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. * * * Pop quiz time: You run Marketing at a B2B company that sells industrial floor-cleaning equipment. You want to amp up awareness and demand with […]
content marketing
Green Bean Casserole: Content Marketing Genius? Thanksgiving Side Dish? Or Both?
In 1955, Dorcas Reilly invented Thanksgiving Green Bean Casserole. Dorcas worked in the test kitchen at Campbell’s Soup, where she wrote the recipe in response to a question from the Associated Press: What’s a good Thanksgiving side dish that uses ingredients found in most American kitchens? The dish she invented went viral. Millions of Americans […]
How to Find Your Unique Brand Voice [with Examples]
The brand voice you use in your marketing is potentially a huge differentiator. It’s also vastly ignored by most companies—especially business-to-business companies. That spells plenty of opportunity for you and your company. “Back up,” you’re thinking. “What’s ‘tone of voice’? That thing I studied in Humanities?” Yes. And also no. Brand voice is how our […]
Why We Need Smaller Stories in Content Marketing
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. […]
2017: The Year to Challenge Our Content Marketing Assumptions
This is part 1 of my 2017 take on the State of Content Marketing and content marketing trends. My 2016 take is here. I originally wrote this post as an open letter to Content Marketing that began: “Congratulations on making it another year…” But that sounds somber and a scooch melodramatic, doesn’t it? Maybe. But […]
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. […]
What Marketing Can Learn from the Most Outstanding Meal I’ve Ever Had
What if we thought about Marketing the way this restaurant thinks about dinner? One of the best things about being a marketer is that your work intersects almost everything. (It’s not like being a professional shepherd, say. The disjoint is greater between the work of sheep-herding and the rest of the world.) One of the […]
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 […]