by Leslie O'Flahavan | Feb 7, 2013 | Social Media Writing Courses, Writing Matters Blog
I recently read Ashley Verrill’s write-up on “The Great Social Customer Service Race,” an experiment by her company (Software Advice, Inc.) that put 14 top consumer brands to the Twitter support test. As you might imagine, some of the brands fared...
by Leslie O'Flahavan | Aug 23, 2012 | Social Media Writing Courses, Writing Matters Blog
This guest post is by Andrea Ford, friend and colleague extraordinaire. Andrea is the Content Lead at Create Digital, an agency in Richmond, Virginia that works with Fortune 500 brands to help make their social media smarter. Create Digital specializes in three...
by Leslie O'Flahavan | Jul 2, 2012 | Social Media Writing Courses, Writing Matters Blog
Check out our latest handy free download for wordslingers and communication campaigners: Guide to Writing for Social Media. We developed this 57-page guide for the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). The examples in the guide are health-related, but the advice about...
by Leslie O'Flahavan | Jun 13, 2012 | Social Media Writing Courses, Writing Matters Blog
I really need your help. A few days ago I tweeted about a new resource I’m offering for download at my site, a Guide to Writing for Social Media, which we authored for the Centers for Disease Control. This is a really nice free resource; it’s 57 pages...
by Leslie O'Flahavan | Jun 6, 2012 | Social Media Writing Courses, Writing Matters Blog
If you’re using Twitter for customer service, you’ve got to live within your means. Yes, the 140-character limit is a struggle. It’s hard to solve a customer’s problem or answer a question in such tight quarters. Even the Pledge of Allegiance...
by Leslie O'Flahavan | Feb 1, 2010 | Social Media Writing Courses, Writing Matters Blog
From the National Association of Government Communicators list, I’m reposting information about a great resource: three social media toolkits from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. (Thanks to Susan Parker, Director of Mass.gov for this info.) The toolkits...
by Marilynne Rudick | Oct 23, 2009 | Plain Language Writing Courses, Social Media Writing Courses, Writing Matters Blog
While updating our web writing courses, I’ve been scouring usability research to find new studies that apply to web writing. The findings from two separate research studies from the Software Usability Research Laboratory (SURL) at Wichita State University remind...
by Marilynne Rudick | Aug 17, 2009 | Writing Matters Blog
It’s not news that language evolves. Nor is it news that the Internet has accelerated the evolution. So no wonder grammar has become a hot topic among Twitter users. The conversation is focused on a grammatical oddity: we have a gender-neutral plural pronoun they...
by Leslie O'Flahavan | Apr 24, 2009 | Writing Matters Blog
With a Blackberry-addicted president in the White House, it’s no wonder the federal government is focusing on ways to use new media to communicate with the public. Increasingly, officials and agencies are harnessing the immediacy and mobility of Twitter. President...
