Posted: March 17th, 2011 | Author: Thom Schoenborn | Filed under: editing, interactive marketing, management, online copywriting, portfolio, social media, webtrends | No Comments »
In a way, I started on this project before I even joined Webtrends, when I wrote a blog post titled: “Portland Bike and Marketing Freak Out.” It’s a good description of what happened when Webtrends bought an ad on the side of a TriMet train asking, “should cyclists pay a road tax?” I stand by that analysis of the campaign today — a near miss. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: November 12th, 2010 | Author: Thom Schoenborn | Filed under: copywriting tips, editing, interactive marketing, management | No Comments »
Go read this first. Or just read my blockquote below:
At my company Fight, we call this “the 80% rule.” It goes like this:
When you convey a difficult concept, you’re better off being 80% right and simple, than 100% right and complex. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: June 11th, 2010 | Author: Thom Schoenborn | Filed under: editing, interactive marketing, management | Tags: arm-twisting, bribery, flattery, recruiting, tip | No Comments »
As I’ve been trying to ramp up the blog at Webtrends, one of the things I have to do is shoot out ideas to people and ask them to write something. Often, there’s more than one person who could write it. Or I want to do a Q&A with multiple experts.
Groups Suck
What I’ve found is that sending one email and cc’ing multiple people routinely fails at generating anything. They all stare at each other and assume someone else who is less busy than them will take care of it. And after all, it’s just the blog. It’s not like the earth will stop turning if we don’t post something.
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Posted: June 4th, 2010 | Author: Thom Schoenborn | Filed under: copywriting tips, editing, interactive marketing, management | No Comments »
When interviewing people, I think young writers can get a little carried away with the Rolling Stone-ness of it all. They want to describe their subjects’ looks and the way they treat the waitress and the African art on the wall. And maybe that’s important. Maybe there’s enough space to fit all of that in. Maybe the person is famous enough to warrant it. But usually not.
This is the real world where you’re interviewing CEOs of small businesses. And the reader typically needs to get something out of it — if you’re not thinking ahead about why the reader would bit.ly your link and send it along, you’re dooming yourself to obscurity.
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