Although we seem to be surrounded by bad economic news, life has to go on. With reports of job cuts, marketing and advertising cuts, and sales slowing down, it’s easy to panic.

It is wise to control expenditure, but at the same time businesses have to continue marketing and selling if they are to survive, let alone thrive.

There is so much that any business can do. Much of it is common sense and costs little:

• Keep your web site and marketing material up-to-date.

• Identify products and services that are more likely to be required by customers: what do you provide that they cannot do without?

• Focus on any of these areas that are most profitable to you.

• Package products and services so that they are more attractive in a difficult market.

• Keep in contact with existing customers to retain them and/or increase your sales.

• Explore other ways of applying your products, services and expertise. It could be just a case of adding new pages to your web site, a public relations campaign or approaching customers in different sectors.

Whatever happens, your business needs to remain visible and able to reach any customers looking to purchase.

When writing for business, we usually like to impress our readers, who are likely to be potential customers, employers, employees or industry peers.

Long words with many syllables can make us appear knowledgeable and experts in our chosen field, but how do readers know that we understand them? Also, they can intimidate readers who don’t know what they mean or mark us out as show-offs to those who do.

Using short, everyday words can make our writing more accessible and easier to understand. Using long words and difficult language can actually create a barrier which readers have to break down before they can understand what we are trying to say to them.

If it’s too much of an effort, many people will just give up and not read over-complicated writing.

There will always be occasions when it is appropriate to use certain long words, but where there are two words of equal suitability, the shorter one could be the better choice.

As you can see, we have relaunched our z2z.biz blog as z2zine and hope you will enjoy it.

We haven’t been posting while this has been in development, but will now post regularly.

Welcome aboard!