Riffs, Tiffs and What Ifs

We've moved to a new site - WritingRiffs.com Appreciate you checking this article out at WritingRiffs.com . We'll be deleting all the content on this site over the next few weeks. Thanks! Steve

We've moved to a new site - WritingRiffs.com - Appreciate you checking this article out at WritingRiffs.com . We'll be deleting all the content on this site over the next few weeks. Thanks! Steve ______________________________________________ Pitch: A quick, concise communication meant to persuade someone to do something - buy a product, service, idea, etc. A pitch is a story told with the goal of getting someone to buy in to your idea; your request for action. You want them to do something. You appeal to their reason and emotions. They want you to do something too. Don't be stupid, waste their time or insult their intelligence with lame words drained of meaning. Good-to-Great There are good-to-great pitches. They're informative, interesting and on occasion, wonderfully inspiring. They connect with you emotionally and ride the road of reason and common sense over to their intended destination―the "decision." And, more often than not, the decision is good ...

We've moved to a new site - WritingRiffs.com. Appreciate you checking this article out at WritingRiffs.com . We'll be deleting all the content on this site over the next few weeks. Thanks! Steve DaDonkey Disasterpieces Corporate boilerplates are boring. A waste of words. Horribly obtuse. Garbled, befuddled, perplexing, muddled obfuscatory nightmares. If they were paintings, they'd be called "DaDonkey Disasterpieces." They're written to give you an idea, a snapshot, of who the company is, what they do and basic contact info . They're typically found at the end of company news releases. The "About the Company" section. Have You Read Any? Have you read any corporate boilerplates lately? Ever? If you can, don't. If you don't, smile. You're blessed. Why? Because they're real snooze-fests. Full of taradiddle twittle-twattle. Written in a language decipherable by only two types of people. The "writer" - and aliens (sometimes o...

We've moved to a new site - WritingRiffs.com Appreciate you checking this article out at WritingRiffs.com . We'll be deleting all the content on this site over the next few weeks. Thanks! Steve This was originally going to be an interview with the internationally best-selling author Steven Pressfield about his new historical thriller, Killing Rommel . Steven is a master storyteller. His works, such as The Virtues of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great, and The Afghan Campaign, and many others are legendary among military aficionados. His book, Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae, is required reading at West Point. While talking with Steven about Killing Rommel, we wandered off the beaten path a bit to discuss the power of story - in business and life - to move people to higher grounds. The kind of power that can inspire people to perform great feats of selflessness and humanity. But, we didn’t stop there - we derailed onto troublesome questions of moral...

We've moved to a new site - WritingRiffs.com Appreciate you checking this article out at WritingRiffs.com . We'll be deleting all the content on this site over the next few weeks. Thanks! Steve Creating or re-designing your current news room into a social news room to keep up with today's business requirements means you will have to justify the costs to the CFO. Be prepared. Your presentation will have to have a hook so powerful you can hang a hat on it. They will ask questions. Many. Then many more. Each question will have money attached. What They're Not Looking For Let me give you a powerful hint. The answers they're looking for are not impressions, views, comments, links, feeds or community building. T hey won't care how cool it is or how the features or functions are "killer." CFO's are easy to neuro-linguistically read. They'll usually give you a visceral indication of how you're presentation is faring. Presentational Logic (Make...

We've moved to a new site - WritingRiffs.com. Appreciate you checking this article out at WritingRiffs.com . We'll be deleting all the content on this site over the next few weeks. Thanks! Steve Below are a list of people on Twitter I follow. They're exceptional, interesting, prolific, and professional. They share good ideas, information and insights. Some are well known. Some aren't. Lotta talent on Twitter. If I was starting with Twitter today ... these would be the first people I'd check out. Wish I had this list when I started. Some of the people below have 15,000-30,000 followers and they follow that many too. That's not for me. I don't look at it that way. For me, it's all about good content. Help me learn. Inform me. Educate me. Make me laugh. Challenge me. I don't care if they're rich, famous and everybody loves them, if that doesn't happen I remove them. Note: I follow tech, industry analysts and news organizations. So these peop...

And "1" Gluteus-Maximus PowerPoint Vomitus Eruptus I have attended literally thousands of business presentations, most revolving around technology products, applications, business systems, methods, practices, etc. Almost all included PowerPoint. Some were god-awful, a few were great; most were in between but usually sideways of good. We're going to spotlight ten eclectic examples of some great presentations (purely subjective), some of which you probably know of. But most, not. You'll also be introduced to a resource checklist and book I bet you've never heard of, but if there's only one book you ever read on giving presentations, this should be it. It'll help you nail any presentation. The standard corporate gobbledygook PowerPoint vomitoria presentation is anywhere from 25-40 PowerPoint slides. Although I attended one that had 87 slides (for a 20-minute presentation). That type of presentation is usually referred to by those well-versed in business pre...