Why Good Writing Matters

Good writing is crucial in this information age—for your customer’s benefit and for the success of your business. The internet is composed of endless words, phrases and stories. Consumers are looking for answers and information.

However, with all these words at our fingertips, we do not read.

We scan.

We are insatiably information-hungry—and extremely impatient. We expect the copy we read—on a brochure, on a website or in a letter—to be broken up into bite-sized chunks and delivered to us in pre-digested form. Browsability is almost as important as grammar.

Good writing = Competence

As readers, we also equate attractive,…

Ghostwriting: Outline

This is the second in a series of posts about ghostwriting. Keylocke Services offers ghostwriting services for both fiction and non-fiction books.

The Road Map to Success

A detailed outline is crucial to your ghostwriting project. This is the skeleton of the project as well as the complete road map towards what you want to convey.

The outline occasionally will have its own fee, independent of the book writing. In fact, after this first step, you might feel confident to proceed on your own–perhaps with a bit of editing at the end of the project.

The outline carries the…

Execs in the City Charity Event

Business Executives Supporting Future Execs

WE Mean Business Dayton (WE-MBD)—a group of women entrepreneurs—announced their partnership with Crayons to Classrooms, a local non-profit organization that provides basic school supplies at no cost to teachers of children in need. WE-MBD will be hosting a one-of-a-kind networking event, called Execs in the City.

I am a charter member of WE-MBD and excited about the plans for this one-of-a-kind fundraiser event.

The Execs in the City event will be held on October 12, 2010 at 5:30 p.m. at the Cox Arboretum in their Fifth Third conference center. The evening will be filled with…

Thank You for Complaining

I am not a complainer by nature. Sure, I will send back a cold entree but I will do it nicely. If I am particularly upset, I will send a strongly worded letter (after all I’m a writer.) But in general, I don’t complain.

This week, however, I had three complaints to make–with three decidedly different outcomes.

1. I hired a business to fix my paver patio. Instead, they did over $2,000 worth of damage to my whole patio and then refused to answer their phone or messages.

I filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and…

Expert Upon Arrival

I have an article in this month’s WedLock magazine on time management tips for social media. I am often asked to speak on the subject as well. One introduction suggested I was a“social media time management specialist” to which I promptly snorted the water I was sipping up my nose!

There are no experts or gurus in social media concerning time management (or social media, for that matter.) We are ALL learning as we go. It would be like claiming to be the nation’s utmost tour guide for the North America continent upon disembarking the Mayflower. We…

How Finding Customers is like Dating

I married young (and luckily, I married wisely.) So my dating experience is limited to my college years. But I have a friend who is dating who asked me what steps I took to find my husband.

I found her choice of words interesting.

“What steps did I take?” She was asking what calculations and specific actions I took to find a suitable husband. Thinking back on my dating years, I was anything but calculating. I didn’t have a guidebook with a checklist.

Dating felt more like throwing a handful of darts at a cork board, hoping some of them

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