This is an occasional series based on actual emails I receive, and my actual responses. Everybody Writes is just shy of its second birthday. Since its birth, I’ve heard frequently from readers who have highlighted the same few typos in the text. (Sometimes nicely. Sometimes less so.) The “few typos” sounds dismissive. But the truth […]
Writing
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. […]
Content Marketing Grows Up: My 2016 Prediction
Content Marketing wakes up one morning in a place it doesn’t recognize, and tries to piece together what happened last night… and all the previous nights, too. (Because, if it’s being honest, last night wasn’t an occasional bender—it had become a lifestyle.) It takes a hard look at itself and wonders with a measure of […]
5 Keys to Developing a Strong Tone of Voice in Your Content Marketing
One of the biggest branding mistakes that companies can make is to not pay enough attention to their tone of voice. “Voice” sounds high-minded, doesn’t it? More suited for the literary world rather than the business world? But tone of voice just refers to how you sound in your writing. In marketing, your tone of […]
Love Rolls Downhill
“Are you going to write about this, Mom?” my daughter Caroline asks me. (She knows I’ve written about her brother.) The question is half tease, half challenge. I can’t tell whether she wants me to write, or not. Maybe she doesn’t know, either. Caroline is 18, and she’s about to begin her freshman year at […]
Enter This Essay Contest and You Could Win a Free Trip to Boston from MarketingProfs
You can be a good writer without being a good marketer. But I don’t think you can be a good marketer without also being a good writer. Which is why we’re excited to announce the First-Ever MarketingProfs Essay Contest in connection with this fall’s premier B2B marketing event, MarketingProfs’ B2B Marketing Forum. This year’s B2B Forum […]
8 Writing Tools I Use Every Day
What writing tools will help you produce your best work? Last week, two interviewers asked me about the tools I’d recommend for writing. One of them asked about writerly things I might covet the way some people do—like first editions of favorite books, or fountain pens, or antique Underwoods. (Not to be confused with other […]
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 […]
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 […]