Eggblogg

eTips: These words must go!

I really think it's time to drop certain jargon words - take traffic, users and social for example.

More about what I mean in this week's edition of eTips ...

Are we losing the ability to write, and do we care?

There's an interesting post over at e-Consultancy this morning, berating website owners for not realising that small improvements to web copy could actually make a big difference to profits.

Then at CatalystBlogger recently, Jennifer Williamson had a moan about copywriters being asked or expected to do stuff for free, and why that's wrong.

There's a common theme here - the perceived value of good writing (or rather the lack of it).

I've always felt the number one reason for this is that everyone can basically write, so it's not seen as a specialist skill, like, say, design. In a world where everyone writes, what makes a writer special?

Then again, all the evidence points to standards of literacy falling, certainly in this country. Kids grow up texting and have no need to learn long words, nor how to spell even short words or construct sentences. Very few 16 years olds are required to write essays or read anything remotely challenging - one girl I know went to sixth form college with the required pass in GCSE English, without having ever read a newspaper or a novel by a dead author, or written an essay longer than 500 words. She's bright, but no demands were made of her at school. We tolerate spelling mistakes even from authority figures such as teachers and national newspapers.

Perhaps writing is a dying art. And yet ... the internet is still a text based medium, and even the dominance of video, music and photo sharing hasn't eliminated the need for words to communicate.

So in a world where fewer and fewer people write, shouldn't that mean the writer's skills are valued more highly?  Or, as it seems at the moment, will we lose the ability to discriminate and just settle for any old rubbish? As the cliche goes, 'In the land of the legless, the one legged man is king'.

How to achieve standout in direct mail?

Every now and then I get letters or emails from people who think I might need their services. Sometimes dreadful ('Dear Sir or Madam, blah blah blah'), usually bland, I sometimes put myself in the shoes of the sender - if I were managing this project, what could I do to make it more successful? Or, put another way, who responds to business-to-business direct mail and why?

Lately there seem to have been quite a few approaches from copy writers, sometimes quite creative in execution. Take today's mailbag, for example, in which I found a bright pink cardboard poster tube, with a hand written label (address almost spelt correctly!) containing a sheaf of A4 papers and a wax crayon.

This was a cry for attention if ever I saw one. I certainly looked at everything in the package. The letter ('My name is..', 'My previous experience...' 'If you'd like to see my work...') The four page CV (entitled 'This bit's all about me...' ahem!) The one page of Photoshop art which I didn't quite 'get'.

Did it make me think 'this person could do a great job for my clients'? Well, the only evidence I had to go on was the letter and the CV, and neither blew me away. Did it make me want to pick up the phone? Not really, as there was just a mobile number. Not even an address. 

I admit it, I'm extra harsh on copy writers, but I do wonder if a bit more emphasis on the steak rather than the sizzle would be more effective, especially when you're targeting fellow creatives and marketing agencies.

But maybe I'm wrong - I can't claim to have written the book on DM -  in fact, if you're reading this and recognise yourself in the story, do get in touch and tell me you if had a great response, and I'll put in an order for pink poster tubes right now!

Three writing tips

Jennifer at Catalyst Blogger has passed on the 'meme' of writing 3 tips on writing, then tagging 5 writers to do the same...hers are all spot on, so what else can I say...? Here goes:

Cut, cut, cut ... I can't say I follow this advice when blogging (!) but if you're NOT aiming for a stream-of-consciousness effect then do it. Amazing how many useless adjectives, cliches and, well, words creep into those early drafts. Ahem!

If in doubt, check it out ... always have a decent dictionary to hand. And a style guide from a reputable publication. I use The Economist Style Guide but there are plenty of others. if you expect people to pay you for writing there's no excuse for poor spelling or punctuation.

Go for a walk ... if you're staring in frustration at a blank screen, a walk is what you need (unless it's raining, perhaps). Fresh air, things to see, space for thinking.

So c'mon peeps, what are your top tips? (Apart from do not use the word 'peeps'...)

Its and it's

As reported by The Guardian, England is now 19th in the world literacy league ('England plunges in rankings for reading')

Good news for those of us who make a living from writing!

Keep recruiting teachers who can't spell, keep up the errors and typos in the newspapers, encourage kids 2 txt and read nothing but Harry Potter until they're 53! Keep kids on the computer and tell them that reading is boring! Yay! More work for us!

But that report's probably rubbish anyway, because, as everyone knows, students are passing more and more and more exams with more and more A, A* and A*&%£!?* grades, so today's kids must be WAY cleverer than those grumpy old men & women who know the difference between its and it's!

Fighting the (word) flab

This week I've been scrambling to get our new website up, and although the redirects aren't yet in place and the changeover from the old sites isn't complete, it's a relief to be more or less there. And tweaking and refining never ends anyway.

I think I've ditched about 90% of the content on the old sites. The new site is lean and mean. I suspect that no-one was reading the other stuff anyway. So from now on I'm going to try to keep it short. Which is actually harder than being verbose. As Mark Twain said (more or less), 'if I'd have had more time I'd have written a shorter website'.

In my o-pun-ion... let's hear it for the puns

There's something about word-play, puns and mischievous metaphors that make me smile. I suppose it's a bit like a panto - it's best not to fight it but to get into the mood and let yourself enjoy.

I'm currently trying to restrain myself over our new company name, Eggbox. It's just too tempting to get egg-cited about all the egg-cellent opportunities it presents to talk about hatching new ideas, thinking outside of the eggbox and so forth. Ack!

One of Eggbox's clients, Drusillas Park, like to pepper their customer email newsletter with puns and obvious word-gags. And funny thing is, it works. Maybe it's the combination of cute animal pics and headlines like 'Ivor New Lady' (pygmy marmoset Ivor gets introduced to a female Kito). Anyway, the newsletter enjoys great open rates and it's clear Drusillas know their market.

But if out-and-out puns aren't really your thing there's still plenty of deadpan mileage to be had in the extended seasonal metaphor. Jordan Ayan in MarketingProfs has pumpkin-loads of fun in an article entitled Halloween Email Advice: How to Revive Your Dead Email Subscribers.

Trouble is, once you start on this route new opportunities seem endless. So best not to over-egg it.