So the question remains: When and where should you try to be “funny” in your writing? Always think of the context. Here’s some tips:

1. Résumé: This really depends on your chosen or desired profession. If you are an accountant, perhaps sticking to the facts will be a better choice. Whereas if you are a graphic artist or in social media, some humor here and there would probably go down well. There’s a lot of talk lately about infographic résumés and using much more creative forms to present résumés, and it seems that you would have more leeway for humor in these formats. But again, you should be careful as an accountant, lawyer, or some of the “straight-laced” careers before using a more creative expression of your work history. Listing something along the lines of “Named as best artist 20 years running by my mother” might work for an art-college graduate looking for an intern position, but not if you’re going for Director of Finance in a Fortune 500 company.
2. Business Letter: If it’s a cover letter and you are introducing yourself for the first time, use humor sparingly, and only in reference to yourself. Remember, what you think sounds funny in your head doesn’t always translate to the page, so if you reread it and you’re not sure, take it out. A regular business letter, especially if it’s a summons or note of default on a loan, should not contain any humor. That’s just cruel and unprofessional.
3. Blog: Again, think of context. Are you blogging for yourself, or other people? If you’re blogging for yourself, I encourage you to use your own voice, and if that’s a humorous voice, then give it a whirl. Luckily, unlike a letter sent in the post, you can amend it later if you find that what you thought was hilarious was misconstrued by your readers. If you are blogging for other people, you must abide by their personal or company voice. This is part of your job. I’m happy to say that we have at least one client that we can be quite cheeky in their blogs!
4. Website: Humor? I recommend you look at the company you’re writing the content for. Too many people write dry, boring content for websites, sure, but that doesn’t mean that every website should be tongue-in-cheek or funny. Creativity is a key ingredient to making content engaging, memorable and informative. Ideally, it should get the web visitor to pick up the phone, enter their contact details or click the “Buy now” button. But does that mean it has to be funny? No. Witty? Could be. This is why there’s rarely a person at a corporation who is skilled enough at creating web content to be in charge of writing the company site, as too many companies forget who they are talking to. They talk at the customer, rather than to the customer, and in the end, don’t provide the information the customer needs to make their decision. Which means fewer return visits to the site, and fewer sales.

I’ll keep posting more tips as they present themselves, but in the meantime, if you’re not sure about using humor, then the answer is probably “don’t”. For more tips on writing and information on our services, contact Either/Or Media via email or by phone: (949) 305-3223.

Think of your business writing as an introduction. If you are making an introduction online, in an email or even in a written letter, the content doesn’t just communicate your message to the reader, it can say even more about you between the lines.

Just as wearing your Donald Duck tie or a pair of jeans to a job interview may give the wrong impression, an email, Facebook post or letter with blatant spelling errors also presents a bad impression. I feel that these errors reveal more about a person than they may think, and one of those items is integrity.

If you are the owner of a company, or an entrepreneur launching a start-up, you ARE your business. Everything you do, say or write cannot be separated from your business—just look at how a person’s Facebook page can be used against them in interviews or personnel reviews.

To my delight, I was recently hired to proofread a business plan for a young man with a wonderful idea for an online business. This young man has the right idea! He wants to make sure that his ego doesn’t get in the way of finding funding for his business, and hired me to comb his business plan for any obvious and subtle mistakes. And I did find a few, plus I asked a few questions for clarification and suggested some omissions and additions. He took them all to heart and amended his business plan before sending it out. In my humble opinion, this was an example of integrity.

Then there are the examples that just make me cringe. The introduction emails without even basic capitalization, run-on sentences and abbreviations that should be limited to text messages, like “ur” and “thx” do not impress anyone, not even a 14-year-old high school student. Not spelling the recipient’s name correctly (or “entrepreneur”) will not win you any points, either. I can overlook small mistakes, like “alot”, even though it drives me crazy, because everyone makes mistakes once in a while.

If someone you didn’t know asked you a favor or presented themselves as a viable company to work with or refer, wouldn’t you look for other signs that the person was trustworthy and had integrity? The fact that they couldn’t be bothered to read over an email or a letter for spelling mistakes speaks volumes about a person’s integrity.

And if it sounds like I’m being too harsh, remember this: even though more and more communication happens online, around 90 percent, it is still written. Written. This means there are even more opportunities nowadays to show yourself up as uncaring about your presentation. There have been numerous articles written on how students—in America and elsewhere—are graduating without the necessary skills in English, math and reasoning to actually be good employee candidates.

My entire business is based on quality writing, for online content, social media and printed collateral. It is shocking to me how many people don’t care about the integrity of their business presentation, including (but not limited to): spelling mistakes on their websites; incorrect information on business cards (with the correct information scrawled in by hand); website copy that reads just like every other site that does nothing to differentiate the company; and spelling mistakes in business Facebook posts.

My point is this: When you are just starting out, remember that you are building your reputation. Do you want to build that reputation on shoddy presentations that showcase dubious communication skills? Or would you rather take a little extra time and show people, with more than just words or flashy graphics, that you are an entrepreneurial force to be reckoned with? The choice is yours.

Need some help with your writing? We can consult or write it for you. Contact us on (949) 305-3223 for more information, or click here for pricing.

Facebook and Twitter bombard the Internet with information—whether it’s relevant or not, it’s hard to gauge, and it can be irritating and frustrating to try to filter out the “noise”. I’ve been having great response to the Facebook and Twitter campaigns I’ve been doing for my clients, but I’m still bemused when companies just stream a news feed into their Twitter and LinkedIn posts—don’t they realize they’re just turning off any potential customers, because they’re not actually saying anything?

My point here is this: If you have such a short window to make your message stand out in this crazy, mixed-up world, you’d better make it good. Whether you’re in front of an audience at a seminar with a slide that says “An average American consumes more than 400 Africans”, besides making any Africans in the room extremely nervous, you’re not communicating your message clearly. Perhaps something along the lines of “An average American consumes more FOOD than 400 Africans” might have been a more appropriate way to phrase that message.

What about that business plan you’re about to approach investors with? If you don’t communicate your idea, your research and your vision in a compelling, accurate and concise manner, do you think they’ll hand over a fat check? No, I don’t think so either.

Remember the old Federal Express slogan “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight”? My new slogan is “When it absolutely, positively has to be right.”

So call Either/Or Media to talk to us how we can improve your business writing, your press releases, your company’s website, your Facebook campaigns, your blog posts and your spelling. We’re here to help, changing the world a sentence at a time: 949-305-3223.

This text is copied and pasted directly from an email sent to my father, who is a writer and food blogger for Stu’s News Laguna Beach, among other things. He had met this woman at one of Stu Saffer’s Coffee Mornings, and apparently she felt he could help her with marketing her project. Here goes. Are you ready? Hold on to your hats:

hi dennis,had some time to look at ur web.amazing!!did i mention i was on the board for thee culinary olympics at the pelican hill.i wish that would have happened.i got alot of atheletes and celebrities to pitch in.i wish thee economy would not have changed that.i took time off after the flop!!anyhow did you ck out my book.[omitted].my new website and brochures and almost done.robert lyn nelson is coming to town nov  8-12th.we r trying to do event for him and i.if not at atlinsplace now it may be a fund raiser at antoines(saving thee oceans) my publisher runs my sea legs.com(saving thee oceans)and that is also what robert is about.iam in the middle of alot of cost but i was wondering what we could do to promote this event and my drive for preparing meals for clients.!!iam a creative social person so marketing and computers,bloging  r not me but if i want to expand big time iam looking for help.can we talk next week.0000000000.lets plan a day and time.i like to not have interuptons with conversation.call me old schooled.thanks [Name removed.]

Heavy sigh. Every time I read it I’m amazed. And you know what else? I’m not sure at all what she is talking about, what she’s actually asking of my father, or how she thinks that this is an acceptable way of writing.

I don’t actually think she’s illiterate or not a native English speaker, so don’t yell at me for poking fun at her. She wouldn’t be able to spell “preparing” or “marketing” if she was illiterate, and I do want to give her the benefit of the doubt that she typed this on a Blackberry.

Blackberry or no, don’t you want to make the best impression on everyone you meet? Especially if you are looking to, and I quote, “expand big time”?

I’d love to get some comments on this one to see how other people feel. It makes me very worried and very sad at the state of writing in this county, let alone business writing. I do understand that it’s my profession, yet I do commonly overlook a few typos here and there with business emails—we’re all short on time.

But this is a serious lack of self-awareness and pride in one’s own “appearance”, if I can call a written message that. And I think I can…because, my dears, that’s branding.

What do we mean by that? Here’s an example. One of our more recent clients, a criminal defense attorney, has hired us to blog five days a week for him, which has not only done wonders for the traffic to his site, it’s had another benefit that neither of us anticipated.

After blogging for about a month at this five-day-a-week frequency, we posted our second press release for him. After it was distributed, I received a call from the editor of the Daily Journal, a Los Angeles and San Francisco-based legal newspaper. She had seen the press release come over the wire, and had a look at my client’s website. She noticed that he blogged frequently, and called to see if he wanted to be a contributor to the publication, a newspaper that is widely respected in the legal community.

I told her I’d ask my client and get back to her as soon as I could, although he was so busy he rarely called me back on the same day. Not so after the message I left about the Daily Journal! He called me back within the hour, very excited at the chance to contribute to the publication and gain notoriety and respect among his peers.

Can you put a monetary value on that kind of exposure? It may not get him a new client, per se, but being a regular writer for the paper may garner him further notice by the press, which will raise his profile both in the legal community, but also in Orange County.

Please do note that the editor would have been unlikely to call him if he hadn’t had a regular posting of blogs…so as well as attracting the search engines, they also apparently attract editors!

Are you ready to increase your profile online, in your professional community and in Orange County? Then call Either/Or Media and see how we can help. We offer consulting services in addition to writing services, so you can learn how to do it yourself, if that’s your thing and you have the time. Call now on 949-305-3223 or click here to contact us by email.

Why? There are four main reasons:

1. Flexibility: SEO for websites walks a fine line; if you start adding keywords that stray  from your site’s subject matter, you can get in trouble from Google and the other search engines for what is called “black hat” tactics. But with blogs, you have more freedom. Think of each blog as a completely new page for your website, and you can add tags pertinent to each one. Most businesses have several facets—in this economy, it’s rare that a company just sells one service or product. Imagine being able to explore each one of those facets in every way, through blogs. You can tag all of the relevant keywords for each blog, giving you much more SEO power than a static web page alone. Basically, you’re getting more bang, or online notice, for your buck.

2. Marketing: What are those SEO guys doing, anyway? We’re not saying they’re not doing their job, we’re saying it goes on behind the scenes. And that’s the opposite from what a blog does. You can promote a blog post on Facebook, on Twitter, on your LinkedIn page, in your networking sphere…that’s right, you get to have real live people reading your blog, not just a bunch of spiders from the search engines. Which means you can use them to target audience. Have you noticed a drop in sales on a certain item, or want to sell a particular brand? Blog about it! Have you won an award or accolade, and want to let the world know? Blog about it! (And send out a press release, but that’s another blog.) Have you added a new service to your roster, or a new employee? Blog about it! We think you see where we’re going with this, but let’s give you an example. One of our clients has Sunday Ticket games showing in their bar area every NFL season. If you look up “Where can I watch the Raiders in Orange County” (and people do), one to three of our blogs will show up within the top five Google results. Yes, our little restaurant in Santa Ana. Don’t believe me? Try it. Their name is Benjies Deli. Oh, and the blog you’ll find? We wrote it last year. It’s still working. Does SEO give you that? We think not.

3. Public Relations: How better to control what people read about you than to write it yourself? Especially when an issue has come up or an event occurred that perhaps doesn’t show your company in the best light. You can immediately post a blog that deals honestly about the issue and deal with your customers directly. I recently attended a presentation by the erudite and esteemed Ron Ploof, who used a case study of a blog that helped explain a company’s mistake. This company managed to tell all the people that passed an industry certification test that they hadn’t passed, and vice versa. Oops. Luckily, they had already been blogging, had a following, and their corporate apology written by the president was well received by the audience, especially since they allowed those who did not pass (but thought they had) the chance to retake the test for no charge. Hopefully Ron will be able to direct us to a case study on his website; we couldn’t find it right away. You should visit his site anyway—he is a very smart man with a great way of explaining all things “social media”—although don’t use that term with him…

4. Relevance: This one is simple. Remember how we keep banging on about how Google has changed their algorithms to reward websites who have consistent, regular updates of content? Well, we’re banging on about it again. It hasn’t changed. And how do you get on board with this consistent, regular updating?? Uh, BLOGGING. That’s one way, and it’s a heck of a lot easier than making a video every week. Why would you NOT do something that Google directly said will help your website rank higher?

If you’re reading this and are still wondering how blogging can help you, please do get in touch. We’ll be happy to explain this all again in direct relation to your business. So call (949) 305-3223 or email us and we’ll be happy to help.

So, even if what you’re writing isn’t the next best business proposal for the client your company’s been targeting for the past year, you’re still writing something with the purpose of communicating to others, be it an email, a presentation, job description, training material, promotional copy, grant proposals, to name a few. Oh, and then there’s the all-important résumé. If you’re unemployed at the moment, it can’t be news to you that there’s a lot—and we mean a lot (notice how that’s two words, not one?)—of other people out there looking. And that means you’d better stand out. What better way than having a well-written, typo-free résumé?

But we digress. Our point is this: just because the computer is king, social media is here to stay and if you explained the concept of a written memo to most people in the workforce, they’d either think you were joking or laugh until they cry, writing is not going away. Yes, it might evolve, but it’s still one of the main things that separates us from the animals.

And that’s what we’re getting at here. While you might think that writing is something dull, someone else’s job or what novelists do, you’re missing both the point and the boat. Improving your writing can separate you from the hoi polloi (look it up), and give you an edge in this very competitive job market.

Oh, you’ve got a job? Do you think you’re indispensable? Having better writing skills than most others in your company could make you more of an asset than just a worker bee. It could also help you get that job in Marketing you’ve had your eye on.

In our next blog, we’ll post some tips to get you going on sharpening your writing skills. In the meantime, start noticing how often you’re typing and writing—it might just surprise you! (And you might want to learn what that red squiggly line means when you’re using Microsoft Word…)

The eight-week course will cover the ins and outs of business blogging, and at the end of the course, students will:

• Learn why blogging is so important to online visibility
• Identify which businesses and industries are best suited for blogging
• Learn to blog either as a freelancer or their current employer
• Determine the needs and develop blogging campaigns and schedules for businesses of all sizes
• Write effective blogs on diverse topics
• Develop a working knowledge of blog platforms, including WordPress, plus posting blogs, tagging and using plugins
• Evaluate analytics from Google and other sources, including plugins

Students will get credit for the course, and they can join from anywhere in the world, as the course will be held online using webinars and discussion forums for a wider reach.

Melanie Mitchell, Acting Director of Management, Marketing and Business at UCI’s Extension Program, said about the course: “I am very excited about offering this course! I see this course as being extremely popular, as it is not just focused at marketing and has a potential for a wide audience range, while still being technical enough to provide value.”

If you want to improve your online visibility, but don’t have time to write or learn how to write a blog, then call Either/Or Media on 949-305-3223 now—it’s clear we know what we’re doing. And if you do have time to learn, call us for our consultation service, and we’ll get you up and running in no time.

Jorge Luis Borges

The Google Doodle today celebrates the birthday of one of my favorite poets, and one of the most fun literary names to say. “Jorge Luis Borges” flows off the tongue so much better than “Shakespeare” or “Emily Dickinson”. Not that there’s anything wrong with their writing; far from it.

One of my favorite works from the Argentinian writer is The Book of Sand, which definitely illustrates the author’s style of magical realism, much like the better-known Gabriel Garcia Márquez. Which makes me want to go back and read it. Hmmm…do you think it’s in ebook form yet?

Jorge Luis Borges certainly inspired me to be a writer, especially poetry, which sadly, most blogs do not call for. But seeing Google’s Doodle today has inspired me to do more writing on my own.

That reminds me…I haven’t plugged my personal blog on here yet. Please click here if you want to read a blog on some delicious food from a very small kitchen.

This is important information, folks, so read carefully. Do you want your face and name to be used to promote brands–without your permission? Well, LinkedIn went and automatically opted-in its 100 million users to do so, with only a blog post as a way of letting us all know it was to happen.

So much for LinkedIn being the responsible face of social media, eh? So what does this mean exactly? It means this: if you’re on LinkedIn and you see a third-party advertisement, you’ll also see profile photos and names of connections, if that connection has recommended or followed a brand. If you don’t want to be a source of free advertising to the brands that you’ve liked on LinkedIn, you best go in and change your settings now. It’s easy to do with these steps, below:

1. Hover over the user name in the top right hand corner of any LinkedIn page and click ‘Settings’.
2. On the Settings page, click ‘Account’.
3. On the Account tab, click ‘Manage Social Advertising’.
4. Uncheck the box next to “LinkedIn may use my name, photo in social advertising.” and click the save button.

Have you been receiving emails from LinkedIn advertisers or recruiters? The job recruiters don’t seem so intrusive, but getting emails from advertisers? Isn’t that the modern version of telemarketers? (Oh, yeah. It’s called SPAM.) You can easily stop this too: Right above the Account tab you clicked a minute ago there’s a tab called Email Preferences. Click on that and click on the “Turn on/off Partner InMail” link and you can uncheck the boxes as you wish. I also changed my Groups email settings in here too, so all of them are just sending me a weekly instead of a daily email. Which made me feel popular, but boy, was it making my inbox full.

We’ll keep you updated if LinkedIn finally comments on this situation.

And, by the way, next Thursday I’ll be hosting a free seminar on LinkedIn at the Laguna Board of Realtors. Yes, that’s FREE. It’s from 1:30 to 3:30, and call Jan at the LBR to book your seat: (949) 497-2474. Or, you can just get in touch with me and arrange a consultation where I can help you with Facebook, LinkedIn, blogging and any other questions you may have: (949) 305-3223.