I remember it like it was yesterday. I was checking out the list of required texts for my class COM 215: Writing for Print. At the top of the list in boldface and all-caps was AP STYLE GUIDE (NEWEST EDITION PREFERRED). Through school, internships, my professional life and even in my personal writing life, my AP Style Guide has been the Robin to my Batman; the Garth to my Wayne; the Scully to my Mulder.
Taylor's Latest Posts
Keeping Your House in Order
Your website is your business’s online home. Though it may have a nice condo (Facebook), a sweet summer home (Pinterest) and a dumb little timeshare you got tricked into signing onto (Angie’s List), your business’s forever home is your website. It’s the place you want to bring people to show off all your cool stuff, the place that’s going to say the most about you and, most importantly, the place where you have the most control of what it looks and feels like.
You’re the Best (Sports Website) Around
Sports teams’ websites have to do a little bit of everything: they promote events, sell merchandise, build awareness and lots of other little things you may not realize. Thankfully, almost every big sports name in Indiana does a great job with their web design – and since they have to do so much, there’s a lot that we can learn from their choices.
The Long Tail & Short of It
When I tell people that part of my job is improving clients' SEO by writing web copy, very few of...
Tell Me a Story
Human beings are storytellers. Just about as long as we’ve been able to walk, humans have told stories. Businesses of all sizes have used storytelling in their marketing efforts to great effect and yours can easily be one of them.
Why Your Emails are Sent to Spam
You can spend hours upon hours crafting the world’s greatest email newsletter. It can have engaging content, superb design and salient calls-to-action, but one tiny misstep in choosing your subject line can send you to the dreaded spam folder – the email graveyard filled with Nigerian princes and free Xanax
Drive Repeat Business with Automatic Email
Think email marketing campaigns take too much time? One way to get the benefits without spending too much time is to use the versatile autoresponder tools in your email client to create drip campaigns.
Japanese Christmas Chicken – When Marketing & Culture Collide
Marketing and modern culture are inherently intertwined. Though the goal of marketing has been unchanged since its infancy, the means through which messages are delivered has adapted to the zeitgeist of the time and the culture it pervades.
The Little Things Count
In business, just like in life, little things can make a big difference. Though keeping your current customers and gaining new ones seems like a huge task, even the smallest of gestures can make the difference in a customer’s mind of who they choose to do business with. What you might see as an insignificant detail could be an instant red flag to a consumer, so let’s make sure you’re doing all the little things necessary to get big things done with your business.
When Social Media Backfires
Social media is like a chainsaw: indispensable when used well, disastrous when used carelessly. Surely you’ve seen a friend on Facebook or Twitter post something they shouldn’t have, be it a status, a picture or even just a reply to someone else’s update. People can lose jobs, friends and money because of what they post online, and businesses can stand to lose even more. The best way to prevent future mistakes is to study the past, so let’s take a look at some blunders made by popular businesses, and how you can avoid making the same ones.
Why Your Business Will Fail
Businesses fail – that’s an unavoidable fact. Some studies put the failure rate of businesses in their first 5 years at around the 70-80% range. So let’s face it – your chances aren’t great.
Failure isn’t something unique to small businesses, either. Even the biggest of the big dogs have come crumbling down, and usually for the same reasons as small businesses. Let’s take a look at some of the reasons the biggest names in different industries have faltered and shriveled away.
Apply Directly to the Forehead
If you’re like me or my Roundpeg teammates, you thought of one that was annoying and/or repetitive. Intentionally grating commercials have been around for several years, and they’re not likely to go away any time soon. Any idea why not? The numbers suggest that when used in the right context, annoying and repetitive ads tend to be successful. Let’s take a closer look at the how, why and when these awful ads work.
Improv-ing your Marketing
Improvisational (or improv) performance is one of the most long-lived and versatile styles of performance in history. It has existed in a variety of forms, from music to dance to poetry, but perhaps most associated with the word “improv” is comedy. Having had the opportunity to perform this style of comedy for close to 10 years, I’ve learned to use my skills as an improviser in a variety of ways both on and off the stage. From problem solving and content generation to overall communication with clients and colleagues I’ve found these fundamentals have helped me flourish. Here are a few tenets of good improv, and how they can help you improve your marketing.