My daughter and I were at a college’s Accepted Students Day, which is basically where school administrators wine and dine prospective incoming freshmen in the hopes they’ll choose that institution out of all those a student might’ve been accepted to. The “wine and dine” bit would be metaphorical—because there is no actual wine involved. But […]
Content
A Writing GPS: The Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Your Next Piece of Content [Infographic]
The writer Andre Dubus (House of Sand and Fog) has described writing as inching your way along a very dark, very long tunnel: you can make out the next few feet in front of you, but you’re not quite certain where you’ll end up or when you’ll get there. What helps with the uncertainty and […]
The Science Behind Quality Content: A New Study
Only a third of the world’s largest companies have quality site content based on human factors like style and clarity and tone of voice (in addition to basics like grammar and spelling.) The study from linguistic analysis company Acrolinx is the first of its kind to try to quantify something that’s hard to pinpoint: What’s […]
Basecamp Is Barking Up the Long Tree with ‘The Distance’
Just about a year ago, Basecamp, a project management software company, launched a quirky little lovely monthly online magazine called The Distance. The Chicago-based company hired a journalist to produce one long-form illustrated story per month, profiling a company that has been in business 25 years or longer and has thrived the old-fashioned way: through […]
50 Shades of Mediocrity: Does Content Have to Be Good, or Just Good Enough?
When a franchise like 50 Shades of Grey enjoys crazy success, is it a signal that content doesn’t have to be good to be crazy-successful? Popularity is only one measure of success, of course. And for most of us in the content marketing world, it’s not a very good one. Yet popularity is still very […]
Win a Free Copy of the New ‘Everybody Writes’ Audiobook
The Everybody Writes audiobook is fresh out of the recording studio! This means that you can now listen to all 8 hours and 44 minutes of the Wall Street Journal bestseller while you are in your car, working out, walking the dog… or raking, shoveling, wrapping, drinking, cooking, canoodling, prepping, pre-gaming, or whatever you might […]
Creative, Funny, Unusually Honest Marketing of an Awful Dog Named ‘Eddie the Terrible’
Most pet adoption listings try to make the cats and dogs up for adoption as appealing as possible. But not the Humane Society Silicon Valley, which last week published a creative, funny, and unusually honest listing for a tiny tornado of a Chihuahua, “Eddie the Terrible.” UPDATE: Eddie gets a home. It’s an awesome piece […]
The Simplest Content Strategy
Creating ridiculously good content is hard. Which is why you have to squeeze every drop of juice out of whatever content you create—as C.C. Chapman and I wrote in the fifth “rule” in Content Rules: “Reimagine; don’t recycle.” “Recycling is an afterthought; good content is intentionally reimagined, as its inception, for various platforms and formats,” […]
This New Book Will Make You a Content Marketing Rock Star
Too many business books feel like cover bands. They might be entertaining enough, but ultimately what they deliver feels a little lacking—a substitute for the real deal. Which is why I love this new digital book launching this week from my friend Jason Miller, Welcome to the Funnel – or, WTTF, as I affectionately call […]