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I hope you find my writing and business tips and observations useful. My business and blog are dedicated to helping businesses communicate clearly and reach their potential. Read, and enjoy!Tash

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How to get writing, no matter what

Published 4 September, 2012 | By TashWord

Finding it hard to write on demand, struggling with ‘writer’s block’ or doubting your ability to get something written?

Staring not writing on laptop

Do you have the time to waste on not writing?

Long ago I decided I didn’t have the luxury of ‘writer’s block’ and I can write on demand rather than waiting for inspiration or the right mood. There are certainly times when I really don’t feel like it, but I have found ways to keep writing anyway.

Some people will say writing when you don’t feel like it means your writing isn’t as good. That maybe true for creative writing (although many novelists would disagree) but if you write professionally you have to meet deadlines for clients whether or not the whim takes you.

Tips for overcoming writer’s block – or writer’s hesitation

Here are some useful techniques, some are well known and some have been really valuable for me over the last nine or so years.

If you have any great tips on how you overcome writer’s block, please share your ideas in the comments section below.

  1. just write. It doesn’t matter what you write – just sit at a keyboard or with pen in hand and write for five minutes without stopping. It gets ideas flowing and sometimes gets doubts out of your head. You may find you are ‘in the mood’ well before your five minutes is up…
  2. forget the start. If you’re sitting in front of a blank page not knowing how to introduce a document, or what title to give it, start writing the middle of it. For an article, write the middle and come back to the introduction and title; for a longer document, choose any chapter but the first and write that. Apart from getting you started, an intro or title often needs revising once the rest is written anyway so leaving it to last makes a lot of sense
  3. if you know broadly what has to be written, write out all your headings and sub-headings for the document. It’s much easier then to just fill in the text between headings in whatever order you feel like
  4. give yourself permission to just write – don’t worry about typing perfectly, getting spelling and grammar right, or having the perfect word in every instance. Get your first draft written and your project is underway – much better to have it all written and spend time proof reading than to have only a paragraph or two written in the same time.
  5. know yourself so you can set up the best conditions for writing. It may be first thing in the morning, after doing some exercise, with music playing or in silence, at a keyboard on a desk, or any combination of circumstances but use your environment to encourage your writing
  6. like that proverbial elephant, don’t expect to tackle a big project in one go. Set yourself small targets – yes it can be ‘have the first draft finished by Thursday’ but it can also be goals like ‘write for 20 minutes then check emails’ as doing something hard or unpleasant is easier to face for a short time
  7. build habits – if you sit at your computer to write at 10 o’clock every day, your mind will expect that and be ready to write

When it comes down to it, the only solution is DO IT!

I find that if I don’t feel like it but start typing I get into it and can write the document easily – and often finish it ready for another! If none of the above helps get you writing, your other option is to ask someone else to write the document or web content for you.

Posted in Business Communications, writing | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Consistency over stats

Published 31 August, 2012 | By TashWord

consistency for baseball battingIn baseball, my theory is to strive for consistency, not to worry about the numbers. If you dwell on statistics you get shortsighted, if you aim for consistency, the numbers will be there at the end.” – Tom Seaver

I rediscovered this quote from my August 2009 newsletter, along with my article on consistency, and thought it worth highlighting again.

What is consistency?

Before discussing what consistency means within a business, here is the definition:

consistency: applying to the same principles or guidelines, not contradicting

mussaman curry is the same everywhere

Mussaman curry has a consistent taste & ingredients

In simpler terms, consistency means made up of the same things. So being consistent in a restaurant means always using the same ingredients for a dish – swapping fish into a beef curry gives a different result and is not consistent.

How would a restaurant survive if some dishes are made with care while others are put together quickly? The lack of consistency would confuse diners – and those getting a poor dish the first time may never return.

For business communications, consistency means making all the words, images, layouts and messages work together with the same look and feel, the same overall style. If everything is consistent, the background message remains the same regardless of the specifics of each piece of writing.

Consistency over stats

It’s easy to get distracted and try something new in the hope of fast results.

For example, some people get caught up in the number of visitors coming to their blog and hear that more posts means more traffic.

So they write two posts a day instead of three a week but time is limited so many posts are written fast with less care. Traffic may rise initially with the more frequent posts, but people won’t come back as often if they can’t rely on the quality of posts.

It may be slower, but three consistently good posts will attract more loyal readers than one good and nine poor posts a week.

Have you ever worried over the numbers at the sake of quality and consistency?

Maybe you have been a customer of a business that got distracted from consistency – how did that affect your relationship with the business?

Posted in Business Communications | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Make your offers relevant

Published 30 August, 2012 | By TashWord

Whether it is a direct email, marketing campaign or even a cold call on the phone, it’s really important to make the offer relevant to the other person – if you want results anyway!

Guest blog approaches

If you want to do some guest blogging and have found some potential host blogs, your next step is to contact the blog owner and offer your posts.

Today, I received a pleasant email offering me some guest blog posts. She wrote clearly, openly told me which site her bio would link to, provided samples of previous posts and offered to write on a topic I suggested.

Sounds good, right?

Yes, up to the point of looking at her URL and sample post topics.

She is representing a housing construction company (the name Word Constructions does mislead at times!) so was offering posts about building topics which is obviously completely irrelevant to my blog.

Check for relevance

alphabet building blocks

Letters are Word Constructions’ building blocks

It all comes back to knowing your audience and your purpose.

If I know my audience are people running a business, then they are not coming to me for building tips but could be interested to read a business book review.

If the purpose of my blog is to share writing and communications information, there is little point writing about the best time to prune a lemon tree.

A little bit of research on the part of the would-be guest blogger would get her posts into more blogs – you don’t have to read much of my site to learn I am a writer, not a builder, and that my name is Tash. I (and therefore my readers) are not her audience so her posts are not relevant and she wasted her time emailing me.

So for every piece of business communications, know your purpose and audience so you can make the message relevant.

Have you considered the relevancy of your blog posts to the people reading them? Are they at least relevant to the audience you want to attract?

Posted in blogging, Business Communications | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

Don’t get caught with deadlinks…

Published 28 August, 2012 | By TashWord

When you’re reading something interesting and informative, it feels great. If the author has linked off to more information, you are likely to click the links to get the additional information you need – and appreciate the author for making it easy to find.

Until the link you click goes to an error page that is…

Deadlinks are not pretty – or useful

Pile of loose threads

Are your links like loose threads going nowhere?

Links that don’t work will frustrate people using your site, destroying some of the good will your carefully crafted content established.

Poor links are also noticed by search engines and don’t help your optimisation.

If you were trying to gain specific benefits through those links, using a faulty link means you miss out on those benefits (such as linking to other pages or an affiliate product).

So I think it’s a good idea to go through your site and get rid of the deadlinks.

If you do it once a year, it’s a big chore. If you do it frequently, you will be able to fix things quickly so the damage is less and the fixes won’t take long to do.

What do I need to fix? What is a deadlink?

A deadlink is really any link that doesn’t take someone to a webpage related to the linking text.

There are a few ways links won’t work so there is more than one thing to look out for when checking your site:

  1.  linking to a page that no longer exists, either because the website has gone altogether, the page has been renamed or the page removed from the site. This generally applies to links to others’ sites so you often won’t know they have changed things unless you check it
  2. making a mistake when you enter the hyperlink – sometimes it is a spelling error but also watch out for details such as forgetting an extension (.html, .pdf and so on), the wrong structural elements (such as http:/// or com,au) or missing part of a path (eg my articles have a pathway such as http://www.wordconstructions.com.au/articles/business/outsourcemistakes.html but wouldn’t work if ‘articles/’ was left out).
    A common way of getting a faulty link on your site is to use a site reference and get the number of levels wrong (eg if my above article link was entered as ../outsourcemistake.html instead of ../../outsourcemistake.html)
  3. although not technically a dead link, but linking to the wrong page is also frustrating for people and less valuable for your SEO efforts. Check URLs are correct and using a specific URL rather than a homepage is usually more useful.

How to check for poor links

If you have a two page site with three links on it, it should be pretty easy to keep your links functioning perfectly.

Start building up your site, adding more internal and external links and the idea of manually checking every link becomes a little scary. Or a lot scary!

I have found two useful tools that make this a much easier job:

  1. Broken link checker – a free online tool that lists all errors found on your site, telling you either the page to find it on or shows you where to find it in the code itself
  2. Google webmaster tools includes  a list of crawl errors. You need to click on the error listed to open a new window. Select ‘linked from’ to find out where the faulty link is so you can fix it. I found it frustrating because it also includes some faulty links from other sites which you probably have no control over. You need a Google account and to verify ownership of the sites to access these tools.

 

Posted in business info & tools | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Who are you communicating about?

Published 23 August, 2012 | By TashWord

Are your website, your emails, your flyers and your conversations about you (and your business) or about your (prospective) client and their business?

Robert Middleton has written a blog post on turning your marketing around to be more effective. That is, stop talking about your business services and features and find out about your client’s business and how you could help them.

By listening to people you become more personable and interesting to them and you get more insight to help their business succeed.

Think about it – do you care that I run a writing and communications business? Or do you care that I can save you time and worry by managing your communications project?

You want to know how you will be impacted by my services – and your clients want to know how you can help them reach their goals.

 What is your blog communicating?

smiling woman welcomes you

Are you communicating welcome and friendliness?

Have you ever analysed your blog posts for their content?

How many posts are about what you do or your products? And how many are giving information or tips that would help your client?

Are case studies or client stories about what you did? Or are they about your client’s problem and the results of solving their problem? The difference may seem subtle but one is me-centric and the other will be more effective at engaging your readers.

What is your website communicating?

Robert asked the question ‘how often do you see a website that’s “you-centered” instead?’ and it’s worth thinking about.

Do you prefer a homepage that rambles on about awards won, pride in service, years in business and pompous language, or one that addresses your issues and questions?

Have you looked at your own website and thought about its appeal to others? If you can’t see it objectively, ask others (friends, clients and professionals) what they think, what your site is communicating to them.

Even a few tweaks to your homepage could make it more appealing and therefore more effective.

One simple improvement you can make is to remove we/I and rewrite those sentences to include you instead.

Posted in Business Communications | Tagged , , , | 8 Comments

Why do small businesses start?

Published 21 August, 2012 | By TashWord

I spent last night talking with my daughter about her subject choices for school. It’s not an easy decision and there are more interesting subjects than there are spots in her timetable so each subject has to be considered for its merits.

One subject we discussed was Small Business Management (note the capitals as a subject name). The course description included ‘find out why small businesses start, what sort of businesses there are and small business marketing’.

I thought that to be an interesting choice of topics – there are so many reasons people start small businesses! Do they study a regimented ideal or will they really look at the breadth of small business types, structures and reasons for existence?

My daughter was really pleased I offered to talk to that class if the teachers wanted me to, which was nice but slightly off my topic 🙂

Why did I start my small business?

About Tash Hughes, Communications ProfessionalI can’t answer a simple question of why small businesses start – I think there are too many reasons to cover simply. But I can tell my story.

I have always been able to write (ok, since I passed Prep anyway!) but it took some time for me to realise that I do it well compared to many people and with relative ease. My love of reading and writing has certainly been a big part of my life – English was always a favourite school subject.

The idea of working for myself appealed, but I didn’t think I had anything worth selling nor the capital to start a business. So I had a variety of jobs until I was home with young children.

Thinking about what I wanted to do, work wise, so I could build skills in between parenting tasks, I liked the idea of being flexible so I was available for my children and just reporting to myself.

A friend asked for some help with her resume and covering letter – and was enthusiastic about the results and commented on how good I was at writing and seeing to the point of what needed to be written.

I helped edit the cookbook our kinder created as a fundraising project.

Then the penny dropped and I fully realised that good writing is a valued commodity that I can provide, and that running my own writing business would offer me flexibility and control.

It was also a business I could start with little  financial outlay so I dabbled, got some initial clients and then set up business properly.

Are starting reasons the ongoing reasons?

I find it intriguing whether or not the reasons someone starts a business are the same reasons that keep them going a year or five years later.

Word Constructions was started so I could be at home, working around my children, using my skills and being my own boss.

Now, nine and a half years later, it still gives me flexibility for my children, utilises my (more refined) skills and lets me be my boss (although clients have a certain amount of control, too, really!). I find that it also has developed a passion for clear communications – a passion to see more clear communications and to help other businesses communicate more effectively.

How about you – are your motivations the same as when you started a business? If not, how have they changed?

 

My passion to help others communicate  clearly fuels this blog, my Twitter objectives and my monthly newsletter.

Posted in About Word Constructions | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Top six skills in a communications consultant or manager

Published 17 August, 2012 | By TashWord

I was recently asked to name a skill that has really helped me as a communications manager/consultant and for running my business.

The conversation got me thinking about the skills and abilities that help make a good communications person, and this is a list of the top six traits I came up with.

  1. ability to write well
    quill on paper by candle

    Writing basics are a good start in communications

    It sounds obvious, but you need to be able to write documents as required or at least recognise quality and issues  for provided documents and materials.

  2. coordination
    I spend a lot of time collating and implementing feedback, communicating client ideas and needs to designers, pulling together information from various sources and so on – if you can’t coordinate multiple people and tasks, managing communications projects will be a tough call.
  3. understand various tasks and roles
    I think it’s easier to work with designers, printers, marketers, programmers and the like if you have an understanding of what they do. It gives you common ground when discussing a project and a better idea of how long is required to get something done. That doesn’t mean I think I could do their jobs (I know I couldn’t!) but at least have an understanding of their expertise helps.
  4. confidence to take feedback professionally, not personally
    Not all clients will be nice about changes to work you’ve done, and sometimes criticism is harder to take than others, so you need to be able to work with feedback rather than get offended. You also need to know when to disagree with feedback…
  5. good communication skills
    Being able to manage a communications program, maintaining website content, preparing reports and so on are the duties of a comms person BUT they must also be able to communicate with clients and suppliers to get the job done. Clear communication saves making errors and builds goodwill which you sometimes need to call on for urgent or difficult jobs
  6. be versatile and creative
    Different clients like to work in different ways, projects require various amounts of work and different tasks, some projects will develop in unexpected ways – there are many times that flexibility and creative problem solving come in handy.

    connecting jiqsaw pieces

    Finding how things fit together is a valuable skill

 

What other traits would you look for in a communications person to work with?

Have you come across a successful comms manager who doesn’t have all these skills and abilities?

Posted in Business Communications | Tagged , , , | 17 Comments

Are you part of the SMB trends for online activity?

Published 15 August, 2012 | By TashWord

Before reading the statistics below, think about your online activity as a small business.

Are you using online activities more or less than last financial year?

Have your online activities changed in the last year? For instance, are you using Twitter more and Facebook less?

Do you use social media more or less than your competitors?

How important is your website to your business and gaining new clients?

All good questions that can help you assess your time and marketing efforts, and make decisions about budgets and software needs.

So what are other SMBs doing online?

This post was inspired by two different sets of data – mainly because they are so different.

According to MYOB’s July 2012 Business Monitor Survey, online transactions, email marketing and social media use have all dropped during the last quarter.

On the other hand, the Sensis eBusiness Report (August 2012) shows an increase in social media and website use by SMBs over the year.

Interesting isn’t it?

Were the surveys so different or has the last quarter thrown the overall pattern for the year?

Social media use

From the Sensis report, I can tell you that…

41% of medium businesses use social media

27% of small businesses use social media

68% of SMBs in cultural, recreational and personal services sectors use social media

21% of SMBs monitor and update their social media presence daily, with 39% doing it at least weekly

For those on social media, the breakdown is:

usage trend graph for social media

Social media usage move up and down

  • 86% Facebook
  • 32% Twitter
  • 25% LinkedIn
  • 12% blog
  • 5% YouTube
  • 4% Google +
  • 2% MySpace
  • 1% Pinterest

Do you spend most of your social media time in Facebook or Twitter? I know I do!

The MYOB report showed that…

5% of SMBs used Twitter compared to 6% in March quarter

15% of SMBs connected via Facebook, YouTube or Google + – it was 18% in March

19% Victorian SMBs (the biggest social media state apparently!) used social media compared to 24% in March

 Websites and online transactions

Like MYOB’s spokesperson, I am glad to see an increase in the number of SMBs with a website – 38% now have a site compared to only 36% in March (interestingly it was 40% when I posted about this in April 2009).

Yet only 24% of SMBs use search engine optimisation to promote their business (it was 31% in March). How much time and effort do you put into SEO and keeping your website fresh and valuable?

72% of SMBs with a website said the website improved the business’ effectiveness – a 4% increase for the last year.

Look at these drops found by MYOB:

  • accepting clients’ payments online dropped from 25% to 19%
  • running email marketing campaigns dropped 26% to 24%
  • buying products/services online dropped 37% to 24%

What impact do such drops have on your business?

With the trends – or not?

So is your business like the majority or minority of SMBs in Australia?

Can you make use of this data to make improvements to your business and your marketing strategy?

Just to confirm, I am on social media…

Tash & Word Constructions on Twitter          Word Constructions on LinkedIn             Tash & Word Constructions on Facebook

Posted in business info & tools, social media | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Poor communications a laughing matter?

Published 10 August, 2012 | By TashWord

Last night, I went to the launch of the Whitehorse Business Week at Headland and was entertained by guest speaker Russell Gilbert.

Although I have seen Russell many times on TV shows and the like, I hadn’t seen a full routine from him before. I really enjoyed it – he was funny and had us all laughing, but also showed he can do magic and sing.

Two of his jokes in particular were based on communications so I thought I’d share them today.

Multiple meanings

wet floor warning signHave you seen one of those yellow signs warning of ‘wet floor’?

Russell apparently cannot see one of those signs without looking for a bucket of water (ok, I’m using a more appropriate source of liquid!) so he can wet the floor.

In this case, the signs are not incorrect but Russell spotted that ‘wet’ can be an adjective (as intended on these signs) or a verb (as the instruction Russell assumed).

For any important message, it is worth checking for alternative versions of a word to be sure you aren’t saying something you really don’t want to say!

Clarity through order

bottle of cleaning liquidRussell also spoke about cleaning products, which may not seem very funny!

Many cleaning products include the sentence ‘cleans and kills germs’ but Russell asked why would you bother cleaning the germs before killing them?

Do the germs say ‘I’m dying but I’ve never looked so clean, it’s great!’?

Ok, we all know they mean ‘cleans a surface and kills germs on that surface’. And it’s good they’ve gone for a shorter version to give their message clarity.

They could make their message much clearer simply by changing the order of that sentence – ‘kills germs and cleans’ is much clearer and doesn’t give comedians an opportunity to pick on it :).

However, kill germs and cleans sounds wrong because we are so used to the other order – would you think that’s a negative or a positive for changing the order if you were producing a new cleaning label?

Do marketers want the emphasis on cleaning or killing germs? Would that be a factor in which order those words are placed?

Would your label aim for clarity or marketing emphasis or customer familiarity?

 

* images courtesy of 123rf and Tash Hughes 

Posted in bad writing examples, Business Communications | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Building an effective business blog

Published 8 August, 2012 | By TashWord

Whether it’s new or established, if you have a blog to help promote your business, you probably want it to be effective, right?

An effective business blog doesn’t necessarily mean it sells anything directly – in fact, trying to sell in every post is likely to turn people away and be highly ineffective.

So, what is an effective business blog?

Like so many things, there is no single answer. It varies between businesses.

elements of an effective blog

Some tools for building an effective blog

However, I think the following options cover most (if not all) objectives of business owners when they establish a blog:

  1. SEO value – a blog is an easy way to add fresh content with keywords to get higher rankings with search engines
  2. showcase expertise – giving information, lessons and latest industry news builds your credibility
  3. build relationships – having a community is important for many businesses. Relationships through blogs build trust, show the business personality and let you learn from your audience
  4. communicate a message – this is probably more for non-profit groups that want to educate people about a topic and a blog full of stories and information can be a great tool in that process

Of course your specific definition may include more than one of these options in more or less detail.

To know if your blog is effective, you need to know the purpose of your blog and have some sort of measurement in place to gauge how well you are meeting that purpose.

For example, if your blog is aimed at getting more website traffic, posting once a month won’t be effective but you can measure your success by comparing website stats each month. Testing posting three times a week then five times a week will show you what is more effective at gathering more traffic and subscribers.

Making your blog more effective

I have just read Chris Horton’s post on steps to generate leads online with your business blog. In fact, that’s what inspired this post!

Chris goes through three steps which  go towards the purpose of your business, marketing and blog – namely know your (target) audience well, address your audience’s needs and how to offer your audience value.

His last step is about clear communication – make your blog posts simple, concise and relevant. Heard that before? Well, yes, that is where my blogging tips usually come in 🙂

I think it is important to note Chris gives three tips on developing a purpose and strategy for your blog THEN a tip on how to make each post more effective.

So have you defined what effective means for your blog?

Do you know who your target reader is?

How often do you measure your blog against your effectiveness definition?

Improving your blog’s effectiveness

Maybe your blog is not as effective as you’d like.

Yet you want it effective tomorrow, not in the six months it may take you  to work through everything Chris suggested. And, if you’re like many of other bloggers, you don’t want to shock your current readers by massive changes.

I think this is another situation where step by step is the solution.

Start defining your target audience and their needs in more detail (or some detail as the case may be!)

Each time you discover something that is not ideal in your blog, change that.

Maybe you decide your ideal audience are parents of young children but you have a blog category on teenage activities. That category doesn’t help your audience so stop writing posts in there as a simple step in making your blog more effective.

Step by step will take a while but is easier to face and implement than doing it all in one go.

I’m going to go out on a limb now – for you personally, what one thing would you like changed on my blog to better suit your needs? Let me know as a comment below.

No promises I’ll change it but I will consider all feedback in light of my blog objectives.

Posted in blogging, Business Communications | Tagged , , | 8 Comments
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