Business finance-2 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 5000 words

Business finance-2 - Essay Example In order to spread risks, most investors diversify by investing in more than one type of security or portfolio. It should be noted that investors like returns but at the same time dislikes risk and uncertainties (Sharpe, 2007). Though financial market has significant rewards and benefits, it is very complex and very volatile, thus critical analysis is required in risk evaluation so that the expected returns can be validated. Dating back in 1950s an American economist managed to establish the theory of portfolio choice (Markowitz, 1959). This was a tool used by investors during this period to analyze and predict risk in relations to the expected earnings or returns. Markowitz’s theory is the currently renowned Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT). Basically, it is an investment theory that was designed to help in maximizing portfolio returns. This is done relative to the level of portfolio risks meaning that a minimum risk levels correspondents to an equivalent expected return level. Though this theory has been widely applied within the financial sector, a lot of challenges have been pointed on its basic assumptions. However, being an improvement of the traditional investment framework, it provides an advance system for the application of the mathematical model, especially, in finance. Portfolio theory supports asset diversification as a strategy to hedge against any possible market risks that are unique to particular company. As a sophisticated investment decision making tool, it helps investors to estimate, classify, as well as, controls the amount of possible risks that may affected the expected investment returns for the company. The Essentials of Investments /Portfolio theory There are necessities to portfolio or investment theory. These include the quantification of risks and return relationships. The second one is the assumption that compensation should be awarded to investors due to risk assumption. Practically, portfolio theory differs from the traditio nal system of security analysis on the basis that it changes focus from an individual investment characteristics to exploring statistical relationship exhibited within individual securities that represent the entire portfolio group (Sharpe, 2007).. Through mathematical formulation, portfolio theory formulate diversification concepts in the investment with an ultimate goal of carefully selecting viable investment assets with low risks compared to the rest of asset groups. This is intuitively possible since assets can change its values in opposite direction. However, the diversification approach has been recognized to effectively lower risks even when there is no negative correlation in asset returns, but it is more effective in scenarios of a positive correlation. Looking at the technical dimension, portfolio theory models assumes that returns on assets exhibits a normal distribution function (Sharpe, 2007). It also uses standard deviation relative to investment returns to define ris ks. In addition, a portfolio is modeled on the basis of weighted asset combinations in order to have what is referred to as a weighted assets return combination. Based on this view, assets whose returns are not positively correlated are combined, thus helping to reduce variations in the portfolio returns. Another assumption made with regards to portfolio theory is that market is efficient and mainly comprised of rational investors. As far as this discussion is concerned, it should be noted that the main fundamental

Generalists Social Work and Rape Survivors

Generalists Social Work and Rape Survivors Introduction Generalist social work practice is one of the conceptual framework developed to guide social workers on social delivery. This approach was developed following the Milford conferences in 1990s. By definition, generalist social work entails a way of viewing practice. It focus on the association between system, on a client-centered and use of appropriate theories and approaches meant to improve people’s well being (Council on Social Work Education 2008). It is always expected that the social work should entail multifaceted approach and that any social worker employing generalist perspective must be ready to engage in direct and indirect intervention based on multilevel assessment (Council on Social Work Education 2008). The generalist social work is also expected to be client-centered and problem-focused in process of helping the client advance social functioning. It should be based on research. As it shall turn out, generalist social worker must be able to skillfully select and apply multifaceted intervention modes and should carry out multilevel assessments and intervene at one or more levels depending on client situation. A generalist social worker should be well-versed with the individual, group, family, community and institutional intervention methods. Generalists social worker should be competent in different treatment skills (Council on Social Work Education 2008). He or she should be able to intervene with complex activities than only referral and should engage in the full spectrum of direct services. He should be even competent in policy and program development, organizational and community development. The generalists social worker should work based on evidence based research rather than traditional chores, which comprises only of referral Generalists social work should help different groups in the society experiencing social problems or needs. Rape victims are example of individuals who need the assistance of the generalist social worker. Victims of violent crimes are most vulnerable to many conditions and should be assisted accordingly (Council on Social Work Education 2008). Social workers are expected to identify these victims and take necessary and appropriate measures to assist them recover from trauma. Before exploring the generalists social work practice with victims if violent crime, this paper will first elaborate who the victims of violent crimes and why they deserve special attention from generalist social worker. Rapeis a form of forced sexual intercourse whereby the resistance of the female is prevented by threats of great and immediate bodily harm such as use of knife or gun. It is very common crime. The choice of this group of victims is prompted by the fact that rape is one of the most serious assault and is characterized by stigmatization (Council on Social Work Education 2008). In fact the victims of rape may decide not to seek any medical assistance because of the stigma. In addition, rape is not only associated with physical injuries but also with the psychological torture and trauma. Fortunately, rape victims may seek help from multiple formal social systems, which include the legal, medical, and mental health system including the rape crisis centers (Council on Social Work Education 2008). This means that the victims of rape deserve special assistance from social workers. Rape also takes place mainly when there is political instabilities. For example, Ghitis (2010) reveals that in any battle ground, rape must take place. He adds that possibly millions of women who have suffered rape during wars are now telling their stories and taking action with the help of legal specialists and womens rights groups. History also justifies that sexual assault inevitably accompanies armed conflict and war. In fact some researchers has used rape to mean a weapon of war and as a phenomenon with important tactical and strategic dimensions (Council on Social Work Education 2008). For example, rape during Bosnian War was used to change the ethnic make-up of the conquered territory. Similarly, rape during Rwandan genocide was strategically done to clear Tutsi population. In Rwanda, for example, the number of rape victims is estimated to be about 500,000. The incidence and frequency of rape is also significantly high. The study by the Federal Bureau of Investigation reveals that a rape case occurs in every ten minutes but is underreported. The analysis also shows that 1 in every 15 women will be raped sometime during her life if the current trend continues. It is also important to note that most of the attention is focused on the rapists. Most policies are designed to punish the rapists. Little has been done to help the rape victims. Rape being a social factor, generalist social worker is considered the most appropriate person to assist the rape victims. The next section of the paper presents the intervention that the generalist social work profession can make to address or intervene in the problem of rape. The analysis would be based on the framework proposed by the Council on Social Work Education, which places emphasis on the use of evidence to inform practice and practice to inform research (Council on Social Work Education 2008). According to the CSWE, the generalists social work should take the role of a broker, an advocate, a mediator, educator, social actionist and also as a clinician (Council on Social Work Education 2008). Evidence based practice of generalists social worker in helping rape victims As indicated, the general social work practice should no longer entail the traditional roles such as referral. Firstly, the generalists should diagnose and identify the needs of the rape survivors or victims that should be addressed. There are many problems that the rape victims could wish to be solved. The first need is that most rape victims may encounter rape ordeal when they were not expecting. This means that the need to be informed about what to do and where to seek medical, mental health and social and legal services (Schatz, Jenkins, Sheafor, 1990). The second need is that after medical treatment, the rape victim needs to go through professional counselling for emotional trauma and its consequent social disruption. They also need legal assistances in aspects such as information about rights, advocacy and representation in the criminal justice system. Rape is also associated with consequences such as unwanted pregnancy and also HIV and other venereal diseases. They need thoro ugh intervention on these matters (Schatz, Jenkins, Sheafor, 1990). Based on these needs, it is apparent that rape victims needs a comprehensive range of services from different fields such as law, mental health, and social life. The only challenge is that most of the rape victims are in a state of extreme emotional crisis. They are not prepared to go through all these fields and may even have little knowledge on what to do altogether. Generalist social worker act as a coordinator and referee Generalist social worker is considered an integral agency who should take the responsibility for developing the program and for organizing and coordinating additional support services. Social worker should be the one to guide the victim of rape on where to seek primary care and where to seek the secondary care. It is indisputable that many services may be available in the community already. However, accessing these services may be the major obstacle. Generalist social worker, according to Council on Social Work Education (2008), should be the one addressing the obstacles barring the rape victim from accessing the appropriate services. The generalist social worker should act as a coordinator and should bridge different facilities with an aim of improving management of rape victims. For example, the hospitals may be ready to manage patients and families in crisis but may face financial limitation as an obstacle and hence may not be able to sypport all the services necessary for a compr ehensive rape-treatment program (Schatz, Jenkins, Sheafor, 1990). However, with the intervention or help of generalist social work, the victims can get assistance from the financial programs and facilities that are meant to aid the patient in accessing necessary treatment. Generalist social work is therefore acting as a coordinator who should coordinate different programs together and also as a referral agent who should refer the victims to the relevant services. Generalist social work as a counselor Council on Social Work Education (2008) considers counselling as an integral part evidence based practice in the management of rape victims or rape survivors. The experiences that such victim go following disclosure of their problems is always unbearable. It has been shown that most of them undergo different forms of victimization. They also receive insensitive treatment, survivor blame and most of them are not offered adequate social services. All these can worsen their state of health. In fact it has been shown that most of them undergo what is called second rape or second sexual assault based on the nature of victimization they experience (Schatz, Jenkins, Sheafor, 1990). For example, it has been shown that survivors experience with medical and criminal justice agencies closely mimic the nature and /or dynamics of actual rape experiences and can be even more re-traumatizing Collings, 2009). The generalist social work is meant to counsel the rape victims on the best way of contain ing the situation. The generalist social work should offer appropriate counselling to the rape survivors and make them understand the situation and also value the importance of social services. There generalist social work should be a source of hope to the rape survivors because they usually receive a lot of resistance not only from society but even from their mothers, in case the rape survivor is a child (Schatz, Jenkins, Sheafor, 1990). They should help the rape survivors recover from the otherwise second rape by counselling them that their future is still bright and assuring them that there exists many social services apart from the medical services that can be utilized (Schatz, Jenkins, Sheafor, 1990). During counselling process, the counsellor should provide the victim of rape with current data regarding the value and responsiveness of the support services. They should also help in educational process. They can, for example give seminars on the emotional trauma of rape. It is always important fo r social worker to be knowledgeable about the criminal justice system. Generalist social worker as a clinician in helping rape survivors As stated earlier, generalists social worker should have clinical competence. Rape victims or survivors normally require medical assistance. Despite the fact that there are hospitals, those working in the hospital may not have enough expertise to handle the rape victims. Many researchers have proved that healthcare providers are not trained on how to handle the case of rape victims (Schatz, Jenkins, Sheafor, 1990). For example, instead of sympathizing and emphasizing with them, the healthcare practitioners may victimize the rape survivors. This is evidenced by the study by Collings (2009), which indicate that most of rape survivors undergo different forms of victimization in the hospitals. They also receive insensitive treatment, survivor blame and most of them are not offered adequate social services. All these can worsen their state of health. In fact it has been shown that most of them undergo what is called second rape or second sexual assault based on the nature of victimization they experience. For example, it has been shown that survivors experience with with medical and criminal justice agencies closely mimic the nature and /or dynamics of actual rape experiences and can be even more re-traumatizing. This means that generalists social worker could be the best clinician to address the medical needs of the rape survivors because generalist social worker is not only trained in clinical competence but also in how to handle the victim of rape without imposing any form of victimization or secondary rape. Generalist social work should therefore diagnose the physical injuries sustained by rape victim or survivor and administer appropriate intervention. The generalist social worker should also test whether the victim contracted the venereal and STI and administer the appropriate int ervention. Generalist social worker as a broker in helping rape victims It is indisputable that the rape victims are in need of many resources and services. However, most of them may not have information as to where to obtain such resources and services. It is therefore the role of the generalist social worker to act as a bridge and to let the rape survivors access the required services and resources. As a broker, generalists social worker should not have personal vested interests. When broking, they should be guided by a number elements. Firstly, they should recognize the victim as an individual with fear and preferences which should be solved at the end of plan or brokerage process. They should also turn the brokerage plan into reality and should take into consideration the risks and benefits of the brokerage process. Generalists’ social worker as a mediator in helping rape victims As stated earlier, rape victims undergo different forms of victimization. They also receive insensitive treatment, survivor blame and most of them are not offered adequate social services. It is also shown that survivors experience with medical and criminal justice agencies closely mimic the nature and /or dynamics of actual rape experiences and can be even more re-traumatizing (Schatz, Jenkins, Sheafor, 1990). Because of this, most of the rape cases are underreported despite the fact that they occur in every ten minutes. The stigma and the traumatizing experiences that the rape victims go through prevent them from even seeking medical assistance. Generalists social worker is therefore expected to mediate the process and help make decisions that are meant to benefit the rape survivor. In fact in court cases, the generalist social worker should be the one representing the client. Ethical considerations It should be noted that the generalists social worker should work towards benefiting all the affected groups. He or she should promote social justice by ensuring that all members of society access the societal resources that a society offers (Schatz, Jenkins, Sheafor, 1990). They should help the most vulnerable groups in the society. Despite the fact that they may act as brokers, they should not use this role to benefit themselves. They should expand institutional resources such as adequate education, political participation and should strive to promote fairness and respect. They should not cause further trauma to the rape victims (Schatz, Jenkins, Sheafor, 1990). It is also important to note that most professionals may defy their professionalism and perceive the rape victim as the cause of problem and hence the professional and personal values conflict. In such case, the generalist social worker should try to maintain his or her professional values. References Ghitis, F. (2010). Pushing Back Against Rape as a Weapon of War. World Politics Review (Selective Content), 1. Collings, S. J. (2009). Where the streets have no names: factors associated with the provision of counselling and social work services for child rape survivors in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Journal of Child Adolescent Mental Health, 21(2), 139-146. Schatz, M. S., Jenkins, L. E., Sheafor, B. W. (1990). Milford Redefined: A Model of Initial and Advanced Generalist Social Work. Journal of Social Work Education, 26(3), 217-231. Council on Social Work Education. (2008). Education policy and accreditation standards. Retrieved from http://www.cswe.org/Accreditation/2008EPASDescription.aspx

The Alcoholic Father Revealed in the Film, William Faulkner: A Life on Paper :: Faulkner Moses

The Alcoholic Father Revealed in the Film, William Faulkner: A Life on Paper While listening to William Faulkner’s daughter, Jill, attempt to describe her father’s personality, I recognized the desire to defend and protect the memory of a provider who was ultimately unknowable to her. It seemed as if each phrase was tentatively spoken as a way of avoiding being untruthful. Mostly, I recognized the inability to truly know an alcoholic parent. I repeat the word ‘recognize’ intentionally. I lived with an alcoholic until I was ten. My stepfather had two personalities: Nick and Earl. Earl was the soft-spoken, earnest hard worker. He was a log cutter for a company that supplied East Texas timber to the local Georgia-Pacific Paper Mill. Each weekday morning he would arise before everyone else, load and fire-up the small woodstove in the living room so that we would awaken to a warm house. By the time my mother aroused my brother and me at 6 a.m. for school, Earl was already gone to work. We would arrive home from school before he finished working and anticipate his return. We would listen for the sound of Earl’s work truck pulling into the yard and run to meet him on the porch. Earl would crouch to greet us and sometimes swing me into the air playfully. My brother and I would follow him into the house and compete to tell him about our school day, and when Earl found his spot on the couch, we would help him unlace his work boots. He would pay us each a quarter for our deed. We would retreat to the yard to play or to our bedroom to watch television while Earl took his evening bath and ate the dinner plate my mom had put aside for him. â€Å"Nick† usually emerged shortly after dinner. He drank pints of Canadian Whiskey from the bottle with the casual speed of a chain smoker. Nick spoke often†¦in loud slurred sentences. His tone toward my mother became very disrespectful. Nearly every sentence began with â€Å"bitch† and was invariably decorated with multiple usage forms of â€Å"mother fucker.† He was not physically violent and posed no such threat. When my mother would tire of his barrage of accusations and complaints, she would sternly tell him to â€Å"shut up.† He would then stumble into their bedroom, fall across the bed fully dressed, and sink into a stupor punctuated by his snore.

Examining Different Arguments Related to the Choice of a Career Essay

Assessment Part A: Critically Evaluating an Argument   Arts and Sciences (Advantage): Lots of flexibility in career choices: Logically Sound Arts and Sciences (Disadvantage): Leads to a career in food service – ‘Do you want fries with that? : Irrational Appeal Education (Advantage): The best way to make a difference in the world: Logically Sound Education (Disadvantage): Guaranteed low paying job: Shifting the Burden of Proof Nursing (Advantage): People always will need nurses: Logically Sound Nursing (Disadvantage): Too much schooling (according to Theo, the Law student): Shifting the Burden of Proof Information Systems and Technology (Advantage): No other degree concentration is as innovative (according to Grace): Shifting the Burden of Proof Information Systems and Technology (Disadvantage): Too limited in scope for much advancement in business situation (according to Ritesh): Logically Sound Business (Advantage): Infinite career options (according to Ritesh): Logic ally Sound Business (Disadvantage): Boring work, stuck behind a desk all day: Shifting the Burden of Proof Health and Human Services (Advantage): All the benefits of Arts and Sciences, but vastly more focused and relevant: Oversimplifying Health and Human Services (Disadvantage): Job options are all in very un-creative fields. : Double Standard Assessment Part B: Articulating the Steps Involved in Evaluating an Argument Write out the two most compelling arguments you heard that affected your decision. Next, list one that you heard that had a big logical error in it, but which you still thought was important. In the IT field, thre is not only a lot of opportunities there, from web design, to business systems and technology. There is also a huge demand in that field. The pay range also starts off at a pretty good level. One ofthe arguments I heard is that since I would start at an entry level position, there is a good possibility that I would not get the hours that I am looking for. Were there any errors in truth with that argument? Describe what those errors were, and what made them errors. There were some errors in that truth. There might not be such a high demand in my area that I live in. If I were to live in a very desolate area with little businesses, there might not be as much opportunity as others may have. What about errors of validity? Remember, these are errors in reasoning – and they’re a little harder to understand! Tell me if there are any errors of validity in this argument. I didn’t think that there were really any errors in the validity of the argument, however, there are some things that might not be considered valid by some. For instance, this field might not be for everyone. Some people might find some enjoyment in it, while others might not like it at all. Revise the argument so that it removes all errors. Restate it in a way that is logically sound. The field can be very promising, allowing you to have the opportunity to make good money. Also, most of the time, there are a high demand for employment, but it also depends on where you are looking for work. Take a look at all of what the job entails, because it might be for you, even though I enjoy it. Take a little more time on this one. What it was that led you to choose this degree concentration. Describe both about how you evaluated the arguments and also about what you valued most. I think that the most important point made in these arguments is which field I would enjoy the most. If I have a passion for technological services, then this is probably a good field for me. Also, if the pay scale is accurate, that is a great start at entry level.

Discursive

Discursive EssaySean Killoran The death penalty, used from 1707 and fully abolished in 1969, was said to have cut crimes by two thirds. It is a controversial topic ever since it was created. It has taken the lives of guilty and innocent parties. In a recent survey 70% or the public want the death penalty reinstated for heavy crimes. Personally I feel the death penalty should only be used if a murderer has been proved guilty with flawless evidence. Many people feel that the death penalty is a cruel and inhumane punishment for any convict.It brings forward the question that would we be any better than the person standing in front of the jury ? There is also a major danger that an innocent person could be sentenced to death. There would be know way of releasing the person if there was suitable evidence from because they would be dead. For example, In 2004, the state of Texas executed Cameron Todd Willingham for starting the fire that killed his children. The Texas Forensic Science Commi ssion found that the arson testimony that led to his conviction was based on flawed science.As of today, 138 wrongly convicted people on death row have been exonerated. One of the main reasons I feel people are against the death penalty is the cost. In Texas over 430 executions have been recorded since 1976, this has cost them $2. 3 million, which is almost three times of which it would cost to imprison a convict. This makes people think why would you pay almost three times the amount to kill a person just so the family can have ‘revenge’ and ‘justice’. There is more than one side to this argument however.The death penalty did reduce crimes by two thirds therefore making the area a safer place. This gives the impression that a ruthless and no holds barred attitude would be put towards the offender and possibly make other people who are thinking of committing think twice. Also there is no chance of re-offending as the type of people who are willing to do suc h a crime will effectively be wiped out. A judge could sentence a man to life in prison. That same man could be out of jail with 15 years. How has life in jail become known as ten to fifteen ears? If the judge says life with no parole, then the criminal could stay in jail a bit longer, but that would mean the country would have to take care of the prisoner for twenty to twenty five years. How can we trust the murderers and thieves of our country to a law that will either let them out in ten years or have us take care of them for twenty years, and then let them go? The criminals do not fear the punishment anymore, because they know they will not die. Punishment is meant to be feared by the convict and to keep him from doing it again.I am not saying we execute all of the criminals in the world, but it has to remain an option for the courts to use and to scare the criminals of the country. Many criminals don't fear the law. They know that they will get out in ten years if they murder s omeone. They are not afraid of jail or their punishment. How can we force them to stop killing or stealing if they are not afraid of the punishment we give them. Most rational men are afraid of death. They don't want to die. There are also men that don't fear death, but enjoy killing.They must be controlled, but if they are sentenced to life, they are soon free to kill again. Again, I am not saying we should kill all the men in jail and any other criminal in the world. That is not the answer either, but we must have the death penalty as an option so that they will be afraid to break the law, and to control those who don't fear death but love to break the law. The Death Penalty has proven to have good benefits upon the country in determining the consequences that criminals deserve. This is needed to ensure the safety of society.If this is the case, there is no need for us to consider the expenses involved in the death penalty. Certainly human lives are more important, for it may easi ly be yours. We should not abolish the death penalty, but hold our country accountable for properly using the death penalty upon those who deserve it. Sources YYwww. wikipedia. com[->0] YYwww. answers. yahoo. com[->1] YYwww. tnjn. com[->2] Word Count: 766 [->0] – http://www. wikipedia. com/ [->1] – http://www. answers. yahoo. com/ [->2] – http://www. tnjn. com/

Tori Amos essays

Tori Amos essays Besides having a self titled domain name, Tory Amos has not just captured an audience with her love for the piano and music, but now also has a website online available to all adoring fans. Primary, www.toriamos.com serviced by Artist Direct, provides current news about Tori personal life and plans for future music projects. Currently the artist isn't touring or working on any projects, due to the birth of a baby girl but, you can always check back later for future updates . Following, there is a place to chat with others about Tori in the forum linked to her website. Last, a videography section has been linked to view all Tori's music videos using the Tori's TV control (provided you have REEL player installed) . If none of these links do it for you, or maybe your just interested in the music itself, ToriAmos.Com links up to all kinds of popular music related websites, included its server Artist Direct. There, you can search for new artists or just browse Toris' online merch andise link to buy her current music releases and videos. Even if the graphics are a little too dark and eye straining, and sometimes the REEL player takes awhile to load, this site is still great place to visit, especially if you're a fan of Tori Amos music or maybe curious of her work. It's very informative, fun, and provides great access to her merchandise. I highly recommend viewing this website to those that have interest. ...

I Miss Not Seeing You

I Miss Not Seeing You I Miss Not Seeing You I Miss Not Seeing You By Guest Author This is a guest post by Julie Link. If you want to write for Daily Writing Tips check the guidelines here. â€Å"I love France,† my friend sighed, and I nodded my agreement. â€Å"I miss not being there,† she added. Huh? My commiseration over lost croissants gave way to puzzlement over this odd expression. You love it, but you regret not being absent from it? A quick perusal of the internet yielded more instances of the erroneous idiom. A headline on .OhGizmo.com laments, â€Å"Goodbye, F-117A. We’ll Miss Not Seeing You.† A query posted on WikiAnswers.com asks â€Å"How do you say i miss not seeing you in french† [sic]? Dictionary.com defines the verb â€Å"to miss† as â€Å"to regret the absence or loss of: I miss you all dreadfully.† The definition makes clear that what my friend missed was being in France rather than not being in France. How did â€Å"I miss being there† morph into â€Å"I miss not being there†? I’ve never seen the expression misused when the object of the verb is a person or a thing. Does anyone say â€Å"I miss not my mom?† (Well, perhaps, but that’s a topic for another day.) No, we all understand that that when we miss something or someone, we regret its absence or loss. We miss the warmth of summer, Gran’s apple pie, or a dear friend. The problem occurs only when what is missed is an action: â€Å"I miss seeing you,† â€Å"The children miss playing at the beach,† or â€Å"Nana misses rocking her grandbabies.† Perhaps the error derives from trying to emphasize the regret. Doesn’t not rocking the babies sound sadder than rocking them? But to add the word â€Å"not† is to create a double negative. Parsing my friend’s remark, for example, would suggest that what she regrets is being in France; that was not what she intended to convey. The definition of â€Å"miss† already denotes a negative- the absence or loss of something- so the addition of the word â€Å"not† negates the loss and creates, if not an arithmetic positive, then at least a grammatical confusion. Why this simple expression, so easily grasped that children use it comfortably, becomes so slippery when a few words are added is difficult to explain. An understanding of grammar is helpful; diagramming the sentence (Does anyone do that nowadays?) would demonstrate that whether what is being missed is a person, a thing, or an action, the structure of the phrase does not change. Rather than exposit the grammatical technicalities of gerunds and direct objects, I think I’ll cogitate over a croissant. The only problem is that I miss not counting calories. About the Author: Julie Link is an experienced editor and avid lexiphile who loves reading and writing about language and grammar. She may be contacted at julieolink@yahoo.com. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Misused Words category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:7 Examples of Passive Voice (And How To Fix Them)15 Types of DocumentsHow to Send Tactful Emails from a Technical Support Desk

How To Write For Social Media To Create The Best Posts - CoSchedule

How To Write For Social Media To Create The Best Posts Social media success requires strong writing skills. However, not all social media managers consider themselves writers. Fortunately, writing great social media content doesn’t have to be difficult. Not every post needs to reinvent the copywriting wheel, after all. Still, taking the time to get your writing right is worth it. Lets  learn how to write for social media and start creating better content now. Why Does It Matter If You Write Well On Social Media? Every social post you publish reflects on your brand. If you’re sloppy, your company will look sloppy too. Even worse, it could undermine your success on social media. Thats why its important to write well on social media. Social media copywriting requires some unique skills.  You need to be able to cram as much value into as few words as possible. You also have to be consistent and engaging at all times. Plus, every network is unique. What works on Facebook might flop  on LinkedIn. This makes becoming a master social wordsmith even more difficult. And thats exactly why we wrote this post. How To Write For Social Media To Create The Best Posts Consistency Counts (So Build A Social Media Style Guide) Keeping your social copy clean and within brand standards can be a challenge. Developing a simple style guide can help with this. A basic style guide can be one or two pages long, and should include the following: Mission Statement: This can be twofold:  why does your business exist, and why are you on social media? Audience/Persona Summary: Briefly describe your core audience on social media. Who are you writing for, anyway? Social Media Brand Voice: Describe what your social brand voice should sound like (casual, serious, professional, irreverent, etc.). Tone: Describe your social tone (helpful, funny, authoritative, etc.) Branding: List requirements for brand spellings (and other copy-related branding elements). Message Types (By Network): Not all content needs to go on every network. Create some guidelines on which types of messaging are appropriate on which of your social networks. If you need help building a style guide, this guide from Hubspot  is a great primer. TIP: Use the Social Media Style Guide Template included in this post to build your own style guide. Put Together a Social Media Writing Toolbox The first thing you'll need is the Social Message  Optimizer! It's the latest FREE tool from your friends at .  Ã°Å¸Ëœâ€° The Social Message  Optimizer helps you nail the mechanics behind writing amazing social media messages. That means it analyzes your message type, character length, number of hashtags, emoji count, and more to help you optimize the perfect message for every social network! When you use the Social Message  Optimizer, you'll: Stop guessing what works (and what doesn't). Learning and then remembering all of the best practices for writing on every social network is super time-consuming and tedious. Now you have a clear place to start writing every social media message! Just write, review your score on each network, and optimize further based on real data. Get immediate feedback to improve quickly. Consider the Social Message  Optimizer your expert who is always there to answer your questions. You'll A/B test your messages before you publish them to get the most engagement on each network. Get even more engagement than ever before.  Capture more eyeballs with your messages! Get more likes, comments, shares, and link clicks by using the data from  6,399,322 social messages to refine yours to be among the top 10%. Use the Social Message  Optimizer now. Grammarly We've all published a social post with a typo before. And we've all felt like this as a result: This is where Grammarly's free browser extension (available for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari) comes in handy. It's a life-saving spelling and grammar checking tool. Install it on your browser, and it'll check your spelling and grammar on everything you write, anywhere (including on social media). Hashtagify.me Looking for relevant hashtags to incorporate into your tweets? Hashtagify.me should fit the bill. It's an easy-to-use hashtag search engine to help you find hashtags people are actually using. 9 Basic Social Media Writing Tips Like we said earlier, every network has its own quirks and best practices. However, there are some standard best practices that generally apply to most networks, too. Let's review those now. Start writing better on social media now.Understand Active Vs. Passive Voice Using active voice helps produce more engaging copy. According to PlainLanguage.gov, Readers prefer active voice sentences, and we should try to use the active voice in most of our business writing to communicate our message most effectively. Active voice clearly identifies the action and who is performing that action. Most writers are familiar with active and passive voice. If you’re not sure what the difference is (and were afraid to ask) though, then never fear. There’s no shame here. Let’s walk through each one: Hear the difference? The first example puts the subject (â€Å"I†) in the driver’s seat. It’s more action-oriented. The second example, however, sounds a bit more flat, factual, and lacking action. Writing for social media? Use active voice.Put Your Audience First It's rude to only talk about yourself. So, write in a way that puts your audience at the center of the story instead. How do you do this? Simple. Say â€Å"you† more than you say â€Å"us.† Here’s a good example from Threadless’ Twitter bio: Write Stuff People Want To Share This requires understanding why people  share content. Let's  break this down into five major reasons: Delivering value to their audience. People want to share things their audience will find valuable. This could mean content that’s helpful, entertaining, or otherwise worth paying attention to. Try writing posts that convey a clear benefit. If you create how-to content, consider writing copy that hints at what the linked article will help readers do. You can also create unlinked social messages that include a useful tip in your post copy or image copy. Here’s an example from Bobcat Company: To  express and define themselves. When sharing posts, people often think, â€Å"How does sharing  this reinforce my identity?† Use surveys or create personas to understand your typical audience member. From there, figure out how they identify themselves. For example, if you sell construction equipment, your audience might see themselves as â€Å"tough† or â€Å"hard-working.† Pickup truck manufacturers know their customers connect their identities to what they drive. This post from Ram Trucks capitalizes on this: To feel connected to others. Social media is about building connections and relationships. People naturally want to share posts that shows they’re part of something bigger themselves. They also like to share posts likely to start a conversation (so they can converse with other people). One way to do this is to write messages that encourage tagging and sharing. Like this: To make themselves feel valued. People want to share posts that are likely to get likes, shares, and positive comments. It feels good to share something your friends like, right?  You might also consider writing messages showing appreciation for your audience. To express beliefs or support causes. People love sharing opinions on social media.  You probably don't need to be told that, either. If it’s appropriate, take a stance on something or show your support for a cause. You don’t have to get too controversial (although sometimes a little bit of controversy is okay). Here’s an example from the United Nations: This tweet does each of the following: It promotes a cause (gender equality). It incorporates a relevant hashtag in the middle of the tweet. It uses positive language. It links to a page where viewers can take action. It also achieves each of these goals without being offensive or inflammatory. Before writing social posts, ask 'Why would someone share this'?Make Sure You Have Clear  Message-Match Between Your Posts And Destination Pages If your post is linking to an external page, then your post messaging needs to match your landing page messaging. In short, your social media content needs to follow through on the promises your posts make. Here are a few tips to keep in mind: Double-check that links are accurate. Only link to substantive pages with good information. And make sure your post copy is relevant to your destination page. Check out this tweet from Esquire. It’s written to stoke curiosity and intrigue. What will  happen on season 2 of Stranger Things? Who knows? I don't, but the destination page here better tell me. Once I reach the page, it’s immediately clear that the post copy directed me to a relevant link. The destination page’s headline is well aligned with the tweet, too. That’s a good thing, because if this ended up being click bait, I would have thrown my keyword. Don’t make people want to throw their keyboards. Make sure your social messaging matches your  destination page.Make Sure Your Copy Matches Your Visual Content, Too If you’re writing image copy, consider connecting it with your post copy too. Here’s a great example from Gary Vaynerchuk: See how the post copy connects with the image copy? One leads into the other to communicate one clear message. Here’s another example from the NFL that creatively incorporates a player’s number (in this case, Randall Cobb of the Green Bay Packers, the greatest sports franchise in history*): *Your favorite team is great, too. This creative campaign counted down the days until kickoff, including a different player down to opening day. Be Clear And Concise Avoid complex language and use short sentences. People skim on social media, so punchy posts tend to work better than long-winded paragraphs. Try to limit yourself to just one or two sentences, if possible. This isn’t a firm rule, but it may be a useful guideline to keep yourself from rambling. Struggling to keep your posts short? Try working through this simple exercise. Start by reading  this example post: â€Å"Here is our latest blog post about a very awesome topic you’ll enjoy.† This isn’t that bad, right? Well, there are a lot of wasted words we could do without. Let’s try minimizing stop words (is, a, etc.) and see how it sounds. We could also make the end of the sentence more specific, focusing on one detail to use fewer words. â€Å"Here’s our latest blog post about blogging.† Hear the difference? The second example says essentially the same thing. It just does it with fewer but more specific words, and sounds much better as a result. Clarity and conciseness are key for writing well on social media.Avoid Pushy, Overly Sales-Driven Messaging At least when it comes to writing organic social media content. While social ads need to be written to sell, organic social posts should be written to inform, entertain, or otherwise make a connection with your audience. That doesn’t mean you can’t promote yourself. It just means it’s best to find a way to sell people on the idea of taking an action without directly sounding like you’re making a sales pitch. Here’s an example from music distribution platform Bandcamp: If you must write a sales message, focus on benefits to the consumer. This tweet from Threadless lets people know there’s a sale going on without forcefully saying, â€Å"Buy Now† or â€Å"Shop Here.† It also uses a nice, clear image. Invoke Curiosity Write in a way that makes people want to click through. If you’re linking to another article or blog post, you don’t need to tell the whole story in your social media update. Instead, leave some details unanswered while implying your linked articles will answer their questions. What is the mystery on "The Curse of Oak Island," anyway?  You don't have to care about construction equipment to want to find out. Recommended Reading: How To Use Social Media Analytics To Create The Best Content Social Media Writing Tips For Each Network Every social media network is different. Different audiences. Different purposes. Different expectations. Your writing and messaging should be adjusted accordingly. Instead of writing one message for every network, tailor your messaging to each one individually. To do this, it helps to understand the purpose of each network, and what works best on each one: Consider audience expectations for each network when writing social media posts.Facebook Writing Tips With declining Facebook organic reach, sharp copy is now more important than ever. Keep Posts Short There’s some wiggle room on this one. However, data shows short posts perform best. Avoid Promotional Calls-To-Action Facebook’s algorithm can detect overly promotional language. This means wording like, â€Å"Buy Now!† or â€Å"Sign up here!† Posts with a hard sales message get demoted in the newsfeed, and with organic reach already in decline, that’s something you can’t afford. Write Shareable Article Headlines If you’re writing blog posts or articles, keep Facebook in mind when crafting catchy headlines. Think short, punchy, and conversational. Recommended Reading: Facebook Marketing Strategy: Why You Need One (And How to Build It) Twitter Writing Tips You can do a surprising amount with just 140 characters. Here are some tips to make the most of your tweets. Do More Than Simply Reshare Headlines As Post Copy This one is okay in moderation. However, it’s better to write copy that adds to the story your article is telling.  Here’s an example of what we mean: Instead of reusing the article headline as a social post, the post outlines the story in the article. This helps build interest in clicking the link, and prevents wasting people’s time reading the same text twice. Incorporate Hashtags Directly In Tweet Copy It’s easy to add hashtags to the end of a post. However, consider cleverly incorporating them directly into your tweets instead. In this example from Electronic Arts, a single hashtag is the entire post. This creates a clean look for your hashtags, and ensures they get seen. Get creative and directly incorporate hashtags in your social posts.Go Easy On Hashtags, Though Make sure your message isn’t lost in a sea of hashtags. Aim to use two, or maybe three, at the most. Recommended Reading: How To Use Hashtags Effectively Without Being Annoying Be Mindful Of Your Character Limit You have 140 characters here. Stay under that limit without cutting corners. Conciseness is no excuse for lack of clarity. If you can’t use complete sentences, you need to rewrite your tweet. Try Adding URLs In The Middle Of Tweets (Instead Of At The End) This tip comes from Dan Zarrella at Hubspot. This data is a little old at this point, but in 2011, he discovered that â€Å"the best area for clicks is about 25% of the way through the Tweet.† As a writer, testing this requires you to consider writing in a way that would let you place a link after just two or three words. Try following this formula: [Short Intro] + [URL] + [Longer Explanation]. Have you tried putting URLs in the middle of tweets, instead of at the end?Tag Other Relevant Accounts Within Your Tweet Copy This helps alert other folks that you’re talking about them. In turn, they’ll be more likely to share your posts. It’s win-win. Be sure to write your posts with other accounts in mind. Incorporate Emojis Into Your Tweet Copy Like it or not, â€Å"emoji† is turning into a language all its own. Used creatively, they can add a splash of character to your tweets. Check out this example from Sporting Kansas City, a Major League Soccer team: Tell A Story In A Tweet It’s possible to tell a complete story in a tweet. Here’s an example from Microsoft: This tweet outlines the entire article in under 140 characters. Recommended Reading: 15 Tactics to Boost Twitter Engagement (Backed By Research) Google+ Writing Tips Google+ is different from other social networks and allows for some interesting formatting options. Use that to your advantage. Write Compelling Post Headlines Google+ is unique in that it allows you to write bolded headlines. General best practices for writing headlines applies here. Don’t Be Afraid To Tell A Whole Story Google+ posts can run a bit longer than on other networks. Take advantage of that. Go into more detail than normal if you feel you need to. LinkedIn Writing Tips LinkedIn is a professional network. Here's how to make sure your writing reflects that. Be Clear Avoid using professional lingo if it won’t be understood by your audience. Be Concise Get to the point. Don’t ramble. Busy professionals don’t have time to waste. Stay Professional LinkedIn is a professional network. Don’t forget this when writing your posts. Stick to a professional tone. Instagram Writing Tips Instagram is a visual-driven network. However, the written word still has its place there. Think About Alignment Between Your Image Copy And Post Copy Instagram is a visual network, but the written word still has a place there. Write image copy that hooks people’s attention while connecting with your post text. Don’t Forget Hashtags Instagram likes hashtags. Don’t be afraid to use them liberally at the end of your posts. Recommended Reading: How To Improve Your Visual Marketing On Pinterest And Instagram Pinterest Writing Tips Pinterest is a highly visual network, but that doesn't mean you can neglect your writing chops here. Write Longer Pin Descriptions According to a study from Dan Zarrella, descriptions over 200 characters long received more repins. That could be thanks to those pins having more detailed context around what they're about to entice people to click and share. Include Links in Pin Descriptions If people like the images you pin, they'll probably want to learn more about where they came from. Adding a link helps, and don't be afraid to add a call to action, either. Include Relevant Keywords in Your Pin Descriptions Including keywords in pin descriptions can help them show up in searches on Pinterest. How To Define And Develop Your Voice And Tone People expect social media accounts to have a consistent voice. Your presence needs personality, even if you’re representing a brand. Social media is about generating conversation. No one wants to talk to someone boring. This means you’ll need to develop a consistent voice. One that’s both true to your brand or personality, while fitting for each social network you’re on. What Does Your Social Media Voice Sound Like? Your voice is essentially your personality on social media. Are you fun? Serious? Creative? What's The Difference Between Voice And Tone? Voice and tone are often used interchangeably. However, there is a difference, and it's important to understand them both. Your tone is the inflection you apply to your voice. Depending on the context, you could sound happy, sad, angry, or any other emotion that's appropriate. Buffer's Kevan Lee may have put it best: Essentially, there is one voice for your brand and many tones that refine that voice.  Voice is a mission statement. Tone is the application of that mission. How To Develop  Your Brand's Social Media Personality Start by asking these questions: What is my/our mission or purpose? What are our values? What kind of language and tone does our audience use? Then, try filling in the blanks here a few different ways: â€Å"We are ________ , but we’re not __________ .† An example answer here could be, â€Å"We are funny, but we’re not offensive.† Or, â€Å"We are professional, but we’re not stuffy.† The idea is to narrow down who you are, and who you’re not. Recommended Reading: This Is The Social Media Posting Schedule That Will Boost Your Traffic By 192% Are You Personable? Professional? Or Both? Social media is often used to keep in touch with friends, family, and colleagues. That means your social media content has to compete against updates from people users are close with. It's a simple fact that most people don’t log into a social network to see content from brands, companies, or bloggers. There are exceptions, of course. In any case, you need to write to stand out and hook people’s attention. This requires understanding what your audience expects to see from you. And that might be hard if your brand isn’t inherently â€Å"fun.† So, what can you do? Know Your Audience Who are your customers? What are their values, concerns, and interests? It’s important to figure this out if you don’t already know. Survey your audience if you have to. You need to know who you’re writing for before you can understand what they want from you. Creating a social media audience persona might help. This essentially entails creating a character description of your average target audience member. Building personas takes a little bit of work, but it can help you get a clear idea of who you’re writing for. TIP: Know who you’re writing for on social media. Do this by running surveys, building personas, or even just listening to what they say on social media. Know Your Competition Seeing what kind of content your competition is writing can help inspire your own approach. Check out some of your competitor’s social profiles and make note of the following: What does their brand voice sound like? Does their content appear to drive engagement? If this company were a person, would I want to talk to them? This can give you an idea of what works in your industry. TIP: Pay attention to competitors in your space on social media. Note their writing style. Take inspiration from what works, and then do it better yourself. Know Yourself. Cat videos, memes, and other distractions dominate on social media. Those things might work for your brand. They could also be totally inappropriate. The key is to find the right balance between personable and professional content and tone for your audience. Start by defining yourself under one of these three categories: Personable. Your brand is fun, warm, and inviting. Professional. Your brand is serious, authoritative, and orderly. Both. Your brand bridges both of the above, tying fun content into more professional themes. How do you know which is best for your brand? One answer is to use common sense. If you’re a legal firm, for example, you probably don’t want to sound lighthearted. If you run a pet adoption center, however, you’d likely want to sound fun and inviting to get people in the door. What do you do if it isn’t immediately obvious which of these three categories best fits your brand? Try working through these three exercises to figure it out. Exercise 1: Determine Who You Are (By Determining Who You’re Not) One way to help understand your brand voice is to ask â€Å"We are ______ , but we are not ______ â€Å" questions. This can help you know who you are, and just as importantly, who you’re not. As an exercise, fill in those blanks a few different ways. Here are some examples: â€Å"We're fun, but we’re not goofy.† â€Å"We're informative, but we’re not boring.† â€Å"We're authoritative, but we’re not arrogant.† Exercise 2: Try Summarizing Your Brand In Just Three Adjectives Another idea is to simply think of three adjectives that describe your brand. In traditional advertising parlance, this could be thought of as a â€Å"tag line.† According to The Balance, A variant of a branding slogan, a tagline can be used in marketing materials and advertising. The idea behind the concept is to create  a memorable dramatic phrase that will sum up the tone and premise of an audio/visual product, or to reinforce and strengthen the audience's memory of a literary product. Your mission (should you choose to accept it), is to do one of the following: Keep your company’s existing tag line in mind when writing on social media. Ask yourself, â€Å"How does this messaging support or reflect what we’re about?† Come up with a new tagline. It doesn’t have to be one you use publicly. It could even just a short phrase you use internally to guide your copy. Let’s try developing a simple tagline using three adjectives. Taglines can be short phrases (typically no longer than five to seven words), but we’ll make this easy. The goal is to help you summarize who you are, in order to inform your social media voice. Start by choosing three adjectives that fall into one or all of the categories below: An adjective describing what you do. Another addressing how you do it. One more pertaining to why you do it. Let’s say you run a car dealership. What are some things you might value? Honesty Experience Quality service Put that together, and you could come up with a tagline like: Honest. Experience. Quality. How To Write For Social Media To Create The Best Posts Social media success requires strong writing skills. However, not all social media managers consider themselves writers. Fortunately, writing great social media content doesn’t have to be difficult. Not every post needs to reinvent the copywriting wheel, after all. Still, taking the time to get your writing right is worth it. Lets  learn how to write for social media and start creating better content now. Why Does It Matter If You Write Well On Social Media? Every social post you publish reflects on your brand. If you’re sloppy, your company will look sloppy too. Even worse, it could undermine your success on social media. Thats why its important to write well on social media. Social media copywriting requires some unique skills.  You need to be able to cram as much value into as few words as possible. You also have to be consistent and engaging at all times. Plus, every network is unique. What works on Facebook might flop  on LinkedIn. This makes becoming a master social wordsmith even more difficult. And thats exactly why we wrote this post. How To Write For Social Media To Create The Best Posts Consistency Counts (So Build A Social Media Style Guide) Keeping your social copy clean and within brand standards can be a challenge. Developing a simple style guide can help with this. A basic style guide can be one or two pages long, and should include the following: Mission Statement: This can be twofold:  why does your business exist, and why are you on social media? Audience/Persona Summary: Briefly describe your core audience on social media. Who are you writing for, anyway? Social Media Brand Voice: Describe what your social brand voice should sound like (casual, serious, professional, irreverent, etc.). Tone: Describe your social tone (helpful, funny, authoritative, etc.) Branding: List requirements for brand spellings (and other copy-related branding elements). Message Types (By Network): Not all content needs to go on every network. Create some guidelines on which types of messaging are appropriate on which of your social networks. If you need help building a style guide, this guide from Hubspot  is a great primer. TIP: Use the Social Media Style Guide Template included in this post to build your own style guide. Put Together a Social Media Writing Toolbox The first thing you'll need is the Social Message  Optimizer! It's the latest FREE tool from your friends at .  Ã°Å¸Ëœâ€° The Social Message  Optimizer helps you nail the mechanics behind writing amazing social media messages. That means it analyzes your message type, character length, number of hashtags, emoji count, and more to help you optimize the perfect message for every social network! When you use the Social Message  Optimizer, you'll: Stop guessing what works (and what doesn't). Learning and then remembering all of the best practices for writing on every social network is super time-consuming and tedious. Now you have a clear place to start writing every social media message! Just write, review your score on each network, and optimize further based on real data. Get immediate feedback to improve quickly. Consider the Social Message  Optimizer your expert who is always there to answer your questions. You'll A/B test your messages before you publish them to get the most engagement on each network. Get even more engagement than ever before.  Capture more eyeballs with your messages! Get more likes, comments, shares, and link clicks by using the data from  6,399,322 social messages to refine yours to be among the top 10%. Use the Social Message  Optimizer now. Grammarly We've all published a social post with a typo before. And we've all felt like this as a result: This is where Grammarly's free browser extension (available for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari) comes in handy. It's a life-saving spelling and grammar checking tool. Install it on your browser, and it'll check your spelling and grammar on everything you write, anywhere (including on social media). Hashtagify.me Looking for relevant hashtags to incorporate into your tweets? Hashtagify.me should fit the bill. It's an easy-to-use hashtag search engine to help you find hashtags people are actually using. 9 Basic Social Media Writing Tips Like we said earlier, every network has its own quirks and best practices. However, there are some standard best practices that generally apply to most networks, too. Let's review those now. Start writing better on social media now.Understand Active Vs. Passive Voice Using active voice helps produce more engaging copy. According to PlainLanguage.gov, Readers prefer active voice sentences, and we should try to use the active voice in most of our business writing to communicate our message most effectively. Active voice clearly identifies the action and who is performing that action. Most writers are familiar with active and passive voice. If you’re not sure what the difference is (and were afraid to ask) though, then never fear. There’s no shame here. Let’s walk through each one: Hear the difference? The first example puts the subject (â€Å"I†) in the driver’s seat. It’s more action-oriented. The second example, however, sounds a bit more flat, factual, and lacking action. Writing for social media? Use active voice.Put Your Audience First It's rude to only talk about yourself. So, write in a way that puts your audience at the center of the story instead. How do you do this? Simple. Say â€Å"you† more than you say â€Å"us.† Here’s a good example from Threadless’ Twitter bio: Write Stuff People Want To Share This requires understanding why people  share content. Let's  break this down into five major reasons: Delivering value to their audience. People want to share things their audience will find valuable. This could mean content that’s helpful, entertaining, or otherwise worth paying attention to. Try writing posts that convey a clear benefit. If you create how-to content, consider writing copy that hints at what the linked article will help readers do. You can also create unlinked social messages that include a useful tip in your post copy or image copy. Here’s an example from Bobcat Company: To  express and define themselves. When sharing posts, people often think, â€Å"How does sharing  this reinforce my identity?† Use surveys or create personas to understand your typical audience member. From there, figure out how they identify themselves. For example, if you sell construction equipment, your audience might see themselves as â€Å"tough† or â€Å"hard-working.† Pickup truck manufacturers know their customers connect their identities to what they drive. This post from Ram Trucks capitalizes on this: To feel connected to others. Social media is about building connections and relationships. People naturally want to share posts that shows they’re part of something bigger themselves. They also like to share posts likely to start a conversation (so they can converse with other people). One way to do this is to write messages that encourage tagging and sharing. Like this: To make themselves feel valued. People want to share posts that are likely to get likes, shares, and positive comments. It feels good to share something your friends like, right?  You might also consider writing messages showing appreciation for your audience. To express beliefs or support causes. People love sharing opinions on social media.  You probably don't need to be told that, either. If it’s appropriate, take a stance on something or show your support for a cause. You don’t have to get too controversial (although sometimes a little bit of controversy is okay). Here’s an example from the United Nations: This tweet does each of the following: It promotes a cause (gender equality). It incorporates a relevant hashtag in the middle of the tweet. It uses positive language. It links to a page where viewers can take action. It also achieves each of these goals without being offensive or inflammatory. Before writing social posts, ask 'Why would someone share this'?Make Sure You Have Clear  Message-Match Between Your Posts And Destination Pages If your post is linking to an external page, then your post messaging needs to match your landing page messaging. In short, your social media content needs to follow through on the promises your posts make. Here are a few tips to keep in mind: Double-check that links are accurate. Only link to substantive pages with good information. And make sure your post copy is relevant to your destination page. Check out this tweet from Esquire. It’s written to stoke curiosity and intrigue. What will  happen on season 2 of Stranger Things? Who knows? I don't, but the destination page here better tell me. Once I reach the page, it’s immediately clear that the post copy directed me to a relevant link. The destination page’s headline is well aligned with the tweet, too. That’s a good thing, because if this ended up being click bait, I would have thrown my keyword. Don’t make people want to throw their keyboards. Make sure your social messaging matches your  destination page.Make Sure Your Copy Matches Your Visual Content, Too If you’re writing image copy, consider connecting it with your post copy too. Here’s a great example from Gary Vaynerchuk: See how the post copy connects with the image copy? One leads into the other to communicate one clear message. Here’s another example from the NFL that creatively incorporates a player’s number (in this case, Randall Cobb of the Green Bay Packers, the greatest sports franchise in history*): *Your favorite team is great, too. This creative campaign counted down the days until kickoff, including a different player down to opening day. Be Clear And Concise Avoid complex language and use short sentences. People skim on social media, so punchy posts tend to work better than long-winded paragraphs. Try to limit yourself to just one or two sentences, if possible. This isn’t a firm rule, but it may be a useful guideline to keep yourself from rambling. Struggling to keep your posts short? Try working through this simple exercise. Start by reading  this example post: â€Å"Here is our latest blog post about a very awesome topic you’ll enjoy.† This isn’t that bad, right? Well, there are a lot of wasted words we could do without. Let’s try minimizing stop words (is, a, etc.) and see how it sounds. We could also make the end of the sentence more specific, focusing on one detail to use fewer words. â€Å"Here’s our latest blog post about blogging.† Hear the difference? The second example says essentially the same thing. It just does it with fewer but more specific words, and sounds much better as a result. Clarity and conciseness are key for writing well on social media.Avoid Pushy, Overly Sales-Driven Messaging At least when it comes to writing organic social media content. While social ads need to be written to sell, organic social posts should be written to inform, entertain, or otherwise make a connection with your audience. That doesn’t mean you can’t promote yourself. It just means it’s best to find a way to sell people on the idea of taking an action without directly sounding like you’re making a sales pitch. Here’s an example from music distribution platform Bandcamp: If you must write a sales message, focus on benefits to the consumer. This tweet from Threadless lets people know there’s a sale going on without forcefully saying, â€Å"Buy Now† or â€Å"Shop Here.† It also uses a nice, clear image. Invoke Curiosity Write in a way that makes people want to click through. If you’re linking to another article or blog post, you don’t need to tell the whole story in your social media update. Instead, leave some details unanswered while implying your linked articles will answer their questions. What is the mystery on "The Curse of Oak Island," anyway?  You don't have to care about construction equipment to want to find out. Recommended Reading: How To Use Social Media Analytics To Create The Best Content Social Media Writing Tips For Each Network Every social media network is different. Different audiences. Different purposes. Different expectations. Your writing and messaging should be adjusted accordingly. Instead of writing one message for every network, tailor your messaging to each one individually. To do this, it helps to understand the purpose of each network, and what works best on each one: Consider audience expectations for each network when writing social media posts.Facebook Writing Tips With declining Facebook organic reach, sharp copy is now more important than ever. Keep Posts Short There’s some wiggle room on this one. However, data shows short posts perform best. Avoid Promotional Calls-To-Action Facebook’s algorithm can detect overly promotional language. This means wording like, â€Å"Buy Now!† or â€Å"Sign up here!† Posts with a hard sales message get demoted in the newsfeed, and with organic reach already in decline, that’s something you can’t afford. Write Shareable Article Headlines If you’re writing blog posts or articles, keep Facebook in mind when crafting catchy headlines. Think short, punchy, and conversational. Recommended Reading: Facebook Marketing Strategy: Why You Need One (And How to Build It) Twitter Writing Tips You can do a surprising amount with just 140 characters. Here are some tips to make the most of your tweets. Do More Than Simply Reshare Headlines As Post Copy This one is okay in moderation. However, it’s better to write copy that adds to the story your article is telling.  Here’s an example of what we mean: Instead of reusing the article headline as a social post, the post outlines the story in the article. This helps build interest in clicking the link, and prevents wasting people’s time reading the same text twice. Incorporate Hashtags Directly In Tweet Copy It’s easy to add hashtags to the end of a post. However, consider cleverly incorporating them directly into your tweets instead. In this example from Electronic Arts, a single hashtag is the entire post. This creates a clean look for your hashtags, and ensures they get seen. Get creative and directly incorporate hashtags in your social posts.Go Easy On Hashtags, Though Make sure your message isn’t lost in a sea of hashtags. Aim to use two, or maybe three, at the most. Recommended Reading: How To Use Hashtags Effectively Without Being Annoying Be Mindful Of Your Character Limit You have 140 characters here. Stay under that limit without cutting corners. Conciseness is no excuse for lack of clarity. If you can’t use complete sentences, you need to rewrite your tweet. Try Adding URLs In The Middle Of Tweets (Instead Of At The End) This tip comes from Dan Zarrella at Hubspot. This data is a little old at this point, but in 2011, he discovered that â€Å"the best area for clicks is about 25% of the way through the Tweet.† As a writer, testing this requires you to consider writing in a way that would let you place a link after just two or three words. Try following this formula: [Short Intro] + [URL] + [Longer Explanation]. Have you tried putting URLs in the middle of tweets, instead of at the end?Tag Other Relevant Accounts Within Your Tweet Copy This helps alert other folks that you’re talking about them. In turn, they’ll be more likely to share your posts. It’s win-win. Be sure to write your posts with other accounts in mind. Incorporate Emojis Into Your Tweet Copy Like it or not, â€Å"emoji† is turning into a language all its own. Used creatively, they can add a splash of character to your tweets. Check out this example from Sporting Kansas City, a Major League Soccer team: Tell A Story In A Tweet It’s possible to tell a complete story in a tweet. Here’s an example from Microsoft: This tweet outlines the entire article in under 140 characters. Recommended Reading: 15 Tactics to Boost Twitter Engagement (Backed By Research) Google+ Writing Tips Google+ is different from other social networks and allows for some interesting formatting options. Use that to your advantage. Write Compelling Post Headlines Google+ is unique in that it allows you to write bolded headlines. General best practices for writing headlines applies here. Don’t Be Afraid To Tell A Whole Story Google+ posts can run a bit longer than on other networks. Take advantage of that. Go into more detail than normal if you feel you need to. LinkedIn Writing Tips LinkedIn is a professional network. Here's how to make sure your writing reflects that. Be Clear Avoid using professional lingo if it won’t be understood by your audience. Be Concise Get to the point. Don’t ramble. Busy professionals don’t have time to waste. Stay Professional LinkedIn is a professional network. Don’t forget this when writing your posts. Stick to a professional tone. Instagram Writing Tips Instagram is a visual-driven network. However, the written word still has its place there. Think About Alignment Between Your Image Copy And Post Copy Instagram is a visual network, but the written word still has a place there. Write image copy that hooks people’s attention while connecting with your post text. Don’t Forget Hashtags Instagram likes hashtags. Don’t be afraid to use them liberally at the end of your posts. Recommended Reading: How To Improve Your Visual Marketing On Pinterest And Instagram Pinterest Writing Tips Pinterest is a highly visual network, but that doesn't mean you can neglect your writing chops here. Write Longer Pin Descriptions According to a study from Dan Zarrella, descriptions over 200 characters long received more repins. That could be thanks to those pins having more detailed context around what they're about to entice people to click and share. Include Links in Pin Descriptions If people like the images you pin, they'll probably want to learn more about where they came from. Adding a link helps, and don't be afraid to add a call to action, either. Include Relevant Keywords in Your Pin Descriptions Including keywords in pin descriptions can help them show up in searches on Pinterest. How To Define And Develop Your Voice And Tone People expect social media accounts to have a consistent voice. Your presence needs personality, even if you’re representing a brand. Social media is about generating conversation. No one wants to talk to someone boring. This means you’ll need to develop a consistent voice. One that’s both true to your brand or personality, while fitting for each social network you’re on. What Does Your Social Media Voice Sound Like? Your voice is essentially your personality on social media. Are you fun? Serious? Creative? What's The Difference Between Voice And Tone? Voice and tone are often used interchangeably. However, there is a difference, and it's important to understand them both. Your tone is the inflection you apply to your voice. Depending on the context, you could sound happy, sad, angry, or any other emotion that's appropriate. Buffer's Kevan Lee may have put it best: Essentially, there is one voice for your brand and many tones that refine that voice.  Voice is a mission statement. Tone is the application of that mission. How To Develop  Your Brand's Social Media Personality Start by asking these questions: What is my/our mission or purpose? What are our values? What kind of language and tone does our audience use? Then, try filling in the blanks here a few different ways: â€Å"We are ________ , but we’re not __________ .† An example answer here could be, â€Å"We are funny, but we’re not offensive.† Or, â€Å"We are professional, but we’re not stuffy.† The idea is to narrow down who you are, and who you’re not. Recommended Reading: This Is The Social Media Posting Schedule That Will Boost Your Traffic By 192% Are You Personable? Professional? Or Both? Social media is often used to keep in touch with friends, family, and colleagues. That means your social media content has to compete against updates from people users are close with. It's a simple fact that most people don’t log into a social network to see content from brands, companies, or bloggers. There are exceptions, of course. In any case, you need to write to stand out and hook people’s attention. This requires understanding what your audience expects to see from you. And that might be hard if your brand isn’t inherently â€Å"fun.† So, what can you do? Know Your Audience Who are your customers? What are their values, concerns, and interests? It’s important to figure this out if you don’t already know. Survey your audience if you have to. You need to know who you’re writing for before you can understand what they want from you. Creating a social media audience persona might help. This essentially entails creating a character description of your average target audience member. Building personas takes a little bit of work, but it can help you get a clear idea of who you’re writing for. TIP: Know who you’re writing for on social media. Do this by running surveys, building personas, or even just listening to what they say on social media. Know Your Competition Seeing what kind of content your competition is writing can help inspire your own approach. Check out some of your competitor’s social profiles and make note of the following: What does their brand voice sound like? Does their content appear to drive engagement? If this company were a person, would I want to talk to them? This can give you an idea of what works in your industry. TIP: Pay attention to competitors in your space on social media. Note their writing style. Take inspiration from what works, and then do it better yourself. Know Yourself. Cat videos, memes, and other distractions dominate on social media. Those things might work for your brand. They could also be totally inappropriate. The key is to find the right balance between personable and professional content and tone for your audience. Start by defining yourself under one of these three categories: Personable. Your brand is fun, warm, and inviting. Professional. Your brand is serious, authoritative, and orderly. Both. Your brand bridges both of the above, tying fun content into more professional themes. How do you know which is best for your brand? One answer is to use common sense. If you’re a legal firm, for example, you probably don’t want to sound lighthearted. If you run a pet adoption center, however, you’d likely want to sound fun and inviting to get people in the door. What do you do if it isn’t immediately obvious which of these three categories best fits your brand? Try working through these three exercises to figure it out. Exercise 1: Determine Who You Are (By Determining Who You’re Not) One way to help understand your brand voice is to ask â€Å"We are ______ , but we are not ______ â€Å" questions. This can help you know who you are, and just as importantly, who you’re not. As an exercise, fill in those blanks a few different ways. Here are some examples: â€Å"We're fun, but we’re not goofy.† â€Å"We're informative, but we’re not boring.† â€Å"We're authoritative, but we’re not arrogant.† Exercise 2: Try Summarizing Your Brand In Just Three Adjectives Another idea is to simply think of three adjectives that describe your brand. In traditional advertising parlance, this could be thought of as a â€Å"tag line.† According to The Balance, A variant of a branding slogan, a tagline can be used in marketing materials and advertising. The idea behind the concept is to create  a memorable dramatic phrase that will sum up the tone and premise of an audio/visual product, or to reinforce and strengthen the audience's memory of a literary product. Your mission (should you choose to accept it), is to do one of the following: Keep your company’s existing tag line in mind when writing on social media. Ask yourself, â€Å"How does this messaging support or reflect what we’re about?† Come up with a new tagline. It doesn’t have to be one you use publicly. It could even just a short phrase you use internally to guide your copy. Let’s try developing a simple tagline using three adjectives. Taglines can be short phrases (typically no longer than five to seven words), but we’ll make this easy. The goal is to help you summarize who you are, in order to inform your social media voice. Start by choosing three adjectives that fall into one or all of the categories below: An adjective describing what you do. Another addressing how you do it. One more pertaining to why you do it. Let’s say you run a car dealership. What are some things you might value? Honesty Experience Quality service Put that together, and you could come up with a tagline like: Honest. Experience. Quality.

Identity-Based Brand Equity Model A Conceptual Framework Essay

Identity-Based Brand Equity Model A Conceptual Framework - Essay Example The following paper aims to close this essential marketing research gap and presents a new integrated brand equity model based on the identity-based brand management approach. It explores the sources of brand equity from internal and external perspectives on behavioral and financial levels in order to achieve a higher level of brand equity measurement and management quality. Since the late 80's - with the rise of the value-based management philosophy - brand equity has developed as one of the key marketing concepts throughout management theory and practice (Srinivasan et al., 2005). The challenge of delivering comprehensible evidence of brand-based equity creation encouraged researchers to develop a wide range of different brand equity models. Today it can be assumed that more than 300 different models have been developed and implemented worldwide. (Amirkhizi, 2005) Majority of these models focuses on the consumer. (Aaker and Joachimsthaler, 2000) Supporters argue that the source of brand equity is based on the consumer's brand knowledge predominantly following an outside-in approach. (Keller, 2003) However, an integrated brand equity approach also reflecting on inside-out approach has yet not received any attention. Nevertheless, it would be highly relevant to also consider brand equity being already created inside the company, for instance through emp loyees. Not only do employees represent an important stakeholder group, but they also operate as the original source of brand equity. (Joachimsthaler, 2002; Jones, 2005) Such a brand equity model with an integrated brand equity definition implicates the following advantages: First, most established models are based on past information and they accordingly derived prognosis. Only the integration of an internal perspective enables an accurate assessment of the entire brand equity, since the employee's attachment to the company is captured. This useful information however is only accessible within the company. Employees are therefore capable of anticipating positive or negative tendencies of internal and external development at an earlier stage, which increases both timeliness and validity of brand equity measurement. Secondly, in majority of developed models, brand image represents the basis of evaluation. Unfortunately it cannot be directly controlled from the company's perspective. In this context, the expression of "brand image as a construct of acceptance" was defined. (Burmann and Meffert, 2005) Brand image results from decoding the brand-driven a nd interpreted signals. In contrast, brand identity represents a "concept of sender". (Kapferer, 1992b) It can be directly managed by the company. Thirdly, the consideration of brand potential and future brand options has received little attention in

Human Resources Management in 21th century Essay

Human Resources Management in 21th century - Essay Example Essentially, the hierarchy of managers, supervisors, and workers characterize the workplace organizationally. The orientations of workers and managers to the particular area delineate the social limits of a workplace. Such a definition need not be limited to manufacturing alone, though. The workplace can also be a department in a bank or university or a school within an education system. What is important is that the work area is discrete, has some technological or production unity which marks it off from other workplaces, and it is recognized as such by workers and managers. Therefore, it is evident that the field of Human Resource Management has evolved into a strategic, technical, and measurement-oriented area in the past few years. Predictably, this field will continue to grow in sophistication and complexity as a reflection of the world in the 21st century concretized by the lessons of encountering multifarious ethical dilemmas in organizations. An organization's core values are manifested by its culture. In the basic ways that business is handled, culture accentuates how decisions are made and how rewards are distributed. Employees learn these ways of doing business through observing co-workers and leaders. If no expectations are established and effectively communicated, employees will "make it up" as they go along when faced with ethical dilemmas. Here, it is revealed that the role of good human resource management practices can be a determinant for building a strong ethical foundation to eventually change a culture that has some of the indicators of a weak ethics system in an organization. With the recent changes going on in employee relations, tackling the workplace requires a new form of public management based on the following building blocks (Barzelay, 2001): Strategy - What is the public value the organization is really trying to create Answering this question forces the managers to figure out their policy goals and exactly what role their agency should play in fulfilling those goals. Workplace design - Like a good roadmap, a sound design helps managers reach its ultimate policy and operational destination. Connecting the network - Technology is the glue that can hold networked company together, allowing employees to share knowledge, business processes, decision making, client information, workflow and other data. Ensuring accountability - Ensuring accountability in a networked arrangement is a matter of getting the following four things right: incentives, measurement, trust, and risk. Human capital transformation - In addition to knowing about planning, budgeting, staffing, and other traditional company duties, networked management requires becoming proficient in a host of other tasks, such as negotiation and mediation. Manufacturing methods in the workplace excited particular interest and, during the 1980s, wide-scale implementations of practices such as just in time production, total quality control and team-based work organizations (Voss and Robinson, 1987). The strong Japanese identity of many of these practices ensured that issues of the feasibility and desirability of the transfer of these

A Comparative Analysis of Internet Banking in the United Kingdom and Dissertation

A Comparative Analysis of Internet Banking in the United Kingdom and Thailand - Dissertation Example United Kingdom and Thailand 49 4.3 Socioeconomic and Technology Factors Impacting on Internet Banking in Thailand and the UK 50 4.3.1 Thailand 50 4.3.2 United Kingdom 54 4.4 Comparison of Internet Banking Services Offered by Banks in Thailand and the United Kingdom 58 4.4.1 Banks in Thailand 58 A. Bangkok Bank 59 B. Siam Commercial Bank 60 C. Kasikorn Bank 61 D. Overall Impression for Internet Banking Offerings by Banks in Thailand 62 4.4.2 Banks in the United Kingdom 62 A. NatWest Bank 63 B. Lloyds TSB Bank 64 C. HSBC bank 65 D. Overall Impression for Internet Banking Offerings by Banks in the United Kingdom 66 4.4.3 Comparison of Internet Banking Service Offerings by Banks in Thailand and the United Kingdom 66 4.5 Chapter Review and Conclusions 67 Chapter 5: CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 68 REFERENCES 71 List of Figures Figure 2.1: Communication Methods and Access Devices in Electronic Banking 16 Figure 4.2.1: Global Competitiveness and Stage of Development for Thailand 53 Figure 4.2.2: Global Competitiveness and Stage of Development for the United Kingdom 57 List of Tables Table 4.1: Comparison of Internet Usage and Population for UK and Thailand 48 Table 4.2: Number of Users of Internet Banking Services in UK and Thailand 49 Acknowledgements Declaration of Originality MASTERS DISSERTATION SUBMISSION FORM Student’s family name: Thasnanipan First names: Nutthapon Student ID No: Course: Master of Business Administration (MBA) Supervisor: Dissertation Title: A Comparative Analysis of Internet Banking in the United Kingdom and Thailand Declaration I certify that this dissertation is my own work. I have read the University regulations concerning plagiarism. I am willing to allow Coventry Business School to use my dissertation as a sample for future students. Signed...In the ubiquitous computing age and a competitive era for banking, customers now present new demands for access and service to keep banks interested in enhancing Internet banking. United Kin gdom now presents 6.5 million customers for Internet banking services, and Thailand has a customer base of around 2 million, with both countries expecting continued strong growth in Internet banking, which also includes mobile banking. However, Thailand presents a GDP per capita of US$ 4,992 that is about a seventh of the US$ 36,120 GDP per capita of the United Kingdom, with a lower penetration of the Internet, cultural preferences for personal relationships and a leaning towards cash transactions.This dissertation presents an examination of relevant and authoritative literature related to Internet banking in Thailand and the UK, an analysis of secondary data for Internet banking for the two countries together with a critical examination of Internet banking services offered by three of the more prominent banks operating in each of the two countries. Internet banking services offered by NatWest Bank, Lloyds TSB Bank and HSBC Bank in the United Kingdom together with those offered by B angkok Bank, Siam Commercial Bank and Kasikorn Bank in Thailand were subject to a critical analysis.

Whom can art offend Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Whom can art offend - Essay Example in Germany had confiscated the art space in the country, by terming such art as â€Å"degenerate† and thus establishing policies that would restrict the use of modern art in Germany1. This art exhibition was organized by Adolf Ziegler, and it was attended by over three million people, who were involved in viewing different artwork exhibitions. Despite this exhibition being a response to the restriction of the application of modern art in Germany, the exhibition was able to meet its objective of popularizing the modern art that Germany was prohibiting. In this respect, art can be offensive to some part of the society, based on the content of artwork that is being displayed, which the society might consider to be offensive, or to be against the acceptable social moral values2. Thus, while the Degenerate Art Exhibition could have been offensive to the German government and some of the German population that was opposed to the modern art principles, the Islamic world has been offe nded by several art applications throughout the modern history. The Islam world has considered some form of art, both print and visual, as offensive to the ideals and values that the Muslims holds dear. "The Innocence of Mohammed" is one of such films that was developed and aired in America, directed by Sam Bacile, which then became highly controversial due to its anti-Prophet Muhammad d and anti-Islam sentiments and contents3. The release of the film caused the Islamic world to protest against its allowed viewership, considering that the film was ridiculing the very fundamental Muslim principles that the religion regards critical. In response to the release of the film in 2012, protests sparked in different Muslim nations, such as Egypt, Syria and Libya, where the protesters were involved in â€Å"burning the USA flag and also attacking the USA diplomats† to those countries4. The protests were far more violent in Libya, where the protesters burnt down the USA consulate in the country and also

Critique of a Speech or Presentation (or editorial Essay - 1

Critique of a Speech or Presentation (or editorial - Essay Example This paper shall talk of how Obama manipulates his audience, or attempts to do so, through trying to confuse their view and hide the violence that his government and previous governments have done upon the nations which have been the targets of affirmative action. Previous instances of governmental actions shall be discussed in the paper as well. Obama begins his address by attempting an appeal to the emotions of the audience and also those who would get to know of it later. An appeal is thus made to the pathos of the listeners and the public of the United States of America. This appeal of pathos can be seen right towards the beginning of his speech, where he says, I would like to begin today by telling you about an American named Chris Stevens.... Chris Stevens loved his work. He took pride in the country he served, and saw dignity in the people he met. Two weeks ago, he travelled to Benghazi to review plans to establish a new cultural center and modernize a hospital. Thats when Americas compound came under attack. Along with three of his colleagues, Chris was killed in the city he helped to save (Obama). An appeal to the pathos and emotions of the audience in the United Nations and the people of America is understandable when one thinks of Obama’s position within the world of American politics. At a point of time that is close to the presidential elections, Obama attempts to make himself look like a person whom the common man of America can identify with is important. This is significant, especially if one takes into account the image that Barack Obama tries to project of himself- a man with a happy family life who has overcome racial problems to rise to the highest office in America and yet hasn’t lost touch with the lower sections of American society. All of these are appeals to the rhetoric of pathos that has always been a part of oratory. Continuing in the same strain in an attempt to appeal to