writing Archives - Page 9 of 15

Great writing never goes out of style

By Patrick Gant

Yesterday, I participated in a great discussion on LinkedIn: in an age in which communicating is becoming less formal due to the growth of social media, do traditional writing skills matter as much as they used to?

You bet they do.

Whether you’re a manager communicating to staff, or an account executive working with clients, there’s more to what you do than simply getting a point across.

Great communication is the mastery of the art of persuasion. The rise of social media means you have more tools at your disposal to ply those skills, but rules still apply.

An email message, a tweet or a blog post is easily hobbled by poor style and typos. Those kinds of mistakes mean you’ll have to work a lot harder to reach and connect with people.

People judge what they read. It’s that simple.

Granted, I’m biased as a writer by trade, but speaking strictly as a business owner, I’d much rather make a small investment in ensuring my message is concise and error-free (and that can be as simple as just taking a few extra minutes to review your work), rather than spinning my wheels wondering why a message isn’t getting any traction.

Great writing doesn’t just define you, it also defines your message.

Why I don’t use Evernote anymore

By Patrick Gant

Having a portable database is a really important part of my workflow as a writer. My research hat is always on, but it used to be hard for me to keep my research notes, bookmarks, text and PDF files well-managed and synced over several Macs in the office fleet. I used Evernote for a while but switched to Yojimbo.

Here’s why. Evernote is great until you decide you want to export your data to another database. That’s when problems arise. Even though Evernote talks a good game about being export-friendly, you’re faced with having all of your rich-text file notes being converted to html.

[Update] Apparently there is some kind of workaround to this, but it’s curious that this issue has yet to be addressed fully by the app’s developers.

Bottom line: it’s your data. It is a mistake to take all your hard work that’s gone into filling your knowledge bucket and compromising with it a proprietary system tries hard to lock you in.

The secret behind the rise of Singapore and Hong Kong as world centres

By Patrick Gant

Just finished reading Stewart Fraser’s Global Financial Centres report 2010 (PDF), which looks at what attracts people to locate in various international financial centres across the world.

My attention is particularly drawn to Asia, where Hong Kong and Singapore continue to cement their third- and fourth-place rankings as world financial centres (click on chart at the bottom of this article to view full sized). Not only are they credited for having rebounded faster from the recession than their counterparts in London and New York, they also get better marks (Singapore in particular) for the quality of the people they have on-hand.

Look a little deeper and you can see what’s behind that: a steadfast focus on innovation and education.

The old maxim is true: money goes where it’s most welcome, but it applies to people, too. Smart people go where they’re given the budget and resources to take great ideas and do amazing things with them.

(Chart: Global Financial Centres report 2010)

Danger, Will Robinson! Beware of classic mistakes when asking for referrals

By Patrick Gant

A brand-new article we’ve prepared for Engage Selling Solutions, based on the sales presentations of Colleen Francis.

Referrals can be really powerful selling tools when used correctly and as part of a formalized plan. However, there’s a right way and a wrong way to ask for referrals. Too often, sales people and business owners commit classic mistakes in asking for them and assume, based on their disappointing results, that referrals might simply not be worth all the effort. Referrals do work. More

Thinking your way out of a problem

By Patrick Gant

Making the choice to innovate and be creative in your business and in the products or services you offer—it’s a smart move that can can help differentiate in a competitive market. But does it mean you have to balloon your R&D budget or go on an acquisition spree to make it happen? Not necessarily.

Apple has been rolling out game-changing products in steady succession, while keeping their R&D spending at $4.6 billion, or roughly 10% of earnings over the last four years. And as Steve Cheney points out, that’s at odds with the strategy of some of its competitors.

Example: between 2007 and 2010, Microsoft spent a whopping $31 billion—700% that of Apple—on research and development.

Real innovation starts by thinking long and hard about your customers’ problems, about how solutions to those problems are being unmet, and then finding better ways to solve those problems in ways that benefit your customers…first.

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