02 02 2016
Rethinking the Social Media Landscape
For over a decade, entrepreneurs have struggled to fully harness the continually expanding influence of social media. According to recent polls, about 28 percent of all online activity is dedicated to social media consumption, so it should come as no surprise that 93 percent of marketers use social media for business. The importance of social media presence is taken as a given, basically granted as your first topic in Marketing 101.
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Exposure, attention and the inevitable backlash associated with social media in a digital age is now a never-ending public obsession.
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03 11 2015
Timing Your Social Media Posts
As they say, timing is everything. The second hand of an increasingly anachronistic analog clock ticks through each moment of our lives and stops for no one. There are the occasions where we wish we could will time to move faster and just as many that leave us wondering in dismay where it all went.
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October is here at last, and the witching hour of Halloween spooks and specters is drawing near. As I began to write, I figured there was no better time to address one of the most frightening aspects of many business’s marketing strategies:
Bad content management.
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29 09 2015
Blogging For Profit
Blogging can be an insanely powerful tool in the business world today. As a human face for a company, a blogger, armed with a unique and engaging voice, brings a built-in customer base who are already in love with the brand.
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16 06 2015
The Dream of a Common Language
It may be a familiar trope in crime stories, but having a dead body in the trunk is a lousy selling point for an automobile. When Ford launched its ad campaign in Belgium, they wanted buyers to appreciate their excellent manufacturing and came up with the slogan “Every car has a high-quality body.” However translated into Dutch, one of Belgium’s three official languages, the ad became “Every car has a high-quality corpse,” which was less than persuasive. Thanks to a translation error, Ford’s new model sounded as if it was an accessory to a crime rather than something you’d willingly drive off the lot.
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Disclaimer: I’ve never been skydiving.
The first step of blogging, like skydiving, is making the commitment to do it. Once you’ve decided you’re going to skydive, you’ve got to decide on a method for your jump. Are you going in tandem? How about an accelerated free fall? Or should you static line that bad boy?
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Envision a gothic fantasy tale, with a blood-sucking horror sitting at a piano. His cold, pale hands dance over the white, glistening keys of the ancient instrument as his haggard, wet breath exits his chest in a tremendous gray cloud of cold, damp vapor.
Your skin may have crawled a little while reading that, but not because the tremendous number of descriptors painted a vivid picture in your mind. In fact, you may have even been distracted by how many words were used to say something so simple. This is an example of the danger of over-reliance on adjectives in your descriptions.
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The Language Ninja is hoping you are having a splendid middle-of-February, and that your Valentine’s Day was a wonderful celebration of affection between you and the one you love most. For the Ninja, it was a day largely spent weeping. Let’s get started!
Q: When is it appropriate to use “I,” “me,” or “myself” in a sentence?
A: If you are an elected official giving a press conference or a director of marketing giving a presentation, it is mandatory that you use “myself” in any instance you might possibly be tempted to use “me” or “I.” No, it isn’t “correct;” it just makes you sound important.
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I’ve always had a thing for Valentine’s Day that I can’t explain. Maybe it’s the incongruous combination of red and pink. Or maybe it’s the stupid puns on hokey valentines and cheap, terrible candy. Could be the hearts, because I really do love hearts. Beyond all those solidly rational reasons, though, my absolute favorite thing about this holiday is that it’s an entire day built around celebrating something that, in the day-to-day, is all too often taken for granted: your special someone.
