Transform Your Website: How Micro-Interactions Improve User Experience

A Black woman wearing a business suit sits at a laptop fully engaged with website micro-interactions. The Write Reflection official logo of a W and R with a pen in the middle and a yellow circle around the outside appears on the laptop's back cover.

Ten to 20 seconds. That’s how quickly you must make a good first impression with website visitors. Fail to hold their attention, and you won’t get a second chance. They’ll be off to your competitors in search of more engaging content. Welcome to the fast-paced digital world, where attention spans are fleeting, and competition is … Read more

Dabbling in Gothic Horror Proves Good Fit For Author

The front and back covers of "The Dance of Rotten Sticks" by Jeff Vande Zande.

The literary snob in Jeff Vande Zande ignored the idea brewing in his brain for most of the summer of 2020. How could he possibly think about putting those thoughts on paper when they were—gasp! —so far off from the genre he usually pursued? With five novels under his belt, most fell neatly into the literary … Read more

Fake News: How Engagement Pods Breed Disinformation

An engagement pod full of fake profiles spreading misinformation.

Engagement pods aren’t a new phenomenon. Social media fakefluencers have relied on them since 2016 to boost their popularity online with bought followers, likes, and comments to create the illusion of a large and captivated audience. However, these social media influencer wannabes aren’t the only ones leveraging the power of engagement pods to get noticed … Read more

Fake It Until You Make It: One CEO’s Cautionary Tale About Engagement Pods

A graphic illustration of a social media influencer staring at her social media feed, with hearts floating around her to symbolize likes.

By all accounts, Jason Hill was a skillful entrepreneur with a hot new idea on his hands. He’d created an app that reverse-engineered the scheduling process to enable instant networking, allowing entrepreneurs and business owners to easily connect with experts through 1:1 phone calls, fostering valuable relationships and creating endless opportunities. Now, he just needed … Read more

Bad SEO Practices Can Ruin Your Rep

A man in a blue suit holding a business card with a BH on it appears in a woman's computer screen and asks her if she wants to boost her website traffic fast.

Dishonest. Sneaky. Unethical. Call it whatever you want, but the strategy remains the same. When businesses manipulate SEO practices to deceive consumers, they risk harming their reputations and customer base. Unethical SEO practices extend far beyond Black Hat SEO techniques like keyword stuffing and paid backlinks. They are more duplicitous, often deliberately misdirecting consumers to … Read more

The F-Word Factor: When Should Brands Swear

A Black woman with a shocked expression on her face as she reads content from her favorite brand online. Symbols for swear words appear around her.

It’s not your imagination. Brands swear a lot more frequently in their copy these days. It’s not a stretch to suggest that potty-moth copy is making a comeback. It used to be taboo, except for the occasional well-placed damn. Writers would not have thought about ever including the gasp-inducing f-word in their sales copy at … Read more

Ella’s Way: Turning The Page On Kindness And Acceptance

Sherry Cerino of Ella's Way.

Ella’s Way is more than a children’s book initiative. It’s a heartfelt mission born from the passion and experience of retired nurse Sherry Cerino. Her long career in pediatric and adult medicine exposed Cerino to individuals of all ages with complex needs and disabilities, developing her strong passion for respect and tolerance of differences. She … Read more

AI Content Detectors: Claims VS Reality

Two hands are positioned on a white computer keyboard. The hand on the left is robotic. The hand on the right is human. The WRite Reflection official log of a W and R with a pen in the middle appears in between the hands.

Just last year, organizations were dropping their writers like hot potatoes to generate free content using AI tools. Entire marketing departments were getting the old heave-ho in favor of ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and other generative AI. The love affair was brief. It didn’t take long to realize AI can’t replace skilled human writers. They began … Read more

AI-Generated Content: Friend or Foe in SEO

A robotic hand types on a laptop that shows the home page of a company called ExcelJet, which was the victim of AI content creation tools misused by an SEO agency.

Social media platforms are filled with AI content creation gurus singing the praises of tools like ChatGPT. They offer step-by-step instructions on how anyone can gain Google’s favor by following their guidance. Technically, some of their techniques work (even if just temporarily). One of the latest brags online is how easy it is to boost … Read more