Entries by Matt Wright

Blog & Newsletter Case Study: Organisation Unlimited

“Thank you so much for your hard work and much-needed direction with my blogs and newsletters”

– Ella Pickard, Owner Organisation Unlimited

Blog & Newsletter Challenges

Create and post regular blogs to drive traffic to the website and increase its index ranking
Schedule & manage blogs in advance to relieve OU’s workload
Put together a monthly-themed newsletter, reusing the blog content where possible
Liaise with other social media feeds to distribute blog content

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October 18, 2016 /0 Comments/by

Simpsons quotes – when art imitates life in the US

Ironic, isn’t it Smithers. This anonymous clan of slack-jawed troglodytes has cost me the election, and yet if I were to have them killed, I would be the one to go to jail. That’s democracy for you

– Mr Burns, The Simpsons

Life imitating art, imitating life

With the US Presidential Elections almost upon us (although 8th November is still too far off for those already weary of the continual Clinton v Trump face offs) it seems an appropriate time to revisit the old adage about life imitating art.

Except in this particular election, the lines between life and art have become so blurred, it’s hard to know where one begins and the other ends.

“…we need a nation closer to the Waltons than the Simpsons”

This was George W.H. Bush’s famous quote regarding family values during his 1992 re-election campaign, which first provoked the ire of the Simpsons creators. read more read more

October 3, 2016 /0 Comments/by

Creative thinking v creativity

Creative thinking leads you new ideas whereas creativity brings them into existence…but when does the distinction start? (*)

“The story must grow, naturally and of its own volition – a slow, haphazard, infuriating process, but the only one I know”

-Hammond Innes

The ‘thinking’ precedes the ‘making’ – it’s always important to get that sorted first of all!

However, knowing when to stop thinking and when to start working is probably the most important act of judgement,  and one which will vary from person to person.

With the Henley Literary Festival starting today, it therefore seems rather topical to muse on the act of creativity.

Creative thinking - Hammond Innes booksThe author Hammond Innes used to start work on a novel usually with only a background, a theme, maybe an opening idea and possibly some idea of a climax. Similarly, the novelist John Fowles used to work on several books at once, constantly reworking and rewriting them, constantly moving from one to the next: read more read more

September 26, 2016 /0 Comments/by

Budapest (Sep 16): Half-marathon & tourist guide

Wow! What a city! We were here for the Budapest half-marathon but managed to fit in 5 days of sight-seeing around it, all in the late Summer heatwave.

Budapest: Daily Highlights & Picture Albums

Day 1 – Fri 9th Sep 2016: Arrival / walk to Viki’s / Dinner at Menze / Beer Festival

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Click here for the Day in Pictures: budapest-day-1

2016-09-10-13-05-42Dionysos – great Greek restaurant we found by the Danube, nice terrace and amongst the poshest toilets I’ve ever seen! [Belgrád rkp 16, 8,590Hf for 2 for drinks and mezes]

Heroes Square at the end of Andrássy Ut, the longest avenue in the city, it contains all the statues of Hungarian chiefs and kings. All you can see of Stalin though are his boots – the rest of him was removed to Momento Park, a dumping ground for all the Soviet-style statues on the SW outskirts of the city.
Anonymous Statue – this one isn’t actually in Heroes Square, but in the City Park, outside a museum and by the largest outdoor skating rink in Europe…when it isn’t full of water that is (it is iced over for the winter). It’s apparently very famous and good luck to touch it (like another statue near the Buda Castle….a horse with very shiny balls which students rub for good luck before exams!) read more read more

September 20, 2016 /0 Comments/by
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SEO scoring for Blogs – Yoast

If content is king, then conversion is queen

-Jon Munsell

Yoast is a plugin for WordPress websites, designed to optimise the ranking of any pages or posts (other SEO optimisation tools are available – it’s just that this one is embedded in my website and is easy to use).

As far as I’m concerned, it’s a game which you have to play, and as in all games there are rules.

These rules might be a little bit clunky and unwieldy for my liking, but the more you ‘use them’, the more you learn how to adapt your content when writing for SEO optimisation……which does make life easier in the long-term. read more read more

September 19, 2016 /0 Comments/by

BLT Networking – Impulsiveness….wait for it….are you?

This fortnight’s BLT (*) topic for discussion was listed as ‘Impulsiveness’, facilitated by Simon Corb from ‘Duty of Care’

Hence I’ve waited a whole day before writing this blog, not wanting to be too quick off the mark!

What can we learn for our business from understanding our own impulsiveness?

Now impulsiveness is a word which is generally regarded with negative connotations, so it’s not usually a quality which most business people wish to associate with themselves

Impulsiveness: doing things or tending to do things suddenly and without careful thought : acting or tending to act on impulse

 When impulsiveness could be good: read more

September 16, 2016 /0 Comments/by
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The 3-step SEO Quick Fix (or learn from mistakes which I’ve made!)

OK, I’ll be honest with you – when I first started Nobleword back in 2013, I didn’t know all that much about Search Engine Optimization ‘SEO’.

So, after I’d built my own website, I naively imagined that that would be enough (after all, I now had an online presence, didn’t I?), so I sat back, and waited. And waited. And waited.

When I first googled ‘Copywriter’ and ‘High Wycombe’, there was no mention of my website until page 19……page 19! That’s practically extinct! read more read more

September 12, 2016 /0 Comments/by
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Flesch Reading Ease – is ‘Readability’ such a good measurement?

How do you measure ‘Readability’?

Flesch Reading Ease is the standard measure of readability used in WordPress sites, which helps articles to rank higher on search engines (i.e. Google to all intents and purposes).

It measures textual difficulty of a reading passage in English – the lower the score, the more difficult the text is.

How it works

  • The Flesch readability score uses the sentence length (number of words per sentence) and the number of syllables per word in an equation to calculate the reading ease.
  • Texts with a very high Flesch Reading Ease score (about 100) are very easy to read, have short sentences and no words of more than two syllables.
  • Usually, a Reading Ease score of 60-70 is believed to be acceptable/ normal for web texts.

There are pros and cons to readability formulas…..but I must confess, I am not a fan – applying mathematics to literature is never a ‘winner’ in my book. read more

September 5, 2016 /1 Comment/by