Category Archives: business

In business, it’s okay to change your mind (and follow your heart)

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TheWriteWay’s pick for February 9, 2015:

“Change is good.” I’ve always believed this statement, and it’s refreshing and reassuring when you see people embracing change in their lives. heartBut the same “change is good” concept can (and should) be applied when we change our minds, especially when we’re following our hearts. Sisters and business partners Becca Nelson and Ellie Brown changed their minds and decided to keep their business, after Mark Cuban offered to buy it for $200,000 on TV’s “Shark Tank.” There was an article on NewsObserver.com that shared their story, and it offered some validation that it’s okay to change your mind in business, and to do what “feels right” to you. (The link to the article that I had posted unfortunately no longer works.) Best of luck, Becca and Ellie – and keep following your hearts! 🙂

P.S. In keeping with the “change is good” theme of this post, I’ve opted to change these weekly blog posts… I’ll be posting one article at a time (rather than two or three), so that each selection can get the focused attention it deserves. (And you may be seeing more than one post per week… Stay tuned!)

WriteOn! – Week of January 19, 2015 – This Week’s Picks:

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Your Sales Teams Can Build on Content Marketing to Get More Revenue…

infographicAre your sales teams “as ‘hip’ to the content movement as their marketing colleagues?” @Hubspot shared this helpful infographic from @knowledgetree in a post last week (“Content Selling: The Next Evolution of Content Marketing”) . Check it out: http://exprt.co/1y8oXgx

Hire a ‘Combination of Right-Brain and Left-Brain Types’ for Your Marketing Team

On the Silverpop blog, Bryan Brown writes, “Companies lack the cross-channel customer insights they need to deliver relevant, timely, personalized content.” He offers recommendations for “transitioning your marketing team” this year. I especially like recommendation #1: “Shift Your Hiring” and hire “a combination of right-brain and left-brain types to thrive in a new marketing landscape…” Read more: http://bit.ly/1CqgUcg

WriteOn! – Week of January 12, 2015 – This Week’s Picks:

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What’s YOUR favorite social media site?…

The Pew Research Center says Facebook is the most popular social media site, but its growth has slowed. my twitter page At the same time, however, other social media platforms saw “significant increases” in popularity and usage. (I’m on several social media platforms, but my personal favorite is still Twitter — and I’ve been happily tweeting since 2009! Follow me on Twitter @kathymagrino.) Here’s the report released last week: http://pewrsr.ch/1ANX79T

In B2B content marketing, let’s get busier — and better!

According to the “B2B Content Marketing 2015 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends – North America” report, ONLY 8% of B2B marketers rate the effectiveness of their organization’s use of content marketing as “very effective.” (This means there’s a lot of room for improvement! 🙂 ) You’ll find a lot of interesting and helpful info about B2B content marketing in this report from Joe Pulizzi of the Content Marketing Institute and Ann Handley of MarketingProfs: http://slidesha.re/1tY68pa

 

 

WriteOn! – Week of January 5th, 2015 – This Week’s Picks:

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Let’s start the year being positive about business — and everything!

Happy New Year! Let’s start the year being positive about business – and life, in general! Here are some valuable lessons from Richard Newton (@richnewton) via the @Virgin blog:  http://bit.ly/1wPNDTU

How do YOU define PR?

Does anyone really know what “public relations” is…?! How do you define #PR?

I found this piece from John D. Wagner in the New York Times, and John’s honesty is very refreshing: “Learning a Foreign Language Called Public Relations” – http://nyti.ms/145ZRRB

 

Introducing a new feature on this blog: WriteOn!

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Each week, I’ll be posting a “WriteOn!” mini-post here on my blog where you’ll find two or three links to blogs, articles and academic research paper posts that I’ve discovered online during the previous week. WriteOn3-carrotHonestly, I’m not sure what the specific topics will be – I’m open to learning about anything and everything that can help keep us positive, focused, motivated and moving forward in today’s sometimes-crazy, often-distracting world.

I’ll be looking for writing that somehow catches my attention. (For those of you who already follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn, you know my interests are wide-ranging and somewhat scattered: business, writing, teaching, learning, entrepreneurship, social media, communicating, etc.) In determining my picks for each week, I’ll be focused on sharing writing that’s somehow eye-opening, thought-provoking or just plain interesting – something that makes me (and hopefully you) think or react or take action.

Let’s face it: There’s so much good writing that’s going on right now, it’s impossible to read it all. Today, it seems we’re all writers – and we’re writing more than ever before: texting, emailing, blogging and expressing ourselves on social and online media… The reality is that humanity, as a whole, is communicating on a global scale and we’re linked together now more than we’ve ever been before.

This new blog feature – WriteOn! – will be my attempt to simplify and filter through all the writing and communicating that’s going on online today. I’m doing this for myself and for my like-minded friends and followers. Hope it helps us all! Look for my first WriteOn! post this Monday, January 5, 2015. Let me know what you think by commenting or tweeting to me. Thanks!

Bring On Your ‘Writing Mojo’!

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The summer session of my COM107-Writing for the Media class at Rider University starts today. It’s a short term (only 6 weeks). Packing a full semester into 6 weeks isn’t easy, but we’ll be starting off with a bang! Right away, we’ll be diving in and discovering ways to “bring on our writing mojo” — that magical feeling when the words just seem to endlessly and easily flow from our brain to our fingertips as we write.  writing mojo

Find Your Writing Mojo

From time to time, we all need a little help to overcome “writer’s block” or to just get started on a writing project. When we’re “blocked” or we’re finding it difficult to focus on our writing efforts, we need to tap into our “writing mojo” to get things done.

Here’s some advice — excerpts from my first class assignment, “Bring On Your Writing Mojo!”:

What inspires you to write?… Do you like to write?… Do you ever suffer from “writer’s block”?… Let’s share our personal thoughts and ideas about the writing process and discuss ways we can bring on our “writing mojo.” Also, please read the following blog posts to discover some of the ways writers become motivated and get ready to write:

You also might want to do some additional research on your own…

The assignment: Write one or two paragraphs answering the following questions:

  • Do you like to write?
  • Why or why not?
  • If you do like to write, what do you like to write about, or what type of writing do you enjoy the most?
  • After hearing and reading about what motivates people to write, what idea(s) or suggestion(s) do you believe would be the most helpful to you to help you “bring on your writing mojo”? Tell us why.

Share Your Ideas…

My students will be writing their thoughts in a private discussion forum on Canvas, but feel free to share your thoughts and write your comments on this blog. I’ll respond to you as soon as possible. Thanks for reading — and good luck bringing on your “writing mojo”! 🙂