I’m flattered to be in another episode of Laurel Papworth‘s video series, Social Media Business. This week there’s Laurel (of course), Tea Smith, Shel Israel and I, talking about six-year-olds receiving iPads at school, Pinterest, The “Almost There Generation” (not yet digital natives), and how to get a cracked iPhone replaced. Tons of great information, [...]
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I haven’t had so much fun driving in ages. Honestly. I love everything about this car (well, almost)… Review of the Holden Cruze Series II hatchback The stereo system is excellent, the handling is great, the ride is firm but not bone-shattering, the air-conditioning is up for Australia’s conditions… Sure, it doesn’t fit adults in [...]
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My FIR colleague Dan York posted last year about a neat way to put promo video presentations together really quickly. Says Dan: So our CEO Jonathan Taylor, who has been experimenting a lot with Prezi lately, whipped up a quick Prezi to explain what happens. A group of us collectively tweaked it a small bit [...]
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SHEL HOLTZ APPEARED in Sydney recently for a full-day workshop on the nexus of social media and PR
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RECORDED AT A one-day workshop Shel Holtz ran in Sydney, 19th August 2011 Shel Holtz on SEO Thanks to IABC NSW for hosting the event. Technorati Tags: seo, shel holtz, iabc, iabc nsw, business communication, lee hopkins Tweet
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a brief introduction to Symbolic Convergence Theory, a well-researched and robust communication theory from pre-social media days, and I’m asking, as part of my research, whether it can ‘play nicely’ with Twitter
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Guest post by Matt Polsky. YOU’VE STARTED YOUR social media campaign using the major social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and now you’re blogging and maybe even podcasting too. So what now? You want to reach potential customers and establish expertise in your field, but how do you go about doing that? Offering quality content [...]
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Subscribe to my business communication newsletter and receive a FREE version of my highly-regarded report, 'Master the Art and Science of Twitter for Business' (that sells for $79)
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I recently picked up a copy of Bob Bly’s excellent ‘Super Productivity for Writers’ e-book and wanted to share with you some of his gems.
Here’s his seven common time wasters that he says writers (and I say everybody) should avoid:
1. Excessive blogging (more than 10 minutes per day) – unless that’s your job, of course!
2. Random web surfing (continuing to surf after you’ve found the information you need)
3. Attending meetings of writers groups, marketing clubs, etc. You can learn and network, but you lose half a day
4. Social or business lunches with other writers, editors, publishers, clients. A waste of time and you can lose nearly half a day
5. Volunteering for committees and similar activities. Every hour you spend on administrative nonsense is an hour you don’t write
6 .Sending or receiving jokes, photos, videos and other junk content via email (or my pet hate – Facebook requests to add time-sucking applications or join groups of no interest to me). Stop wasting other people’s time and yours
7 .Letting a ringing phone interrupt your writing. Get caller ID and call them back when you have finished (or better yet, set the phone’s ringing tone volume to ‘silent’ and get an answer machine to take the call for you)
Even though Bob is focusing his material on writers, of which he is a superb one, the advice found on page 22 of his book applies to all of us methinks.
As he points out on page 21, with an average lifespan of seventy- five years, we have only 27,375 days from the time we are born until the time we die. And since we’re asleep for a third of that time, we have only 18,250 days we’re actually awake and active.
How you spend this finite amount of time is mostly up to you. To maximise your productivity, income and output as a writer, writing must be a priority.
If you prefer to garden, that’s perfectly fine; but don’t complain that your colleague who spends those hours in front of the pc is getting more work done than you are. It’s your choice.
Wise words, indeed. Get a copy of this brilliant book and be careful out there…
I love Bob’s material – as I write I have 26 of his publications, each a worthy addition to my knowledge library.
Bob Bly is the man McGraw-Hill calls 'America's top copywriter.' Bob has written copy for more than 100 companies including Boardroom, Phillips, IBM, Medical Economics, AlliedSignal, and Lucent Technologies. He is the author of more than 60 books and a columnist for DM News and Early to Rise.
Making Social Media Work for Your Business - just published!
Social Media: The New Communication Landscape - for Ark Group
How to get started with podcasting in your organisation - for Melcrum Publishing
Contributing author to:
How to use social media to solve critical internal communication issues
How to communicate with hard-to-reach employees
- for Melcrum Publishing
How to use social media to engage employees - for Melcrum Publishing
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Tactical Transparency by Shel Holtz and John Havens.
A belter of a book and a 'must read' addition to any communicator's bedside reading table if they are serious about introducing social media into their communication plans. It includes a fabulous chapter on transparency and business (hint: you want to photocopy it and give it to your CEO!)
Qualitative Communication Research Methods by Thomas Lindlof and Bryan Taylor.
Not just a book for academics, it's chock-full of great ideas on how to effectively and efficiently research your employees, customers, the marketplace and other stakeholders
The Twitter Book by Tim O'Reilly and Sarah Milstein.
A fabulous book that gives a clear, clean overview of what Twitter is and WHY you should be engaging with it. THEN it goes into depth with so many tips and ideas that they should have sold the book for twice the price!
Practical SEO Copywriting: a ‘must get’ book. My mate Glenn Murray has written a bottler of a new book on search engines and copywriting.
In a cunning twist of bizarre nomenclature, he’s titled it Practical SEO Copywriting. The cheeky little fox! It’s a DIY guide to writing online copy for both human readers AND for that 400kg gorilla we lovingly call ‘Google’.
The danger, Glenn quite rightly …err …writes is that focusing too much attention on all of the supposed SEO ‘tricks of the trade’ will make your copy all but unreadable by the human brain. You know, all that stuff bandied about by the so-called SEO (search engine optimisation) experts: keyword frequency, exact string versus individual words scattered across the page, page length, alt tags, header tags, and so on.
Not that this stuff isn’t important – it all is, and more besides – but Glenn argues persuasively that by far more important is the ability to write copy that people will actually want to read – and link to!
