by Sue Horner | May 18, 2017 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
“Your website is a beast you must constantly feed,” writer and search engine optimization (SEO) specialist Marnie Hughes told a group of entrepreneurs this week. That means constantly updating your site with blog posts, news or other content to help reach your...
by Sue Horner | May 10, 2017 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
A classic line in the movie Spaceballs reveals a secret password is 12345. Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis) says, “That’s the stupidest combination I’ve ever heard in my life! That’s the kinda thing an idiot would have on his luggage!” Of course, it is exactly what...
by Sue Horner | Apr 27, 2017 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
“There’s a lot of year left,” says Mark Peters, who writes a column called Evasive Maneuvers. But the word “re-accommodate” is already a front-runner for the Euphemism of the Year, he tells Time’s Katy Steinmetz. A euphemism substitutes an inoffensive expression for...
by Sue Horner | Apr 20, 2017 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Email newsletters are back – or maybe I should say are still – in the spotlight. And whether sent by large companies, media giants or solo entrepreneurs, email newsletters can be a powerful marketing tool. For example, the content marketers at Copyblogger get massive...
by Sue Horner | Apr 13, 2017 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog, Writing samples
Readers appreciate when the writer does the heavy lifting to explain the complex and figure out “what’s in it for me?” That’s a big part of what I do. In 2016 and 2017, I had the honour of interviewing brainy researchers at Western University’s Faculty of Science. My...
by Sue Horner | Apr 6, 2017 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Post-it notes were flying in a session on creative problem-solving. Trevor McAlpine of Synergetic Management had members of IABC/Toronto’s Professional Independent Communicators covering the Post-its with ideas in a fast-paced session on creativity. The tactic was...
by Sue Horner | Mar 30, 2017 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
I’m a packrat. There. I said it. And it’s true. I hang onto things way too long. Sometimes it’s due to sentimental value (Baby’s first stuffed animal! Photos! Letters from loved ones!), but other times it’s just that I’m busy. I file and forget. I don’t even see the...
by Sue Horner | Mar 23, 2017 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) launched an exhibit this week that explores the story of nine rare blue whales that became stranded in thick ice and died. The ROM recovered two of the skeletons after the creatures washed ashore in Newfoundland and Labrador in...
by Sue Horner | Mar 15, 2017 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
My colleague Sheila Gregory posted on Facebook that it starts to bug her when a word becomes trendy and is used everywhere. Right now, that word is “myriad.” A few of us chimed in with other overused or jargony words we find annoying. But jargon isn’t just annoying....
by Sue Horner | Mar 8, 2017 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Whether your organization has five people or 50,000, there is no “silver bullet” that will solve all your communication challenges. And despite the shiny toys of the digital age, panelists at an IABC event on Feb. 28 agreed that old-school listening, talking to...
