The 7 deadly sins represent the corruption of a person’s morality and behaviour. The gist is that as a person sins, they become more accustomed (or numb) to it, which could lead to more frequent acts and/or at higher intensities.

Although you’ll need to refer to a higher power for more on how sinning can impact the soul, we do also know that sins can extend to a person’s work… and your writing could be as easily tainted as your heart and mind if you’re not careful. Join Wordsmith as we explore the 7 deadly sins of writing and how we can avoid committing such egregious errors.

Let’s start by exploring pride – the first and greatest sin.

If we were to list a positive change that COVID has brought on, then the willingness to cook is something that many can agree with – takeout isn’t always for everyone and the same batch of options day in and out can certainly get stale after a while! With enough motivation, we look to cookbooks or the Internet for recipes to try, however, the hunt is often quite troublesome. 

While most front page results are usually highly rated, the process of finding said recipes after clicking onto the website is often not as straightforward as you’d hope. Some authors feel the need to tuck their recipe behind a wall of photos and text, others like to include annoying pop-up videos as you scroll through the page… and you get the idea. With reader experience being vital to modern marketing, poorly designed pages are a death sentence for user enjoyment and engagement. To ensure that you don’t make these same critical mistakes, join Wordsmith and let’s examine some common branding and design sins that are all too common in cooking blogs.

With COVID restrictions lifted only recently in Hong Kong, it’s not unusual to feel like we’ve been trapped in the same loop for the past 3 years. Even if we don’t have to work from home anymore, some aspects of our work and life may have grown slack – be it our attention to detail, adherence to schedules and timelines or even just finding the drive to get off of Netflix.

In December, Oxford named “goblin mode” to be their 2022 Word of the Year, and it is defined as a type of behavior which is “unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly or greedy… typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations”. It’s certainly an appropriate word considering the demotivating environment around us. However, such pitfalls can be escaped once you have the right tools and mindset – let’s recap some of our favourite writing tips over 2022 that can help you avoid becoming a copywriting goblin!

After you’ve successfully hooked your audience with the perfect marketing email, it’s time to ensure that your website content is also up to snuff. For today, let’s focus on taglines – arguably some of the most important and prominently displayed content on any website. Join Wordsmith and let’s polish up those web taglines!

Just as brands and content marketers were settling into a post-COVID marketing rhythm, we’re all now facing another major upheaval – the looming threat of a global recession. Consumers are quickly adjusting their spending habits to adapt to higher interest rates and rising inflation, while businesses scramble to tighten their belts and scrutinise their marketing budgets to see what can be cut.

We understand that every new year brings a variety of challenges and opportunities for marketers, but many foresee 2023 to be a lot more testing than most, as businesses are still trying to recover from the global pandemic. While everyone may hastily jump to the conclusion that dialling back on content marketing spend makes the most sense for short-term budgetary concerns this year, experts are urging marketers to think twice and focus on maximising the effectiveness of their content marketing budgets and start preparing for the recovery instead.   

With content distribution becoming so convenient through streaming services, social media and so forth, content creators are always on the lookout for something new to deliver to their ravenous audiences. However, when some creators fall behind, they may look to less ethical ways to keep up – plagiarising. The phrases “inspired by” and “ripped off from” get thrown around a lot, but how can we discern between the two when the line is not always clear? Buckle up and join Wordsmith as we explore the subtle differences between inspiration and intellectual theft.

Given the looming economic headwinds that most brands will be facing next year, winning the hearts and minds of customers in 2023 might require some swift changes to current content marketing plans.

It's clear that when it comes to marketing, customers rule. Their technology-driven mindsets and waning attention spans are becoming the driving force behind emerging marketing tactics and trends. Some trends have the possibility of fizzling out fast, but, the most successful and savvy content marketers in the business learn to keep their fingers on the pulse and continue to adapt their strategies in line with audiences’ preferences, values and buying behaviours. Join Wordsmith as we delve into the four key content marketing trends that we believe are going to be big in 2023, to set your brand up for an incredible year ahead.

Have you ever struggled with writing? You Googled your problems… tried every trick, hack and guide… only to find yourself in the same predicament. Perhaps going about this by yourself isn’t the way to go – could hiring outside help do the trick? Just like coaches at the gym, writing coaches can tailor training programmes that sort out your weaknesses and play to your strengths… What’s the best way to choose a coach? Does coaching even work? Join Wordsmith as we take a look at whether writing coaches are worth considering or not.

With the return of the Rugby Sevens and various international events and expositions to Hong Kong, things are perhaps finally looking up for the local economy – networking opportunities included! Although face-to-face meetings are always the preferred medium, COVID has shifted much of the networking landscape to online platforms, and it’s definitely not the same when you are reaching out to someone physically versus through an email. How can we ensure that our emails aren’t sent straight to the recipient’s bin? Join Wordsmith and let’s explore how we can make our networking emails worth the read.

Pre-covid, we’ve tackled subjects like How To Find The Right Content Strategy Based On Your Company’s Size, but we thought we’d take a deeper dive into what start-up businesses should do to ensure they have a robust content marketing strategy in place. And this topic is very fitting, as research shows that the global pandemic has surprisingly brought about a true boom in start-ups. In 2021, almost 5.4 million applications were filed to form new brands and businesses in the US—more than any year on record, according to the Census Bureau. This number represents a massive 53% increase from 2019. And analysts predict that the growth of entrepreneurship in the post-Covid-19 economy will only continue to increase.

Generation Z is one of the hottest target demographics for marketers and brands. Why? Because they command a whopping US$360 billion spending power, according to a 2021 Bloomberg report. However, to tap into any market, you need to be able to resonate with the audience – and to reach zoomers (members of Gen Z) – you need more than basic proficiency with Internet culture. Join Wordsmith and let’s learn what it takes to write for this picky demographic!

From robotics to artificial intelligence, there’s no hiding from technological advancement. Although innovations like Amazon’s Alexa are old news, much of modern technology is still centred around user convenience and boosting productivity – so how far has technology come with regards to writing? We first explored this topic in June of 2020, but has the pandemic slowed progress? Join Wordsmith and let’s see if AI writing has improved since!

We make and are subject to requests on the daily. We do it when we go for lunch and request the special of the day, when a client “requests” that we make an amendment for the 26th time, when we sigh and ask our colleague to follow up on said request, and so forth.

Although most daily requests happen verbally, some requests won’t be acknowledged until they are put into writing. In these cases, it often takes a little more effort than a simple “I want this and that” to get the job done. To learn how to make proper requests the Wordsmith way, read on!

In every industry, across every profession, you’re likely to find leaders, managers and colleagues who are constantly looking for ways to demonstrate their unparalleled industry knowledge and skill set to their peers. Often, this manifests in jargon: a specialised, often abbreviated way of talking that’s full of long-winded acronyms and unusual “Geekspeak” (technical jargon) that they rely on to communicate. Sharing this unique, common language is very powerful for cementing company culture. For example, when flight attendants (FAs) mention PAX numbers instead of passengers or waiters discuss booking “four-tops” instead of "a table for four guests," they're not just saving letters and syllables, it’s a way of insinuating that "we're a team together." Jargon and Geekspeak may be great in creating a certain kind of “synergy” in the workplace but it’s a mistake to think that this language holds the same appeal when it comes to marketing to your customers.

Whether for fiction, blogging, finance or whatever their job entails, good writers often carry skills that extend beyond their current responsibilities. For this reason (and because it’s spooky season), it is the perfect time to dive into Stephen King’s take on the writer’s toolbox – let’s see why building up a hefty arsenal of tools is worth the investment!

Everyone wants a piece of the SEO pie. If you play by its rules, Google rewards you by placing your website and content higher on its results page – but the inverse is also true if you don’t cater to the web crawlers. Considering the competitive advantage offered by first page search listing, there are no shortage of guides, tricks and hacks that promise results.

However, not all guides necessarily complement one another (nor may the information presented be up to date – or even accurate). For new marketers, it’s like being thrown into the deep end of the pool alongside various life preservers. Some will help you float… but some will sink the moment you latch on. If you’re worried about what to believe, Wordsmith has you covered with a quick guide on how to curate SEO content!

It’s incredibly easy to set up email marketing campaigns today. With online services like Mailchimp or Constant Contact, you can create mailing lists, do A/B testing and fire off content to thousands of recipients (or more, depending on the size of your list) with just a few clicks of a button. However, where there’s convenience… sloppiness and laziness usually lurk nearby.

Even if you conduct email campaigns without an online service, a simple mistake could cost you audience engagement and even subscriptions! If you’re new to email marketing or just want to make sure you’ve done your due diligence, Wordsmith has some quality tips to improve your next email campaign!

Capturing our audiences’ attention is the goal of every writer and business. However, this is rarely achievable through boilerplate material and soulless copy – a bad habit that some businesses fail to realise, or worse, care about. Not only is boilerplate boring and uninspiring, it also drives away audiences and engagement.

Rather, we should always aim to infuse our own “brand” into our writing. Join Wordsmith as we explore how to inject our personality and experience into our writing – and yes, this applies even when writing on behalf of another person or business!

Have you ever felt giddy while reading a good story? Good writing – whether it’s a novel, a screenplay, a short story or even a marketing scenario – makes you feel a palpable tension in the air and your fingers tremble as you turn the page… with every sentence that you read, you feel more and more compelled to find out what happens.

Seeing our readers like this is every storyteller’s dream, but finding out that the readers are distracted and disinterested would be the nightmare. If your readers just don’t seem to be engaged, it might be because you aren’t asking the right questions while writing – and we are not just talking about questions like “what happens next?” Join Wordsmith and learn how we can step up our question game to become better storytellers!

Newspapers were once heralded as the champion of information sharing. Then radio and television news broadcasts became the norm – and now, the Internet and social media are where people turn to find the latest scoop. Although physical newspapers have definitely been relegated to a backseat position (and more often used to line the litter box), old timey newspaper journalists adopted a few unique writing tricks that are still used even today!