English Writing "Huh?"-ism #002

Another post in my series of writing faux pas

As many of my friends and associates know, in between sales & marketing full-time gigs over the past few years, I've been doing a good amount of substitute teaching within the Howard County Public School System.

I tend to concentrate my teaching within high school Spanish and Social Studies courses, and I've been enjoying it a great deal. It's been a way to give something back, earn some  extra money, stay young, and get a ground level layman's view of the state of today's education. The latter has certainly been eye-opening (both good and bad), but that's for another post. 

Howard County is known to have the best overall student performance stats within Maryland, and the state of Maryland ranks near the top within the nation.

But alas, there is certainly room for improvement. I saw the following on an social studies instructional chart that gets handed out to students within a required high school course.


Example 1:

"Some people in China (known as Boxers) are tired of being argued about and want to be free of all foreigners."

Huh? Awkward choice of words and phrasing. Yuk!


Example 2:

"The US wants to trade with China. Other countries (Britain, Russia, Japan) only want China to trade with them."

Huh? I think they are trying to say, ". . . want China to trade only with them."

We can do better.


If you run across something you think would be good to post in this series, please email me at dcryan7@gmail.com (I'll be sure to credit you!)

English Writing "Huh?"-ism #001

This was in the Washington Post today (10/15/17), p. H13:

Fragonard's Fantasy Figures

An exhibition that presents scientific research into the mysterious series of thumbnail-sized sketches of brightly colored portraits of lavishly costumed individuals relating to more than a dozen of Fragonard's known paintings. At National Gallery of Art.

Huh?

In the Post's defense, this may be just a copy & paste from the press release they received from the National Gallery of Art, but still . . .

Fyi, this is the first of what I expect will turn out to be many fun (or sad) posts. I am not trying to be a smarty-pants snob with this. Rather, I am aware firsthand (I used to be a very poor writer myself) just how critical good writing is for success in almost any endeavor in life. This is just my small way of furthering that message. Stay tuned! 😉

P.S. If you run across something you think would be good to post in this series, please email me at dcryan7@gmail.com (I'll be sure to credit you!)

Free and fun ways to improve your Spanish

I've been making a big push over the past 6-months toward reaching my lifetime goal of becoming totally fluent in Spanish. Not quite there yet, but getting close.

Some folks have been asking me what I use to study. Below are some FREE and FUN tactics that have proven to be successful for me. (Preface: any apps I recommend below are usually avail for both computer and smartphones.) 1) First, download the SpanishD!ct app.

It's not just a great online English-Spanish / Spanish-English dictionary. There are also easy-to-access verb conjugation lists, flashcards, and a cool "word of the day" function that posts a new vocab word daily on your smartphone or whatever.

2) Get the DuoLingo app.

It has a quick-paced interactive interface. Here are some screen shots:

3) The DuoLingo folks also have a cool digital flashcard app called, TinyCards  It can be a productive way to pass time on the smartphone.

4) Some public libraries, like ours here in Howard County, MD, allow for free remote online access to Rosetta Stone.

Rosetta Stone incorporates photos of situations. The emphasis is on travel, but vocabulary and grammar concepts can be learned just the same.

Now, I personally prefer DuoLingo because I seem to be able to go faster through it. Whatever. You certainly can't go wrong with Rosetta Stone.

5) Listen to a Spanish-speaking news/radio talk station using the free app, TuneIn. You can search for Spanish-speaking stations from around the world. I personally like Radio Mitre out of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

BTW, I find that the Argentines are some of the best Spanish-speakers for Spanish students to understand. Colombians also have that same reputation. They tend to enunciate very well, and their accent is "plain." It's analogous to those learning English finding native Mid-westerners here in the States easier to understand. I always suggest that one listen to such a station in the background, like when doing yard work or chores around the house. And remember to relax, take the pressure off yourself in trying to understand everything. Start out treating this akin to drinking water from a firehose. At first, try to pickup just one or two words from your vocabulary studies. Then make it phrases. Before you know it, you will soon actually know what they are talking about. I have to credit Ms. Robinson, my first Spanish teacher in 7th grade (that's back in the Dark Ages), in first suggesting this tactic. Back then though, there were no apps of course, so I used a old shortwave radio of my dad's. I would go to sleep with the radio playing stations from Mexico, etc. 6) A variation of the above is to also listen to local Spanish-speaking radio stations while driving in your car. Even if it's mainly a Spanish music-formatted station, you can pickup a lot from the commercials. Here is a link to, El Zol, one such station in our DC/Balt area. (Zol is a play on the word Sol, which means sun).

7) Watch Spanish-speaking television news (e.g. Univision, Telemundo). You've probably already read or heard the day's news in English, so the cross-referencing to the Spanish-version of the same news, along with the graphics and video, will enhance comprehension.

8) And yeah, while on those tv channels, you have my permission to go ahead and watch those "racy" telenovelas with all the those sexy Latino stars and starlets. Below is a still from Telmundo's Tierra de Reyes (Land of Kings).

Sure, you will pick up new vocabulary -- and you can always tell your significant other that you are just working on improving your Spanish. 😉
Note: When listening to Spanish radio or television, you can also develop the technique of "breathing in" the language. Sound crazy? What I mean by that is instead of attempting to translate word-for-word, you will eventually want to transition to the point where you let the phrases just flow into your brain. It analogous to the technique of speed-reading, where one reads phrases rather than individual words. Turning that "word-by-word" switch in your head into "phrase-by-phrase" mode will greatly enhance your Spanish skills.
My advertisement: I do a lot of substitute teaching of Spanish, including long-term stints, with Howard County Public Schools in Maryland. I also offer tutoring. Sure, there are advantages to having a native-speaker for a tutor, but just like great NBA players don't always make for the best coaches, there is also an advantage to having a tutor who knows first-hand the "struggle-points." If you wish to discuss my working with you or your student, please reach out to me at dcryan7@gmail.com

Grow Your Website Traffic with Embedded Video

(reprinted from my Sales & Marketing Minute column in the TIVA newsletter)

Click on the individual images to enlarge the pages for proper reading size.

"Doubling Down" on LinkedIn

(reprinted from my "Sales & Marketing Minute" column for the TIVA newsletter)

As a one-person marketing team for a small business, I am very jealous of my time. I must narrow my attention to the activities that return tangible results. 

My social media activity is one area where I have recently done such refocusing. I have cut back my involvement on several platforms and expanded my activities on LinkedIn.

I viewed a webinar about LinkedIn recently, just to make sure I was staying current in understanding its capabilities. For example, I have found the logic behind the "endorsements" feature puzzling. The value of "recommendations" I understand, but the "endorsements" seem too Facebook-like for the more professional arena of LinkedIn. In the webinar I was glad to learn that others shared my skepticism. But "endorsements" aside, the webinar affirmed my long-held belief that LinkedIn can be a most powerful resource for marketers.

In the 2014 Digital Media Workflow eSurvey that Chesapeake Systems conducted, we included a question about social media. We asked participants to answer the following: "In my professional role, I regularly 'maintain a presence' on the following social media platforms:"  70% of the respondents checked LinkedIn. The next closest was Facebook at 42% and then Twitter at 31%. I found it interesting that Google+ drew only a 16% response, since that is where I have been putting some focus of late due to Google's dominant role in SEO. I may have to rethink that strategy a bit.

Here are some aspects of LinkedIn that I continue to find appealing:

LinkedIn remains a great way to effectively and efficiently prepare for a meeting with a new contact. I can not only get the basic facts, but usually it also allows me to find something in common with the person to talk about that is outside the immediate scope of our meeting. That's textbook Dale Carnegie (author of the classic, "How to Win Friends and Influence People").

I also like LinkedIn Groups. In fact, I have expanded the number of groups I follow. Monitoring them for genuine leads has proven to be fruitful. Now granted, most of the groups have rules about being too promotional in the discussions, but what I look for are opportunities to connect with a person who posts a question that illustrates a "pain point" they are having within a realm my company can address. Instead of responding to such a question publicly on the forum, I usually find a way to connect with the person directly, then point them to some relevant online content of ours, like one of our podcast episodes. I'm not saying this opportunity occurs frequently, but when it does, I have had a good success rate in getting a subsequent conversation going between the new contact and one of our sales team members.

I continue to utilize LinkedIn's "walled garden" email platform in my marketing activities. Typically, I periodically send out an email to my LinkedIn connections that is basically a brief note featuring links to an upcoming event or popular blog article on our website. Granted, the number of my LinkedIn connections is much smaller than the number of people on our eNewsletter list, but my LinkedIn connections tend to be more responsive and engaged when it comes to reading my correspondence. While the average open rate of Constant Contact eNewsletters within the Communications industry is 17% (that's just opens, not to mention the far fewer "click-throughs"), I have been able to determine that sometimes as many as 50% of my LinkedIn connections actually click-through to the links in my LinkedIn emails. I like those results.

So if you feel you need to narrow your social media focus as I have, then perhaps you should consider "doubling down" on LinkedIn.

David Ryan is the Marketing Director at Chesapeake Systems www.chesa.com, an IT-centric media systems integrator based out of Baltimore. David can be reached at dryan@chesa.com.

A further sign of fiscal desperation in the newspaper industry?

I love my iPad. 

I have become hooked on reading my morning issue of The Washington Post on my iPad. And the digital access hasn't cost anything extra to our home delivery subscription of the paper.

But of course, the home delivery is now costing us over $60 every eight weeks, while a household digital subscription by itself would cost only $30 for that same period.

So, over the past few months I have lobbied my wife for us to make the change. She is certainly no digital Luddite. She has balked at the proposal because, rightfully so, she has been unhappy with the look and function of the digital version of The Post on her smaller-screened Kindle.

Obvious husband solution: buy her an iPad for Xmas. To which, together with my daughter, we did.

Susanne loves her new iPad (btw, ahem, hers has a retina screen which mine doesn't . . .), and I just got the green light from her to switch the household to the money-saving digital subscription of The Post.

So I called the Post's subscription line, and everything proceeded fine with the rep on the other end of the phone. Then, to my surprise, she offered the following: She said that since we've been such loyal customers (ok, ok), she could offer us a special promotion, valid til Dec. 31st, where we could get the digital subscription AND keep the home delivery, for a year, at a cost that works out to less that $11.50 per month -- yeah, about $3.50 less per month than the digital subscription alone.

Huh? Well, once I confirmed that there were no catches, and discussed it with my wife, I took the offer. (Ok, yes, we do feel a bit guilty about the additional trees we'll be killing, but they are now at least using some recycled material for the printed paper)

Why is The Post offering to give us both services for less than the digital alone?

Well, my wife got it quicker than I. She said it's because this arrangement allows The Post to officially count us as both a print and a digital subscriber -- which is important to them when presenting to potential advertisers. 

Now, we've been getting free copies delivered to us of the Sunday issue of The Baltimore Sun for awhile now, but what does it say about the newspaper industry's present business model that The Post feels they have to in effect, pay us, to take the printed issue?

Whew, thank god, I guess, at least for The Washington Post's sake, that someone with deep pockets, online savvy, and patience, like Amazon's Jeff Bezos is taking over the helm.

Oh, and P.S. he may want to do something to address my wife's concerns about how The Post functions on her Kindle.

P.P.S. In talking with my daughter (the Economics major) about this, she said, "Well, the physical paper can act as a "brand reminder" that you have a digital Post account, what with so many free online sources for news available." Hmmm, I can see that Mr. Bezos indeed has a BIG challenge on his hands to make money with this new generation of young adults.

Some Tips for Improving Your Writing

At one of my recent presentations about online marketing, someone in the audience asked for some advice on improving her writing. Here are some tips I passed along:

* First, I complimented the person who asked the question on being able to make that assessment of herself. And I also congratulated her on her desire to do something about it. There are far too many people who delude themselves otherwise.

* My foremost bit of advice is the same that we tell our kids: Read. Read anything you want . . . just READ. There is a huge correlation between voracious readers and good writers. And it's never too late to start.

* Take advantage of today's technologies and have a way to start a scratch document whenever and wherever the Muse strikes you. I personally like the cloud note application, Evernote. I write a sales and marketing column for a media industry association, and whenever an idea or a paragraph comes into my head, I can access Evernote on any of my devices.

* When you get to the point of writing that first draft, try to do it during a time and at a place where you are not feeling pressured. I realize that office settings and deadlines may limit your ability to control this, but be creative. Some suggestions that work for me: Write during the noon hour when others are out of the office at lunch and the phone is less likely to ring. If need be, find a space where you can get some privacy, like an unoccupied conference room. If the document is large, such as a proposal, see if you can telecommute and write from home for awhile before heading into the office

* When writing, err on the side of using more paragraphs, at least during the first draft. You can always consolidate them later if needed. You will find that this helps keep you laser-focused on what you are trying to say. This is a good tip to keep in mind when you are writing for the web as well. Studies have shown that readers on the web tend to click away when they see large blocks of text.

* Take advantage of the capabilities of the modern-day word processor and edit, edit, edit.  True geniuses might be able to write masterpieces in one take, but the rest of us mere mortals are served well when we take the time to edit carefully. Accept this concept. It's ok.

* Make a game of editing. Since the goal is to use as few words as possible, find some clever way to reward yourself for every word you extract. (For me, when I'm working on one of my columns, every fifty words I cut out entitles me to buy another song on iTunes.)

* Intersperse your writing and editing with breaks. Fresh eyes will help you catch errors or awkward phrasing. I like to put drafts away for overnight if possible. If the situation won't allow for that (like when writing emails), then I get up for a few minutes or move on to something else for awhile before returning to the piece.

* When you think it's all ready, read your final draft out loud one last time. Yes, out loud (quietly if in the presence of others). The point is to move your lips. If you stumble, it's usually a sign that a phrase or sentence is awkwardly worded. Fix it.

* A note about presentation. Ok, I am not rabid about this, but I urge folks to write using Arial or Helvetica or some similar font. Here's my hypothesis on this: If you think of black text as being resistance to eye flow, then a non-serif type allows for faster reading.

* Finally, you should have in your library of reference books, "On Writing Well - The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction," by William Zinsser. It's available on Amazon for less than $10. Most of what I have written above stems from his insights and tips. And he has plenty more to share.

There's a prize at the end of all this . . . It's called, FUN. Yes, once you lose the fear and get your writing on track, you start enjoying it. And don't think your readers won't start noticing that. It won't be long before you too earn the reputation of being a good writer.