Strategy Is Change
As I write this in mid-November, a great majority of organizations are engaged in the curious annual ritual known as “strategic planning” — the often rote process by which forecasts are honed, spreadsheets cells populated, templates turned into documents designed to guide a year’s worth of activity. If this sounds like a familiar grind for […]
If Content is the Answer, then What’s the Question?
In early 2007, I wrote a piece for Mediapost about the need for brand marketers to become video content makers. It began, There’s an old advertising joke that goes like this: “The answer is a 30-second spot. Now, what’s the question?” Fast forward eight years and you could make a similar joke with one ironic twist. […]
The #1 Thing Marketers Must Know About the #1 Thing They Should Never Do
As a marketer, the list of things you “must do” is short — so short that it contains exactly zero items. You wouldn’t know this, though, if you were to tally the sheer number of “must do” blog posts, articles, white papers, infographics and thought leadership pieces being churned out by marketing practitioners each and […]
Are You Making These Monstrous Content Mistakes?
For Halloween, our thoughts have turned to the insidious content strategy blindspots that hide the monsters killing your results. So in the spirit of the season, we thought we’d take a look at some common bugaboos that can creep into any company’s content operations. But never fear — we’re here with a bag of treats and just […]
10 Content Strategy Questions Every Organization Must Answer
Sound strategy — whether corporate, business, marketing or content — comes from asking the right questions, with why being chief among the questions you should ask. Well, effective execution of your strategy requires that you ask (and answer) the right questions too. After all, a strategy is only as good as your organization’s ability to execute […]
Wise Content Strategists Ask “Who” 10 Times
Content is a team sport. One that requires commitment, cooperation and collaboration — not only within your core content team but across organizational silos. You can’t do it all alone (and you wouldn’t want to!), so it’s important to know who will own each key element of your program. And to know who, you need […]
49 Free Stock Photo Sites Content Marketers Will Love
As a content marketer, you know the value of finding just the right image to bring text to life — even when you don’t have the budget for original photography. Luckily there are dozens of sites that publish free photos for use by web developers, content creators, bloggers and designers. But with so many sites to […]
Are Marketers At War With Consumers?
Do you view marketing as an act of brute force against the consumer? The odds are that your knee-jerk response is,“no.” But the language you use when you talk about marketing may indicate otherwise. Is your marketing-speak peppered with words like target, campaign, preempt, and penetrate? We choose the language we use for specific, if sometimes […]
Nine Content Marketing Tools Your Competition Isn’t Using (Yet)
There’s hardly a shortage of tools that claim and aim to make content marketers more effective, efficient, even more creative. Some aim to automate the entire content marketing lifecycle while others pinpoint a specific pain point (from visual design to better analytics) — and while the big boys like Contently, NewsCred, Percolate and Kapost will […]
Three Ways Content Marketers Can March to the Beat of a Different Drummer
Tomorrow marks the official start of the 2015 drum corps season. While that probably means very little to most of you, I enjoy finding inspiration in unusual places and have often found that this youth activity is a breeding ground for business lessons. So this year, I’m taking a look at how some of the top […]
