So you're a writer? Here's a pencil. Write.
KeyNotes - THE Moving Finger Newsletter
About writing and editing for business, and words in general
February 2008
In this issue:
Make the Most of Your Content - Recycle!
Most businesses have stories to tell that will help them sell more of what they do, if only they could get around to putting them down on paper.
Trade media, visitors to your website – all are hungry for worthwhile information your company could provide.
Trouble is when management time, staff or budget is limited, there are too many excuses to justify why nothing ever gets done on a regular basis, if at all.
The answer is to recycle your content again and again to make the most of your time and money, and capitalise on opportunities to demonstrate your business's expertise and value to potential customers.
Take case studies. These are great additions for your website, but don’t stop there. Add them to your press kit, print them off as PDF hand-outs to leave with customers or use them as a basis to target selected prospects who’ll be interested in what you did. You can re-shape the key information as a press release. If you publish a newsletter, make sure you feature the results, or write a tantalising summary to direct your readers to your website for the full story.
What about that white paper you struggled with? Use it as an exclusive download from a lead generating email, or offer it as an article for your key trade journal, or perhaps as the basis of an interview. Don’t forget to re-use any articles on your website where they will add content for better search engine friendliness.
Start thinking about your company in terms of the solutions it provides and you’ll never be short of material. And if you take a wider view of where you can use that material, finding the time and resources to get it written shouldn’t be a problem either.
Don't OD on Capital Letters
There's a tendency currently to litter written copy with capital letters in the mistaken belief that they lend words greater importance.
In fact, the opposite is true.
Quite apart from being grammatically incorrect, the mis-use of capitals actually weakens the message by slowing down reading. In terms of email, their overuse is said to be top of the bad habits list, too.
According to Grammar and Punctuation – all you’ll ever need to know ‘seeing lots of capitals in a piece of writing can…make (readers) think they’ve missed a full stop and started a new sentence without realising it.’
Capital letters should be used for:
- proper nouns (the names of people and places, the titles of books)
- to start sentences or quotations.
