Allan Jackson – Allan Jackson Communications

Writing for the Internet

October 30, 2017October 30, 2017 by Allan Jackson

A while ago I wrote an article on the reasons why more business people are needing written content these days but it wasn’t used at the time. I’d obviously prefer you to hire Allan Jackson Communications if you need something written for your business but I have outlined some things to look out for if you’re determined to go it alone:

Writing for publication was usually left to professionals in the days before the web became so much a part of our lives.

There weren’t, in fact, that many chances to be published. Most marketing was done in the form of advertising in the media including magazines and newspapers. Some businesses ran PR campaigns to get free publicity but that was usually outsourced. This was because creating content to publicise a business while still being acceptable to the news publications was a pretty skilled occupation.

Business people had little need to write to support their marketing efforts. The situation was turned on its head, however, when Internet marketing took off and everyone became publishers.

Businesses wanted to be found when the public used a search engine to look for products and services. The butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker suddenly needed content, fired up MS Word and started to churn out words.

Then a new problem arose when the search engines began to change the way they ranked sites. At first they had given priority to sites which had good keywords in their HTML code so the text content of the site was often overlooked.

Writing a book for business: Part II

May 3, 2017May 3, 2017 by Allan Jackson

Publishing your business book - Feature image

Last time I discussed some things to bear in mind when embarking on writing and publishing your business book because you can save yourself a lot of trouble if you get the basics right. I covered talking to your printer before doing anything else and not trying to write and layout at the same time.

Using styles

I also introduced the idea of using your wordprocessor’s styles feature to apply formatting to text instead of instead of changing font or size from the menu. It’s easy to change the appearance of your document by altering the style definition and not having to search for every instance of formatting. It will also help whoever is laying out your masterpiece and minimise the time they spend importing and formatting the content. Styles also make it much quicker and easier to generate tables of contents.

There are a number of built-in styles in MS Word. Here are a few suggestions about ones you can use:

Heading 1 – chapter headings
Heading 2 – sub-headings
Emphasis – italics
Strong – Bold

Writing a book for business: Part I

May 3, 2017April 9, 2017 by Allan Jackson

Writing a book for business - Part 1 - Feature image

Only a small number of authors ever manage to make a living writing but producing a book is still a good idea for many business people. That is because writing a book for business is a great way to publicise yourself if intellectual property is your stock in trade.

Add value to courses and lectures by selling your book or even giving it away. Only a tiny minority ever get as far as writing a book and it really impresses people when you show them the freshly printed fruits of your genius and it convinces them you know what you’re talking about. I experienced this after I wrote a book of historical snippets about Durban, my former hometown.

There was zero interest in me and my project while I talked the talk but that all changed as soon as I had a manuscript to show. The City Council took an interest and pre-ordered copies which paid for the printing. Community groups began to approach me to speak at their meetings when the book hit the streets; I became an authority overnight.