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Featured Resources
Be a Superstar Reviewer: Four Tips for Getting What You Want from Your Copywriter
Tips for Selecting and Working with Subject Matter Experts
What Causes Marcom Projects to Fail
More Resources
Four Simple New Year’s Resolutions for Marcommers
Blech. It’s already late-mid-January and you still haven’t made a New Year’s resolution. I think I know why: if you’re older than, say, 25, it’s probably impossible to think of a single personal flaw you haven’t already overcome by way of a previous New Year’s...
Wordie Fun for the Holiday Dinner Table
Hoping to spark some delicious conversation around the holiday dinner table? Stacy interviews Cristy Clarke, fabulous founder of TableTopics—conversation starters featured on the “Martha Stewart Show,” on “Ellen,” in O Magazine’s “Favorite Things” issue, and now, in...
My Mother the Pop Icon
My Mom is hanging in the Museum of Modern Art: the Monica Lane story from publicity glossies to Pop Art.
How to Write a Great Voiceover
No question about it: video and animations are hotter than ever. You can post them on your site to highlight a product or service—or use them on YouTube and other social sites to connect with customers. And with the advent of smart phones with decent video cameras,...
Tips for Creating a High-Impact PowerPoint Presentation
A PowerPoint presentation ultimately requires two things: powerful messaging and impactful graphic design. Achieving both requires careful preparation, but the results are so worth it.
Quotation Dos and Don’ts
Your Highness: I hold a job that requires I write articles, press releases, and similar pieces in which I quote others. You’d think I’d have such matters down by now, but I’ll come clean: I never really learned the rules for using quotation marks. To complicate...
How to Write a Great Private Placement Memorandum
Everyone in venture capital and private equity is familiar with private placement memorandums (PPMs)—perhaps all too familiar. Let’s face it: PPMs can be long, dry, and formulaic. They don’t have to be. At ABS Capital Partners, we aim to write PPMs that do more than...
My Smartphone Love Affair
Swept off her feet by a sexy smartphone, this Content Bureau designer wonders how long it will be until she’s replaced by a newer model …
Typos of Death
There are just some typos you can’t forget – even if you want to.
Commenting on a Corporate Blog: Making Your Digital Two Cents Count
Commenting on corporate blogs is easy. Writing constructive and accurate posts? That’s more complicated. But the reward for taking a thoughtful approach to commenting will be words you’ll be glad to see live on in digital eternity …
So a Copywriter, a Carpenter, and a Chiropractor Walk Into a Bar…
Is it a stretch to see parallels between shingling a wall and writing copy? You be the judge.
Never Fear the Semicolon
Your Highness: I have a confession to make: I live in fear of the semicolon. As phobias go, I know it could be worse. I could have an aversion to, say, spiders, or maybe conference calls or my BlackBerry. Which would really be unfortunate, since I work in marketing....
Food Is My Muse
Designers—just like everybody else in the world—love to work with products we hold close to our hearts. Consider me more than pleased that olive oil, wine, chocolate fudge, and vodka are among the ‘food’ items we’ve had the chance to play with at our San Francisco...
How to Overcome Writer’s Block (Works for Me, At Least)
The deadline approaches, but words won’t dislodge and tumble onto your screen. You’re juiced up on caffeine and your favorite writing music has been playing for hours. The sum total of three hours of “work”: one crappy sentence. Oh dear, what can you do? I can only...
How to Write an Edgy White Paper
Ho-hum. Another white paper. Most clients struggle to turn this staple of the high tech industry into something exciting, engaging, and most important, actually read. An edgy white paper is refreshing. Challenges your thinking. Shows true zeal. We’ve written hundreds...
Keep Your Favorite Assets Evergreen
A recent B2B copywriting project began with our client sending me an array of white papers, case studies, and brochures as background material. She called particular attention to one white paper as a great benefits overview. Indeed, the paper does provide a very clear...
Typography Tenets: More Design Tips for Non-Designers
You’ve worked hard to create a singular voice; visual focus is just as important. Here are some quick guidelines to avoid common font mistakes and help keep your docs looking pro.
How to Ghostwrite a Great Conference Blog
Your annual user conference starts in two weeks. You’ve packed glossy brochures in cozy boxes. Printed thousands of badges. Reserved buckets of ice for your nightly foot-soaking. And to chronicle the big event on your company blog, you have your very own ghost eager...
A Sonnet For My Valentine
Content Bureau’s unbelievably wonderful intern, Kendall Weikert of Dartmouth College, avows passion in sonnet form to a certain love object.
The Anti-Valentine: Seven Things Not to Say or Write on February 14
You’ve made it through 364 days without killing your relationship. Good for you! Now it’s Valentine’s Day – the day your Significant Other will scrutinize everything about you. Even your grammar. If you can just get through February 14 without committing a major...
Bring Local Flavor to Your Marketing Campaigns With Transcreation
How do you ensure that your campaign maintains the impact of the original without having to launch new creative in each market? This is where marketing “transcreation” comes into play. Transcreation is a freer form of translation, closer to copywriting. The result is a text that’s linguistically and culturally adapted for specific countries and/or regions, be it for Latin America, Africa, Europe or even local U.S. Hispanic markets.
How to Write a Great Thank-You Note
Writing a thank-you note has long been perceived as a chore, especially painful for children, who don’t understand that civilization just might fall apart without such social niceties. It can seem like a race to get to the part where you sign your name (with great...
Excuse Your Typos? No I Won’t, Actually.
As our fingers fly across our smartphones, we’ve developed a shorthand way to dash off messages without spending too much time on the finer points of spelling and grammar. “C U later” and “gr8” substitute for actual language when we’re communicating via the small...
Dear Santa Redux
We all love our holiday traditions, be they Black Friday sales, polishing up the menorah, or, as in my household, trudging into the Bureau of Land Management forest up in the foothills to find the perfect tree, only to forget the tree-cutting permit and get the truck...
How to Write a Great Executive Tweet
Like it or not, the 140-character tweet is today’s version of the boardroom speech. Read about execs who have mastered the art of Twitter.
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