Ideas just happen. Or do they? As I’ve set myself ambitious goals for content, I need a process that generates ideas reliably. It fascinates me how my process requires both structure and randomness to work. I honed these techniques as SVP of idea development for Forrester Research, and now I use them constantly. Perhaps you…
There is so much bullshit out there. Which of it is the most awful? What bullshit is doing the most harm? It’s time to find out. Today, I begin accepting nominations for the 2015 Bullshitty awards. I will continue to accept nominations from now through August 15. I will announce winners in September. Since I expect you’re all…
In English, there are things you can count on . . . like the fact that “they” is plural. Except it isn’t always. Let me see if I can convince you. As my coauthors and I were writing The Mobile Mind Shift, one of them came up with this central definition: A mobile moment is a point…
Responding to several requests, here’s a follow-up: one viral post on writing tips has made my blog more popular, improved my search rankings, and given me the confidence to take the next step in my journey. Here’s what I learned. Viral blog posts taper slowly. Here’s a chart of the traffic on my blog for the last…
After two months on my own, I’ve finally figured out what I’m doing. My purpose is to give you the courage to say what you mean. I wasn’t sure what kinds of people my ideas would resonate with. I haven’t pushed consulting, because I wasn’t sure who needed a writing counselor obsessed with rooting out bullshit. Here’s who asked about my services….
Crappy writing springs from crappy planning. Like an architect, plan before you build. On a project that takes weeks or months to write, spend at least one day on planning. Follow these planning tips to maximize your chance to create something great. In this post, I show you how to lay the groundwork for a writing project like…
Blogging is wonderful. People all over the world have shared their perspectives with me. While many of my blog commenters are apparently not native speakers of English, I find their idiom delightful, almost poetic. I had to reject 1,077 comments on this blog. But so you won’t miss out, I present here the most poetic excerpts from…
I recently did a Skype interview with Paul Gillin and Eric Schwartzman, the coauthors of Social Marketing to the Business Customer and proprietors of the B2B branch of the outstanding podcast For Immediate Release. Paul and Eric gave me a chance to talk about what I’m passionate about: the lack of candor in most business communication, how…
Here’s what I learned when last Monday’s writing tips post went viral: smart people stick to their goals in the middle of a viral storm. I’ll tell you what happened, what it felt like, and what I learned. Let’s start with what I’m trying to do here. When I started this blog, my goals were, in order of importance:…