
What My Italian Family Taught Me About Food, Marketing and Copywriting
Content & Strategy Copywriting SkillsI blame my fascination with food and food metaphors on my upbringing. Growing up with a full-blooded Italian mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother (who came from Italy as a young girl “on a boat”), my fixation on food was inevitable. Food…

Writing Content for the Web – Basics
Content & Strategy Copywriting SkillsWhen I’ve coached customers on building their own content for websites or blogs, there is a very straight forward approach I take. It works with beginner writers who are just trying for the first time, or experienced product experts who are…

How I Write: My Copywriting Process
Content & StrategyWhether I’m writing a campaign for Art.com’s homepage or brainstorming a creative name for one of my partner’s sushi dinner parties, I always take the same steps. Let’s take this email copy (below) for example. The Goals Write…

The 5-Step Process of Creating Synergy Between Content Marketing and Social Media Marketing
Content & StrategyYou have the content. You have the social media profiles set up. But somehow, nothing seems to work. You run in a circle of publishing and posting without avail. Your social media marketing isn’t driving you business, and neither is your content.…

Advertising Taught by Guinness
Content & Strategy Copywriting SkillsAdvertising taught by Guinness: If you’ve ever spent time in Dublin, chances are you’ve been to the Guinness Storehouse. According to the fast-talking cab driver who whisked us from one side of the city to the other, the Guinness Storehouse…

3 Reasons to Stop Stealing Other People’s Words
Copywriting SkillsThe other day I was on the phone with an entrepreneur who KNEW HER STUFF! She is an expert at working with her hands and heavy machinery to create all sorts of interesting products. The extent of my handiwork? Typing 100 words per minute…

7 Ways to Polish Your Writing and Get Your Message through as Fast as Lightning to Men and Women from every Walk of Life
Content & Strategy How to Become a Lean Mean Editing Machine Reading is a conversation between two people. In a face to face conversation one can ask and answer questions to clarify and complete the meaning and move on. When it comes to reading this isn’t…

25 tips for writing the user experience
Content & StrategySo what the heck is user experience and why does it matter how you write it? While in the online world, user experience is often considered the same as usability, information architecture (IA), and user interface (UI) design, those areas are…

How to Design a Killer Book Cover & Skyrocket Your Book Sales
AdvertisingE. Haldeman-Julius sold 100 million books in less than seven years. He achieved this by using simple and effective book covers based on compelling titles and clean cover design. No fancy titles or design, it was all about simplicity. What…

How’s your voice? Active? Passive? Shout? Whisper?
Copywriting SkillsNearly all of us nonfiction/business writing gurus (ye Gods, what an awful cliché) pound tables and shout loudly that active voice rather than passive voice is essential in marketing communications no matter what. Mea culpa here, in fact…

Why promoting your weaknesses is a smart idea
Copywriting SkillsIn business writing, it’s common to only talk about our strengths – the positive aspects of what we offer. But there are two excellent reasons why you should also promote your weaknesses, rather than hide them: 1. it builds trust 2.…

How to Freelance as a Copywriter
Content & Strategy Copywriting SkillsTen things to get your head around if you really, really, really want to freelance as a Copywriter. Mention the word ‘freelance’ and people assume a life in which you take the whole of August off, spend your days in pyjamas and resort…
