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Marketing Content: Coloring Within (and Outside) the Lines
Coloring page from On Coloring website. Marketing is an art. And whether you are interested in it or not, if you have a job, you are doing marketing. (I could argue that if you are human you are doing...
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Content Strategy: Avoid Marketing Ploys
A Communicator who is a master of Marketing ploys. Marketers feel that they get no respect because they often hear that what they are doing is just a “marketing ploy” as they develop new content....
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Creating Marketing Content: Empathy for the Audience
Except when I am representing myself, I am always impersonating someone else when I create marketing content. At a networking event this week someone mentioned that she is a good writer, but only when...
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Good Content: The 5 Rules
Everywhere I go people are talking about content. That’s great for me—I live for content; I am a communicator. The problem for less enthusiastic content providers (small business managers) is what to...
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Marketing Speak Is Not Good Content
A century old newspaper example of Marketing Speak Content Strategy This last week I attended the Dallas Content Strategy Meet-Up. The presentation was called “Avoiding the Content Strategy Silo Trap”...
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Social Media for Confidential Services
Until now, providers of confidential services could not take advantage of the communication opportunities of social media. I explained the reasons for the restrictions in my post last week. By focusing...
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A Systems Approach to Business Communications
Groups of all sizes and varieties create a system of relationships. Good communications must always be designed to facilitate the functionality of the entire system. Because internal and external...
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Good Content: Best Practices for Every Call to Action
People need direction. If you don’t tell them what to do, and how, they are unlikely to do it. In marketing, those instructions are known as the call to action and every instance of marketing content...
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Content Marketing Extended to Scent Branding
Using branding, marketers try to establish a positive impression, compel action, and then build customer loyalty. As a content marketer I am accustomed to considering how appearance and sound (speech,...
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Content Strategy: Effective Taglines
I have been driving past this company headquarters on the highway for years. Every time I see the building I wish they had benefitted from some savvy advice before they put up that unfortunate...
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Targeting Content for the Audience
Recently, I managed the development of a brochure for a construction service company. Their goal was to expand their sales by helping them to partner with building contractors. Their customers include...
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Different Audiences Respond to Different Content
Last week I was a participant in a focus group. We looked exhaustively at messaging for a new drug that will be sold to people like me. The other members of the group included a retired fourth grade...
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The Content Conundrum: How to Evaluate Content Quality
Once upon a time, not so long ago, there were clear markers that helped readers and viewers to judge reliability. In those days, the context provided the audience with an easy way to evaluate the...
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Successfully Managing Content Projects
Last week I finished up a short-term intensive project creating revisions and new content for the launch of three new websites for a mid-sized financial company. In order to reinforce their reputation...
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Motivate Colleagues by Showing Appreciation
It’s Thanksgiving. I really like this holiday because it reminds us to look at all of our accomplishments and the benefits we enjoy rather than focusing on our disappointments. I try to do that every...
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Marketing using Native Advertising
This last week the FTC held an informational workshop in Washington DC concerning the use of native advertising. Advertisers are clearly in defense-mode. The government is trying to investigate whether...
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The Biggest Content Mistake Ever
Yes, for great content you do need to know how to write or speak fluently. And yes, you also need to know what you want to say, but the biggest content mistake you can make is to lack knowledge your...
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Creating Valuable Content
Creating content is tricky because it needs to be engaging and persuasive. To attract attention and be consumed it must be surprising, entertaining, or informative. To be persuasive and inspire...
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