John Haydon had a nice, short post on his blog recently about using infographics to help tell stories. I’m a big fan of infographics, and if you use them or are considering doing so, his five tips for you are great.
But the post also makes an excellent point about all nonprofit and association communications, not just infographics. He says: Continue reading
Been too busy this week to spend much time keeping up with your newsletters, RSS feeds and other news sources? Here are some of the best articles I’ve come across during the week.
Daily Beast blogger Andrew Sullivan announced last week that he will begin charging readers to access his blog, The Dish. This is very big news in the journalism world, where the question of whether readers will actually pay for good content rages. But it also carries with it a lesson for associations – and really for anyone who has a website that they want people to visit. Continue reading
Another quick writing tip here. This one, I think, I learned from a high school English teacher:
There’s always a better word than thing.
And I’d say about 95 percent of the time I can think of that word.
Next time you’re writing and find yourself using the word “thing,” stop and take a minute to think if there’s a more specific word you could use. If you can’t think of one, finish your writing and then come back to it. Think again. Give yourself about 5 minutes with it. I’ll bet you can come up with something better.
Aside from getting a really good all-around education and much-improved job prospects, I learned a few really important things in college. For example: 
But one of the most important things I learned — especially for me, a journalism major — was an important tip to tighten up my writing. Here it is, free of charge, saving you the cost of four years at a Big 10 university: Get rid of the extraneous warmup text at the beginning. Continue reading