​The days of sinking into a desk, staring at a blackboard, and watching a teacher give an hour-long speech are rapidly coming to a close for modern classrooms. Teachers are talking less, listening more, and delivering effective lessons that increase results. Today’s educators are trading the traditional “Whole-Group” teaching model, where students sit quietly in their seats all day, for activities that engage, excite, and support students in their quest for academic success.
 
Here are three strategies that promote fun, relevant classroom learning:
 
Partner Talk
A simple way to break up a traditional lesson into a more interactive activity is to ask students to “turn and talk.” Teachers can engage their students with minimal effort and planning by asking their students to explain, question, or simply repeat a concept to someone sitting close by. Then, for a few minutes, students get to do the talking.
 
Partner talk enables students become actively engaged in the content and can be employed easily at any point, or several points, throughout a lesson. This also gives teachers some instant feedback from ‘listening in’ to the conversations students have to see what they know or what they are confused about regarding the lesson.
 
Mini-Lessons
Mini-lessons involve a direct instructional approach to target individual skill development. While the rest of the class is working on another activity, the teacher pulls a select group of students who have a common, demonstrated need and provides them with a quick lesson addressing the area in which they need support.
 
For example, the teacher may choose to work with a group of students who are reading below grade level to give them essential feedback at a less intimidating pace. Teachers might also take aside a group of students who have mastered mathematics concepts and provide them with activities to accelerate their skills. Effective mini-lessons involve a keen awareness of students’ specific needs, as well as some additional planning about how to address them.
 
Leveled Small Groups
Similar to mini-lessons, utilizing leveled small groups provides students with an opportunity to engage with content at an appropriate level. After an assessment has been administered and scored, teachers can use their data to identify areas where students may need additional support. Placing students in groups based on a common level, or need, allows for instruction time and activities to be allocated toward content that is “just right;” lesson content is neither overly challenging or overly simplistic for the group.
 
Frustration and boredom are prevented as students build confidence in their abilities. Small groups may require additional staff or a teaching rotation to give all students the instruction they require, but the time and effort involved promotes enjoyable and accessible learning for all students—a goal that every teacher aspires to achieve.

As writers of educational resources, we know as well as anybody that it can sometimes be tricky to create lesson plans that pop off the page—ones that translate perfectly into the lives of teachers and create a class full of riveted, interested students.

Lucky enough we have developed some tricks of the trade on how to really make those lessons exciting for both students and teachers. Check out the following tips to make educator resources that translate best from paper to practice:


Our number one rule is CREATIVITY

• Creativity comes from one place: brainstorming. Sit down and write out all the crazy ideas you have for a lesson—maybe you want students to jump up and down on their desks to test gravity, or run around the hall playing a game of tag to understand how molecules work.  

• Take your ideas to the moon without fear of judgment. When you have a long list, bring your ideas back down to “sky” level by making them more practical—you will be surprised by how many new, innovative, and creative lesson ideas you will have!  

• Check out the principles of design thinking for some more tips on brainstorming effectively http://dschool.stanford.edu/dgift/.

Take advantage of TECHNOLOGY

• We are in the 21st century, which means that technology is totally accessible and can be leveraged to create some amazing educational resources.  

• Scour the web for interesting images, videos, infographics, audio, apps, and programs that are relevant to the educational topic. Students tend to pay attention more when resources are interactive and entertaining, which makes technology a great resource in the classroom.  

• Hint—a great place to look these days for lesson ideas is Pinterest.  Try it out here: http://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=lesson%20plans.
  

EXPERIENTIAL Learning

• The best way to learn is by doing. Piggy back off your brainstorming session by grounding your lessons in experiential learning—let students touch, hear, see, and interact with the topic.  

• If you are writing educational resources about weather or seasons, have the students go outside and collect leaves, flowers, or grass.  Encouraging students to interact and become part of the lesson drives home the topic and keeps students engaged.
  

Don’t be afraid to keep it fresh. Depending on what you are working on, incorporating things like pop culture or history references might be appropriate and help keep the lesson relatable and interesting to both students and teachers.

So you’ve sent out a direct mailer, or maybe an e-mail campaign, to prospective clients. You’ve included your name, website, and all of the fantastic services your business offers. Chances are, the first thing your soon-to-be-client will do is try to find you online—through Google, your website, any images that may be floating around, or your social media channels. 

Your online presence says a lot about you, and one way you can secure your stellar cyber reputation is through LinkedIn. Although perhaps not as trendy as Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, LinkedIn is like your great Aunt Mabel—sturdy, reliable, and loves chocolate chip cookies (okay, that last one might be an exaggeration).

Check out our tips below for creating a professional (and totally awesome) LinkedIn profile:

Pay Attention to White Space

• Don’t overwhelm your reader with blocks of text. Give them enough information so they know who you are and what you have accomplished, but don’t jam-pack the page so much that it looks like one paragraph.

• Try bullet points—see how well it works for this post?! Don’t just take our word for it, hop on your LinkedIn profile and experiment with spacing and layout.  
  

Strategic Networking

• Join groups and make connections that are relevant to your skills and interests, but don’t sign up for every single group you come across. Clients want to know that you have a clear focus, not that you are out to connect with every single group or person on the site.

• Sometimes it’s not what you know but who you know. Explore your connections’ profiles and see who their connections are. If there is someone you think would be great to network with, ask your connection to make an introduction. 
  

It’s All About the Language

• Just like you would on your resume, your LinkedIn profile should use strong action-based verbs like analyzed, developed, managed, or instituted. Check out a longer list of action verbs here: http://career.opcd.wfu.edu/files/2011/05/Action-Verbs-for-Resumes.pdf.

• Compelling, creative copy is another way to wow your potential clients. You can still keep it short and simple while being creative and showing your clients who you are. If you are funny (think Groupon style humor), don’t be afraid to take that tone in your profile. Make it succinct but still make it you.

• Although it may go without saying, the most important thing about your LinkedIn profile is to be truthful. Don’t trump up skills you don’t have to impress other people. Your potential clients want to know how great and awesome you are now—so make sure to show your true colors!
  

Now go forth and let the cyber makeover begin!

So your direct mailer is ready to go—you’ve got your perfect picture, some amazing copy, and a stack full of sealed envelopes, but where should you send them?

Start Local
Values are shifting and people, including prospective clients, want to work hand in hand with local small businesses. You can’t beat the integrity, attention to detail, and working attitude of a homegrown business, and potential clients understand that. 

Create your own “farm to table” presence by starting local. Target your mailers to prospective clients in your area. Your close proximity allows for the potential of face-to-face meetings and endless networking opportunities. Keep it fresh, keep it local.

Research
Who are your prospective clients? Are they big businesses who need copy writing?  Are they the small mom-and-pop shop down the street that needs a little bit of help with marketing?

Before sending out your mailer, you first have to know who your clients are, and then do some research. With our “start local” philosophy in mind, hop online and do a search to see what prospective clients are in your area. 

A great place to check first is the online catalogue in your local library, where you can often find a list and description of all businesses in your area. Make sure you target businesses that fit your client profile and that would be a good fit for your skill set.

Snail Mail and Social Media
These days, getting the word out about your business doesn’t only have to be done through snail mail. Take your mailer and turn it into an interesting infographic to post on your social media outlets or use that perfect pic to post on your website along with your KISS-worthy copy. 

However, it’s important to keep in mind that because so much is done online now, getting an actual piece of mail into the hands of your prospective clients can be an incredibly effective way for them to take notice. 

With so many emails in their inbox and the thousands of people they follow on Twitter, your online mailer could get lost in the shuffle. It’s best to have a two-pronged approach by sending your direct mailer in the post and keeping up to date with fresh and interesting content on all of your social media outlets.

Now you are officially ready to send those sealed envelopes—go ahead, and lick that stamp and pop ‘em in the mail! You will be glad you did.

After picking the perfect pic for your direct mailer, it’s time to choose the complementary content.  Here’s a quick how-to guide:

Crisp, Creative Copy
Leaving only limited space for you to wow your clients, copy on your direct mailer should be clear, clean, crisp, and creative. Using some common literary tools such as rhymes, alliteration, and repetition can seal the deal and make your mailer stick in the heads of your prospective clients. For more information on how to write some KISS-worthy copy, check out our blog post here.

Back to the Basics
Potential clients can’t contact you if they don’t know who you are or what you are about. Always include your name, the name of your business, as well as the business address, phone number, and website on your direct mailer. Make these elements as clear and easy to find as possible without making them the focal point. Potential clients should be able to find out who you are, what you do, and how to contact you.

Proofreading and Presentation
Never send out a direct mailer without proofreading it first. Get out your finest fine-tooth comb, make some coffee, and settle into a comfortable chair to get the proofreading party started. But before you get too comfortable, the first trick is to actually walk away from your writing.  

Take a break.  

Grab your coffee and move outside, get some fresh air.  

Nothing helps you proofread better than a little perspective. When you come back to your mailer with fresh eyes keep a look out for grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, and organization. With such a limited amount of space, there’s no excuse for sloppiness and clients expect to see you put your best foot forward.

Now that you have your perfect pic and your attention-grabbing copy, just exactly where are you going to send this mailer? Tune in to our next blog to find out!

If you've ever designed a mailer, you know a lot of thought goes into it. What colors will you use? What information should you include? What picture will communicate what you need to say?

We’ll help answer these questions and more over the coming weeks in our Direct Mail series. For starters, let's zoom in on photos. 

Here are some pointers to pick your perfect pic: 

Get emotional.
Never underestimate the power of pathos in pictures. Building an emotional connection with your readers through compelling images is at the core of constructing a direct mail piece that sparks reaction…and more importantly, ACTION.

Aesthetically pleasing visuals help readers associate meaning without ever looking at the copy. Good writers recognize how to paint emotional appeal not just in copy, but in the brush strokes of every image, graphic, and photograph that adorns the page.

To color or not to color? That is the question.
Different color schemes can elicit different reactions from readers. While everyone carries unique perceptions, the psychology of colors has long been considered an important aspect when creating marketing collateral.

• Do you want your readers to feel a sense of calm or excitement when they pick up your mailer? (think blue versus yellow)
  
• Is your goal to convey urgency or credibility? (think red versus blue)
  
• Are you sending a creative or clinical message? (think orange versus white)
  

From images to logo designs, and even font style, color selection helps lead readers to one reaction or another. Know which path you want to steer readers to and select colors that mirror those objectives.

Quality is king.
The same careful attention given to crafting direct mail copy should also be given to selecting images. Like culling the right word choices or modifying modifiers, picking pictures requires a critical lens.

• Make an investment. It’s not hard to find free photos, but that doesn’t mean they’re any good. Purchase photographs for best results.
• Aim for uniqueness. Stock photos are widely available on the web, but that means they’re also available to everyone else. Think beyond stock photos and strive for uncommon quality. 
• Ensure appropriateness. Make sure each photo is appropriate and fitting to your core message and audience.
  

Tune in next week for part two of our Direct Mail series for tips on crafting creative copy. 

Keep it sweet and simple…KISS. The concept of simplicity is simple enough, right? But when it comes to writing clearly it’s not always as easy as you think to KISS. 

Here are some helpful pointers to de-clutter your writing:

KEEP IT…
Keep your writing style consistent to help your readers easily digest content in any genre, whether it’s for a sales letter or website copy. Write in the same voice and style to keep it simple.

SWEET…
Sweet writers know their audience and how to please them. That means adjusting word choices, sentence structure, and organization based on the end readers’ needs. A lawyer writing to a client would take a much different approach than if she were writing to a fellow lawyer. Technospeak can be perfectly appropriate in writing, but only if your audience is as qualified as you are on the subject matter. 

SIMPLE…
Simple copy balances information like a fine-crafted scale. Keeping overly complex jargon out of copy can be a good tactic because most people don’t have the time or desire to break out Merriam-Webster to untangle meaning. Value your readers’ time by keeping copy informative, but simple enough to create instant understanding.

When it comes to writing, it's key to KISS. You don’t have the added luxury of body language to be able to tell if someone is still with you. Your readers are busy. If you have nothing to prove, except your point, pucker up and KISS.   

The morning newspaper no longer requires a robe and slippers. The print pros know this. That’s why they have gone digital, or at least drive readers to the web within their publications.

But there is a reason magazines are still strategically placed at any and every grocery store checkout aisle. You need to decide which mode of communication will work best to reach your audience. In many cases, you will need to find a happy medium. That’s why it is important to either:

a) create materials that are both print and online friendly or
b) create two different versions of each document—one for print pages, the other for virtual flipping.

Create documents that convert easily.

Clearly, if there’s a way to write one version, this is preferred. Who wants to waste time?

There are a couple different ways you can make one work for both venues.

Make it a PDF.
If you want to maintain the integrity of your original hard work, consider going with a Portable Document Format, commonly called the PDF. The read-only format makes it challenging for anyone to edit. Many online guides that are available for download come in PDF form so that the reader can print the document off and highlight or underline as needed. A PDF easily separates information page by page.

Know the ABC's of color.
We all go way back with Roy G. Biv, but sometimes he isn’t our best choice.

RGB (Red, Green, Blue) is the color model used in computer monitors. So this is the way colors are set when graphics, for example, are designed in Photoshop. When printing something you see on your computer screen, however, you need to make sure the color model is changed to CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) because this is the way color shows up on print (via http://www.colormatters.com). If you are not a techie, this may seem tedious and daunting. However, it is important to communicate crisply and clearly through pictures.

According to some scientific research, the average person’s attention span is, oh, hold on, a text is coming in. You get the idea. People are busy and distracted. Consider creating a smaller web version of a larger printed document in a few simple ways:

1. Add a hyperlink to your original document to elaborate on this condensed post.
2. Use a graphic to make your point. Make it, buy it, or borrow one you like with permission. 
   
3. Make a short YouTube video to explain. There are other video sources, but YouTube remains the big dog. Put your company’s name in the video title. Be conversational, yet show you know your stuff. Drive the viewer back to your original document for more information by showing a text link and saying that link out loud.
   

Know your audience. Know how to reach them. If you want some help, we are here for you.

Think back to your eighth grade English class – all those literary devices and creative writing exercises. Well, you can forget all that, right? It has no place in the professional business world.

Wrong! A thousand times wrong.

Those creative writing techniques were designed to keep readers engaged, interested, and wanting more. Sounds like the ideal customer, yes?

While flowery metaphors and complex allegories are probably a little much for the business world, some basic creative writing techniques can help improve all varieties of communication.

Give these techniques a chance; besides being helpful, they can also be a lot of fun to write.

1. Hook
Be bold. Begin with an anecdote, a surprise, or a particularly interesting fact. Begin with a quote, a question, or an answer.

Begin with something unique.

Getting people interested in what you have to say is one of the hardest parts of writing, so experiment with the beginnings. Ask yourself, objectively, if you weren’t the writer, would you keep reading after the first sentence?

2. Descriptors
Imagine a weary student choosing between two articles:  

“Antarctica”  
or
“The Frigid Desert Few Have Ever Seen: Antarctica”

Description isn’t just for advertising – it’s for any time we want to evoke some extra spark in our readers. Be careful not to overdo it though. Description needs to be balanced with clarity and simplicity.

3. Plot
Every good piece of writing has a beginning, middle, and end. It has some action and some resolve. Plot gives the words and paragraphs a shape.

Flat line reading will usually induce sleep.

4. Practice and Have Fun
Writing is a muscle (Aha! A metaphor!). It needs to be exercised. Practice looking at things in new ways. Try different approaches. Rewrite the same opening in three different ways and see which one you like better.

Don’t be afraid to show some personality. Strangely, this does take practice. It can make you feel vulnerable, but your readers appreciate vulnerability. Readers connect to vulnerability. If you would like help in injecting your written communication with creativity, please reach out to us anytime and let’s talk!