Blog
Plain language writing tips
Plain language is all about reaching more of your customers or clients by creating content your user understands quickly, easily, and completely.
How you can beat writers block every time
You know the feeling: you stare at a blank page and it just stares back at you. You’re not sure where to start writing, and when you do, every word you put down feels wrong.
So how can you get past writers block?
Cut to the chase (How to be brief part 1)
How do you tell if your writing hits that sweet spot between giving enough information, and too much? No one likes being overloaded with information, or needing to wade through a swamp’s worth of detail. It’s easy to spot ‘too much information’ in other people’s content.
Make every character count: (How to be brief, Part 2)
Sometimes, your writing has to fit through the eye of a needle. On Twitter, you’ve got 140 characters to work with. In mobile apps, even fewer.
How to write with confidence (it’s easier than you think)
Most people would tell you that Adrian can’t write, at least not by the usual definition. When he sits down to type, P’s are jumbled up with b’s. Vowels are skipped altogether. It’s been like this since Adrian was a kid. One teacher told him, “You’re no good at history. You can’t even write.”
Which books made the biggest difference and why
Last year, I raced through business books like a teenager out to set the world record in a burger-eating contest.
Why clear writing works better for all readers
Conventional wisdom is that clear writing only matters when you’re writing for the general public, or people with less formal education. Health awareness campaigns for teenagers. Supermarket catalogues. Warning signs at the edges of cliffs.
How to sharpen your content: write like an Egyptian
When you write for business, you write for short attention spans. You can’t expect a client to trudge through pages of preamble before they arrive, exhausted and mud-spattered at the thing you want to tell them.
What’s the real reason to hire a content agency?
I’d seen all the arguments for hiring a content agency, but nothing compelling – until recently.
Costing content projects: Part 2 – Models
Now that we’ve gone over the factors that inform the cost of content projects, let’s look at costing models.
Costing content projects: Part 1 – factors
How do you cost out content? On the surface, this seems like such a simple question. Surely, you just look at the number of pages, articles or words and then it’s done?
What’s the right amount of information for your site?
The information overload question often comes up when I run web writing workshops. We’ve all seen sites where the homepage is three miles long. But the other extreme won’t work either. Your website must have more than a logo and a phone number.
Top ten tips on writing for the web
The best web content is like an ambassador for your business. It carries your messages out into the community, builds your reputation and wins over your ideal customers. Here are some of the tools and techniques I use.