Improving the effectiveness of information

How to write effective articles? We can’t possibly answer that question if we don’t specify what we want to achieve. As mentioned in my previous post,  if you simply write an article because you feel the urge to do so, you will at best amuse your audience with an intriguing story. But to be effective, you need to know what you want to achieve. A goal-driven approach to writing Writing articles is – or at least should be - a goal-driven activity. You are trying to achieve ‘something’ with your audience and that something is not passive reading. An effective article is in my opinion an article that persuades the reader: • to perform an action • to change his or her opinion • to share your ideas with others If you look back upon the articles that you have read, which ones would you still consider to be worth reading? Exactly: the ones that changed your opinion on a topic, that helped you in your work or that motivated you to discuss the topic with others. So simp...

I am a writer. I have been all my life and I wouldn’t know what to do if I would ever lose this talent. I have been writing about many topics: from welding procedures and high tech greenhouse technology to  software implementations and the use of semantic technology.  Apart from the writing I enjoy digging into these topics and finding out how things really work and what the benefits are of these new technologies or approaches. But is a talent for writing in combination with an interesting topic enough to form the basis for a successful and effective article? Or do we need more? In this series of blog posts I will explore the criteria for a successful article, not necessarily providing you with a fix set of rules but rather focusing on best practices, lessons learned and examples from my own work. On the cover of a magazine One example from my own work. In 2008 I wrote an article called “The Flexible Intranet” about using semantic technology to create smarter Intranet sites...

As mentioned in my previous post, my carreer at Be Informed ended a couple of weeks ago, offering me the opportunity to rethink my professional goals and ambitions. As a result I made the decision that being a product marketer - focused on 'pushing' a product - was not the way to go for me. I would rather work again as a business consultant, closer to the business and working with a customer - really helping a customer - to improve a company's agility, efficiency and results. In Accenture I have found an employer that offers me the opportunity to use my > 15 years of experience with enabling performance improvements for organizations in interesting national and international projects for renowned customers. It will give me the great opportunity to develop myself further as an expert in translating complex organizational goals and processes to clear and innovative ICT solutions and making knowledge applicable. In this blog I will conti...