The Write Blog

I had to share this.

So, I bought some shoes from Zappos.com last month, and the day after I placed my order, this fun little confirmation email landed in my inbox:

“Yay” is right. Zappos took something that could have been bone-dry and made it fun and funky.

Especially when compared to this sturdy, functional-not-fashionable confirmation email from another (Problem? I don’t have a problem. I like shoes. A lot. Stop judging me!) online shoe retailer:

See the difference?

The second one is . . . fine. It works. At the end of the day, I still know all the important stuff, like the tracking info and the order number. But, well, it’s sort of like choosing the clunky, orthopedic walking shoes over the sexy, peep-toe pumps.

The email from Zappos appealed to me as a writer because it was a much-needed reminder that you can inject a little fun into almost any copy. As a customer, it just made me smile.

So, what do you think? Do little things like this matter to you? Have you seen any great examples of fun copy lately? Let me know!

This article is courtesy of OnlineDegree.net A great list of tips for anyone who does research online.

Google has been around for ages, and if you’re just starting college, you’ve probably used the search engine for most of your academic life. But there’s more to the powerful search tool than just typing in keywords. Here are 56 Google search tricks for all types of students, whether you’re in high school, pursuing an online degree, or are just trying to brush up on your own research skills.

Advanced Search

When you’re searching for specific material, use Advanced Search to plug in qualifiers that will narrow down your search. Here are more Advanced Search tricks to learn.

1. Search within a domain: Only let Google bring up .edu or .gov sites, for example, if you want primary sources or authoritative information.
2. Select file type: This very handy qualifier is useful when you need to quickly find certain types of data or information for a presentation. You can choose to limit results to .pdf, .xls, Google Earth, .doc, .rtf, and more.
3. : If you’re looking to use open source material or unlicensed material, this is a good trick to make sure you’re on track.
4. Exclude terms: Use a minus sign right before a word (-example) to eliminate it from your search results.
5. Wildcard search: The * key acts as a wildcard in Google search that can be helpful with early stages of research. Google gives the example [Obama voted * on the * bill] to learn about Obama’s votes on several different bills.
6. Blogs: After conducting a search, click on the “Blogs” button under “Show Options” to view only blog posts on the subject.
7. Limit synonyms: Did you know that Google sometimes finds results that don’t match your search exactly, but that use synonyms instead? Type in the + sign before a search to eliminate synonyms and use your words only.
8. Language: For foreign language or international business or policy classes, or if you just have to have a primary source, use this selector to change language settings.
9. Where your keywords show up: When you’re looking for very specific information or for a specific kind of source, you can use this feature to limit where the keywords show up in your search: the URL, title of the article, in links to the page, or just anywhere in the page.
10. Find pages that link to the page: Use this feature when you want to do a little more digging. You’ll stumble across blog posts, journal articles and news stories that offer more in-depth commentary.
11. Quotation marks: Put quotation marks around a phrase to let Google know you want that exact phrase in that order.

Scholar Search

Google Scholar is an excellent resource for undergraduate and graduate students who want a quick way to connect to authoritative information from journals and scholarly publications. Use these tips to search Scholar.

12. Search by author: Scholar recommends using the author’s initials, or at least first initial and last name, to increase your results.
13. Search by journal: Used Scholar’s Advanced Search to find articles published in a specific journal or publication.
14. Find articles and pieces that reference that article: By typing in the name of an article in quotation marks, you’ll find that paper plus other papers that reference it.
15. Limit by date: Make sure you’re citing the most updated research by limiting your returns by date.
16. Find court opinions: If you’re searching for court opinions, you can search by state, choose only U.S. federal court opinions, or expand your search to all journals and opinions.
17. Select collections: Also in Advanced Search is the option to select collections like Chemistry and Materials Science or Social Sciences, Arts, and Humanities.
18. Search Library Links: Under Google Scholar Preferences, you’ll find the option to find library access links.
19. Start with citations, then move offline: Sometimes Google will pull up a citation but not the whole piece because it hasn’t found it online. If it looks like a good match for your research, copy it down and bring it to your librarian for help locating it.
20. Find foreign language journals: Look for primary materials from foreign language journals in Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Spanish and more.
21. Bibliography Manager: Bibliography Manager is a Scholar feature that lets you add citations in various formats like RefWorks, RefMan, EndNote, and BibTeX. This is found in the Preferences section.

Reference Tools and Tips

Google is full of tricks for pulling up statistics, basic facts and reference material. Check here for great shortcuts for finding definitions and more.

22. Dictionary: Type the word “define” before the word you want to look up in the Google search bar.
23. Calculator: Just type in an equation with the = sign to use Google’s calculator feature. You can find more calculator operators and symbols here.
24. Books: Click on the “Books” option under “Shop Options” after entering your search. You’ll find Google books on the subject, and can quickly add them to your library or preview them.
25. Unit conversion: Let Google complete unit conversions for you when you type in a problem, like “4 lbs in kg.”
26. Cooking conversions: When you’re trying out mom’s recipes at school, use this feature to solve cooking conversions.
27. Numeric ranges: If you want to know who was president during a certain timeframe, type in “president 1940…1950″ for example. You can also use this feature to find results that contain certain dollar amounts or other numerical ranges.
28. Stock Quotes: For business classes, you can use the Stock Quotes search by typing in the ticker symbol. Google will bring up current stock quotes.
29. Glossary: Type in a word followed by ~glossary to find glossaries, term lists and dictionary entries for that word.
30. Package tracking: Find out when your next care package arrives when you use this feature.
31. Public data: Look up public data by typing in keywords and a location, like “population california.”
32. Area Code Lookup: This feature should be useful when applying for jobs or looking for places to visit in your area for research.
33. Froogle: Whether you’re shopping for the best deal or are conducting market research for a project, use Google’s product search tool, Froogle.

Notes and Organization

Keep your research organized with these tricks.

34. Search within a site: Type “example search term site: example website” to search a keyword or search term within that site only, if you need to use a particular source.
35. SearchWiki: Use SearchWiki to star and edit your favorite results, even hidden ones.
36. info:: Find information about a website if you need to verify it or collect data for a citation.
37. Custom Search Engine: Create your own custom search engine with Google. You can name it, pick the language, and select only certain sites to be searched.
38. Learn how to assess credibility: This slide explains how to check a page’s “about” section, find a date and author, and verify the author’s credentials on Google.
39. Google Toolbar: Great for study groups, this toolbar lets you share websites with friends and translate web pages.
40. Pay attention to Google’s indents: Google indents results when they’re from the same website as the result above it.

Social and New Media Search

Google is a great tool for finding images, toying around with new media, and locating and connecting with people online. Here are some Google tips to help you maximize Google’s cutting edge potential.

41. Google Maps eye-level perspective: Once you’ve searched for a particular map, drag the little person icon (located at the top of the zoom in/zoom out bar) anywhere on the map to get an eye-level perspective.
42. Google Groups: When you want to pull up information from Google Groups only, you can type in the author’s name, group name or insubject: and the subject keyword.
43. Updates: After conducting a search, click on the “Updates” button under “Show Options.” You’ll get a steady stream of the most updated social media comments about that topic. Clicking “Discussions” will take you to forums Q&A pages.
44. Google Image Search: You probably know how to use image search, but did you know it’s a useful way to ID people and look up foreign language definitions?
45. Knol: While it may not be the most authoritative search tool, Knol can help you start your research and find out how others around the world are reacting to current events and popular discussion topics.
46. Recognize faces: Follow this link for instructions on how to get Google to recognize faces, and not bring up other image results when you type in someone’s name.

Shortcuts

Use these shortcuts to make your Google searches even faster.

47. I’m Feeling Lucky: If you’re an expert searcher, use this button on the Google search page to get automatically directed to the first web page that would normally show up in a list in a general search.
48. “Better than” and “reminds me of”: This weird little tip will help you find comparisons. Just type in either search term and then a keyword, all enclosed in quotation marks.
49. cache:: Use this shortcut to show a web page in its cached version.
50. related:: Type in a website after related: to find related sites.
51. Shortcut for spellcheck: Don’t bother going to a dictionary website to see if you spelled something correctly: just enter it into Google’s search bar, and the “did you mean…” suggestion will pop up with the correct spelling.
52. Google Blog Search: Blog Search is another quick way to jump to blog posts only.
53. Set up iGoogle: Personalize your Google homepage so that it contains links to your favorite feeds and research pages.

Miscellaneous

From looking for jobs to understanding case sensitivity, here are more Google tricks for students.

54. Google Job Directory: Use this tool to look for job opportunities, including seasonal jobs and job fairs.
55. Delete search history: You can clear your address bar history, Google Toolbar history, and Google search box history here.
56. Search operators are case sensitive: Google isn’t case sensitive when it reads your keywords, but operators like OR are.

A Tip on How to Balance Good Writing with Good Customer Service

I had spiders in my garage. Lots of them. Probably hundreds, to be honest. But they were just in my garage – they hadn’t infiltrated my home. Yet. In fact, I hadn’t seen a single spider in the living room, the bedroom, or the bathrooms, and I kept trying to tell that to the lady on the other end of the phone. The problem was, she wasn’t listening.

Pest-lady continued to insist they didn’t sell pest treatments just for the garage. I needed the whole house done. And not only that. I needed a quarterly pest treatment plan. Yeah, ok. So I called the local guy, who did it my way. And, you know what? It’s half a year later. And still no spider re-infestation.

So, what does that have to do with writing? Well, listening to your clients – I mean truly listening is hard. And just like the pest-control lady, copywriters often try to force clients into their own mold. But ultimately, trying to convince a client to take on a copy style that they don’t like is not going to work. It certainly won’t work for the client-copywriter relationship, but in many cases, the end copy doesn’t convert well to sales, either.

Why? Well, the thing is, your client just may be right.

Copywriters have taken all these marketing classes and read all these marketing books and written all this great marketing copy. So after they’ve gotten a few happy clients under their belt, they have a tendency to assume they know more about their client’s clients than the client does. So, for example, if the copywriter is used to getting response with short, pithy copy and using a lot of chunking on a website, sometimes they get in the habit of trying to write every client’s copy that way. Then, if the client wants longer, more technical copy, the copywriter’s first response is to think, “Well, I’ll do it their way, but the client is obviously an idiot and this will never work.”

The thing is, surprisingly, your client may know more about marketing than you give him credit for. Clients who have been in business for a long time tend to know their customers — and they have often attracted customers that are very similar to them. So, if, for example, your client is fascinated by the mechanics of shot peening — their clients may actually be interested in that too.

The trick is to balance what you know about best practices in writing with what your clients know about their business. Maybe you don’t put the mechanics of shot peening on the home page, or front-and-center in the brochure. But there probably is a good place for it, if your client thinks their clients want to know.

So, tip of the day: avoid copywriter hubris. Find out what marketing approaches have been successful for your client in the past and leverage them. Don’t reinvent the wheel, and don’t exterminate the copy angles that are already pest-free.

Good news for all word nerds: The Associated Press has finally made the switch from the old-fashioned “Web site” to the simpler, more natural-looking “website.” Yay!

To me, “Web site” has always seemed a little stuffy and English teacher-ish. Good for AP to know when it’s time to change things up. According to the AP’s Web site – er, website – the change will be included in the 2010 print edition of the style guide.
Continue reading AP: Goodbye “Web site;” Hello “Website”

Should businesses include prices on their marketing materials, landing pages, websites, etc? One school of thought says no – get customers in the door with free offers or discounted pricing, then, once they understand the value of the product or service, hit them up with the prices.

That theory can work … sometimes. But hiding prices can often have the opposite effect on consumers, especially online buyers. I’m going to illustrate one reason why hiding prices doesn’t work for me. It starts with a personal story about trying to buy a magazine.

Why I Didn’t Buy a Magazine Subscription

Last week I was reading the online version of an industry publication (I won’t say the name, but it’s a very genre-specific writing magazine). I liked one of the articles so much that I decided right then and there that I wanted to buy the print subscription.

So I clicked on the “Subscribe” button. The next page that came up was a registration page. I looked all over the registration page for the price of a 1-year subscription. Nada. I clicked back a page and looked for a price. No luck. I turned to the “FAQ” page, thinking that maybe pricing options would be available there.
Still nothing.

It seems that, before I could find the price of the magazine and make an informed decision about whether or not to buy, I had to register with my name, email, and mailing address first. Then, presumably, I would be taken to a checkout page where I’d input my credit card info.

In short, that particular publication lost my business. I gave up without buying my subscription, and I haven’t regretted it since. I was frustrated that I couldn’t find a price ANYWHERE on the website and nervous, too: while most magazines cost around $25 for a year’s subscription, I know all too well that some magazines can cost upwards of $100. Plus, I didn’t want to add my name, email, and mailing address to the company’s marketing database (and endure the many emails and postcards that were sure to follow) if I didn’t know if I could afford to subscribe to the magazine in the first place.

The Consumer Dilemma About Pricing

Should you include your prices … or not? In most instances, there aren’t a lot of ethical problems with underscoring your prices. But there are plenty of reasons why hiding your prices can hurt your conversions for potential customers. Here are four of the reasons why I opted not to buy when I couldn’t find a price:

If there’s not a price, I probably can’t afford it. This was my very first thought about the magazine – there must be a reason they don’t want me to know the price. Were they scared Continue reading The Money Question: Should You Include Prices in Your Marketing Materials?