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.
Make your content personal
Does your content feel sterile? You want something more conversational and more engaging. At the same time, you’re wary of sounding forced or hyped-up, like so much marketing can. There are two words that will transform text of corporate beige into readable, relatable content. Those words are ‘you’ and ‘we.’
How we wrote the Canberra Story
When you love where you’re from, you want other people to love it too. That could be your employer, your family, your home-town.
Mastering levels of storytelling
How can organisations actually get value from storytelling — at all levels of what they do?
Introducing pair writing
Out of all the tools in my training kit, pair writing is my favourite. It is such a radically simple, but deeply powerful way of unblocking writing.
My five favourite books on the art of persuasion
If you’re up for slipping in some professional development while reclining pool-side, here are my five favourite books on the art of persuasion.
What’s a useful way to spend that last bit of comms and digital budget?
It’s such a strange time of year for comms and digital people. There’s money, but not for much longer, and the budget you’ll have next financial year is still up in the air. How do you get value for what you have, and maybe even set your team’s work for the year ahead?
Information architecture and content strategy: how are they different and how do they work together?
We often talk about content strategy and information architecture (IA) in the same breath. If you’re tackling a large content project, you’ll need both to take you from a broad vision to a functional website or digital experience. Something you can actually build and maintain.
What to look for in a writing trainer
You’re interested in lifting your team’s writing capability, and you’ve decided to bring in a trainer. But deciding who to bring in isn’t always easy – you might have narrowed it down to two or three providers who all have good credentials and a list of satisfied clients.
Writing training: what’s the best approach?
You want to lift your team’s writing skills – but how? Most people will go straight for a standalone training session. I run writing training sessions, and I love doing them. They can often work – but they’re not the only model. Let’s dive into how to decide, and what other options to bring in.
Improving your intranet: what’s the return on investment?
You know that a stronger intranet will be better for your organisation – but how do you quantify that? When you’re creating a business case, numbers help.