Social Media

Brilliant Creative on a Tiny Budget: 5 Examples from an Unlikely Source

A version of this story appeared in Total Annarchy, my fortnightly newsletter that helps you be a better writer, storyteller, marketer. Get it in your inbox; you’ll love it. * * Has the pandemic made us more creative? I’ve been wondering this lately… Have the uncertainty and randomness of the past 18 months made us more resilient—determined to get through the insanity, to roll with the punches? And does newfound resiliency make us more comfortable taking a risk here and there? And doesn’t creativity require an element of risk? (^^ actual transcript from 3 AM Brain, lying supine and actively ignoring Right Shoulder, who since rotator cuff surgery acts like a real jerk at night—keeping everyone awake) * * * I checked to see what the Google Gods might say on it. From Dr. Michael Bloomfield, a creativity expert and researcher: If you look upon uncertainty as an opportunity for […]

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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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Why Snapchat Is Launching a Magazine

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 gadget reviews or industry gossip. It will be about how we live today and how our lives are mediated by devices.” A messaging app investing in writing is a little baffling, isn’t it? So why is an instant messaging app dominated by impermanent selfies and video suddenly investing in writing? When 100 million daily active users can turn images of themselves into a taco or a pooch or a baby, isn’t the very idea of reading kind of… well, basic, as my teens say? Said another way: in a disappearing-photo, 10-second-video Snapchat world… isn’t writing

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Calling BS on Facebook’s Edict That Writing Is Dead

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. “It conveys so much more information in a much quicker period. So actually the trend helps us to digest much more information.” In five years’ time, she added, Facebook “will be definitely mobile, it will be probably all video.” Stats show that the written word is becoming obsolete, replaced by hipper, accessible images and video. She did throw writers a bone: Words are disappearing—save for the fact “you’ll have to write for video.” Did you catch that? “have to.” Have. To. Our words are like the last triceratops wandering an increasingly balmy earth. In search

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The Airbnb Berlin Wall Anniversary Film: A Q&A with Its Creator

Airbnb yesterday launched a short animated film aligned with two things: the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and a traveler-inspired story of “belonging anywhere.” “Wall and Chain” tells the story of a woman named Cathrine who in 2012 brought her father back to Berlin for the first time since he’d left decades prior, before the fall of the Wall. Cathrine’s father, Jörg, had been a guard in West Germany. In Berlin, through Airbnb, Cathrine and her father booked a place with a friend of Kai, once a guard on the opposite side of the wall, in East Germany. See the result in this short but powerful film: Wow, right? So how did Airbnb hear Cathrine’s story? Why did it select this story? How much did this cost, anyway? And what are the broader lessons content marketers take from belonganywhere? I asked Dennis Goedegebuure, who led the

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Twitter Helps Me Get My Lost Book Back, and What You Can Learn from It

Last Wednesday I flew from Boston to Philly on a midday JetBlue flight. I’m a nervous flyer, even when the weather is cooperating. Last Wednesday, it was not. It was stormy and rainy, and so the flight bounced around aggressively in those 59 hellish (for me) minutes; by the time we landed at PHL airport, I felt how an ice cube might feel inside a cocktail tumbler shaken by a jacked bartender. So, as soon as we got the OK, I bolted out of my seat and out of that plane to thank baby jeebus and kiss the ground my feet were happily back on. In my haste, I left behind the book I was reading. It was a copy of Austin Kleon’s Show Your Work that the author himself had signed for me just weeks before, when he keynoted the MarketingProfs B2B Forum. I didn’t realize the book was missing until

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Mercedes-Benz and Instagram: A Clever Way to Build Your Own Car

I talk a lot about using social media for storytelling (rather than simply sharing), and I also talk a lot about creating content that’s useful, inspired and empathic to the needs and wants of the people you want to reach. Inherent in all that is the idea that you should reach people where they are – which might not be on your own website. Which is why I love this Instagram program from Mercedes-Benz, created as part of a larger program to promote its new 2015 GLA. (I’m particularly grateful to my friend Dave Cutler, who generously shared it with me.) Mercedes is looking to reach Millennials, and the program, Build Your Own GLA, allows potential buyers to assemble a custom automobile on Instagram by choosing color, wheels, roof, grill options, and so on…. in one of 132 possible combinations. Merecedes worked with Razorfish on the program. The idea is that

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13 Writing Rules

Many hold a notion that the ability to write, or write well, is a gift bestowed on a chosen few. Writing well is considered a kind of art, linked murkily to muse and mysticism. That leaves us thinking there are two kinds of people: the writing haves—and the hapless, for whom writing well is a hopeless struggle, like trying to carve marble with a butter knife. But I don’t believe that, and neither should you. The truth is this: we are all capable of producing good writing. Or, at least, better writing. And we all should be producing better writing. Because in our content- and social media-driven world: Everybody writes. We are all capable of shedding mediocre writing to reveal something more inspired and reader-centric. The first step is to get into the right mindset. Here are 13 writing tips (or writing rules) to help you get started. 13 Writing

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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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