Coffee time reading

CorporateLand has a particular way of speaking, doesn’t it? There’s a certain je ne sais quois, a certain aura of ego. It’s a clique that likes to isolate through acronyms and jargon. Think back to when you started at Big Company plc. How many acronyms did you have to...

You’ve worked hard on generating great ideas for your blog. You’ve researched them thoroughly and fleshed out the main points in clear, simple language. You’ve even put together a nifty infographic that illustrates everything visually. And yet, you’re just not getting...

We talk a lot about content at The Content Type – kinda obvious, given it’s in our name. But it can be scary to start when there are so many choices to make and so many things to sort out. That’s why we thought we’d get down in words – and putting things down in words...

Meet Jenny, my awesome cat. She’s about nine years old. Or so I think. When I adopted her she was already an adult, you see. Jenny and I have been through a lot together. We’ve moved four different houses in four different cities in two different countries. She’s...

This list is full of tips for bloggers. Rather than go into depth on a small number of tips, I decided to go into no depth whatsoever on a huge number of tips. This is because there are already hundreds of posts that go into lots of detail and, for these tips, one...

There is an astonishing amount of new content published every single day online.  You need to bring everything you can in order to get yours to stand out when writing new content, or it will sink without trace or readers. Content without a context is just noise. But...

The longer you do something, the more you learn about it. So after more than 300 years in the business, here are more of my learnings. Anything I’ve missed out, please holler. 37 things I’ve learned from a career in copywriting 1) The mighty are just as likely to fall...

I’ve been earning a living from writing, in one form or other, since 1984. 1984! That’s pre-Internet. Pre-PlayStation. Pre-Pret! Everything I knew then is ancient history. The Ford Escort, Band Aid, Rick Allen’s left arm… And logic tells me that everything I know now...

Great things come in threes Ever noticed how things are often better in threes? Two is too little. And four feels like it’s a tad too much. But three? Three feels just right, doesn’t it? Humans love patterns As humans, our brains are hard-wired to excel at recognising...

Writing for SEO might appear daunting, especially if you have been involved with the internet for some time. If how to write for SEO fills you with dread, it’s time to shake that off and get started. The mysteries of keyword stuffing and black hat practices of...

“We help disruptive startups pivot their offering and maximise their growth potential by leveraging their social graph and the power of big data.” Ugh. “What does that even mean?” you may be muttering to yourself as you read this.  Perhaps, you’ve even thrown up in...

Creating fresh and exciting content on a regular and consistent basis can take up a considerable amount of your time. Reinventing the way you approach content creation each time you need to publish can result in costly mistakes. The barrier to producing content may...

“Best-of-breed technology” – so what? “First-class service” – so what? At college the first business model I was introduced to was ‘Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs’. You’ve probably come across it at some point too. Basically, it’s a pyramid that describes the different...

Absolutely nothing. Both words are completely meaningless and yet I see countless IT and tech companies determined to stuff them into their copy at every opportune moment. I remember being at university, sat in the dimly lit lecture theatre as my tutor delivered a...

How do you make your fintech thought-leadership article stand out in a sea of sameness? In my view, there are 5 non-negotiables if you want to produce work your readers will find valuable and which will actually position you as an authority, instead of adding to the...

What’s the point of writing that thing? Do you ever get that feeling? You’ll have half an idea about something you want to write about but a quick search tells you the subject has been covered before and those who covered it did a good job. So you decide: what’s the...

True story… I never enjoyed English at school. In fact, it was one of my least favourite subjects – right behind geography (which I was advised not to continue at GCSE-level) and history (which baffled me with its left wing / right wing, remember 101 different...