Writing about a highly technical topic, like crime or law, can be intimidating. In the world of criminal law, there are innumerable rules, practices and procedures. Criminal lawyers speak their own language. To write a good crime or legal story, a writer needs to have credibility.Credibility comes from working within the rules of criminal law and speaking the criminal law language. But you don’t have to be a cop or lawyer to write about crime or criminal law with authenticity. Here are some tips to get started:1. Brainstorm: As in any genre, a good story with interesting characters and plot twists must be the starting point. Physically write out brainstorming ideas without regard to order, quality or completeness. Just start writing, and let the ideas flow.2. Get Inspired: Inspiration often comes from outside sources, often unexpectedly. Read great books, and watch great movies, especially crime and legal drama. Read about crime in the news. Follow interesting trials. Watch true crime stories on television and read true crime books. You never know when some small tidbit will spark a story in you.3. Outline: Everyone has their own methods of and opinions about outlining. Whether organized by chapter, act, scene, character or plot point, outlining is a critical tool to organize a story. The more complex the story, the more important an outline can be. Outlining can be especially important in a crime novel or legal drama because your story needs to fit within the rules of the criminal law world.For example, if you want to have a piece of exculpatory evidence discovered at the end of act two, you will have to know what stage of the legal proceedings the case is in to help determine how the evidence could realistically come to light.4. Educate Yourself: Read up about real criminal law on the internet and in books. Look for information specifically targeted to the non-lawyer. Watch real trials when they are televised. Watch true crime shows. Although they often cut out a lot of detail, especially the procedural stuff, they usually get things right. Read news stories and true crime books. The same warning goes for these sources: they are usually accurate but often leave out details you might want to know.Do not rely on talking head lawyer commentators on television. They usually speak off the tops of their heads and often get things wrong. They also often have an agenda that they are pushing and speak of things from that point-of-view. Finally, do not rely on other criminal law fiction. Crime fiction in television, movies and books are often completely, eye-rollingly off the mark.5. Consult an Expert: When in doubt, ask a question. As you brainstorm, outline and draft, keep notes of questions that come up. Consulting an expert, usually a criminal lawyer, can be costly, so try to know what you want guidance on before you contact someone. Also, be sure to speak to someone who is able to explain things simply and clearly, and who is willing to admit when they do not know something.Following these tips will give a writer confidence to create within the world of criminal law and to begin writing crime and legal stories with authenticity.
5 Tips for Writing Authentic Crime and Legal Fiction
How to Kick-Start Your B2B Content Marketing Strategy
Developing a B2B content marketing strategy that aligns content messaging with your target audience is no small task. In fact, 88% of B2B marketers currently use content marketing as part of their overall marketing strategy, yet only 32% have a content marketing strategy.The development of a fundamentally customer-focused marketing strategy will blaze a trail for a B2B content marketing strategy to reach new customer engagement and acquisition goals. By ensuring value is delivered to your customers, the B2B content marketing strategy will fall into place.Here are a few key tenets of B2B content marketing strategy to kick start the process for you and your team:1. Determining your content point of view. Here’s a hint: Make it customer-focused.2. Ensure once you start executing on content creation, you can measure your efforts. Another hint: Make sure it’s driving a tangible business outcome as well.3. Align your team’s talents with the type of content being created. Last hint: Not all marketers think the same way.Customer-Focused Point of View for Content Pays OffContent marketing strategies developed to engage customers with your brand start by aligning content with the point of view of your reader. Delivering information both that the customer sees as valuable and that aligns with your brand should be the underpinnings of every B2B content marketing strategy.In a recent study from Forrester Research, they provided the example of Kraft Foods launching a site (kraftrecipes.com) to share recipes and food ideas using their products. By shaping purchase decisions, encouraging buyers through the journey through value-driven content, Kraft Foods had buyers that were all-the-more inclined to purchase cream cheese for “that casserole recipe I saw online”. They delivered value to customers by encouraging a purchase decision as opposed to pushing a coupon.With a customer-focused point of view regardless of the buyer type (B2C and B2B buyers), position your content to deliver value to your customers. Similarly, through customer-centered content, you can actively shape purchase decisions through a B2B content marketing strategy that drives leads which, in turn, fuels revenue.Prioritize and Set Content GoalsIn a recent survey of content marketing maturity, Forrester found that 52% of B2B marketers were in the early stages of assembling a content strategy and executing it. While B2B marketers seem to be embarking on a more customer-focused approach to content development, a key tenet to a closed loop model for your B2B content marketing strategy is tracking buyer interactions with content at each stage in the purchase life cycle.Providing buyers with content that is useful and valuable to read, watch, or interact that encourages forward movement in the buying cycle is a B2B marketer’s dream. And yet if those interactions are not measurable, how do you know your content strategy and supporting tactics are effective?To kick start your B2B content marketing strategy that produces customer-focused content, ensure your team is taking a practical approach to content creation aligned with short-term goals. Meeting and rewarding these short term goals will push your team to drive increasingly buyer-aligned content. This will inevitably result in customer interactions that contribute to increased revenue. These longer-term objectives ensure content drives tangible business outcomes.Align Talent with Content CreationBalance your team to align strengths with content creation requirements. Buyer-aligned content that captivates, inspires and challenges is a different focus for most B2B marketers. Marketers whose background include a mix of product marketing, sales positions and even direct marketing may be challenged to make this shift.Climbing to new heights requires planning and preparation but it also mandates physical and mental stamina. Applying that principle to strategy development versus plan rollout and execution, B2B marketers need to consider skill assessment and training as a critical tenet of B2B content marketing strategy. When the team is ready to hit the trail, talent needs to be aligned with a type of content creation that sees through the buyer’s point of view, interweaves a compelling story and is appropriate to the content application.So, begin with your team to consider what content will deliver value to your customers. With this customer-focused lens, a B2B content marketing strategy will achieve the following:
Address buyer concerns to engage
Motivate them through the buyer journey
Build support from bottom-line-thinking executives.
Business Loans In Canada: Financing Solutions Via Alternative Finance & Traditional Funding
Business loans and finance for a business just may have gotten good again? The pursuit of credit and funding of cash flow solutions for your business often seems like an eternal challenge, even in the best of times, let alone any industry or economic crisis. Let’s dig in.
Since the 2008 financial crisis there’s been a lot of change in finance options from lenders for corporate loans. Canadian business owners and financial managers have excess from everything from peer-to-peer company loans, varied alternative finance solutions, as well of course as the traditional financing offered by Canadian chartered banks.
Those online business loans referenced above are popular and arose out of the merchant cash advance programs in the United States. Loans are based on a percentage of your annual sales, typically in the 15-20% range. The loans are certainly expensive but are viewed as easy to obtain by many small businesses, including retailers who sell on a cash or credit card basis.
Depending on your firm’s circumstances and your ability to truly understand the different choices available to firms searching for SME COMMERCIAL FINANCE options. Those small to medium sized companies ( the definition of ‘ small business ‘ certainly varies as to what is small – often defined as businesses with less than 500 employees! )
How then do we create our road map for external financing techniques and solutions? A simpler way to look at it is to categorize these different financing options under:
Debt / Loans
Asset Based Financing
Alternative Hybrid type solutions
Many top experts maintain that the alternative financing solutions currently available to your firm, in fact are on par with Canadian chartered bank financing when it comes to a full spectrum of funding. The alternative lender is typically a private commercial finance company with a niche in one of the various asset finance areas
If there is one significant trend that’s ‘ sticking ‘it’s Asset Based Finance. The ability of firms to obtain funding via assets such as accounts receivable, inventory and fixed assets with no major emphasis on balance sheet structure and profits and cash flow ( those three elements drive bank financing approval in no small measure ) is the key to success in ABL ( Asset Based Lending ).
Factoring, aka ‘ Receivable Finance ‘ is the other huge driver in trade finance in Canada. In some cases, it’s the only way for firms to be able to sell and finance clients in other geographies/countries.
The rise of ‘ online finance ‘ also can’t be diminished. Whether it’s accessing ‘ crowdfunding’ or sourcing working capital term loans, the technological pace continues at what seems a feverish pace. One only has to read a business daily such as the Globe & Mail or Financial Post to understand the challenge of small business accessing business capital.
Business owners/financial mgrs often find their company at a ‘ turning point ‘ in their history – that time when financing is needed or opportunities and risks can’t be taken. While putting or getting new equity in the business is often impossible, the reality is that the majority of businesses with SME commercial finance needs aren’t, shall we say, ‘ suited’ to this type of funding and capital raising. Business loan interest rates vary with non-traditional financing but offer more flexibility and ease of access to capital.
We’re also the first to remind clients that they should not forget govt solutions in business capital. Two of the best programs are the GovernmentSmall Business Loan Canada (maximum availability = $ 1,000,000.00) as well as the SR&ED program which allows business owners to recapture R&D capital costs. Sred credits can also be financed once they are filed.
Those latter two finance alternatives are often very well suited to business start up loans. We should not forget that asset finance, often called ‘ ABL ‘ by those Bay Street guys, can even be used as a loan to buy a business.
If you’re looking to get the right balance of liquidity and risk coupled with the flexibility to grow your business seek out and speak to a trusted, credible and experienced Canadian business financing advisor with a track record of business finance success who can assist you with your funding needs.