Plotting the path to content marketing influence: Where do you measure up? To make it easier for you to achieve this end goal, I've come up with this index to help you map out where your content marketing influence stacks up.
Is a lost kitty poster a study in good marketing?
At times, the best of us get bogged down. Messaging complexity overwhelms us. We try to incorporate too much contradictory feedback. Stakeholders don’t take the time to understand the simple role that each individual piece plays in the sales process. The design doesn’t function well. So we end up with marketing that refuses to employ the basic marketing techniques that make a lost kitty poster simple, understandable and engaging.
More effective marketing: 3 things a marketer can learn from a graphic designer
2 ways to use data to inform marketing creative you should start using now
Today, as I watch the industry learn how to apply data to their campaigns, I’m witnessing how the starvation of the past is making simple observations seem monumental to marketers. I rarely see anyone talking about their experiences applying data to the definition of creative that is the backbone of a successful campaign: a compelling message and how well it's brought to life with words and visuals.
Teach your organization to “just say no” to clipart
Years of customer relationship building, brand management and creative strategy are just no match for the use of goofy cartoons, people icons that oddly have no faces and nonspecific renditions of technology and business concepts. We all agree, but for some reason all of our companies’ decks are chock full of clipart. The era of DIY makes it so easy. What’s a brand advocate to do?
Compelling content: Who are you writing for? Your stakeholders or your customers?
Sum up the courage necessary to remain strictly disciplined in conversations with stakeholders, or you will bear the fate of siting quietly listening to stakeholders who are more interested in telling you how they’d approach marketing if they were marketers, instead of providing you with useful direction.
3 questions marketers should ask the next graphic designer they interview
Every time I’ve been hired to work in a technology company, I’ve been interviewed and hired by a marketer and not by another graphic designer. If you are a marketer, hiring the right graphic designer is not about matching candidates with your bullet point list of required skills. It’s about asking the right questions.
The 7 worst “drivers” of content marketing strategy, and how to lessen their impact
Everything that I know about content contributors, I learned in rush hour traffic. Like drivers on the road, many content contributors don’t understand how to behave as an integral component within a big, complex mechanism of parts moving forward. Most are focused solely on their own, individual journey. Some even think that if they were the only contributor on the road, they would get to their destination faster and more would be gained. But most organizations do not succeed on the merits of an individual, but instead on the success of all contributors working together.
5 ways marketers can strengthen account engagement and be a champion to sales
When I hear about oft-lamented conflicts between marketing and sales, it always reminds me of the occasional struggle between a designer and a marketer while building content. They both want the same outcome, but somehow they can find themselves caught in combat over different yet valid aspects of success and are so driven by their efforts they can’t/won’t figure out how to weave them together.