Welcome to our latest fortnightly eBulletin, posted here on Tuesday 6 January 2009. In this issue:
- There’s still time to book a Workshop at 2008 prices
- What exactly is … email bankruptcy?
- Are you a member of SYP’s group on Facebook?
- Tip of the Week – how to spot when your copy’s in a rut
There’s still time to book a Workshop at 2008 prices
Welcome to 2009 – we’d like to wish a happy new year to all our subscribers. This first working week of the new year can be tough, so why not reward yourself or a colleague by booking training workshops at 2008 prices while you still can? Offer expires on 15 January.
What exactly is … email bankruptcy?
This time of year lots of us are trying to clean up our inboxes – organising, archiving, deleting … is that you this week? A radical alternative is email bankruptcy, which involves admitting defeat, deleting your entire inbox/sent box, and declaring this Day 1 of email all over again. As this is a VERY risky strategy, we’d recommend applying yourself to inbox sorting with renewed determination and rewarding yourself with chocolate for every 100 emails deleted.
For more realistic tips on managing email, and plenty of jargon-busting, why not join us on an E-Marketing Workshop this spring?
Are you a member of SYP’s group on Facebook?
The Society of Young Publishers currently has 809 members on Facebook – does that include you? If it doesn’t, should it? There’s no age limit, plenty of info already about 2009 events, extracts from their InPrint newsletter, and opportunities to read and place posts.
Tip: Facebook is great for active groups like the SYP but when you find a new group we’d recommend checking out the number of members, recency of postings, and number of people posting (some ‘groups’ turn out to be one obsessive individual …) before joining in.
Tip of the Week – how to spot when your copy’s in a rut
All of us have words and phrases we fall back on. They’re safe, innocuous, and trip naturally off the keyboard to fill available space. Trouble is, all of us are using the same ones which means they add up to a great big vacuum … Readers aren’t bothering to read them because they’ve simply lost their meaning, rather like the boy who called ‘fire’ so many times that nobody was listening the time it was real.
Get hold of a few of your competitors’ catalogues, and compare their copy with yours. Is it alarmingly familiar? Now imagine a potential customer getting multiple catalogues in the mail. How many ‘comprehensives’ or ‘essentials’ are we throwing at them? And how refreshing would it be to see copy that WASN’T entirely predictable? Use this to edit your copy with renewed vigour.
Even simpler, take a spread from one of your catalogues and highlight every use of the adjectives you know you’re overusing. Try it if you dare.
Our Copywriting Workshops are a great way of seeing copy in an entirely new light. Join us on one of our open courses, or ask about an in-house course tailored specially to you.
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Rachel Maund
Marketability - extra marketing resources and training just when you need them
Tel and Fax: +44 (0)20 8977 2741
Email: rachel.marketability@btinternet.com
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