“Be brave enough to suck at something new.”
The quote is attributed to business book author Jon Acuff, the great Greek god Pinterest, or that Etsy shop that printed it on a baby onesie.
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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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An excerpt from Everybody Writes 2: Your New and Improved Go-To Guide to Ridiculously Good Content. Get a copy; you’ll love it. * * * Last week I walked by a storefront. From the outside, I liked the vibe of the place. The products on the shelves looked… promising. As I stepped just inside the door, a foot-tall robot jumped out of nowhere: “HI WANT TO CHAT? I’M HERE TO HELP YOU FIND YOUR WAY.” I kicked him aside. I browsed the aisles. Something caught my eye. As I reached out to look closer, a salesperson slid directly in front of me. “TONY,” his name tag read. He had a tattoo of an onion on his neck. “Not so fast, sister,” TONY said. “You want to touch it? Look closer? See if it’s right for you? Give me your email address first.” His neck veins bulged. The onion pulsed. Before
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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. Small stories are human-scale. Ira Glass, host of This American Life, spoke at Columbia University about the need to tell important stories—about refugees and climate change, to name but two—even if most of us are sick and tired of hearing about them. We’re sick of them, Ira told the Columbia Journalism School graduating class of 2018, because such stories have “the two key ingredients of any story you don’t want to hear anything else about: (1) it’s depressing and… (2) YOU ALREADY KNOW THE STORY.” Refugees: 60 million displaced people. The largest refugee crisis since
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Here’s the best writing I read all week. It’s 170 words tucked into a belly of a 7,000-word article. And yes… it’s about stink bugs. Stay with me. Because those of us writers who write about B2B “solutions” or other boring or complex things can learn a lot from the vivid description of these gross little guys. First, I need to have you read it, too. And then let’s break it down, okay? (via When Twenty-Six Thousand Stink Bugs Invade Your Home) Making Boring Writing Fun Again Those of us who write about the unremarkable B2B products, mundane “solutions,” or complicated, boring anythings can learn a lot from this passage. Let’s break it down: “Its head is unusually small, even for an insect, which gives it an appropriately thuggish look. Its six legs prop its shield-shaped body up in the air, as if they were pallbearers at the
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Ronald Clark’s father worked as a custodian of a New York Public Library branch in an era when library caretakers and their families lived on site. A few of these apartments are still around, although now there are no people living in them. Ronald’s dad kept the NYPL Washington Heights branch clean and tended the coal furnace. The 24/7 access to books in a pre-Kindle age changed Ronald’s life: He grew up to become not only the first person in his family to graduate from high school but also a college professor. As part of its celebration of how libraries change lives, StoryCorps a few weeks ago produced Ronald’s story as a three-minute film. There’s so much I love about this sweet little film: (1) The message of the life-altering power of libraries; (2) the animation that brings Ronald’s gravelly narration to life; and (3) the choice to use video
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In marketing, I value three things: quality over quantity, great writing, building an audience over stuffing a pipeline until it bursts at its seams with so-called leads. I value other things, too. But those three things are top of mind for me this morning, because we just released a brand-spankin’-new research report, B2B Content Marketing: 2018 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America, produced by MarketingProfs and Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and sponsored by Brightcove. The report—blandly titled, but nonetheless full of rich insights—presents findings from the 8th annual content marketing survey. (Yes, 8th!) And therein we find… quality bests quantity, craft and creativity matter, and building an audience is better than simply collecting leads. And we know this because 870 of us business-to-business marketers paused for 5-7 minutes this past July long enough to take the survey that spells it out. Here are two of my favorite takeaways from this year’s
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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As an exacting writer and a proponent of a slow and strategic marketing, I should be having an aneurysm (Ann-eurysm?) over how a single, sweary, typo-infested LinkedIn post slopped together in 20 minutes sparked a flurry of online engagement and $90K in sales. But I’m not. Because from a marketing and writing point of view, there’s a lot to love about the post-I-should-hate. Why is it the greatest? And what we can learn from it? Before I get into it, a caveat: If you are offended by profanity, you might want to skip this post. Read this one instead. It’s about food. (And not at all offensive.) The Story My friend Cara Mackay runs a family business that makes and sells “the best sheds in the world,” in Perth, Scotland. Those “sheds” aren’t just your typical squirrel-infested toolsheds: Gillies and Mackay customers use them as summer houses, beach shacks, playhouses,
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