by Sharon Ernst | Oct 24, 2024 | Uncategorized
I’ll admit it: I’ve yet to use ChatGPT. And I am still skeptical that it is going to fulfill all the marketing potential I see touted on LinkedIn. But I did just write an article for a client and was given AI-generated content as the starting point. And below is what I learned during my first experience. I pass this along to help out anyone else who is either a) handed an outline generated by ChatGPT as I was, or b) generating such outlines and giving them to writers to use. Because, regardless of my skepticism, I realize that AI...
by Sharon Ernst | Sep 27, 2024 | Business Email Writing
Originally published May 2020. Updated September 2024. Why should you care about effective business emails? Because they save time, both for you and for the people you email. How do they save time? Because you write fewer emails when you are better at it. When you’re a competent and considerate writer of emails, you cut down on the unnecessary back-and-forth email traffic and the clutter in your inbox. And your reward? You get back time. Better emails = better brand + time saved In my last post on business email writing, I talked...
by Sharon Ernst | Sep 24, 2024 | Business Email Writing
Originally written April 2020. Updated September 2024. Writing emails at work is something we do on automatic pilot but shouldn’t, because how you email matters. Would you show up for work in rumpled pajamas and bed hair? Would you slouch in your chair scrolling through your Instagram feed on your phone while in a one-on-one meeting with your boss? No and no, because you know your appearance and body language are a reflection of your professionalism (and brand) in the workplace. But do you realize the same is true of the emails you...
by Sharon Ernst | Sep 16, 2024 | Business Writing Skills
Writing with numbers, wait…what is this doing here??? This is a blog on business writing! Yes, it is a blog on business writing, but it is more so a blog on writing well, and that means being clear and concise so you can easily communicate your message when you’re writing with numbers. To be honest, it’s easy to get numbers wrong, and when that happens, our writing and therefore our message is affected. So let’s take a look at some rules for using numbers, plus some ways to make sure our writing is always clear, no matter how...
by Sharon Ernst | Sep 13, 2024 | Proofreading and Editing
Last time, I showed you an example of word puking from a restaurant website. It was a whole lot of fancy words that said essentially nothing that would help the reader understand what kind of food or experience they could expect. This time we have a run-on sentence—71 words—that does say something, but the reader gets lost in it because it is so darn long and confusing. Here’s the sentence, with brand names removed: The auto industry has paid lip service to digital sales for years, but with the growth of ABC’s direct sales model and...
