By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD There’s an alarming trend among marketing folks, especially those focused on e-marketing. Their perspective is if marketing can’t be measured, then it’s not viable. This is incorrect; some marketing results simply cannot be tracked. Consider print marketing. You can’t count the number of impressions, clicks, or conversions. You have no […]
There are some who think you can either write well or write a lot, but you can’t do both at the same time. I disagree. Just as it takes practice to write well and practice to write fast, it likewise takes practice to turn out good work quickly. However, I wouldn’t recommend pursuing both at […]
In last week’s post, Check Your Writing, I mentioned the need to watch out for commonly confused words. Spell checkers point out some of the most typical—such as its versus it’s—but I suspect all writers have certain words that trip them up. Knowing what these words are is the first step to avoiding them when […]
I heard there are only two things we need to check in our writing. Can you believe that? Only two things. How exciting! I thought there would be an unlimited number of considerations, but I can handle two. Even a short checklist might overwhelm, but a pair of items seems doable. When I learned this, […]
There are a lot of movies about writing and even more when you consider movies that have writers as characters. Here’s my initial list:
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD Last month I wrote about the importance of embracing social media. Regardless how you may feel about it, social media is an increasingly important business enabler that should be part of our overall business strategy. In general, social media can be used as a means to connect with people and […]
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, Ph.D. You don’t need to spend much time in a call center before realizing agents enjoy sharing stories about their callers. This can be good: establishing community, providing a safe outlet, and building a collective understanding. (Conversely, venting about callers should be discouraged.) After such stories are shared, someone often says, […]
Earlier this year, my buddy and I started attending a writers’ critique group. It has been beneficial to us, offering encouragement, affirmation, and correction. Unfortunately, it takes us an hour to get there—and even longer when the weather is bad. Though we will remain connected with that group, we are also starting our own writers’ […]
I heard an author mention her memoir—weighing in at 103,000 words—was too long and she needed to shorten it. The first thing she did was the search for all occurrences of the word “that.” By removing their unnecessary appearances in her manuscript she cut a thousand words—or about one percent—from her book. Although she still […]
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD I was quite skeptical about “gamification,” the use of game concepts to motivate desirable behavior among customers (or employees). I reasoned that while expecting customers to “play games” might result in a short-term increase in brand involvement or purchases, I doubted if it was sustainable. However, I am rethinking my […]