I wrote him back, and I thought my answers might help others, so here they are (slightly modified):

• Study English Literature. I don’t know about all English Lit departments, but in Bar Ilan we had to write a million papers proving ideas. We had to explain our hypothesis, prove it, and summarize it at the end. That’s basic marketing writing! “Our widget can help you become a better cook [intro]. Its advanced fast-forwardizer streamlines the cooking process [proof] so you will enjoy your newfound ability to create foolproof muffins in half the time! [summary]” See – Shakespeare at his best!
• If English Lit is not your thing, you have to at least have a basic knack for writing, plus attention to detail. It doesn’t matter what style you can write in: as long as you can write a decent, persuasive paragraph that has no grammatical errors in it, you’re already on the right path. What you’ll need to do is learn to match your writing to different goals, but the basics are…basic.
• Take a course in copywriting or marketing writing.
  I never took a course. But some people learn better in a classroom setting, so it might be a good way to start.
• Read up about it on the web. Buy some books. I highly recommend this route. Keep reading on the web. Copyblogger is an amazing source of useful tips for good writing. Don’t let the name fool you – what this guys has to say applies to all writing, not just blogging
• Get an entry level job, get experience, use that experience to get a better job, get better experience, get an even better job, etc. That’s the route I took.
  Focus your career path on copywriting, so even if you get a job that’s not 100% writing, if you did some writing, focus on that on your resume.
  (Writing a persuasive resume is also marketing writing…)
  For example, in one of my first jobs I started taking care of client communications and worked on their brochure content. So even though that wasn’t my job, I focused on that on my resume, and got my next better job.
• Move to Israel. There is a huge demand for good English copywriters in Israel right now from hi-tech companies and other companies that export their services. Many writers will tell you it’s not easy to make a living writing in Israel. It’s true. But if you really become a good copywriter or marketing writer, than you can apply those skills to market yourself and build up a good clientele, or get a really good job in marcom.

I hope that helps!

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LessAccounting is an online, web 2.0-type of application that allows small businesses to track income, expenses and invoices. Since I am always on the lookout for tools that will make my small business life easier, I signed up for the beta and was therefore informed of the launch via email.

The website has a clean look and feel to it, and the following introductory text:

Things We Aren’t…

• We choose not to function, act or even smell like Peachtree or Quickbooks.
• Wesabe is great, we just aren’t anything like it. (But we do import from it!)
• Freshbooks or Blinksale: we invoice, just no robust calendar time tracking functionality.
• Not a robust CRM by any means, just check out Highrise by 37signals.
• If you need a sales management component that is built for a large sales teams, try Salesforce.
• We’re not an address book or a check registry.
• No Calendar here, try iCal or Google Calendar.

On the one hand, I can see what they were trying to do here. They wanted to take a different approach that would get our attention. It got my attention alright – It made me wonder why all these other applications are better than LessAccounting, and what I would be missing out on by using LessAccounting. This is especially the case since I actually use one of the services they mentioned above: Highrise. I love Highrise, so if LessAccounting isn’t as good as Highrise in the CRM department, it makes me wonder what they’re lacking in the other departments. And they keep saying they’re not robust! Why? We want things that are robust, not half-baked!

Basically, a move to differentiate themselves by saying what they aren’t will probably leave many potential customers wondering why they should bother with them.

LessAccounting can save themselves by taking the above and making it into a table with two columns labeled “Things We Aren’t” and “Things we Are.” Then they can say “We aren’t anything like Peachtree” in the first column, and then explain their advantage in the second column, which could be something like “LessAccounting is a lightweight, online application that won’t weigh you down with a zillion extra options or features you don’t need.” Then the user can see exactly why they’re not like Peachtree – it’s not just because they can’t be, it’s because they choose not to be. And they need to say that they are robust – it’s just in their own useful way. (I never used their service, but if they’re trying to sell it, I’m assuming/hoping it has its strong points.)

Tom Chandler over at The Copywriter Underground explains how this principle is not just effective in the world of writing, but also in everyday life. He describes an incident where he had to report an injury to someone’s wife, and he foolishly started off with the bad news. My kids teachers’ are all very aware of this principle, and if they ever call in the middle of the schoolday, they start off by saying, “Don’t worry, so-and-so is alright.”

Bing Crosby knew what he was talking about in his song “Mister In-Between”:

You’ve got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative
Latch on to the affirmative
Don’t mess with Mister In-Between

It was true then, and it’s true now! Use positive words that exude benefits when talking about your product so that people associate it with good things only. Sound confident that your product is useful and that people will benefit from buying it. Don’t be negative, and don’t even be half-baked – watered-down text that is In-Between can cause you almost as much damage as negative words.

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Many of us have seen the English marketing material published by Israeli companies that not only is unclear, but can also be embarrassing. Thankfully, many Israeli businesses are aware of the importance of quality content in a global market, and this awareness is spreading. As a result, Israeli companies are successfully positioning themselves against global competitors.

Now if only the Chinese were more concerned with the quality of their English content…

My Shiny New (and Mysterious) MP4 Player

I recently bought an MP4 player from an online store. I decided to buy the cheapest one I could find – with a one year warranty, I figured if it lasted a year I would have gotten my money’s worth. I take pride in not paying for brand names, i.e. iPods, and anyways, everything is made in China these days so why spend more for something that probably came out of the same factory as a name brand that costs ten times the price?

When my new player arrived in the mail, I opened the package with anticipation (email is great, but there’s nothing better than getting something fun in the mail, especially books or fun electronic toys). It came in this handy box with a magnetic lid, but when I read what it said on the lid, I knew I was in trouble:

“THE EARTH MUSIC WIND LEAD BY ME”

This is one of those mysterious Chinese sentences that I’m sure many of you have seen on other Made in China products. I have no idea why they write these things, or what they’re trying to say, and no amount of deciphering by me or my family could come up with a reasonable meaning for the above sentence.

I opened the box and took out the MP4 player. It is a thin, shiny, sleek little thing. Very cute. Since I’ve never used one of these things before, and the only interface is this simple round dial that is supposed to do everything, I took out the instruction manual. But my suspicions based on the mysterious EARTH MUSIC WIND sentence proved to be more than right – I couldn’t understand a word of the manual.

First of all, it looked like it had been typed on a typewriter, and it was printed on this flimsy old-style paper, like something my Dad used to have in his office. But the text is just hopelessly hopeless. Here are some juicy excerpts:

“1.1. In general use function of product:

• Support most 99 statures catalogues in one class are of music document and the recording document broadcast.
• Support each catalogue most support 99 recording documents’ identify.

…

1.2 Fast function of the MENU key
1.2.1 At the MUSIC RECORD,VOICE, FM, TXT, IMAGE…in the SYSTEM, in addition to the special provision situation of the outside or special obsolescent, grow to press MENU key, is all to stop operate at present, return the main course list.

1.4 Trumpet
When insert the headphones, the trumpet (player) does not work…”

I kid you not.

8 Year Olds to the Rescue

I tried fiddling around with the player to figure it out, but kept getting stuck and couldn’t get back to the main menu. My 8 year old son, who was thrilled about the new addition to the family and wanted to start using it already (he was in denial about my insistence this was actually something that was for my use ONLY), helpfully invited over a few of his friends to show me how to use my new player. The boys gave me a brief tutorial, and now we’re in action.

The moral of the story: until the Chinese get their acts together on the English front, make sure you have some offspring or offspring-aged people around who can show you how to use your new toy.

For another example of the next generation outdoing us on the technical front, watch the following video:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diWiXvvR8HA[/youtube]

Moreover, I advise that the genocide in Darfur must be stopped.

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As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve been out of things for a bit because I gave birth on Sunday, Dec. 31. While I was in the hospital, I received an email from Ben Yoskovitz informing me that my submission to his Group Writing Project on “What I Learned in 2006″ won a prize!

The last and only time I recall winning a prize was when I was in second grade. Our local public library had a contest where kids answered questions through some kind of treasure hunt that involved reading books. I actually won that contest and was awarded a robot eraser. They could have handed me a shoelace as a prize and I would have been just as thrilled, since I had never before won any contests, and I guess I could sense that my future didn’t hold many prizes either.

Ben says that he selected the winners randomly out of the 70 submissions, which makes me even more incredulous that I won. And this time, it’s no robot eraser: I’ve won a copy of Jon Spoelstra’s book, “Marketing Outrageously.” Reviewers seem to really like this book, and I always love a good read. So thanks Ben, and I hope to review the book once I’ve finished it.

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