This week I debuted a new presentation at Content Marketing World about creating bigger stories, braver marketing, and more buff, ripped marketing writing with bolder tone of voice. (I’m giving this same talk at INBOUND15 tomorrow.) If there were a 12-Step Program for PowerPoint Recovery, I’d be going to meetings thrice weekly. I tend to […]
content marketing
Jargon: A Marketer’s How-Not-to Guide
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
6 Things You Can Learn from an Unfunny Marketer’s Funny Redemption
Fifteen years ago, my friend Doug Kessler swore off any attempt at “comedy” after an attempt at funny dissolved into flat-out failure. Doug, who runs marketing agency Velocity UK in London, recalls the white-hot shame of it all: “We wrote a script. Sent it to client. We expected some review and back and forth… but […]
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 […]
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 […]