Getting Rid of Tattletale Words in Your Résumé

By Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of
The Frugal Editor: Do-it yourself editing secrets for authors:
From your query letter to final manuscript to the marketing of your new bestseller

People in all walks of life work mightily on perfecting their résumés and other career-building documents and then forget one vital step. An editor. Preferably an editor versed in all the elements of writing including grammar, punctuation, storytelling…wait! Storytelling?

Yes. And some other surprises like marketing—and a little knowledge about psychology won’t  hurt either.

The list is long but it can be shortened by thinking “experience.” A broad range of experience. So, no, your high school English teacher may not be your best choice. Nor, your mother who “did really well in English.”

There are a whole lot of tattletale words you shouldn’t use in your résumé or related documents like biographies, proposals, query letters, and media kits. All of these documents are designed to convince the reader of your ability to do the job—your expertise—and to nudge your career (or product) toward success.   

So what are those words? And how do they relate to storytelling?

Ambitious is one of the most frequently used tattletale words. It seems like a wasted word doesn’t it. A couple more that mean little because of overuse or are downright laughable are highly motivated or responsible. That you are writing this document is an indication that you are ambitious.

This is where that storytelling thing comes in. You tell a little story that subtly shows the responsible, ambitious, or highly motivated aspect of your work habits. Using the age-old writers’ motto, “show, don’t tell,”  will keep your reader from asking—often with a touch of irony—what makes you ambitious. King Midas was ambitious. Maybe your reader assumes your father got tired of seeing you playing video games and you got ambitious only when it looked as if the couch would no longer be a good place to park yourself.

So what is your story? Tell about the upward movement in your chosen career or even between careers—how one informs the other and gives you knowledge and a dimension that no other applicant is likely to have.

Hardworker and go-getter seem as useless in a résumé or query letter as ambitious. It’s like tooting your own horn. The person reading it might ask, “Who says?”

Overblown adjectives. Words like exciting and amazing—even when they describe results or projects—are anathema. They have the same problem as hardworking above. I call this the awesome syndrome. They are words that tempt a reader to scoff. Instead tell a story about the extra effort you put into a project and the difference it made. Or quote one of the rave reviews you received from one of your supervisors in a periodic assessment, recommendation, or endorsement.

Team player has been a cliché for decades.. Instead choose a group project you’ve worked on and tell about your contributions. Or just list some of the ways you might have helped another department or division. And, because human brains have been wired for stories since we sat around the fires we made in caves, make it into an anecdote if you can.

Think out-of-the-box is also a cliché-ridden no-no. It’s storytelling time again

Microsoft Word. I’m proud that I can produce an entire book using Word from its Contents to its Index to its Footnotes. I love that I don’t have to spend time learning another program. But there’s no point in telling people that I’m an expert at Word. Everyone is. Of course, I can use it prove another point like how well I have managed to adapt its features to new, advanced project and tell how much time I saved by doing that rather than learning a new program. I might mention how much more professional it looked even as I saved that time. And I might mention that my project got rave reviews.

Some frequently used words like synergy have become a way to insert some humor into a résumé and that has become as much of a cliché as the overuse of the word. Marco Buscaglia picked this word out of the hundred (if not thousands) of popular words I call business-ese. You can avoid them by reviewing your copy and purging anything that sounds officious including most words with more than three syllables.

Think in terms of relationships, colleagues in other departments, associates in competing companies, respected academicians, mentors beyond your teachers. Though a good story can take even that kind of mentorship out of the humdrum and into an Aha! Moment.

Before you send off your paper, go over it. Find all the weak verbs—is, be, do—and use your thesaurus to strengthen them and to make them more accurate.

Carolyn Howard-Johnson was an instructor for UCLA Extension's world-renown Writers' Program for nearly a decade and edits books of fiction and poetry. She  is the author of the HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers including The Frugal Editor  and The Frugal Book Promoter. They are both USA Book News award-winners and both have won several other awards. Her How To Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically: The ins and outs of using free reviews to build and sustain a writing career.is the newest book in her HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers. Her The Great First Impression Book Proposal is a booklet that can save anyone writing a proposal time reading tomes because it can be read in 30 minutes flat.

Carolyn is the recipient of the California Legislature's Woman of the Year in Arts and Entertainment Award and was honored by Pasadena Weekly for her literary activism. She is also is a popular speaker and actor. Her website is www.HowToDoItFrugally.com.

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Email Marketing - 10 Top Reasons to BE Doin' It

By Karen Cioffi

While marketing strategies can come and go, there are still those that are top contenders and email marketing is one of them. And, it's an important strategy in book marketing.

So, what makes email marketing so important - why exactly should you be doin' it?

Here is a list of 10 top reasons:

1. Email lists are personal and build relationships. They help you develop a relationship with your subscribers. No other marketing strategy offers this ‘personal touch’ element.

2. Emails drive targeted traffic to your website. This means the people clicking on your email links (CTAs) are already interested in what you offer.

3. It’s one of the most cost-effective strategies there is (in other words, it’s cheap and has a great ROI).

4. It’s is easy and quick. Services, like GetResponse make it super-easy to create lists (campaigns), create the coded optins, and allows you to send out emails immediately.

5. It allows for automation. This means you can schedule emails to go out at specific days and times and segment (divide) your list.

6. It’s versatile and customizable. You can create a variety of campaigns, segway into other campaigns, use for weekly workshops, and so much more.

7. It generates results. Email marketing is one of the only strategies that encourages subscribers to become customers or to take other actions.

8. Allows you to measure results. Email marketing services have analytical tools in place that give you much need information, such as how many subscribers open your emails and how many click on the links in your emails.

9. Beats social media’s conversion rates. Conversion is the process of a person taking a desired action, such as clicking on your link or optin.

In a study by McKinsey and Company, it shows that email exceeds social media’s conversion rate by 40X. (1)

Forty times. That’s huge!

10. According to Convince and Convert.com, “People who buy products through email spend 138% more than people who don’t receive email offers.” Along with this, “44% of email recipients made at least one purchase last year based on a promotional email.” (2)

You may feel it’s all just too much. You already blog as part of your marketing strategy, isn’t that enough? Well, it’s really not.

Keep in mind that if you use social media to share your posts, you’re only reaching a minute percentage of your followers. And, less than 1% of your website visitors will buy from a random blog post they clicked onto.

As number 7 above says, email marketing produces results. And, your efforts can be as simple as linking to your most recent blog post from within your newsletter or email. Be sure to use it as part of your book marketing strategy.

To get started with Email Marketing, you need an opt-in box. I use Get Response and like it so much, I'm an affiliate for them. If you need to get your email marketing going, start with Get Response.

For an in-depth look at email marketing check out my 45+ page ebook (no fluff), Email Marketing Right V2. It tells you exactly what you need to do to effectively build your subscriber list, and it's only $3.97! 

About the Author:

Karen Cioffi is an award-winning children's author, ghostwriter, and author/writer online platform instructor. Subscribe to the RSS to get must-know writing and marketing tips! 

And, check out Karen’s e-classes through WOW! Women on Writing:
http://www.articlewritingdoctor.com/content-marketing-tools/

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HAPPY NEW YEAR

And, to start the new year, I have a useful gift for you:

Make Money Writing – Create Kindle eBooks

 HAVE A HEALTHY, HAPPY, AND 
PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR!

Karen and Writers on the Move

It's New Year's Eve

2016 Coming to a Close – 2017 Just Before Us, Bright and Shiny

Mark Twain said, “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do, so throw off the bowlines, sail away from safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails.  Explore, Dream, Discover.”

Make 2017 a year of action rather than procrastination.

To end 2016 and latch onto 2017, here are 11 quotes I find inspirational. Hope you do too.

“Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose.”
~ Lyndon B. Johnson

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” ~ Wayne Gretzky

"For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Remember, today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday."  ~ Dale Carnegie

“Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” ~ Will Rogers

“You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
~ Christopher Columbus

“I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.” ~ Stephen Covey

“Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” ~ Warren Buffet

“If a man empties his purse into his head no one can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.” ~ Benjamin Franklin

You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream. ~ C.S. Lewis

“You’ll never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine.” ~ John C. Maxwell

HAVE A WONDERFUL NEW YEAR'S EVE!

One Last Edit: Re-think before Submitting

Can you look through your completed book without making any changes? I tried it after thinking I had finished up the basic editing and even the polishing. There couldn't possibly be anything more to "fix," thought me. Wrong. I found more changes, important changes, many changes. Throwing caution to the wind, I gave up all notions of completion and continued, alternating between rummaging through additional passes as the need occurred to me with my pinpoint-sharpened #2, and then laying my book down to rest for short periods of time. My conclusion? The persistent question: When will I ever be done?  

What do I need to re-think?

While in the throes of this quest I decided, what the heck, what's one more pass? I came up with:  What do I need to re-think? It turned out to be the most revealing edit of all. It resulted in a title change, removal of a subplot (that was BIG, but I had to do it), addition of a character (that was fun), rearranging some of the scenes and re-checking the arcs, making sure someone or something didn't fall off the face of the page. Each character arc, including arcs in each character's dialogue, and each event, had to be followed from beginning to end. If I hadn't done that particular check, pearls of the necklace I had begun to string would have fallen off before the clasp could have been attached. Nightmares could have resulted. I could have wound up with another fire-engine red I, another school daze Incomplete, only this time from an editor and not my teacher (if I should be so lucky!)

Take One More Look

• Go back to the theme card you prepared before or during the writing. Make sure the main theme shines through and ask yourself, Do the minor themes bolster the main theme?
• Check the structure one more time. Is it solid?
• Does each character have an arc? Each story part introduced have follow-through to the end? Follow each one all the way through to make sure.
• Is your main character's flaw/need evident in the beginning and satisfied/solved from what she's learned by the end?
• Have you done a scene check to make sure there isn't any section that might work better elsewhere?
• Is there any character or scene that doesn't move the story forward?
• Is there anything to add to strengthen any part, or any weak part to delete which will strengthen the story?
• Is description kept at a minimum (in a children's story)? Is the story told through dialogue and action?
• If it is a mystery, make a list of the clues, red herrings and reveal to make sure everything is covered.
• Do one last fact check.

If you grow weary of so many revisions, give your story a rest and come back to it later. One of my writing instructors once told me, you don't write a book, you re-write a book. When at first I thought I was done, I had to disengage from disappointment when finding so many glaring errors. This must be the armor people talk about that writers must grow and wear, and perhaps why people admire authors so much. For the fortitude and single-mindedness it takes to do the seat-time, on and on, until we are finally satisfied with the finished product, whatever it takes. Being sure of your work is a must if a writer wants to produce a sparkling, page-turning, humdinger of a book!

Linda Wilson, a former elementary teacher and ICL graduate, has published over 100 articles for adults and children, and six short stories for children. Recently, she completed Joyce Sweeney's online fiction courses, picture book course and mystery and suspense course. She has currently finished her first book, a mystery/ghost story for 7-11 year-olds, and is in the process of publishing it and moving on to new 

writing projects. Follow Linda on Facebook.

Image: http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/

One Easy Way to Learn to Write Good Copy

Guest Post by Cathy Chapman, Ph.D.

It doesn't matter what wonderful service you provide or how amazing your product is, if you don't let people know it's there, no one will buy it. Sure, word of mouth works for some things. For most, however, you need to write something and get it out to people to let them know what you have. The question is, how can someone on a limited budget with beginning skills as a copywriter, someone who writes advertising copy, let people know about their product.

The answer is simple. Copy what others write.

No Plagiarizing Allowed

When I said to copy what others wrote, I don't mean to steal their words and use them in your own advertising copy. I mean for you to take pen and paper in hand, no computers allowed unless you literally cannot use your hands, and copy a sales letter word for word. This is a powerful learning technique used in many circles. When you write with pen and paper, something magical happens in the brain. I can't tell you all the neurochemical responses in that brain of yours, but when you write by hand, there is a complex interaction in the brain that helps you learn faster and easier.

Don't spend your time physically reproducing any sales letter you come across. Use your time wisely and copy, for learning purposes only, the best sales letters you can find. You can do an internet search using the keywords "winning sales letters" and come up with a treasure trove of letters you can begin copying to get the hang of writing a good sales letter.

One of the most successful, if not the most successful letter to introduce a new product was written for a newspaper you may have read or at least have seen the name. That is The Wall Street Journal. This very successful financial newspaper was once only an idea in someone's mind. As time has demonstrated, it was a great idea. The problem was that people had to buy initial subscriptions for it to be successful. This very simple two-page letter has generated an estimated $2 billion in revenue for The Wall Street Journal.

The Step before Copying

The sales letter that launched The Wall Street Journal is one to use for leaning by copying by hand numerous times. Before you put pen to paper, read it out loud several times. Listen to the cadence of the words. Pay attention to the imagery. Notice the feelings you have as you are reading it. Can you put yourself in the place of each of these young men? Which one would you rather be? Would you want success so much that you would pull out your check book, fill out the form and pop it in the mail? Remember, the internet wasn't even a spark in the mind of anyone at that time. This direct mail piece had to provoke immediate action before the offer was lost under a pile of other advertising.

Once you've read the letter and put yourself in the reader's position, begin copying the words. Feel the cadence as you write. Let the words and the rhythm of them imbed themselves within you from the interaction of what you see with your eyes and reproduce with the movement of hand. This simple task, although it takes time, will move you faster in learning the skill of copywriting.

You can then take what you've learned and write your own powerful sales letter in your own wonderful style that may be the next $2,000,000,000 winner.

Cathy Chapman, PhD, LCSW is a strategic marketer, copywriter and coach for the self-help and alternative health care market. To receive your Special Report "The Bare Necessities for an On-Line Marketing Campaign with Little Cash Outlay... Plus One" go to http://www.mindbodyhealthwriter.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6553599

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