Old vs. young for your blog
Looking for a new angle on a classic investment or financial topic? Try the following suggestion from Ray Peter Clark’s Help! for Writers: Interview the oldest person you know, and the youngest. I can imagine a nonagenarian and a child would have very different perspectives about topics such as “Why save money?” or “What should […]
Winston Churchill’s lesson for speakers and writers
Winston Churchill was an outstanding speaker. Here’s what he said about his preparation. If you want me to speak for two minutes, it will take me three weeks of preparation, it will take me a week to prepare. If you want me to speak for an hour, I am ready now. —Winston Churchill The bottom […]
Ammo for your plain-language battle with compliance
“Our compliance officer makes us write like this.” That’s the complaint I sometimes hear when I push financial professionals to write better. If you’d like to push back, consider the point made by Joseph Kimble in Writing for Dollars, Writing to Please: The case for plain language in business, government, and law. Kimble is a […]
6 lessons from my book writing experience
Thinking about writing a book? Before you start, please consider six lessons from my writing experience with Financial Blogging: How to Write Powerful Posts That Attract Clients. They’ll make your writing process flow more smoothly. If you enjoy this post, I’ll follow up with posts about my book’s production and marketing. 1. Decide on traditional vs. self-publishing […]
How can you share a personal story, yet still draw in readers?
I’m a big fan of showing personality in your blog posts. Sharing your stories helps you do that. But if you start off with “I,” you risk seeming self-absorbed. I like how a Vanguard blog post tackled this challenge. It opened with “Do you remember when you first encountered the World Wide Web?” That’s a […]