The FourWayStop
The Monthly Newsletter for Avenue Z Writing Solutions      September 2007
September QuickStops
QuickStop Marketing Tip
QuickStop Writing Tip
The FunStop of the Month
QuickStop Tech Tip
QuickStop Marketing Tip: Give Your Marketing Documents a Voice
Add some personality to your marketing material by asking yourself, "What voice would sound best reading this document aloud?" James Earl Jones? Minnie Pearl? Bill Clinton? Your answer may guide your copy and give your marketing material new life.
 
E-Mail or Email?
Technically, the reference books tell us that e-mail is short for "electronic mail" and should have a hypen. Popular culture, however, has pretty much created and accepted email as an acceptable spelling.
 
My old journalism prof's rule: If you can't be right, be consistent. So choose one way and stick with it in all your correspondence.
The FunStop 
 
The average human being will accidentally eat about a pound in weight of insects over the course of a lifetime.
 
Greetings!

Welcome to the first edition of the FourWayStop, Avenue Z's monthly newsletter. Each month you'll receive four mini-features on marketing, writing, technology and a little humor.
 
My first feature article focuses on Tech Tools, and I received valuable input from the Executive Listserv from ASAE. Have more tips that didn't make the list? Send them in and I'll update the article for next month.
 
My focus at Avenue Z is copywriting for the association market. Let me know how I can help your organization.
 
See you next month!
 
Beth
Beth Ziesenis
Free and Low-Cost Tools Your Organization Can't Live Without

association solutionsAs innovative workers in the age of gadgets, we take pride when we find a tool that helps our organization without hurting our budget. This article is a list of  little features/tools/resources we've stumbled upon that make us very proud - proud to have found them, proud to be saving our organizations money, proud to share them.

They are the types of resources we find in the wee hours of the morning after a night of random surfing, when we send out an excited "Hey - look what I found" emails to our colleagues.

 
Here's a sample...

File Conversion/Sharing Tools
PDF conversion software - try
www.123FileConvert.com and www.pdf995.com. 1-2-3 Fileconvert has a free trial then a low cost. PDF995 lets you have the converter for free if you'll watch an ad.

 
People love www.yousendit.com for transferring large files. The Lite version is free and allows files up to 100MB.

Promising to host videos, documents and pictures forever, for free, www.Divshare.com can also act as a file-sharing resource.

Survey Tools
Many of us rely on the free version of
www.surveymonkey.com. You're limited on the number of questions and responses, but it frequently gives you all you need.

 
Try the sister product, www.pollmonkey.com.
 
I hope you enjoyed my inaugural issue. Next month I'll look at Blogs You Should Know and more useless trivia.
 
Like the newsletter? Pass it along! Use the Forward to a Friend link below to share The FourWayStop.
 
Sincerely,
 

Beth Ziesenis
Avenue Z Writing Solutions