Sue Horner is a freelance writer in Oakville, Ontario, who blogs about writing, newsletters, communications and running an independent business in The Red Jacket Diaries blog.
Inc.com’s contributing editor, Geoffrey James, doesn’t sugarcoat it. In a piece called How Corporate-Speak Rots Your Brain and How To Stop It, he says jargon “makes you and everyone around you progressively less intelligent.” What’s more, rather than making you sound...
My competitors are better than me. I’m not as smart as my colleagues. People won’t want to pay for the services I offer. If you’ve ever found yourself thinking thoughts like this, you’ve been the victim of perceptions you have about yourself...
You don’t have to hire someone to slap you every time you turn to Facebook. That was the extreme step blogger Maneesh Sethi took to be more productive, detailed in Why I Hired a Girl on Craigslist — and How I Quadrupled My Productivity. But to be...
If you wanted to reach someone urgently, would you rely on email? Increasingly, it seems, you would. Well, you might not. I certainly wouldn’t in a business situation*– I would pick up the telephone and call. Yet at a professional development event earlier this...
Thank you to the people who took the time to read (and sometimes comment) on the Red Jacket Diaries blog this year. Here are the 10 most-viewed posts in 2015: 1. My recap of Mitch Joel’s speech to IABC/Toronto in February, where he talks about people wanting...
As the old year winds to a close and you get ready to pop the champagne on a new one, you’ll find lots of advice for making and sticking to resolutions. I’m not a big fan of once-a-year resolutions, but according to the impressively named Statistic Brain...
Are you still Christmas shopping? As the big day hurtles closer, those ads warning of “last minute” are starting to hit home. If you have avid readers/writers/word-and-punctuation nerds on your list, you might be interested in these dozen ideas, inspired...
Researchers say that people’s attention span is a pitiful eight seconds — supposedly less than that of a goldfish. (Do you wonder, as I do, how researchers measure a goldfish’s attention span?) So it’s not surprising that marketers are looking...
My colleague and friend, Deana De Ciccio, is a graphic designer who loves creating infographics. These creative efforts combine words and images to tell an interesting story. In keeping with the upcoming season, we partnered to create this just-for-fun infographic...
If you’re researching home renovations, planning a wedding or looking for recipes, chances are you have a Pinterest account. Big brands also have Pinterest boards, encouraging customers to “engage” with them by pinning photos of their products in use. But...