Last weekend I made a short list of interesting writing that you should be reading. Along those lines, I’d like to offer you some more this week. Again, I’d love to hear what you’ve enjoyed reading recently.

Mommybloggings Part Deux: The marketers are here to stay. Are we?
If your audience includes moms, you might be interested in Liz’s take on mom bloggers and marketers. The debate isn’t over yet.
7 Signs Your Marketing May Need to Evolve
Are some of your practices outdated? John tells you how to improve and update your marketing strategies.
Five Ways to Persuade Like a Silver-Tongued Trial Lawyer
Just the …read more

We’ve all experienced the rogue employee who wipes out any goodwill you felt for a restaurant or a service supplier with their attitude.
Well, corporate cultures can be just as toxic to the customer relationship, but instead of one dysfunctional “brand ambassador,” you have a company full of them.
Valeria Maltoni offers two examples of ways companies sabotage the customer relationship. On her Fast Company blog, she describes the way companies drive away customers with poorly thought-out cost cutting efforts.
On her Conversation Agent blog, she talks about measuring brand value, and how a weak or non-existent brand strategy can destroy your sales.
Put …read more

Even if you don’t know the original source for a fact or a quotation, you need to indicate that it’s not your idea.
Otherwise, your audience will assume you are either too dim to know that you’re borrowing from someone else, or that you are too unethical to acknowledge the debt.
Either way, you have everything to gain and nothing to lose.
If you have time, track the information back to its first author. And for facts and statistics, it’s worth doing a quick check about the validity of the statement.
Commonly-accepted pseudo facts like “You should drink eight glasses of water a day,” …read more

The average person in business receives too many memos, e-mails and news alerts in a given day to pay close attention to all of them.
Unless you can communicate quickly  what value will come from reading your information, they may not even get past the heading.

Assuming you are distributing something that has value to people, it’s your responsibility to signal that value in the first few words.
And if you can’t think of a reason people would find the information valuable, maybe you shouldn’t be wasting their time with it.
Technorati Tags: influence,business,communications,values,teasers,stickiness,answers,information,words

Everyone appreciates praise from a client, a supervisor or a co-worker.But vague compliments leave the (often correct) impression that you don’t really understand what that person does.
When you spot someone doing something right, provide immediate positive feedback that’s specific to the task.  If you aren’t sure about someone’s role, spend a few minutes finding out more before lavishing praise on them.

“You saved me from embarrassment this morning when you spotted that typo before I sent that document out,” communicates not just your appreciation, but also your understanding of what was done and how it helped.
“You do a great job! …read more

You have to wonder how the talk went at CBC the day they decided to play hardball with the author of the iconic Hockey Night in Canada theme song.
“That theme is too recognizable,” one exec said to the other. “Is that really worth a couple of million dollars?”
(Pardon me while I get out my calculator and figure out how much cash the theme song would generate in mobile phone ring tones at $3 per customer…)
Tired of the legal strictures of their expiring agreement with the jingle’s songwriter, CBC decided to play hardball, setting a deadline for negotiations with the …read more

There was a time when a public speaker could count on the attention of their audience.
Blackberries, wireless laptops, and other tools mean that you’re no longer in control of the environment you’re speaking in. Are you talking to a room full of conference-goers, or to all the readers of live bloggers and folks Twittering your comments to their colleagues?
You don’t know.
The implications for speechwriters and their clients?
Speechwriter Glynn Young says speakers need to be more conversational, engaging the audience in the talk. Speechwriters need to “think of people not as an audience, but … as a community, a community …read more

There’s a mountain of analysis of what went wrong with Hillary Clinton’s drive for the presidential nomination.
I’m with the pundits who say it was her team’s assumption that they were orchestrating a coronation when they needed to be gearing up for a marathon race.
While the dark horse (no pun intended) raised buckets of money and orchestrated a grassroots revolution, Hillary stayed stuck on the experience message.
Instead of asking voters to make a change by electing a woman, she kept hammering away that experience was the most important quality in a leader. It worked for Dick Cheney, so why …read more

Too many interviewers think their job is to look smart.
The job of the interviewer is to create an environment in which the subject of the interview is as open, animated and coherent as possible. If jumping on a couch and behaving like an orangutan (with a hat tip to Tom Cruise) is what it takes to achieve that, then that’s what they do.
Instead of proving how intelligent you are, use an interview to achieve your goals.
Ask dumb questions. Ask open-ended questions that force the person to explain more.
Leave your ego at the door, and you may find yourself getting the …read more

Phil Donahue on CBC Radio’s As It Happens:
Who’s to blame? 
“The American people are. We elect leaders who talk tough, who say ‘Bring it on,’ instead of bringing help.”
“Every major daily paper in the United States was behind this war.”
Donahue has discovered the documentary film format, and spoke with soldiers and their families about the personal damage done by a war that was launched on false pretenses.
Interesting to see Donahue move from the daily grind of a talk show to the intense focus and long development time of a documentary. Body of War was co-produced and co-directed with Ellen Spiro.
You can …read more