Hi everyone,
I’m moving this blog over to http://www.medium.com/@lizinthemaking
I hope you follow me there! Hint: you’ll find a new post! 😉
Much love,
Liz
All posts by lizinthemaking
Context is King
Let’s get this out of the way. I’m a sponge. I soak up everything I learn and I apply it. This is a strength, but lately I’ve been seeing a weakness in this strength. There are two major problems.
1. I can’t trust everything I read
Being a liberal arts grad thrown into a business and tech world, sometimes it’s difficult to sit back and think critically about a topic I know little about. The good part is, I get to ask people I work with if I’m iffy about something. This just means I have to have my spider senses on when reading.
2. Context Matters
I get too excited every time I get to add a new tool to my arsenal. It’s like giving me a gun, teaching me to fire, and I fire at the first thing I see. Sometimes it backfires.
What works in one context might not in another.
For example, I’ve been reading the Copy Blogger 101 manual (it’s free after you sign up – which is also free to do). There is a tremendous amount of great tips in there, but not all of those tips should be used in every project. I recently used overused imagery and it turned out be cliché. Normally, in an ad it’s not too bad, but when it’s a business web page, it’s not a good idea. I learned the hard way to scale back on that front.
I’ll be asking myself from now on after I read every article I come across about copy, advertising, and so on:
“Where should I use this?” and “Where should I not use this?”
Sometimes, we get so caught up with the details that we should remind ourselves to step back and look at the bigger picture.
No Mo Clip Art!
Remember in school when they told you to put some images into your report to make it look nice? They should have warned me about clip art in blogs.
I admit, I got a little lazy looking through those free photo websites… But who the hell knew that people would put clip art on those websites?!
Deep down in my gut, I knew as I was clicking and dragging Exhibit A that it wouldn’t suffice.
Exhibit A
If I had listened to my gut, it would have prevented my boss from laughing and telling me not to use Clip Art. Lesson learned: listen to your gut and quit using anything that looks like you pulled it out of a Saturday morning cartoon.
Disclaimer: this doesn’t count as me using Clip Art in a blog post… does it?
Here are sites for photos I’ve been using:
http://unsplash.com/
http://wefunction.com/category/free-photos/
Anyone got good ones to share? Passing the hat around.
Liz in the Making 