Annecdote

How Do You Balance Your Personal and Professional Social Media Presence?

  I started on Twitter in 2007 as @MarketingProfs, sharing headlines from the site and representing the brand there. Then 5 years later I resuscitated @AnnHandley on Twitter as a personal ID—a handle I’d been squatting on for years but never used. Why the second account? I guess the easiest answer is that it seemed… I don’t know, time? Because Twitter itself had shifted. In 2007, when I started on Twitter, things felt a bit quieter. A bit under the radar. I started and assumed the ‘Profs Twitter account first on a lark (let’s see what this is all about, shall we?) and then as it grew… I just kept at it. Why? Simply: I enjoyed it. (There’s nothing quite like it.) And it’s worked for us. And now, I’m pretty sure MarketingProfs is one of very few major business-to-business brands whose Twitter account is run solely by a shareholder. […]

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Empathy, Marketing, and ‘Misterogers’

This post on empathy and marketing is an expanded version of the intro to my forthnightly newsletter, which features a letter from me to you along with ideas worth sharing and a healthy dose of fun. Not on the list? You can subscribe right here. I moderated a panel about Empathy and Marketing last week at South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas. “Empathy” is one of those words that feels impossibly squishy and subjective in a business context: It’s scrubbed clean and sitting in the front row along with “authentic” and “engagement” and “best practices.” But in marketing, I think of empathy as feeling with people—signaling through our actions, words, and tone that We get you. You belong here. And it helps marketers articulate how our products or services fit into the context of their customer’s lives, and can make their lives better. Too high-minded? I don’t think so.

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You Had Me at Pizza: How Omnichannel Marketing Matters

What’s omnichannel mean, exactly? And what does it have to do with the best pizza outside of Naples? And where does lively writing fit into all this? Andris Lagsdin has a small company outside of Boston called Baking Steel that manufacturers and sells ultra-conductive metal baking sheets. Its flagship product is its namesake Baking Steel, a heavy, quarter-inch honed hunk of steel. It doesn’t look like much—it looks like an ordinary piece of metal. But it gives you the best pizza crust outside of Naples. (Ze. Best.) Last spring, Andris ran a contest promoting a new, lighter product called the Mini Griddle. He invited subscribers to comment on his blog post with a recipe idea: What would you make with a Mini Griddle? The best entry would be the winner. I entered the contest on a total whim. My recipe—invented as I sat at my desk one wintry morning in

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What Marketing Can Learn from the Most Outstanding Meal I’ve Ever Had

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 worst things about being a marketer is that your work intersects almost everything. We’ll be standing in line at the post office, and a woman behind me, whom I know vaguely from somewhere (maybe our kids played soccer together?), is telling me about renovating her house. She’s figured out who has the best take-out. She knows all the best laundromats. She wonders whether she might launch a crowd-sourced online resource for locals who might value such information… The next thing I know, I start verbally mapping out a whole website and marketing plan for her.

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Scrappy Video Content Marketing: What If We Didn’t Try So Hard?

What if we stopped trying quite so hard with our video content marketing? What if we just told our true stories honestly and simply, and with empathy for the very real problems our customers have?  A video from a tiny Arizona startup busts some common myths about using video as part of a content marketing program. There are three other things to love about it, too: 1. The video is script-less—but still it speaks volumes. 2. It sits squarely in the sweet spot of how I define great content, or content that is useful x inspired x empathetic. 3. It’s a great example of how a scrappy attitude and simple execution can be powerful. It’s made me wonder: What if we didn’t try so hard to be amazing and awesome? What if we just spoke from our hearts, with empathy for the real problems we solve? Details on all that

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Introducing ‘Everybody Writes’ and a Free Gift for Anti-Mediocre Writers (This Means You)

This is the official announcement of my new book, and I couldn’t be more thrilled to finally be sharing some details with you. I’m also excited to talk about a fun freebie for those who buy the book in the next few weeks (more on that in a sec). Writing a book is like birthing a Volkswagen. The process is about as pretty as you’d imagine that to be: it’s long and arduous and you sweat a lot, and most of the work is done while crying. But as with actual childbirth, I’ve forgotten all of the painful parts already. Because today, it’s like the family is coming over to get the first glimpse of her, and I couldn’t be happier to show her off. The new website is up at EverybodyWrites.com. (You know who does good work? Nick Westergaard and Brand Driven Digital!) “Awesome” is one of those words

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Why I Built a Tiny House

I’m writing this now from a cramped second-floor office in my house. I’m sweating just from the exertion of typing this sentence. Even with air conditioning, it’s 450 degrees up here. I could mix a tin of muffins and set them to bake on the shelf behind me, and in 20 minutes breakfast would be ready. The heat up here normally makes me grumpy. But today I’m giddy, because from my window I can see two electricians fishing wire to a brand-new office in the backyard. It’s the almost-final step to completing my tiny house before I can move my entire operation there during working hours—and by “operation” I mean me, my MacBook, and Abby, a 16-pound Cavalier King Charles spaniel who—even in this heat—lies under the desk, her furry rump pressed against my foot. (The spot on my foot where her fur meets my skin feels about 1,000 degrees.

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Swinging Doors and Second Chances

Usually I write about content and marketing here. But today I’m temporarily returning to this site’s roots with a personal story. 1. Nine years ago I drove from Boston to Connecticut to pick up an almost one-year-old Cavalier King Charles spaniel named Abby. She was to be a foster dog for a short while, until the rescue group found her a permanent home. The details were murky: A family somewhere in NY had surrendered her – something about how they bought her from a pet store, and she spent much of her time at home in a cage. I guess her original owners knew she deserved more. And so they gave her to Rescue, to give her a second chance. The first time I met Abby she was tiptoeing like a cat along the back of the Rescue coordinator’s couch, acting like she owned the place. (She didn’t.) She was

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Content Marketing In 15 Minutes a Day: 3 Content Hacks

Part of me is allergic to the headline I just wrote—or, at least, the “15 minutes a day” part. Because starting out with a stingy marketing mindset runs counter to the spirit of the rich content marketing opportunity. It reminds of me of punching a clock at a job you hate: How little do I have to work? How much responsibility can I shirk? But, still, businesses—especially very small ones—have certain constraints and often-ungenerous realities. What if you really have only mere minutes a day to focus specifically on marketing? What if you run, say, a restaurant or a pizza shop—and you’re squeezing out a Facebook post in between the lunch and dinner rush? Can it be done? Yes. But only with a solid plan and strategy in place. At least, that’s the message Shelly Kramer and I gave a few weeks ago at the International Pizza Expo in Las

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