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 […]
Social Media
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… […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]