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Marketing Podcast with Ann Handley
The simple answer to the promise of contained in today’s title is this – get Ann Handley’s latest book – Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content
Handley is my guest for this week’s episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast and she knows a thing or two about writing. She’s a former writer for the Boston Globe and this is her second book. Perhaps more to the point, she’s the cofounder of early web news provider Clickz and currently acts as the Chief Content Officer for MarketingProfs. In those roles she rummages through and sometimes edits hundreds and hundreds of pieces of ridiculously good content and sometimes ridiculously bad content.
By keeping an eye on the types of content people love to consume and share as well as the typical mistakes many first time and long time writers make, she’s gained a pretty keen insight into what works and what doesn’t.
In Everybody Writes she makes the case for the fact that writing is inevitable to success in business and that in some form or another we can all stand to get better at this most basic form of communication. She also sticks a flag in the sand and takes a stand for better writing in general.
The great thing about Handley, and you can hear in the interview, she’s serious about better writing, but doesn’t take the notion too serious at all. In fact, her writing style is down right humorous at times.
In my last book, Duct Tape Selling, I suggested that writing may be the master skill for anyone that needs to communicate an idea. Even if you don’t write for a living, but developing a writing practice you will become a better salesperson, speaker, thinking and communicator.
Everybody Writes is jammed packed with ideas, stories and great advice as well as simple practical tips that every writer can use to improve their written communication. I love the last section of the book that breaks down how to write better landing pages, video scripts, emails and on and on – very practical stuff that everybody writes!
Just for fun I thought I would also toss in this infographic from the grammar checking folks at Grammarly. The graphic attempts to answer the age old question – are women or men better writers? Click on the image below to see the full research and draw your own conclusions.
Click to see full infographic from Grammarly
