Find prospects by connecting, not selling
“A miserable, soul-sucking experience.” That’s how speaker Steve Slaunwhite described cold calling at a meeting of IABC/Toronto’s Professional Independent Communicators. Sure, calling up complete strangers can be successful, eventually. But this “sales-getting”...
Here’s your challenge for National Punctuation Day
National Punctuation Day is fast approaching; do you have your assignment yet? What, you haven’t been eagerly awaiting Sept. 24? That is the day when Jeff Rubin reminds us that “a semicolon is not a surgical procedure,” and urges us to freely toss...
Tweeting once or twice isn’t enough
Last night, I enjoyed dinner at a local restaurant. Great food, excellent value, attentive service and an elegant setting. There were TWO of us in the restaurant. Four, if you count the waiter and the chef. I was tempted out on a Tuesday night because the restaurant...
Transfixed by doors & gates & paths
Beautiful gardens are part of the charm of Royal Roads University in Victoria, BC. While I was there, I found myself enchanted as much by the various doors and gates throughout the gardens as by the colourful peacocks that roam the grounds. If you want to get all...
Keep calm and get over the post-whatever blues
As a society, we’re not very good at transition. Women who take maternity leave from a busy job outside the home practically get whiplash switching from the day job to the dead stop, career-wise, that is the all-consuming day-and-night job of motherhood....
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...
Friday word fun: Aug. 3
It’s a long weekend in Ontario, so let’s lead into it with some Friday word fun! Creative haikus about traffic (thanks to Sue Ridewood for the link). Example appropriate to Ontario holiday weekend traffic: “Need a few days off / after Sunday night...