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Blog Editing Pro Tip: How Do You Handle Too Many Verb Tenses?
“I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.” —Vladimir Nabokov Do you know the difference between future progressive, present perfect...
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Blog Editing Pro Tip: Don’t Let Cliches and Idioms Get Out of Hand
“Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.” —attributed to Samuel Johnson In a basket of bunnies, be the cat....
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Blog Editing Pro Tip: Actions Speak Louder as Verbs
No word in the English language is as insidious as is is. Is is everywhere. Sometimes is is a helping verb, and sometimes is is a linking verb. Sometimes is is the only verb that will work, but all too...
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Blog Editing Tip: How Much Editing Advice Is Too Much?
Whether you’re talking about writing, editing or trimming your nose hairs, advice on how to do it well (and how to do it right) is abundant. Every bit of advice you get, though, is really just an...
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Why Meta Descriptions Are Not Obsolete
Google announced way back in September 2009 that meta descriptions would no longer figure into its search algorithms. Black hat and gray hat web designers had been abusing these meta tags for years to...
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Give Your Business Card a Mullet
Some say that in this modern age of ubiquitous smartphones and continuous digital connection, old-fashioned dead-tree business cards are just a quaint and pointless tradition. To these people, I say,...
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How To Put Business Jargon In Its Place
People like to complain about jargon. A lot. This is odd considering that anyone who has a job uses some kind of jargon — specialized vocabulary that is unique to a specific business or industry —...
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Should You Write Online Content Like A Reporter or a Storyteller?
Since the first newspapers began running through the first printing presses, how news was written was guided (and limited) by the printing technology itself. Over time, even as technology progressed,...
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YouTube’s Audio Library Is Both High-Quality And Free
Your YouTube marketing videos just got better soundtracks. YouTube has launched a new Audio Library that allows users access to royalty-free music tracks for background music in their videos — or even...
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Is Web Content Turning Art Into A Commodity?
I remember when I was a young, hopeful, aspiring writer, sitting at my desk, dreaming up new worlds and putting them on paper. I just knew that when I grew up, I would make my living as an author. That...
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Website Editorial Gaffes Could Be Costing You Customers
Editors, grammar Nazis, language mavens and other logophiles have been saying for a long time that good grammar is more than just window dressing, and now we have data to back up that assertion. Global...
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Why You Should Separate Your Data from Your Story
Having solid mathematical data lends veracity to your posts. But in your rush to present readers with loads of great data, you might be undercutting their comprehension and making your text less...
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4 Ways to Simplify Your Blog Posts, and Why You Should
Think for a moment about some of the blogs you visit most often. How many of those do you visit primarily because you enjoy the writer’s style and way with words? How many of them do you frequent...
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7 Marketing and PR New Year’s Resolutions
According to Statistic Brain, roughly half of all Americans will make a New Year’s resolution, and less than half of those resolutions will be achieved. Most resolutions will be entirely personal —...
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Fast Food, Bitty Burgers and Pop Culture: Anniversary of a Viral Video
Today marks the 30th anniversary of what might be considered the first video to go viral, years before the World Wide Web, camera phones and social media. On January 10, 1984, Americans heard...
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Will Jelly Stick Around? Predictions About Biz Stone’s New App
Biz Stone and his entrepreneurial cohorts finally launched their much-hyped Jelly app last Tuesday. Couched in feel-good language, this free mobile app (available for Google Android and iPhone) uses...
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An Engaging Twitter Feed Is No Longer an Option
Twitter’s Magic Recs has been a part of Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android since late September. Some people who use the apps don’t even know it’s there (the Recommendations toggle button in...
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In Search of Awesome: The 4 Types of Quality
Here at DigitalRelevance, we think (and write) a lot about quality. About creating things of such high quality as to be irresistible. High-quality work is certainly an admirable pursuit, and though we...
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5 Reasons Hummingbird Could Bring Back Copy Editors
Google launched the Hummingbird update sometime last August, but SEOs, online writers and editors and search professionals everywhere are still trying to figure out what it means for their daily work...
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How to Emulate Upworthy, and Why You Probably Shouldn’t
To many marketers, Upworthy is “that site that publishes those headlines.” And although it’s true that the folks at Upworthy have developed a headline philosophy that leaves many salivating, some...
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Stop Humanizing Twitter and Just Be Human
We’ve all heard the advice that in order to gain followers to your brand’s Twitter account, you need to humanize your voice. Some would-be gurus even point the way toward a more human-sounding voice:...
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The Unconventional Wisdom of Ultra-Long-Form Content
Conventional wisdom said that people have short attention spans, that they’ll only consume online content in small bites and that they don’t read anymore. Marketers everywhere latched on to that...
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Make the Most of Your Web Page Titles. All Three of Them.
Sometimes, the most difficult and frustrating part of writing for the Web is coming up with just the right title. That perfect title grabs readers’ attention and entices them to read further. It’s...
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Where Bad Marketing Copy Comes From
Like many people who call themselves writers or editors (or both), I have an almost allergic response to the uninteresting, uninspired and sometimes unreadable tripe that all too often passes for...
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Bad Marketing Copy: 6 Treatment Options
In my previous post, I wrote about some of what I have identified as the root causes of bad marketing copy. Today, I offer treatment options. What follows are six ways you can foster the creation of...
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