Lee Hopkins, Writer

Category: Business writing

  • Chu’s Asian Restaurant, Unley

    Vietnamese Chinese fusion that sings! I’ve written before about Chu’s Vietnamese Chinese restaurant in my Google Reviews. Had a wonderful evening here with three friends. Food was fabulous, the Pinot Gris was excellent, the host/owner was witty and knowledgeable. Will definitely come back, many times. ——— Months later: Have been back many times. Owner Wen…

  • AI and writers

    What are we as writers if not improvisers? Some of us plan out our work, filling in every gap before putting fingers to keyboard, others of us are ‘pantsers’, writers who write by the seat of their pants, never knowing what’s going to happen next, but trusting in their muse that inspiration will strike. Both…

  • AI *WILL* disrupt writers, and sooner than you think

    As a retired business communicator with some 30 years of experience behind me building websites, blogs and providing the content for them, I had left the Business Communication profession behind and embraced my photography and my Masters degree in Creative Writing & Communication. So, when AI came across my horizon, I was ill-prepared for its…

  • Writing at the gates of an AI dawn

    WOW! This comment from 2022: “Two-thirds of Australian authors are women—our new research finds they earn just $18,000 from their writing” Zwar, Throsby and Crosby, The Conversation 2022 You can’t even live off that! It’s below the poverty line, methinks. And yet, digital writing for businesses is booming: “Aussies with digital marketing skills in hot…

  • Robot My Life and Australia Post: customer service fails

    Australian robot mop/vacuum company RobotMyLife is a failure at customer service, but does provide Lee Hopkins with a useful case study on poor customer service

  • Secrets of master communicators: 11-15

    In our previous communications we looked at ten persuasive techniques that advanced communicators use to influence us. Today we look at another five. Eleven Firstly, scarcity. Here’s a fun experiment from the 1970s—procure two identical glass cookie jars. In one jar put ten cookies, in the other, two. Same cookies. Now invite friends to tell…

  • Secrets of powerful communicators: Influencers 6-10

    In our previous article, we looked at five persuasive techniques that advanced communicators use to influence us. Today we look at another five. Firstly, there’s social role expectations. Try this: place someone in an environment, in a role you have asked them to play but they don’t necessarily have experience in playing. Very often they…

  • Secrets of persuasion: how to positively influence your message recipients

    According to Andrews, Van Leeuwen and Van Baaren, there are thirty-three hidden persuaders that powerful communicators use to get the results they want. In this article, I list five of the most powerful. 1. Acknowledging resistanceYou may find this hard to believe, but simply acknowledging that the recipient of our communication is going to have…

  • Nonverbal communication and space: why your office is the size it is

    In an interesting book entitled The Hidden Dimension,  anthropologist Edward T. Hall discusses space, how people structure it, and how space influences communication. “Proxemics” is the term Hall has coined for the interrelated observations and theories of man’s use of space as a specialized elaboration of culture. One use of space with which most of you…

  • 5 ways to structure a presentation for maximum effect

    When creating an outline structure for a presentation we are about to give — whether that presentation is in writing, via personal delivery, or via multimedia — there are five basic ways to organise that structure for maximum effect: by Time by Space by Problem & Solution by Cause & Effect by Motivation Let’s consider each in turn. 1. Structuring your…