Archive for category Popular Culture

Use, Don’t Abuse, Twitter

Apr 16

Posted by Susan Monroe in Communication, Marketing communications, Popular Culture, Social media | No Comments

Twitter just flashes by, doesn’t it? For an introvert, who really likes to take a few minutes to chew on an idea, that can be a touch disconcerting. Still, folks love it, and businesses increasingly see it as a viable tool.

So, in the spirit of disseminating knowledge, I’m posting hints from Ilana Bercovitz on Twitter blunders small businesses make (). She’s come up with 10. I’m going for the five that seem most important to me, though they’re all great.

Shameless self-promotion ‒ What?!! That’s an article of faith in American society. Still, hold back a bit.

Retweeting yourself ‒ No, it’s not efficient. It’s lazy. If you want to tweet about the same content, find another way to say it.

Using multiple hashtags in a tweet ‒ They make your tweet annoyingly unreadable.

Tweets that are too long ‒ Huh? Tweets are short by definition. But leave enough characters to allow people to add commentary, @mentions, etc. when retweeting you.

Irregularity ‒ Tweet every day.

Ms. Bercovitz is not a big fan of robo-tweeting and recommends moderation—believing that followers want to see the real person behind the tweets. I get that, but it’s my way of dealing with a busy schedule and still trying to participate. I’m a big fan of Hootsuite, which makes it possible to queue up tweets promoting my blog and other interesting content and spread them out over a few days. And, the Ragan feed has some great stuff about writing, editing, and PR. So, I plan to continue. There’s enough “human” stuff from me to balance out.

What you do you think?

Tags: marketing communications, Popular Culture, SF Bay Area Copywriting and editing, Social Media

Dumb but Funny User Stories

Apr 9

Posted by Susan Monroe in Communication, Copywriting, Popular Culture | No Comments

Periodically, my wonderful colleague Kay Paumier will post something funny on her blog. One of her most recent posts was entitled “Disorder in the Court” and featured hilarious interchanges between lawyers, witnesses, and the like. (). If your day is not terrific, they are guaranteed to cheer you up.

In the same spirit, I propose that you check out “Clueless users: 10 more tales of the absurd” by Brien Posey. This piece is absolutely worth reading in its entirety. Each petite vignette is a gem, but I’m particularly fond of this one:

7: Bad power strip

I once got a call from a user who said that he thought that either a circuit breaker had been tripped or his power strip had gone bad because neither his computer nor his monitor were receiving any power. This guy was normally pretty sharp, so I assumed that his diagnosis was probably correct.

When I showed up with a new power strip, I began unplugging everything from the old power strip only to discover that the power strip was plugged into itself rather than being plugged into an electrical outlet.

More Madness

Mr. Posey has also written “10 stupid user stories: The madness persists.” Full of guaranteed howlers.

Enjoy.

Tags: copywriting, editing, marketing communications, SF Bay Area Copywriting and editing, Susan Monroe, Writing

The Danger of Becoming a Household Name

Apr 2

Posted by Susan Monroe in Branding and messaging, Marketing communications, Popular Culture | No Comments

A few months back, I read a great article by brand identity expert Nora D. Richardson. Her thesis was that some brand names are victims of their own success. They become so well known that people use them to describe a product class. Think Aspirin, Xerox, Kleenex, pantyhose, and even Google. (Google is arguable, Ms. Richardson notes, because large numbers of searchers go to Google and nowhere else. Still, Google has publicly discouraged its generic use.)

These brand names are freely and generically used—often by their owners, who should know better. They are verbified and sometimes associated with negatives. Remember political commentators referring to Ronald Reagan as the “Teflon” president, because bad stuff just didn’t seem to stick to him?

Avoiding Genericide

You should avoid genericide like the plague. I used to work in sales for Dictaphone—now a division of Nuance Communications, and that company was famous for taking brand misusers to court in a heartbeat. And I once knew a woman who ran Casini’s, a specialty apparel shop in D.C. Not surprisingly, she received a classic cease-and-desist letter from designer Oleg Cassini’s attorneys, who claimed that she was diluting and therefore damaging his brand.

So, how do you prevent genericide? In my opinion, Ms. Richardson’s two most important tips are 1) never use your brand name generically and 2) follow your brand name with a description of it what it is or does. One thing is for sure, though, you need to be consistent and diligent guarding your brand name use or the courts won’t rule in your favor.

Have you ever worked for a company that had problems protecting its brand? What was its response? And, what examples of brand genericide can you come up with?

Tags: Branding and messaging, copywriting, SF Bay Area Copywriting and editing, Susan Monroe, Writing

Fun with Pronunciation

Feb 26

Posted by Susan Monroe in Copywriting, Popular Culture, Words, Writing | 1 Comment

If you’re a non-rhothic speaker, then “better” and “Beretta” rhyme.

Say what?

Yup. And a hearty thanks to Geoffrey K. Pullum, a contributor to Language Log for his amusing observations about linguistics and the recently released “Skyfall,” starring cinema’s sexiest man (or so say the loyal readers of SF Chron movie critic, Mick LaSalle.)

According to Mr. Pullum, a distinctly un-stuffy academic, Skyfall is rich in linguistic “stuff” (his term). One notable example the rhyming of “better” and “Beretta,” which occurs while Mr. Craig is cavorting in the shower with a gorgeous Eurasian woman. He murmurs that he likes her better without her Beretta, “and the rhyme, you see, only works as “in a non-rhotic dialect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-rhotic) such as standard Southern British.”

There you have it. I love hearing people speak British English in all its lovely permutations—from annoying upper crust to the squad room accents of Inspector Jane Tennison’s crew to Jimmy Cliff in “The Harder They Come.”

Still can figure out where they come up with “alu-minium,” though.

Tags: SF Bay Area Copywriting and editing, Susan Monroe, Words, Writing

Fun with Words and Concepts

Feb 19

Posted by Susan Monroe in Popular Culture, Words, Writing | No Comments

This light and fluffy post comes to you courtesy of a colleague who shares my love of words and ideas and has inspired at least one previous post.

Enjoy these. Don’t they conjure up wonderful images?

O x y m o r o n s
1. Is it good if a vacuum really sucks?

2. Why is the third hand on a watch called the second hand?

3. If a word is misspelled in the dictionary, how would we ever know?

4. If Webster wrote the first dictionary, where did he find the words?

5. Why do we say something is out of whack? What is a whack?

6. Why does “slow down” and “slow up” mean the same thing?

7. Why does “fat chance” and “slim chance” mean the same thing?

8. Why do “tug” boats push their barges?

9. Why do we sing “Take me out to the ball game” when we are already there?

10. Why are they called “stands” when they are made for sitting?

11. Why is it called “after dark” when it really is “after light”?

12. Doesn’t “expecting the unexpected” make the unexpected expected?

13. Why are a “wise man” and a “wise guy” opposites?

14. Why do “overlook” and “oversee” mean opposite things?

15. Why is “phonics” not spelled the way it sounds?

16. If work is so terrific, why do they have to pay you to do it?

17. If all the world is a stage, where is the audience sitting?

18. If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?

19. If you are cross-eyed and have dyslexia, can you read all right?

20. Why is bra singular and panties plural?

21. Why do you press harder on the buttons of a remote control when you know the batteries are dead?

22. Why do we put suits in garment bags and garments in a suitcase?

23. How come abbreviated is such a long word?

24. Why do we wash bath towels? Aren’t we clean when we use them?

25. Why doesn’t glue stick to the inside of the bottle?

26. Why do they call it a TV set when you only have one?

27. Christmas: What other time of the year do you sit in front of a dead tree and eat candy out of your socks?

28. Why do we drive on a parkway and park on a driveway?

Business Relationship Building

Jan 30

Posted by Susan Monroe in Communication, Popular Culture, Sales and marketing | No Comments

Today’s post owes a lot to two smart women, Elizabeth Marshall, a marketing and relationship strategist, and Jill Konrath, a sales guru.

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I walk into a business event with a heightened level of anxiety. Not just because I’m a classic introvert, but also because I’m uncertain about how to go about the process of building business relationships. These days, of course, that anxiety—which I suspect others feel as well—extends to the social media.

How to build and sustain relationships, particularly when you don’t see someone every day? How to ask for help at the right time and in the right way? How not to be annoyingly and inappropriately pushy?

If I understood what these wonderful women are saying, you do best at building relationships, whether you’re a stay-at-home mom, a salesperson, or a solopreneur if you keep three things in mind.

The Magic Three

First, make thoughtful choices. Whether you choose to interact online or up close and personal, do some homework. Figure out which organizations and individuals are worthy of your attention and support. Are they serving your target market? Do you like what they’re doing and how they’re doing it?

Second, don’t wait for others to come to you. Comment on thought leaders’ blog posts. Join an organization and volunteer. (Board positions are a great way to do that.) As a corollary, and both women emphasize this, add real value in the form of good ideas, insights, and whole-hearted participation.

Third, don’t ask for something until you’ve built a real relationship. Seems simple enough, but in their desire to keep things moving forward, many people forget this. It helps to be organized. Make a list of the people you’d like to engage and work on connecting with them. Write a note of congratulations if they have a new job or have successfully pulled off a challenging project, for example. Send them the link to an article that might interest them. Again, focus on adding value.

These are all good ideas, but the first one really resonates with me. And that’s about making choices. None of us has all the time we’d like, so it makes sense to put your effort and energy where it makes the most sense and resist the temptation to try to do everything.

Tags: sales and marketing, SF Bay Area Copywriting and editing, Susan Monroe, Words, Writing

Loving the Exclamation Point!

Dec 26

Posted by Susan Monroe in Copywriting, Popular Culture, Words, Writing | No Comments

There’s an article in The New York Times you must read if you’re at all interested in good writing. Not just because it’s written well but because it reveals an interesting trend in punctuation.

Ben Yagoda, a professor of English at the University of Delaware, notes that “online writing begets exclamation points. A lot of exclamation points!” This punctuational style is easy to mock, but in his view, it serves a purpose. Ending a sentence with an exclamation point adds some pizzazz to online writing. Adding another and another can raise one’s voice above a whisper.

Mr. Yagoda seems particularly interested by an exclamation point-question mark combination (QEC), which he believes is encouraged by the Internet. A symbol for it, known as the Interrobang, enjoyed brief popularity in the 1960s but never really caught on. Now, however, the combination—either exclamation point or question mark first—seems to have found a happy home online and, “to good effect, in books and essays.”

If you love that comic-book style of expression, the QEC may be for you. When I think about using exclamation points, though, I remember a former boss. He regarded them with a jaundiced eye, considering them to be a sign of weak writing. I once presented him with a piece that contained one and never that did again.

Tags: marketing communications, Popular Culture, SF Bay Area Copywriting and editing, Words, Writing

Creating a Good-Looking Resume

Dec 4

Posted by Susan Monroe in Popular Culture, Writing | No Comments

As I mentioned in my previous post, December is a great time of year to get going on a job search, and that generally means polishing up your resume.

This post gives full credit to Toni Bowers of TechRepublic, who, back in May of this year, answered the question, “What is the best font to use in a resume?”

Ms. Bowers addresses her remarks to an audience of techies—who apparently can be counted upon to do some strange things with their resumes—but her advice works for all of us:

Try something other than Times New Roman ‒ It’s a perfectly acceptable font, but “everyone” uses it. Choose something else to help your resume stand out a bit more.

Do not use Courier ‒ Hard to believe that anyone does, but if you were considering it, forget it. It looks odd and geeky, even for a programmer.

Do not use anything too exotic ‒ Bear in mind that your resume may be scanned, so don’t use a cursive font or anything truly unusual. Arial and Helvetica are perennial favorites. And Calibri is nice and clean.

Use ragged right margins ‒ Strictly speaking, we’re talking about font here, but font and spacing work together to create a readable piece of work. Right-justified text contains disconcerting holes and is just plain hard to read.

One last thing. After you’re tired of looking at your resume, ask a friend or peer you trust to take a look at it and make their most honest comments. You may not be overjoyed with what you hear, but you will be glad you asked.

Tags: copywriting, editing, SF Bay Area Copywriting and editing, Words, Writing

Fixing those Fatal Resume Flaws

Nov 27

Posted by Susan Monroe in Communication, Popular Culture, Writing | No Comments

It’s getting to be the end of the year in an improving economy, so I bet a lot of us, experienced employees and newbies to the job market are getting prepared to pound the pavements.

Resumes—and cover letters, as you will read—are still a necessity, but most of us, I am bold to say, don’t do that great a job with them. And that includes folks who graduated from party school Chico State (“Six of the four best years of my life”), Wharton, or Virgina Tech (my personal fave).

Robin Ryan, a career counselor and the author of Winning Resumes and Winning Cover Letters has catalogued some of the resume errors that make her wince in an article entitled “Resume Mistakes Can Cost you the Job.” (By the way, I heartily recommend Net-Temps, the site where this article was posted. Great advice there for both the mighty and the low.)

Here’s some food for thought. Pay attention, because the average resume get about 15 seconds of attention:

Lying ‒ a bad idea and one way to get your butt out the door faster than you’d want. You generally get caught and, as Ms. Ryan points out, “inflating your qualifications into fabrications is NOT the same as using good self-marketing…”

A dearth of accomplishments ‒ Some of us may not think we’ve done that much, but we have done more than we give ourselves credit for. Think. Scrape the corners of your career for “specific facts noting demonstrated skills and past accomplishments achieved.” Don’t give up until you’ve come up with a couple. If you’re having a problem, ask a friend or your mom.

Ad infinitum nauseum ‒ It’s disgusting, I know. You’re a Stanford MBA. You’re a multi-talented serial entrepreneur, but that doesn’t mean folks want to read five pages of detail about your wonderfulness. As one HR director put it, “More is not better.” Keep it to one page.

Proofread ‒ Yep. It’s a humble skill, and as copywriter and editor, I can tell you that it’s indispensable. Ms. Ryan notes that “Employers felt typographic errors reflect the poor quality of work they can expect from you.” Oh, skip the micro-type, too.

Cover letter ‒ A necessary pain in the butt. Ms. Ryan notes that employers surveyed responded that “cover letter are very influential and can snag an interview all by themselves.” Broadcast resumes, without cover letters—and I‘ve been guilty of this myself—go nowhere.

This is a great time to get your act together for the upcoming year. Please feel free to let me know about your tips and hints.

Tags: Branding and messaging, sales and marketing, SF Bay Area Copywriting and editing, Susan Monroe

Recharging Your Entrepreneurial Batteries

Nov 13

Posted by Susan Monroe in Popular Culture, Words, Writing | No Comments

This is probably a good time of year to think recharging yourself. The holiday season has essentially been with us since the first Christmas trees started to appear at Home Depot—in August, grrr. Perhaps you’re feeling tired. The year is winding down, or so it may seem. And now is the ideal time to start preparing for next year.

What? Next year? Well, yes. Even if you don’t run a business, a few tips for recharging your entrepreneurial batteries are not amiss. Trust me, as an accidental entrepreneur, I wonder at my enthusiasm for this stuff, but I’ve finally learned that it’s better to take action than not.

Herewith, a few ideas borrowed liberally from Rene Shimada Siegel of High Tech Connect. Rene has forever endeared herself to me by confessing that she periodically needs to think about what to do when her “pilot light goes out.”

Sweat ‒ As in work up an honest sweat by moving your body. My favorite place is the track at San Mateo High School, home of the legendary Bearcats. I walk as fast as I can for at least four outer loops and then trot home. The nicest part of the experience is that I am free to think about whatever without having to worry about tripping over curbs (a specialty) or watching out for traffic. And it’s fun to see football and soccer practice.

Whine ‒ No, not all the time and only to trusted advisors or peers. I take comfort in the fact that apparently former presidents Clinton and George H.W. Bush exchanged thoughts, probably about those f****rs in Congress who made their jobs so much more difficult.

Play ‒ No, not all the time, but enough. Do something that “refills your bucket.” Not someone else’s. I still reflect on a conversation with a fellow introvert who shared how much she had squirmed during a vacation cruise—where she was literally surrounded by people from the moment she woke up until beddie-bye time. Her (wildly extroverted) husband was ecstatic at the stimulation; she was ready to jump into the Mediterranean.

Think ‒ After noting that we all spend too much time on “unnecessary or even misguided activity,” Rene says, “Give yourself some unstructured time to think about what’s frustrating you and what’s holding back your business. And take notes.”

What do you do to recharge your batteries?