12 innovations in internal communications (a report from #IABC14)
What forces are shaping internal communications, and what are the best practices that help companies improve their own communications performance? At a session at the an IABC World Conference in Toronto, speaker Kelly Parsons shared what Melcrum’s research...
What the new anti-spam law means for e-newsletters
The looming deadline of July 1, 2014 has some marketers in a panic. That’s when a new law comes into effect, the Canadian Anti-Spam Law — which acronym-lovers shorten to CASL, pronounced “castle.” Running afoul of the law could mean serious...
APEX award for Wordnerdery!
Yahoo! My monthly newsletter, Wordnerdery, has been given a 2014 APEX Award of Excellence for Publication Excellence. APEX Awards are given by Communications Concepts, which helps communicators “write, edit and manage more effective business publications.”...
What question drives your life?
Is there one question “you are never tired of asking and will never know the answer to”? This is the question 2014 IABC World Conference* speaker Lesley Jane Seymour referred to in her keynote session, “Discovering Your Life’s Question.”...
Geeky content can drive reputation
For every narrow, geeky subject, Carl Friesen bets there’s a matching geeky publication that wants your content. At a meeting of IABC/Toronto’s Professional Independent Communicators, Carl outlined how to drive reputation through content that shows off your...
Get more referrals by letting others know what you do
A colleague asked me this week if I knew anyone with a specific expertise. No one person came to mind, so I scrolled through the member lists of a couple of associations. With a somewhat vague idea of what the members did, I had to rely on their brief summary of...
Do’s and don’ts for writing effective captions
One of my clients had a standing request to find a photo for each article written for the employee newsletter. No wonder; “Photos attract even the most casual reader,” says The Canadian Press Stylebook, and that makes captions “probably the most-read words…after...
In which Sue survives a perilous climb
What I was thinking? Months ago, I agreed to do a fundraising event, the 24th annual Canada Life CN Tower Climb. That’s 1,776 steps, from the bottom of that tower on the left, allllll the way to the observation deck. I would be part of the Advantis...