“Let’s start a blog,” exclaimed my partner Anna one day last year. “Great idea,” I said. “But I already do all the bookkeeping for the business, so the blog will be your baby, OK?” “Word,” replied Anna, in a weak attempt to bring some urban grit to her vocabulary. A few months later, Anna learned […]
In a perfect world, you’d never have to edit your own work, but well, you know the drill. The world’s not perfect, life’s not fair, yada yada. So spend a little time now or a lot of time later trying to convince your boss to let you keep your job as a “pubic relations director.” […]
Wait! This isn’t Dan! It’s just Dan sharing an old newsletter article by my out-on-maternity-leave partner Anna! Enjoy … We all know the world is filled with people who make snap judgments about other people based on very little evidence. And we all know this because we all make snap judgments. Want to avoid giving […]
One of the random gems I’ve stumbled across in recent years is RainToday.com. It’s an offering of Wellesley Hills Group, a “management consulting, marketing, and lead generation firm focused on helping professional services firms grow.” (btw, The Hired Pens has no relationship with Wellesley Hills Group, so I have no ulterior motive here.) Anyway, I […]
One of the great things about our work at The Hired Pens is the variety of projects. On any given week, I might be working on a website, brochure, newsletter and feature article. One type of work that rarely enters the mix is writing for catalogs. That’s Anna’s bag. She’s had dozens of catalog assignments […]
Back when Anna and I were just a couple of crazy kids with a dream, we had an interesting debate. It concerned our fledgling website – and how we wanted to present ourselves to the online world. The year was 2001, and we didn’t have the cash to hire a Web designer. We were going […]
Part of our job as copywriters is to advise our clients on what not to do. Don’t make the subject line for that email so long. Don’t make users hit the Scroll Down button eight times to reach the bottom of that Web page. And one of my personal favorites: Don’t include anonymous testimonials in […]
Anyone who writes for a living has to be conscious of readability. Or at least anyone who writes for marketing and/or advertising purposes. Since becoming a professional writer, I’ve taken pride in keeping things readable. Reining in long sentences and paragraphs. Avoiding complex words. Adopting a friendly, conversational tone. After so many years of writing, […]
Here’s what it takes to keep people coming back. A few weeks ago, I was at a conference on new media and heard this quote: “Content is the new customer service.” At which point I jumped up on my chair and shouted, “YES!” You know, since we provide content. Then I was like, “Wait, what […]
