I am a complete novice at this line of promotion, but my North American colleagues are exceptionally well versed in it. For example, Carol Kinsey Goman has a new book coming out in May 2008 (on body language in the workplace) and she is looking for opportunities to speak and promote it, Australia being [...]
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The Aussie election is *finally* upon us. Yea! My fine colleague and exceptionally tall blogger Trevor Cook and his colleagues at JWM have created a very handy eight-page guide to the election issues, a snip at the very reasonable price of $0. As with all things that emanate from Trevor’s keyboard, it is full of [...]
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Hurry! There’s only 3 weeks until the first Social Media Workshop for Communicators and there are limited places available on each course. Social Media Workshop for Communicators With me, Lee Hopkins, online & social media communication strategist. 16th & 17th October 2007, Melbourne Marriott Hotel (with the AFL Grand Final being a foregone conclusion, I [...]
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To be held at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Queensland on 28 September 2007. Schedule 9:00 am: Welcome and Introductory Panel Discussion Why are blogs becoming so ubiquitous? What is unique about the Australian blogosphere? 10:15am Coffee Break 10:30am Breakout Rooms Room 1: Citizen Journalism Grassroots vs mainstream journalism? Video/photo citizen journalism? Is [...]
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The incredibly lovely and incredibly wise Justine Atkinson from Melcrum has just finished putting the final flourishes to the two-day workshops I am presenting in the fair cities of Melbourne and Sydney later this year. Entitled ‘Social Media Workshop for Communicators - Integrating social media into your communication strategy’ the workshop is jam-packed with goodness for business [...]
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Please help yourself to two pdfs of presentations I recently gave to the PRIA State Conference in WA and a large Financial Services company. Click on the images to download the pdfs (both links open a new browser window) PRIA State Conference – WA Financial Services company Please note that the videos that were also part [...]
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Alex Manchester from Melcrum has very kindly posted commentary and a YouTube video about my half-day workshop on Social Media and Employee Engagement from last week’s seminar. Here’s the video: (watch out for the flamin’ good ending) Thanks, Alex — you’re too kind! p.s. the “employees are almost like humans” is sarcasm, a joke! Technorati [...]
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Okay, help needed urgently. URGENTLY! Does anyone have an up-to-date list of which Australian medium-large companies are social media-ing? Please reply by commenting on this blog… Cheers,Lee Powered by Zoundry Tweet
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As media ownership in WA concentrates and election fever sets in, how will communications professionals make their messages heard and keep their issues in check? Hear how the top of class in Perth comms are tackling the challenges at the Resourceful Public Affairs seminar 9am – 1pm, Friday August 31, Novotel Langley, Perth Speakers include: [...]
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The video says it all. Courtesy of CrunchNotes: “Whatever company this is, they should use this as one of their primary recruiting tools. Well done. As soon as you get to about 0:53, you know it’s going to be good.” Where do I sign up to join? Oh, I DO miss working in web companies… [...]
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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!
