allowing site visitors to rest their eyes. Let them take in a thought or two and then chill out a second before moving on.
Subheads are also helpful. These are little headlines, usually bolded or set off from the rest of the text in some way, that identify the topic at hand. They look good, typographically and they help readers who want to skip through the article and scan for the information they need. You can check out the subheads I used on this article for an example.
Don’t forget to edit your work as closely as possible. Look for spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors and double-check that names are spelled right. Get a friend or family member to read through your work.
Are you dyslexic or a legendarily bad speller? It doesn’t mean you can’t be a writer, but you do have to make sure you compensate for this. Get two friends to read through your work. Use spell check, even if you won the regional spelling bee when you were in school, because we all make mistakes. Spell check is included in nearly every word processing program and on most blogging platforms. It'll save your life.
Make sure your work is clean, whatever you do, because if your client doesn’t notice your mistakes, their site visitors will. Errors mean a loss of credibility which means a loss of customers. Period.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Avoid Being Underpaid
AVOID BEING UNDERPAID
This is where the real work of writing comes in. Don’t worry, you don’t have to be a journalist to do this. You just have to think like one. One caveat: many employers out there underestimate the time it will take for you to complete a writing project, because they don’t figure in enough time for research. Because of that, many potential clients have budgets that seriously low-ball you.
Many people are also working with a faulty paradigm: If an article is short, then it takes a writer less time to complete. The truth is, writing informatively and short can take even longer than rambling on and on. The 18th century British author Samuel Johnson famously delivered this apology to a correspondent: “I did not have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one instead.”
Research and editing take time. If a potential client wants you to write five articles and pay you $100, turn him or her down unless they are a friend or you’re willing to take the work in order to build a portfolio. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself working for far less than minimum wage. I speak from hard-won experience.
This is where the real work of writing comes in. Don’t worry, you don’t have to be a journalist to do this. You just have to think like one. One caveat: many employers out there underestimate the time it will take for you to complete a writing project, because they don’t figure in enough time for research. Because of that, many potential clients have budgets that seriously low-ball you.
Many people are also working with a faulty paradigm: If an article is short, then it takes a writer less time to complete. The truth is, writing informatively and short can take even longer than rambling on and on. The 18th century British author Samuel Johnson famously delivered this apology to a correspondent: “I did not have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one instead.”
Research and editing take time. If a potential client wants you to write five articles and pay you $100, turn him or her down unless they are a friend or you’re willing to take the work in order to build a portfolio. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself working for far less than minimum wage. I speak from hard-won experience.
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