Reading: “Word Hero”

During my Saturday haunting of the book shelves at Barnes & Noble, I stumbled by accident on this gem: Word Hero, by Jay Heinrichs: “A fiendishly clever guide to crafting the lines that get laughs, go viral, and live forever.” Had I looked for it in the business or marketing section I’d never have found […]

Good Writing Friday (in homage to words well woven together)

From The Food at Our Feet, by Jane Kramer, in the New Yorker:   I spent the summer foraging, like an early hominid with clothes. It didn’t matter that the first thing I learned about that daunting pastime of hunter-gatherers and visionary chefs was that nature’s bounty is a thorny gift….I had foraged as a […]

Lo-Fi Content Strategy and Whiteboard

Content strategy documents and artifacts are not automatically accessible for all that may need to actually use them. Take a “simple” copydeck for instance– one of the lowest of the low strategy documents. This is where the rubber meets the road. End users of this document could be developers, programmers, and content management specialists. But […]

Good Writing Friday: Barry Hannah

Barry Hannah is a short story genius. From the story, “Two Gone Over”: I was in North Dakota around the SAC base in March. The wind blew hard across the beet fields and the tarmac, wherever it was. I had done my duty in Grand Forks and we talked in a bar. She and her […]

Memorable Call to Action

Sometimes the best way to grab users is to put a quick, catchy, memorable call to action, slogan, or other message in front of them: “Before you break a bone, put this in your phone.”

Wasting Away in Copy-ritaville

I’m not the smartest knife in the drawer because I’m a bit like the shoemaker– her kids go barefoot while everyone in town is sporting the best shoe-wear. That analogy could be applied to my own personal web copy and content. I own a dozen or so domains, every last one of which I have […]

A web content inventory can pay for itself a few times over

A website content inventory enables careful assessment of a website as it exists at any point in time. A content inventory can be used during the planning phases of a web project or at any point in time a clear accounting of content, including links, calls to action, pages, tone and voice, etc. is needed. […]

Shock and Awe Sales Copy

“Should We Also Flood the Sistine Chapel So Tourists Can Get Closer To the Ceiling?” Info Marketing Blog‘s most recent classic advertisement is a brilliant example of shock and awe. The ad has nothing to do with the Sistine Chapel…