Content

How This Marketing Program Cleaned Up: A Case Study in B2B Storytelling

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 your audience of commercial and municipal facilities managers. But it’s… well, industrial, floor, and cleaning. What would you do as a tactic in your 2020 content strategy? Pick one: Point a camera at your CEO in a regular fireside chat to demonstrate how the brand is there for you in these trying times Hire an Instagram influencer and their family to literally eat off a scrubbed, sparkling, Covid-free floor Launch an old-school, year-long essay contest to find stories about janitors If you’re Tennant Company… you go all-in on #3. And I love it. It speaks

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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 regret: “How did I end up here?” Everyone said Content Marketing had such potential. Everyone said it was the hope for the future that would save marketing from itself. Everyone said Content was the very thing that would align storytellers, artists, writers, technologists, and analysts. Everyone said they’d all work together to create marketing that doesn’t feel like marketing. The Content Marketing champions toiling and sweating in marketing departments worldwide stuck out their necks for Content Marketing, too. They believed in it, and they convinced their bosses and clients to believe, too. Everyone said they’d

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9 Qualities of Good Writing

👉 👉 👉  New newsletter! Get a letter from me to you in your inbox, every two weeks! Sign up for free right here. There are two kinds of people: Those who think they can write, and those who think they can’t. And, very often, both are wrong. The truth is, most of us fall somewhere in the middle. We are all capable of producing good writing. Or, at least, better writing. Why does good writing matter? Isn’t the best content marketing very often something short, snappy, and non-text? Like Skype’s Born Friends video, Lowe’s Vines, or Chipotle’s haunting video commentary? Sometimes, yes. But here I’m not just talking about content in a marketing context. I’m talking about content, period. Text is the backbone of the Web, and it’s often the backbone of any content you watch or listen to, as well. That Born Friends video started with a story

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This Is Why B2B Companies Need to Hire Brand Journalists

The key to being a thought leader is to… well, lead. The news broke at about 8 AM Eastern today that the world’s third-largest software company, Oracle, had acquired Compendium, a content management company. At the time, I was part of a panel for a UK audience with Brightcove—in other words, I was pretty much sealed off from social media and news headlines. So I first heard the news when Jesse Noyes of Kapost emailed me at 9 AM for commentary on the acquisition, for a piece Kapost was putting together. Jesse also took the opportunity to let me know that his boss, Kapost CEO Toby Murdock, had already formulated and published his early thoughts on the move. Jesse‘s email read as follows: “Don’t know if you already saw the news, but Oracle announced today it’s buying Compendium. Toby has already shared his view on what this means for the

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A Message from My Marketing World… I’m Writing a Book!

I’m interrupting this personal blog to bring you a message from my business world: I’m writing a book! Planned for early December release, Content Rules is a how-to guide to creating compelling content for the Web. The talented and fun CC Chapman is co-author (David Meerman Scott is writing the foreword), and together we’ll answer questions like, How can you create so-called bold stories and videos and blog posts that will inspire people? How do you develop ideas that will arouse passion for your products or services? How can you cultivate fans? How can your ideas ignite your business? Any organization with a website is a publisher, right? So Content Rules applies to organizations of all sizes and stripes, whether you are a Fortune 500 corporation or a mom-and-pop on the corner, or anything in between: hospital, entrepreneur, nonprofit, sole practitioner or consultant, artist, government agency, church, school, political candidate,

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