The terrifying experience of interviewing fellow journalists
I recently interviewed two journalists for their alumni magazines, and it brought up a fear. Besides interviewing celebrities (which I haven’t done much of), interviewing journalists is my most intimidating task. Why? Because they know my job and might even be better than me at doing it. Two different career points The first journalist I […]
Changing writing assignments
Put your head down to stare at a document at the start of your writing career, then look up and it’s 20 years later. That’s how it feels some days. And then others you can feel the slow grind of change in your industry, blog posts in the early 2000s, then Facebook in 2004, then […]
Thought leadership on big picture topics
What are the big topics in your industry? As a writer, the clear winner for 2023 was AI. At first, I was hesitant to write about it, firstly because I felt the need to experiment with it myself in order to have anything meaningful to say. Second because I wanted to read what the quicker […]
Posting with purpose
As much as I’m a fan of blog posts and other longform content, I’m always thinking about (and prompting clients to think about) why I’m creating them. Why that topic? Why this interviewee? Here are the main reasons why and how these reasons can prompt deeper thinking as you write: Educate blog posts are great […]
Best writing advice for your younger self
A writer was recently blogging about writing business advice they would give their younger selves. That prompted me to think about my own younger Sue. I think about my 25-year-old self, just a couple of years into her career. She was laid off from her first magazine job and thinking she’d try out this freelance […]
Good content starts with good interviews
Writing is my job, but my secondary skill is interviewing. I’ve even come to think of it as one of my AI-resistant skills. Is there anyone who can interview like a human? Not yet. Here are my favourite tips on this top skill: Ever since I first heard it, my favourite interview question has been: […]
Updating your audience avatars
Who among us is obsessed with audience? If you’re a content writer or copywriter, you likely spend a lot of time thinking about the personas or audience avatars that we’ve created for our outreach. (Greta, 32-year-old marketer in charge of social media and impact reports for a small college in Western Canada, passionate about storytelling […]
Collecting client feedback
A “do as I say, not as I do” topic for me is collecting client feedback. I always wait too long, and then it feels like doing me a favour. When you’ve just completed a project and done a great job, when you can hear the gratitude in the voice of your client. Or you’ve […]
Repurposing, again
By now the idea of repurposing content is not new. Smart content creators are always looking for a second and third use for any piece of writing they create. But can we dive even further into that process? What if we thought in advance about the ways that the content’s lifecycle and the forms it […]
Bound to the keywords
We used to be able to just write a blog post, but now we have to identify relevant keywords first and then write the blog post. There’s a reason why writers have a love/hate relationship with SEO. It’s the never-ending pull between the creative impulse just to put your thoughts onto the page and the […]
