Archive for March 2013

Using the word “we” hurts messages intended to persuade or sell. At least this is what speech coach Dr. Michelle Mazur believes – and her reasons are fairly compelling. If you missed them yesterday, here they are. Although on Wednesday I was gung-ho about Dr. Mazur’s “don’t-use-we” position, I confess that I’m less so now.…

Bill Clinton was right. Or was he? Flashback to September 1998. President Clinton was giving testimony to a grand jury about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. He was asked if he was lying to top White House staffers when he told them directly that “there is nothing going on between us.” Clinton responded with this: “It…

But wait! There’s more! (So say the infomercials…) Would I ever leave you hanging? Well, obviously I did – because several of you wrote to ask me for the rest of the advice from top copywriter Ray Edwards. Passing along my condensed version of Edwards’ template for creating an effective sales and marketing letter – and…

Short & sweet sounds good. Doesn’t always work, though. Ray Edwards is one of the top copy writers in the country. His specialty is creating words, catch phrases, and compelling paragraphs that sell a product or service. He wouldn’t describe it exactly like this. Rather, he’d say that he writes copy that invites people to…

We could’ve written a better headline than this! I attended a website conference last week which required an overnight stay in a hotel near Chicago. For whatever reason, I always enjoy finding the USA TODAY by the door of the room in the morning. I don’t even mind if the hotel bill is attached to…

We’re deluged in data. Can we stay afloat? TGIF probably takes on new meaning week by week for school leaders and communicators. The necessity for us to do more with less never seems to diminish. Nor does our internal daily battle with the ominous, ever-present feeling of being overwhelmed. It’s understandable, really.  Although we are…