It’s a lot easier to understand what our writing voice is as a writer if we first look at its components. I see four elements that comprise a writer’s voice. Writing Voice Personality Each person has a personality: how we act, appear, and relate to others. Likewise, each writer has a personality, how we come […]
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Kill Passive Writing
The sentence, “In my opinion, passive writing is bad,” exemplifies the passive voice. The active voice says, “Kill passive writing.” My title proclaims this. By nature, my words, both spoken and written, are passive. Many years ago, I became so irritated with Microsoft Word pointing out the passive sentences that I turned off the option. […]
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD Although the number varies with who’s doing the telling, it’s many times more costly to obtain a new customer than to keep an existing one. The sad reality is, though, no one at the giant mega corporations gets this – or at least their actions belie that they do. For […]
If blogging is a form of self-publishing, then is writing a blog post the same as other writing? Well, yes and no. While there are similarities, there are also some key differences. If you want to blog, here are seven blogging tips to be a successful blogger: 1. Make Your Title Search Engine Friendly Forget […]
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How Do Your Prospects Perceive You?
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD When my office phone rings, I don’t want to answer it. This may seem odd coming from someone who has spent three decades in the call center industry, experiencing it from almost every angle. Though there are multiple root causes, the primary reason is that these calls are seldom welcome. […]
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Medical Self-Service
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, Ph.D. Most of today’s younger drivers have never experienced pulling into a gas station and having an attendant run out to fill up their car with gas. When it comes to fueling their vehicles, all they know is self-service. I have a vague recollection of that time. When the concept of […]
When I write, I’m compulsive about saving my work at each lull in my typing and often in between: “alt,” “f,” and “s” at each pause and sometimes even typed midsentence. I don’t want to lose a thing. There’s a reason for this. Early in my career, and in the early days of PCs, I […]
There are many good (and some not so good) resources that cover self-publishing. Some of these are in the form of books, others as podcasts, and more as blog posts, all from industry insiders. By far the best one I’ve seen is the book APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur-How to Publish a Book by Guy Kawasaki […]
This week two friends expressed frustration with their attempts at building a platform for their writing. One lamented that with his work, family, schedule, and carving out time to write, he simply doesn’t have time to invest in growing his platform. My other friend is taking an extended break from all blogging and social media. […]
By Peter Lyle DeHaan, PhD I’ve been thinking about self-service lately. Self-service works nicely when I want general information. But when I seek to resolve an issue with a product, service, or bill, online self-service is more likely to frustrate than help. In those cases, a phone number is what I want – a phone […]