The last dispatch from the dorm (probably!)
My two-year degree program ended in mid-July, but that chapter came to a true end with a one-minute or so walk across the stage at the Royal Theatre in Victoria, B.C. for convocation on Tuesday. My classmates and I don’t actually have our BA in Professional...
Flex your creativity with truly awful writing
It was a dark and stormy night… So begins Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s novel Paul Clifford, the inspiration for the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. In tribute, the contest gives awards for the “opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels,” or...
Erase these wordy phrases
It can be easy to just go along with formal, wordy and awkward wording, especially if your Legal team has a chance to review articles before you publish them. (Sorry, lawyers, but you know you aren’t comfortable with informal!) But please don’t. I’ve...
Dig to find the right newsletter content
There used to be a service that provided “canned” content to be used as filler for employee newsletters. I never understood why. A newsletter is precious real estate. Even an e-newsletter only has so much space available before the reader gets distracted...
Secrets of successful independents
The F-word cropped up early in the March 7 “Secrets of successful independents” session put on by IABC/Toronto’s Professional Independent Communicators. I’m talking about FOCUS. Coping with changes in the freelance landscape requires both focus...Restoring the past: Every picture tells a story
(Written for HP Canada employee newsletter) A treasured photo can be a memento of a significant occasion, a record of a birth or marriage, the last connection to a late loved one. For families left homeless after the devastating hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005,...
Employee newsletters: How often should you publish?
(Updated in September 2016) A colleague once mentioned that her company had a small print employee newsletter. They published it three times a year, but were thinking of dropping the frequency to twice and increasing the size. My first reaction was dismay. No matter...
10 tips to polish your LinkedIn profile
Never, never, NEVER auto-post your Twitter comments to LinkedIn. It’s annoying, all those #hashtags and @signs are #messy and #confusing to #people who don’t use #Twitter, and you’ll just cause your network to hide your comments, which effectively hides YOU from...