Why We Need Smaller Stories in Content Marketing
Image source: Gratisography I talk a lot about thinking BIGGER in your marketing: sharing a bigger story to put your company in the larger context of what people care about. But today, I’m focusing not on big… but on small. I’m focusing on the need to tell the smallest story possible. Small stories are specific. […]
5 Keys to Developing a Strong Tone of Voice in Your Content Marketing
One of the biggest branding mistakes that companies can make is to not pay enough attention to their tone of voice. “Voice” sounds high-minded, doesn’t it? More suited for the literary world rather than the business world? But tone of voice just refers to how you sound in your writing. In marketing, your tone of […]
Bigger, Braver, Bolder Content Marketing: 3 Examples from the Cutting-Room Floor of My Latest Presentation
This week I debuted a new presentation at Content Marketing World about creating bigger stories, braver marketing, and more buff, ripped marketing writing with bolder tone of voice. (I’m giving this same talk at INBOUND15 tomorrow.) If there were a 12-Step Program for PowerPoint Recovery, I’d be going to meetings thrice weekly. I tend to […]
Love Rolls Downhill
“Are you going to write about this, Mom?” my daughter Caroline asks me. (She knows I’ve written about her brother.) The question is half tease, half challenge. I can’t tell whether she wants me to write, or not. Maybe she doesn’t know, either. Caroline is 18, and she’s about to begin her freshman year at […]
This Wonderfully Old-School Business Storytelling Tool Helps You Tell Powerful Stories
“We need stories so much that we’re even willing to read bad books to get them, if the good books won’t supply them.” —Philip Pullman Just under a year ago, my friend Ron Ploof sat in my kitchen and told me his idea for a simple tool that would help businesses become better storytellers. Only… […]
Enter This Essay Contest and You Could Win a Free Trip to Boston from MarketingProfs
You can be a good writer without being a good marketer. But I don’t think you can be a good marketer without also being a good writer. Which is why we’re excited to announce the First-Ever MarketingProfs Essay Contest in connection with this fall’s premier B2B marketing event, MarketingProfs’ B2B Marketing Forum. This year’s B2B Forum […]
How Not to Ruin Instagram (Now That the Ad Floodgates Are Open)
“Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do.” —Steve Jobs The news broke last week that Instagram will expand its advertising service to all marketers, not just a chosen few (Disney, The Gap, Ben & Jerry’s) it’s been working with since first rolling out ads in the fall of 2013. […]
8 Writing Tools I Use Every Day
What writing tools will help you produce your best work? Last week, two interviewers asked me about the tools I’d recommend for writing. One of them asked about writerly things I might covet the way some people do—like first editions of favorite books, or fountain pens, or antique Underwoods. (Not to be confused with other […]
Jargon: A Marketer’s How-Not-to Guide
My daughter and I were at a college’s Accepted Students Day, which is basically where school administrators wine and dine prospective incoming freshmen in the hopes they’ll choose that institution out of all those a student might’ve been accepted to. The “wine and dine” bit would be metaphorical—because there is no actual wine involved. But […]
A Writing GPS: The Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Your Next Piece of Content [Infographic]
The writer Andre Dubus (House of Sand and Fog) has described writing as inching your way along a very dark, very long tunnel: you can make out the next few feet in front of you, but you’re not quite certain where you’ll end up or when you’ll get there. What helps with the uncertainty and […]
The Science Behind Quality Content: A New Study
Only a third of the world’s largest companies have quality site content based on human factors like style and clarity and tone of voice (in addition to basics like grammar and spelling.) The study from linguistic analysis company Acrolinx is the first of its kind to try to quantify something that’s hard to pinpoint: What’s […]
Basecamp Is Barking Up the Long Tree with ‘The Distance’
Just about a year ago, Basecamp, a project management software company, launched a quirky little lovely monthly online magazine called The Distance. The Chicago-based company hired a journalist to produce one long-form illustrated story per month, profiling a company that has been in business 25 years or longer and has thrived the old-fashioned way: through […]
The Secret to Marketing Event Success (Spoiler Alert: Muffin Tops)
“The past is always tense, the future perfect.”―Zadie Smith Want to win a trip and full pass to the MarketingProfs B2B Forum? Enter our essay content here! Registration just opened for the MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum. That’s a boring name for a conference, isn’t it? Which is why we affectionately nicknamed the B2B Marketing Forum, […]