Author: Jesse Harris

Writing | Marketing | Science

Sales Prices are Overrated – What I Learned About Promotions from a Tactical Stocking

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Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Black Friday weekend has just passed, which means we are being slammed with sales prices and special promotional prices from anything from clothing and jewelry retailers to newspapers and software. As a marketer, I should find this time of year exciting! Every brand in the world is pulling out all the stops to try and grab attention. Surely the best that marketing has to offer is on display.

Unfortunately, Black Friday brings out the worst in marketing. Companies use sales and promotions in a way that is manipulative or deceptive. This guide is meant to explain to consumers how to deconstruct the use of sales pricing and to teach aspiring marketers how to avoid unethical pricing practices.

Common Mistakes When Targeting Marketing Writing for a Scientific Audience

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Marketing to scientists requires a careful balance. Marketing people tend to come in too hot, thinking that clever graphics and sales pitches will bring in sales, while scientists believe that cold data is enough to win business. Both of these extremes have significant limitations and can even hurt your brand if you aren’t careful.

How do you find the “Goldilocks” middle of these two approaches?

How to Write — 9 Lessons from Review of 50 Writing Advice Articles

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Medium writers love to write about writing.

In fact, writing is one of the most popular subjects on the platform. There are hundreds of thousands of posts on Medium with the “Writing” tag. I devour these articles, even though they can be repetitive. I find it comforting. They can be a writing coach whispering gentle reminders, or a cheerleader hyping me up.

With so much written on the topic, I decided to do a deep-dive on the subject. First, I found 50 articles which met the following criteria:

  • Must be recent
  • Must have at least 1000 claps
  • Must be focused on writing advice — does not cover satire about writing, or narrative pieces on the life of a writer.

From there, I summarized the advice, and found 9 themes that emerged as the most important and the most often repeated. Here is what I found.

Your Writing is Too Complex – How and Why to Simplify Your Content

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When you’re writing for the internet, you should be aiming for a 6th-grade reading level. This isn’t just personal advice. It has been documented again and again that simple writing gets read more than complex writing.

Why is simply writing so important? Is it necessary if I’m not aiming for a mass audience? Let’s take a moment to examine why.

3 Ways Trash Drafts Help You Write Effectively

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Want to upgrade your writing process? Try using “trash drafts.” As the name implies, these are drafts of your article that are meant for the trash bin. While it may sound like a waste, these greatly simplify your actual writing process. To show how this works, I will include the trash draft of this article below. It has not been edited beyond Word’s autocorrect feature. It isn’t a great read, but many of the ideas in this article can be found there. Here are three reasons why trash drafts improve your writing.

Review – Dare to Lead, by Brené Brown

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Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead is one of the most popular books in recent management literature. Brown is a longtime writer, researcher, and consultant on leadership and corporate culture. Dare to Lead is meant as a distillation of her work, meant for a mass audience. The book focuses on the importance of courage in leadership, exploring the various ways it is essential to success. Despite some issues, this 2018 book is thought-provoking and provides a few unique perspectives on everyday topics. It is a breezy read with a lot of personality. While the book is a bit difficult to pin down, it has some valuable points to consider.