Grotto Communications

a marketing communications company

Writing and Styling Tips for an Online World

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Writing and Typing Tips

Are You Spaced Out?

Ok, this first one is actually a typing tip. ONLY USE ONE SPACE between sentences. Anyone who took a traditional typing class back in the day had the concept of pushing the space bar twice after every sentence drilled into their noggins. But in the publishing world — where typography is quite a bit more sophisticated than what that Selectric of yours used to produce — only one space rules.

Pick up a book. Look at a magazine. Surf ye olde web. Nary a double-space between sentences can be found. Help your blog, newsletters, presentations and all else look more professional by breaking yourself of this little habit. (Assuming Millennials have been mercifully spared this habit.)

Being “Centered” Doesn’t Mean Your Words

Reading from left to right in our western-euro-style culture is normal. By stacking all your copy in centered wads, you make it more difficult for people to read and absorb your content.

Centering text can be helpful for emphasis, like headlines or calls to action (“register now!”). But web pages, printed flyers and anything with more than a few lines of copy will often work best using the time-honored left justify approach. If you are looking for something more exciting or energetic, best to work with a professional designer who knows how to handle font selection, kerning (the space between letters), leading (the space between lines of text) and so on. A good designer can provide pizzazz without sacrificing readability.

Break It Up!

The more fractured our communications routes become, the less time we actually spend reading anything. With the rise of social media, texting and online chat, our poor little attention spans continue to shrink. A recent study showed the next generation eschewing email all together, preferring texting, Twitter and Facebook for most communications.

So do your reader, colleague and client a favor and break up your writing into easily scanned chunks. A few sentences will do. Logical breaks are best, but if you’ve got a paragraph in an email starting to run more than 6 or 7 lines, you’re going to lose them. Shorten your sentences. Self edit as much as possible and concentrate on the most important parts.

Bite The Bullets: Honing Your Presentation Skills, Part 2

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No Robot Presentations

In Part 1, we urged you to carefully consider your audience, your message and your toolbox in the initial planning stage for a presentation. Additional tips touched on getting creative with images while keeping text and transitions clean and clear. Part 2 wraps up with what happens at the even itself.

3. CONNECT WITH PARTICIPANTS: Engage. Be a person, not a robot.

No matter what your style or comfort level with public speaking, you can learn ways to connect and inspire. Never just read your slides or presentation. In fact, treat your visual presentation differently from what you are saying AND from any printed materials you provide.

  • HANDOUTS: Your handouts should offer something different from the presentation itself. Suck your notes content back out of PowerPoint and into a Word document. Add some resources, clean it up a bit and include your name, company logo and date. Provide handouts only if it will improve the experience and persuade people to your point of view.
  • QUESTIONS: Open up your session with a couple of questions to help you confirm or improve your understanding of your audiences’ needs and “come from”. If you are speaking to a large group, just ask for a show of hands.  Be clear about whether or not you will take questions during the talk.
  • FOLLOW UP: Allow for some follow-up to your presentation. Offer to provide additional resources via email or invite people to follow you on Twitter or your business page on Facebook for additional tips or information.

When you concentrate on your audience and your message, you can put together your support materials more efficiently and effectively.

RESOURCES

  • Beyond Bullet Points: Using Microsoft PowerPoint to Create Presentations that Inform, Motivate and Inspire, 2005.
  • Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery, Garr Reynolds, 2008
  • Cutting Edge PowerPoint 2007 for Dummies, Geetest Bajaj, 2007
  • PowerPoint 2007 for Starters: The Missing Manual, E. A. Vander Veer, 2007
  • stock.xchng, http://www.sxc.hu/ (free stock photos)
  • BIGSTOCK, http://www.bigstockphoto.com/ (inexpensive, royalty-free photos)

Bite The Bullets: Honing Your Presentation Skills, Part 1

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No Robot Presentations

If you find yourself standing in front of a group of people with a big screen over your shoulder, you will probably find the experience more gratifying for everyone involved if you feel more confident about your presentation skills. Build that confidence by honing your message and keeping your PowerPoint deck — or any other tools you use — clean and simple.

1. GETTING STARTED: Clarify your goals for the presentation.
What do you want people to get out of your talk? How much time do you have or do you need?

  • AUDIENCE (WHO): Make notes about your anticipated audience to hone in on their needs and come up with the best way to reach them. Are they coming from the same place? Do you need to allow for different levels of knowledge about your topic?
  • MESSAGE (WHY): Boil it way down and define your goal. DON’T DO THIS PART IN POWERPOINT! Step away from the computer! If you had to speak extemporaneously on your topic right now, what would you say would be the most important points to get across? Jot down your main points. Then, maybe, start typing.
  • TOOLS (HOW): Don’t forget to get some of the basic housekeeping pieces settled before you get too far with your planning. Remember to question whether or not an electronic presentation is really necessary. If a white board or chalkboard would do, don’t rule that out as an option.

2. CRAFTING YOUR STORY: Develop a creative way to tell your tale.
Next, organize the main points of your message and see how they can flow together. Be concise and find the best way to get your message across in clear, active language.

  • IMAGES / PHOTOS: Use expressive, royalty-free graphics to illustrate each main point. Your onscreen presentation should never duplicate your talk or provide all the data. It should support the main points with simple, evocative illustrations. Consider the “Squint Factor” when deciding which charts, graphs, or data to include.
  • TEXT: Use active verbs and full sentences. But keep those sentences tight, a maximum of 2 lines in the headline or first sub-header text size. Add category slides to break up the piece.
  • TRANSITIONS: If your presentation is to be less than 15 minutes, then transitions may just add unnecessary clutter. Use the animated feature very judiciously. A simple fade in and out is sufficient. Use the same effect for similar level situations.

Stay tuned for Part 2 with tips about connecting with participants and resources.

Ode to a Fridge: Why Design Matters

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Why Design Matters

I have an unusually deep fondness for my refrigerator. If there was a fire, I would grab the crazy cats first, then give a longing look at the fridge and say goodbye, knowing that saving it wouldn’t be possible. Or logical. Or even sane. Mentioned this to a client once and — rightly so — got a look of puzzlement and concern.

What makes this fridge special? Surely it keeps things cold as most of these appliances are supposed to do. Quite simply, it’s the design features. Thoughtful and well-executed design can make an experience comforting or frustrating or even exhilarating.

Using It Feels Effortless
You reach out to open this fridge and your hand slips into the molded crevice across the top of the main door. No clutching of a clunky vertical rod. Your fingers glide into the nook and a soft tug gets the job done. Freezer door is similar with one handle mirroring the main door and another, more shallow option up at the tippy-top to offset the angle. So even reaching above your head requires minimal effort.

Everything in Its Place
Interior features abound. Glass shelves are adjustable and they slide out for easy access or cleaning. Compartments come in various but commonsense shapes to accommodate different types of foodstuffs. No hunting and digging to find that left-over half onion. Even the freezer lights up and offers a shelf that glides out so you can see what tasty morsels might be tucked away in frosty suspension.

And, Oh, That Wondrous Feeling
Have you ever been frustrated trying to use a new appliance or electronic device and thought maybe you were just being stupid? It’s probably not you. Companies that take the time to consider the user experience and craft an item that makes intuitive sense win over customers time and again. KitchenAid demonstrates that they pay close attention to our relationship with stored food. Oxo is notorious for creating household tools that just feel right. Surely we don’t even need to discuss the success of Apple‘s design aesthetic.

By acknowledging the importance of design even in our most mundane moments, we can apply that observation to our work. Does our company web site make it easy for visitors to find the information they need? Do ads or promotional materials communicate our brand in a tangible way so people understand our company’s strengths? How can we communicate more effectively AND elegantly?

Now get started. Take a few minutes and brainstorm about how you could both simplify and beautify one aspect of your work today. Tackle something easy like the signature line in your email account.  Make sure people can read the important details in a screen-friendly font, legible color and size with hot links to web sites, etc. Make it lovely. Make it matter.

Finding Your Voice: Who Are You on Social Media?

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Finding Your Voice on Social Media

You’re starting to get the hang of it. Posting updates on Facebook, creating a page for your business and maybe dipping into the river of noise that is Twitter. But how are other people “hearing” your voice? Do you come off like a knowledgeable and engaging business person? A super chatty wanna-be celebrity? A vague, disconnected cipher?

Honing your “voice” means fine-tuning what topics you engage in, what kind of words you use and even the frequency of your communications. Every aspect of these virtual declarations and interactions is standing in for a lot more content than meets the eye.

What Topics Do You Engage In?
Depending on what type of business you do and what your goals are for social media, the topics you choose to talk about may need to be refined.

Do you promote your company all the time? It’s always better to offer ideas and connection beyond those which would directly benefit you. This is not the place for “sell, sell, sell”.

Or do you post and chat about absolutely every tidbit that even vaguely appeals to you? If so, friends and followers may have trouble remembering in which areas you actually excel. Showing authentic personal tastes definitely fosters rapport. But spouting off on political rants — unless you swim in those waters for a living — or reporting every meal you eat — unless you cook for a living — isn’t the way to convince people that you are a crackerjack business pro.

Keep coming back to home base: news, tips and conversation starters that easily connect with your mission. Ask questions. Tell an occasional (usually squeaky clean) joke. Show people what it’s like to do business with the real you.

What Words Are You Using?
Grown-ups running businesses should be judicious with how they use slang and abbreviations. Shortening words is critical in Twitter and texting, but if your messages wreak of teenybopper (“OMG, R U OK?“), you risk losing respect . Succinct is good; humor is helpful. Try to tap into how you really talk when you are most on your game. Confident and compelling. Stay positive. And take it easy with the jargon. The more you know about who is following you, the better you can gauge how much industry lingo they can translate.

How Often Do You Post?
Goldilocks has the right idea: not too much, not too little. Obviously, posting constant updates on your every move (now even literally with location apps) can put off many friends and followers. And piping in after days or weeks of silence doesn’t give others a reason to think you’ve got much useful to share.

Aim for just right. Experiment and set some objectives to see if certain updates seem to attract more attention (i.e., retweets and replies in Twitter, likes and comments on Facebook, discussion on LinkedIn). Set aside some time to note interesting trends or follow some RSS feeds that will give you news that might be useful to share.

Don’t forget to link to your own web site or blog every so often since newer followers may need a reminder. If you think you’re a great gal or guy to work with (and why wouldn’t you!?), there’s no reason why you can’t channel some of that charm and know-how into your virtual voice.

Translating Marketing Trends for Small Biz, NFPs

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The 2010 Kellstadt Marketing Group Symposium held this spring for DePaul University alums, students and grad students offered some intriguing insights into what they called the Next Gen. Much of these sessions serve marketers in corporations looking to expand and innovate on a grand scale. But the Grotto approach is to glean what we can from the big guys and apply variations to small business, entrepreneurs and not-for-profit organizations.

Here’s the juiciest stats and observations I made from this jam-packed session:

  • “Continually improve how you can obtain data about your clients, customers, target audience. The more you can refine your message and deliver it best, the more effective your communications will be.”

TRANSLATION: Get email addresses whenever possible. Ask questions at any touch point with customers, patients, etc. Connect with your prospects in language, look and ways that fit the way they really talk to each other.

  • 54% of bloggers post daily.

TRANSLATION: Whatever you are doing online and in social media isn’t enough. Find people who can help you expand your efforts in these areas. (Note to self: Blog more!)

  • Build your personal brand.

TRANSLATION: As we live our lives more publicly, we need to craft the story about our own personas conscientiously. People are now more likely to “know” you before ever meeting you. Make sure those impressions are in alignment with your business and career goals.

  • Since women do 80% of the buying in the consumer marketplace, be sure you are speaking to them.

TRANSLATION: Do your homework and find out exactly who makes the decisions about buying your products or services. Imagine your best possible client/patient/customer and craft marketing messages that speak directly to them.

  • Look for the “passion points” in the group you are targeting.

TRANSLATION: Do you know what excites or inspires your target audience? Beyond the old marketing model of talking about what “pain point” motivates buyers, this approach addresses tapping into positive motivations whether for fun, success, fulfillment, etc.

  • “Understanding the new media means you’ve gotta live it.”

TRANSLATION: Not a big stretch here. Kari King of Glam Media put it bluntly in that statement. To meet customers where they are online, you’ve got to be there, too. Actively. Regularly. Dabbling is a good way to get your feet wet. But don’t expect to win new clients/patients/customers with just a Facebook page and a never-checked Twitter account. Carve out some time and make social media a priority in your marketing efforts – especially if you know your prospects are already living there.

Right-Size Web Design

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Right-Sized Web Design

Sometimes the petite pepper provides the right amount of heat for a tasty recipe.

With the arrival of a shiny new year — along with a shiny new decade — the promise of hot tech and the drive for business improvements can inspire many an entrepreneur to take a closer look at the company web site. Would the site deliver better results with some strategic updates? Does the look and feel match the brand? Are prospective clients and customers persuaded to buy.

The best approach for reviewing the site is to aim for what I call “right-size web design”. What are the next best upgrades for your site that will bring you the most bang for your buck? Remember exactly who you most want to reach when pondering an upgrade or makeover and consider these questions:

How often can you update the site?
Keeping content fresh for SEO (search engine optimization) and returning visitors is more critical for some types of businesses than others. Retailers need to keep product and sales info current. Service providers in health and technology need to showcase their expertise in a rapidly changing environment. But monthly content updates may be sufficient while you use your blog for more transitory or conversational info.

Do you need any interactive features?
A calendar or RSS feed can add depth and interest to your site. But if you don’t change up events or info often enough or the site is too busy, these features can also distract visitors and postpone or thwart a potential call or sale.

Can you integrate your social networking activities?
Get your Facebook page, Twitter feeds, blog and more tied in with your web site. A simple icon link will do for some; up-to-the-minute, simultaneous posts work better for others.

Take a good look at your site and talk over the options with your marketing partner or web guru. You can get the right sized upgrades for your site without spending a fortune or settling for the status quo.

Sometimes You Just Need to Ask for Help

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By nature, small business owners have a real DIY attitude. You have to when you wear that many hats: ceo, marketing director, receptionist, coffee maker/fetcher/cleaner-upper. It’s a great, and probably necessary trait. But successful entrepreneurs also need to know when they need help.

Maybe it is high time you hired an intern for some marketing assistance or a bookkeeper to handle invoicing, etc. Our bookkeeper Linda not only takes care of AP and AR at Grotto, she offers ideas that have streamlined our processes and improved the bottom line. (She’s with us just part-time so holler if you want her number. She’s great!)

Asking for help doesn’t always mean adding staff or expanding your list of vendors. Remember to ask colleagues, friends and even clients for advice when you are puzzled by something. The whole online social networking phenomenon has some degree of call-and-response built in where the most interactive hubs depend on a give and take of information.

Think nobody wants to help? Especially “in these times”? Think again.

Check out tweenbots. Proof positive that people—even NYC busy people—are always willing to help. Just ask.

Thanks for the link, Charley.

Does Your Web Site Need a Check-up?

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Web Site Checkup

  • Do you find yourself apologizing for your web site when you send someone to it? (“Just ignore the pictures/flashy thing/out-of-date stuff.”)
  • Do you feel like the site could actually motivate more people to call or buy?
  • >Does it just seem like the site feels a little dated or out-of-step with what you see on the Internet these days? Or, it doesn’t even mention your current services or product lines?

Whether you update content on your web site frequently or just every so often, a regular—perhaps deeper—review could improve search engine results (which means bringing new eyeballs to your info) and make sure the site is technically up to snuff.

You don’t necessarily have to scrap the whole site to get some added benefits. Even a few tweaks can bring real results. For instructor Arlene Faulk, we improved her page rank in Google and delivered more inquiries and students simply by changing the words “t’ai ch” with an apostrophe to “tai chi” (without) on her site along with some other minor copy updates. Renaming page files with search friendly words, converting image-based navigation terms to HTML text or rewriting content on key landing pages just might give your business the bump it needs.

Your web site check-up might point to some of these action steps (depending in part on when the site was built and the techy chops of your web designer/developer):

  • Streamline the underlying code to make sure the site functions well on all popular browsers.
  • Update copy and images to tell people exactly how your products or services will help them.
  • Experiment with new keyword phrases in the copy, page titles and file names to match what real people are typing into search engines.
  • Rethink (and probably remove) flash-based opening pages.
  • Add alt tags* and restructure content to meet standards for the disabled and for mobile devices.

Of course, a full redesign may be necessary at some point. Web standards (including the explosion of Internet access on mobile devices) are continually being refined to help us deliver information more efficiently. Don’t let your web site stagnate!

*alt tag = A bit of code that says what an element or image is even when it isn’t being displayed. For example, a visually-impaired person using a screen reader would hear the text of the alt tag in place of seeing the image.

Mind Your Copyrights: Is Facebook Getting Grabby?

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Whether or not you have taken the plunge and started exploring the possibilities for smart business marketing among the social networking sites, this news bears watching. This week, a story broke that Facebook recently – and quietly — changed its copyright policies which made it rather unclear as to whether or not they would own whatever users post on the popular communications site.

Their Powers That Be have responded that the changes weren’t meant/don’t mean what you think they mean. In a cnet news report (Facebook: Relax, we won’t sell your photos), spokesman Barry Schnitt’s statement indicated that, “[t]he new Terms were clarified to be more consistent with the behavior of the site. …That is, if you send a message to another user (or post to their wall, etc…), that content might not be removed by Facebook if you delete your account (but can be deleted by your friend).”

Still, cnet warns: “Things are a little bit murky for sure, though. Unlike the Yahoo-owned Flickr, Facebook does not have extensive copyright preferences, meaning that a professional photographer might want to choose a media-sharing site where there’s less of a gray area as to what can actually happen down the road.”

This development shouldn’t stop entrepreneurs and freelancers from using such sites to promote their services. But we should all be mindful of what value our information has in this digi-age while proceeding cautiously.

All in all, it seems a boneheaded move by FB. Either the terms should have be edited more carefully to state what they claim they mean or they might have followed the collaborative approach the site seems to encourage by posting a draft and creating a bit of dialogue around it. Lawyers may shudder at such a notion, but as a marketer, I say if you don’t talk to your audience directly, you will simply lose them.

More selfishly, I worry that I won’t be able to enjoy the random postings of pals like Bob Huff’s lovely photos. Let’s hope not.

“Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.”

— Charles Mingus

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