Posted By Cynthia Hartwig on June 12, 2013
“Martinis are like women’s breasts. One is not enough and three is too many.” —Winston Churchill Metaphor and simile are two of the best weapons for making business writing more vivid. In the example above, Winston Churchill, a wit and a writer of merit, manages both to surprise and reward us with his apt description [...]
Posted By Emily Warn on May 22, 2013
Rand Fishkin (CEO of SEOmoz) is a soulful voice of social media marketing, an advocate for being who you are as a way to find and—yes—love your following. For his do’s and don’ts on building a personal brand, click through his presentation “How to Earn Traffic Without Selling Your Soul.” But turn to the soul [...]
Posted By Cynthia Hartwig on May 20, 2013
When you’re pressed for time, it’s hard to write well. But believe it or not, it’s okay to write as fast as you can, churning out boring, repetitive, and overwritten drafts. Putting words on a page is always the most difficult part. It’s easy to revise them if you know these seven editing tips. They’ll [...]
Posted By Emily Warn on May 17, 2013
Guest blogger Michael Shilling writes for Microsoft’s MSN Music and now for Two Pens. Welcome Michael! He is the author of the novel Rock Bottom (Little, Brown and Company, 2009) and numerous short stories. Communicating is about connecting, yet the number one mistake that social media content producers and creators make is that they treat [...]
Posted By Cynthia Hartwig on May 13, 2013
Am I the only one who grinds my teeth at grammar mistakes involving that vs. who? This error crops up all over Twitter and Facebook, and a lot of e-books that haven’t been proofed by a copyeditor. Did you notice the telltale phrase in my second sentence: “that haven’t been proofed by a copyeditor?” It’s [...]
Posted By Cynthia Hartwig on May 8, 2013
One is the Loneliest Number in Any Design Brief A creative or design brief has to reduce all the things that could be said into the ONE SINGLE THING that is most important. Lots of product managers and marketing managers and client types try to wangle two or even three (!!!) points into the brief, [...]
Posted By Emily Warn on May 1, 2013
If you Google the question about how frequently you should post, the answer is about two to three times per week. But many blog advice columnists forget one thing. I’ll tell you what it is in a second, but first let me explain why their general recommendation makes sense.
Posted By Cynthia Hartwig on April 12, 2013
For those of you who are just starting out, I’ve put together a short list of the most effective tactics for writing content that gets read and followed on social media. 1. Strong Verbs and Nouns Rule. The rules of good writing apply to writing content on Twitter and Facebook and every other social network [...]
Posted By Cynthia Hartwig on March 24, 2013
Scott Hanselman (@shanselman) and author of one of the most influential and globally read blogs on technology surprised me at a recent presentation to us Microsoft bloggers on writing content. He told the audience, “Twitter is a river of shit.”
Posted By Emily Warn on March 18, 2013
Maybe it was a sign of early senility. Or maybe I think the topic’s really, really important. Whichever, last week I broke a cardinal rule of SEO by writing about the same thing twice. Thank God Cynthia noticed so I could trash the post. Bad behavior like that and Google will give you a warning [...]