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August 24, 2006 | Dean Froslie: Turn Technobabble Into Compelling Copy

Over at MarketingProfs, Jonathan Krenz has several writing tips for those of us who must occasionally turn technology talk into understandable prose.

July 14, 2006 | Dean Froslie: Writing Magnetic Headlines

If you’re a writer (or even if you aren’t), head over to Copyblogger for a series on writing magnetic headlines.

The opening installment makes a compelling case for why you should write headlines first. The rationale? Your headline articulates your promise to the reader, and writing it first ensures you fulfill that promise in your body copy. Writing the headline later often leads to a marginal promise.

June 29, 2006 | Dean Froslie: Character Blogs Multiply – With New Wrinkles

The value of character blogs – which are usually authored by a fictitious character, brand or toy – is an ongoing debate among marketing and communications professionals. But there’s little doubt they are rapidly growing in quantity and creativity.

As character blogs evolve, they use a variety of new approaches and tactics – including a few examples that present character blogs next to posts from real people. Consider several television blogs highlighted by Neal Justin in the Star Tribune.

June 09, 2006 | Greg Ness: Congratulations! You’re A Published Author

I teach a communications class every spring semester at a local college. This January, I polled my class and asked the question, “How many of you are published authors?” No one raised a hand. I told them that within a day they would not only be authors, but also publishers. Then I explained how they would start a blog that next day. Within 24 hours, they all had their first post on their first blog. They were now publishers and published authors. Each student’s words were readable by anyone on the Internet. Once again, the Web has taken something that was almost impossible (getting published) for someone (an author) and made it incredibly easy.

May 24, 2006 | Dean Froslie: Aligning Web 2.0 With Sales and Marketing

Depending on the perspective and context, the term “Web 2.0” references a revolutionary business progression, the latest cool application, social media, rich media, new media, or any combination of the above.

Seeking to move beyond the buzzwords, MarketingProfs has another good what-does-it-mean-for-me article; this time, the focus is Web 2.0 and its impact on marketers. Stephanie Diamond, a former AOL marketing director, outlines five focus areas.

May 18, 2006 | Dean Froslie: You May Be a Professional Writer

Are you a professional writer?

Before you answer, consider another question: What percentage of your day is spent writing?

If it’s more than 50%, says writing consultant Stephen Wilbers, you’re definitely a professional writer.

May 04, 2006 | Greg Ness: Blurring The Lines (Part 1): Writer and Reader

Before the Internet, it was easy to distinguish between the writer and the reader. Journalists gathered information and wrote news stories; readers absorbed what was relevant and/or interesting.

Writers wrote articles or feature stories; readers leafed through the daily, weekly or monthly titles and decided if the feature was worth their attention.

Copywriters wrote ads; readers (viewers, listeners) were exposed to them.

Authors wrote books; publishers predetermined readership by which few books would get printed—and fewer yet—which ones would be publicized and promoted.

Public Relations strategists wrote their messages and worked their channels. If the relationship with an editor and the content was right, a PR story with the intended message might appear to the targeted readers.

Prior to the Web, the readers had no choice about the part they played because there were people, organizations, big business and multi-million dollar printing presses standing in their way. No more.

April 21, 2006 | Phil Leitch: John Gruber Makes Daring Fireball a Full-Time Affair

John Gruber’s Daring Fireball is one of my favorite blogs, in fact, it probably is. I can’t think of another that I would rather take with me to a desert island. I have religiously read Daring Fireball since discovering it a little over a year ago. He almost exclusively writes about the world of Macintosh, but does manage to sneak in other nerdish topics from time to time. But it is his take on happenings surrounding Apple and the Mac that leave me eagerly anticipating his next post. The problem has been the posts were sparse, maybe two in a week if you were lucky. On Thursday, he announced that he had quit his job at Joyent (they make a pretty nice product btw) and was going to work full time on Daring Fireball. This is great news for the Mac community, but also the blogosphere altogether. Gruber has a great writing style and tackles issues head on, always with an interesting perspective on the topic at hand.

I wish you luck, John. I can’t wait to read you every day.

April 20, 2006 | Dean Froslie: Tracking Eyes Online

Usability guru Jakob Nielsen’s new Alertbox column reports his latest findings on how users read web pages. According to Nielsen’s eyetracking study, users most frequently scan pages in a pattern that roughly resembles an “F.”

April 18, 2006 | Greg Ness: Blogging Continues Ballistic

A new State of the Blogosphere report from David Sifry shows the number of blogs increasing at a dizzying pace. According to the report, Technorati—the blog search engine—is now tracking 35.3 million blogs. In a previous State of the Blogosphere report released just two months ago, Technorati was tracking 27.2 million blogs.  Over eight million blogs have been added in the last two months! It also means, over the past 60 days, an average of more than 5500 new blogs have been created each hour.

April 14, 2006 | Dean Froslie: Your Content Will Be Stolen … Eventually

In this era of copy-and-paste convenience, your online content will be stolen. The only question is when it will occur.

What’s the incentive, and why would someone be interested in your content? The motives are not unlike the typical spammer: Drive traffic by misleading the user. Fool search engines into giving your site higher rankings. Create search results that appear to be from legitimate sites. Leverage free blog engines and other publishing services to anonymously (and economically) market a product or service.

April 13, 2006 | Ron Lee: Bottom Line Those Headlines

Writers and editors love snappy headlines. And why not? Headlines help sell more copies and attract more online readers, and this viewership, online and offline, helps fuel ad revenues.

Lately however, headline writing is changing thanks to a very influential online “audience” that has emerged – a very literal, logical, just-the-facts “left brain” kind of reader, one not likely to understand witty, funny or pun-intended headlines. Just who is the viewer? It’s a ”bot”, a software program which crawls through the Web, “reading” and ranking the online news for search engines. Read how bots are changing the way reporters and editors are displaying content to attract more eyeballs and bolster the bottom line.