This is an occasional series based on actual emails I receive, and my actual responses.  Everybody Writes is just shy of its second birthday. Since its birth, I’ve heard frequently from readers who have highlighted the same few typos in the text. (Sometimes nicely. Sometimes less so.) The “few typos” sounds dismissive. But the truth […]

A messaging app investing in writing is a little baffling and weird, isn’t it? Today Snapchat launches online magazine Real Life, in which a staff of five writers publish long-form essays and narratives about life with technology. It’s headed by social scientist and researcher Nathan Jurgenson, who says Real Life “won’t be a news site with […]

Facebook is predicting the end of the written word on its platform. And perhaps suggesting that words more broadly are doomed. “The best way to tell stories in this world, where so much information is coming at us, actually is video,” said Nicola Mendelsohn, who leads Facebook’s operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. […]

What if we thought about Marketing the way this restaurant thinks about dinner? One of the best things about being a marketer is that your work intersects almost everything. (It’s not like being a professional shepherd, say. The disjoint is greater between the work of sheep-herding and the rest of the world.) One of the […]

Content Marketing wakes up one morning in a place it doesn’t recognize, and tries to piece together what happened last night… and all the previous nights, too. (Because, if it’s being honest, last night wasn’t an occasional bender—it had become a lifestyle.) It takes a hard look at itself and wonders with a measure of […]

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 […]

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 […]

“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 […]

“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… […]

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 […]

“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. […]

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 […]