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The opening session keynote speaker at the HUG Super Forum (I’m attending for work) made some really great points about making content work for you to gain clients or customers.
AK Stout, the owner at Saying it Social, emphasized that creating fresh, new content, not only helps your SEO, but also adds value to you or your organization.
She said, people aren’t using search engines to find a “plumber” like they would use the yellow pages, instead they are searching for, “how to fix a leaky faucet.” If your plumbing business can be on the first page of results for how to fix a leaky faucet, you’re more likely to gain that person as a customer when they can’t fix the leaky faucet themselves, or when they fix it using your information and another big plumbing issue comes up later.
The same is true for you. If you can be on the first page of results for whatever your niche or your company’s niche is, the more likely you are to gain that the person searching for that information for the project or in the future. You’ve provided valuable information without trying to overtly sell something.
Which was Stout’s second point, overtly selling turns people off. If instead you can provide value or desired information before pushing yourself or company, then you’ve gained their trust and you’re more like to gain a sale in the future. It’s a different mentality than in the past.
Think of that when you’re interviewing for a position. Instead of selling yourself, prove you can provide the value and have the necessary qualities for the position.
How do you provide valuable content and gain trust?
After explaining who vs. that, I realized I’m still getting hung up on who’s versus whose. I like apostrophes to show ownership. Unfortunately, with these two the one with the apostrophe does not equal ownership.
Who’s is who is. Or who has. It does not show ownership.
Examples: Who’s at the door? (Who is at the door?)
Who’s leave? (Who is leaving?)
Whose is for ownership.
Examples: Whose sandwich is this?
Whose children are those?
Make sense now?
Image from: cafepress.com
That’s because I knew both were about distance, I just thought the right one was whichever sounded better in the sentence. Turns out there is a difference.
Farther is for physical distance. Further is for a metaphorical distance.
So if you can replace the answer with miles, feet, or centimeters then the right word is farther. For example, I’m farther away from Far, Far, Away than I was when I lived in Disneyland. And I need more coffee before I can get any further involved in this project.
Make sense now?
Image from: http://www.unenlightenedenglish.com/wp-content
All Together is an adverb that means at the same time or as a group. For example: One, two, three, all together, sing happy Birthday to you and let’s go to the movie at the drive-in all together, it’s much more fun that way! So if you can substitute let us or drop the all and the sentence still makes sense use all together.
Altogether
Altogether is also an adverb that can mean completely, total or considering everything. For example: today’s deposit was $439 in cash and $588 in checks: $1027 altogether or altogether, it wasn’t such a bad trip, despite the sort of disastrous incident with the beehive.
The Education Bug website offers a mnemonic you can use to differentiate all together and altogether. “Remember that all together – because it’s two separate words – is the one that needs to get into a group and get in sync. This associates the meaning with the spelling to help you remember which of these easily confused words is which.”
Image from theoatmeal.com (always good for a laugh)
Full disclosure, in high school, I once wrote an entire paper without than. I had convinced myself it wasn’t a word. Part of that was writing the paper a little too late in the evening and part of it was general confusion. The day after I turned the paper in, my teacher stopped me on the way out of class with a laugh, turns out I wasn’t the first and I’m sure I won’t be the last to make this mistake.
So given that tidbit, it should be no surprise that nearly a decade later, I still see this same mistake in other’s writing. As you can see from theoatmeal.com’s rendition, this grammar mistake is really easy to fix.
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