Archive for February 22, 2010

It’s Not About Listening, It’s About the Green

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Woman Plugging Her EarsI hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to be blunt. Social media isn’t about listening. No one cares about listening. I wrote a post earlier where I said customers don’t care if brands are listening. It’s true, we don’t. You know who else doesn’t care about listening? The person who signs your paycheck. The head honcho, the big wig, the (wo)man upstairs. However you want to phrase it, the decision makers don’t care about listening. So why are you still using “listening” as a reason to invest in social media?

I’ve spent the past 5 years of my professional career on the corporate side of things. To make things worse, it’s been in the financial space (I know, we’re greedy bankers, we caused the crisis. I’ve been called a lot of bad names, don’t worry). So maybe it’s the “business” in me, but let’s face it, the only thing that matters…it’s green and hopefully in large denominations. Read the rest of this entry »

Your Copy Sucks: That vs. Which vs. Wait, what?

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close-up of cloth pouch with scrabble tilesJust admit it. ADMIT IT. You don’t know when to use “that” and when to use “which” in a sentence.

Don’t cry! Nobody does. Seriously, no one can remember the rules for that/which because they are so. Freakin’. Difficult to remember when you’re in the middle of writing. But some of you actually care about your writing, and for you, I will break it down. The rest of you can go, I don’t know, eat cheez doodles and watch the local news.

Here’s what the Chicago Manual of Style (praise be His name) has to say about that/which: Read the rest of this entry »