It's not hard. Really, it isn't.

But if you do find it hard - this pesky business of being able to use your own language properly - here are some handy tips from The Oatmeal on how you can come across as less of an idiot:

10 Words You Need To Stop Misspelling

It's funny because it's true. Because we hear rubbish like this every single day. Spat out by marketing charlatans and swallowed whole by the easily impressed.

Actually, thinking about it... that's not funny at all.

Keep pressing the 'refresh' button for endless pearls of wisdom, such as:  

"Provide brand ambassadors with compelling conversation hooks to enter into communities and fuel advocacy."

What The F**k is My Social Media Strategy?

Running a business and want to promote it a bit on Twitter? Great. The only things you need to avoid are the three Bs:

Boring. Boastful. Banging on and on.

Easy.

There's a caveat though. You're allowed to do those three things (a bit) if - and only if - you have a personality. A real personality, that is. Not just a business face.

A great example of this is Sarah Pettegree of Bray's Cottage Pork Pies. Many of her 'tweets' are full of news about her business, mentions of awards she's won, orders she's secured, and general talk about pork pies. If you're not that interested in pork pies, those tweets have the potential to be quite dull. But they're not dull at all. And the reason for that is that Sarah's personality shines through in every tweet.

More importantly, perhaps, she also tweets about many other things that are totally unrelated to her business. And she really communicates with people, having proper conversations. I don't mean dopey marketing/business 'conversations', I mean real conversations. It explains how she's managed to not only build up a good Twitter following, but also a massive amount of goodwill. It helps also that she's always out and about and always happy to meet people for a chat. It's why everyone is so fond of her.

On top of all that, she's got the one truly essential thing that can make a business succeed: a fantastic product.

I wrote some time ago about what businesses should do if they want to make the most of Twitter. I'd say that Sarah does it better than any other business I follow. So if you're a business person - particularly if you're running a small, local business - you could do worse than follow Sarah in order to pick up a few tips and get the measure of how it should be done.

And remember those three Bs.

No, wait, don't bother with that nonsense. Just remember to have a personality. And to behave like a normal human being. After all, it's not always good business to always do business.

Blimey. My very own aphorism: "It's not always good business to always do business." I can feel a book coming on...

Follow Sarah (@brays_cottage) on Twitter here.

One thing that everyone in Norwich knows to be true: that the Puppet Theatre is a real treasure that should be protected and supported, whatever the cost.

Of course, when I say ‘everyone’ what I really mean is all the nice middle-class people that you and I hang around with. Golden Triangle types. Green voters. Cyclists. You know the sort.*

Ordinary people – who make up the vast majority of Norwich’s citizens – don’t care much about the Puppet Theatre. How do I know this? Because if they did care, it wouldn’t be struggling.

Earlier this week the theatre was granted yet another chunk of Arts Council (i.e. our) money: £60,000. Now, I’m all in favour of arts funding but the Puppet Theatre seems to me to be doing very little to justify yet another handout.

What I don’t understand is how it fails to sustain itself. If, as we’re supposed to believe, it’s a truly innovative, fun, exciting and unique experience, why aren’t people breaking the doors down? Or forming orderly queues?

I reckon it’s as simple as this: not enough people like puppets. While that may cause consternation among puppet fans (and the Puppet Theatre trustees), it’s kind of tough. If people don’t want to see puppets maybe it’s a bit silly to have a whole theatre – which is quite expensive to run – devoted to them. Maybe the sensible thing, for starters, would be to downscale and find a new venue.

A Punch and Judy booth on Cromer beach maybe.

Of course, the theatre’s lack of success could well be due to the fact that they don’t do enough to get people through the doors. Could it possibly be, for instance, that the people running the theatre are a little bit arrogant? Do they think that what they do is so fabulous that they shouldn’t have to dirty their hands with advertising and marketing? Or do they think it’s enough that they talk exclusively to their interested middle-class audience?

Or is it that age old problem: creative people trying to run a business?

Or maybe it’s something else entirely. (If you haven’t worked it out yet, this is all speculation on my part. But as I’ve never let ignorance stop me from shooting my mouth off before, I’ll continue.)

Whatever the reasons for the theatre’s failings, there’s clearly a problem. At a time when we’re all being told to accept painful cuts, it seems a bit much that the Puppet Theatre continues to receive funding.

I think a big problem is that it doesn’t really know what it is. It’s too esoteric and narrowly focused to appeal to the mainstream; and yet it’s not cutting edge enough to exist within the world of leftfield arts. It’s a rather ungainly coupling of the two.

My (fairly obvious) suggestion: they should get their offering sorted and think about how to appeal to a wider audience. Kids love the theatre. So do parents. Ordinary kids and parents, I mean. If I were running the place, I’d get out there and find out what those (ordinary) people would like to see (I’d bet good money that it wouldn’t be much of what’s featuring on this year’s programme).

And once I’d got the offering sorted, I’d spend a bit of time and money working out a decent marketing/advertising strategy. That is, one that’s designed to get bums on seats. None of your faffing about.

There. Sorted.

* I’m lying, of course: I wouldn’t be seen dead hanging around with Green voters and cyclists.

By the way, I did say above that this is mostly speculation. If you know more about what’s going at the Puppet Theatre, or just want to tell me what a misinformed idiot I am, please leave a (polite but firm) comment below.

Oh, and I failed to get in my two Puppet Theatre gags - that the acting's a bit wooden and that I reckon their funding packages should come with strings attached.

If you didn't see my article in the EDP Business section, here it is now in all its (slightly faded) glory:

In the weeks running up to the election, all sorts of pronouncements were made about Nick Clegg and how he was going to cause an upset. In the end, of course, he did cause an upset – but not as a result of anything he’d planned.

Quite a few people were left with egg on their faces over Clegg. Despite what they told us, he simply wasn’t something that most people were prepared to take a punt on.

The worst thing I heard about Clegg before the election was that he’d created a great brand. The worst thing I heard about him after the election was that, despite his failure, he still had a great brand.

Here’s a question: how do you discover whether your brand is a good brand or a bad brand? The answer is very simple. But I can guarantee that most business people will assume that it’s complicated.

And they’ll assume it’s complicated because there are people out there who do everything they can to turn basic marketing and advertising principles into dark, mysterious arts.

Here we go: The only surefire way to tell whether you’ve got a good brand is if people are buying your products. If they’re not buying your products, you haven’t got a good brand. It’s that simple.

Nick Clegg didn’t have a good brand.

The thing is, you can’t simply take what you consider to be good brand values, paste them on to your product and hope for the best. It’s not you who decides what makes a good brand – it’s the people buying your product. And the only way they’ll decide if your brand is any good is by buying and using your product.

As the excellent Bob Hoffman says: “ We don’t get them to try our product by convincing them to love our brand; we get them to love our brand by convincing them to try our product.”

It’s why I’m so suspicious of notions of “branding” – because it’s the wrong way round. Just think about the great brands out there and how they got to be that way.

Apple, for instance. It’s a great brand because it makes great products. And does great advertising. The same goes for John Lewis. They didn’t just paste brand values on to their products - they were built up over time.

Again, as Hoffman says: “If you get the product right, the brand will take care of itself. If you don’t get the product right, all the branding in the world won’t help.”

As Nick Clegg, and his supporters, discovered.

There’s a lesson here for business people: don’t waste your time, and money, worrying about textbook “brand values” and how you can apply them to your product. Worry, instead, about creating a good product and doing good advertising and promotion. If you get those things right, you’ll get people to buy your product: which will then result in them loving your brand.

It might take a while, but that’s how good brands are built. They’re simply not created in a matter of days, or weeks.