Content Creation

Content helps you tell your organization’s story and connect with your audience in a powerful way.

Here are some posts to help you create custom content for your organization:

The New Online Video Landscape (and How to Take Advantage of it)

the new online video landscape

The online video landscape has changed about as quickly as people used to change channels before the days of DVR. Here are several ways things have changed in the world of online video.

Why Shakespeare’s Tweets are Better Than Yours

shakespeare tweets

“There’s no money in poetry, but then there’s no poetry in money, either,” said poet, Robert Graves. As an English major with a concentration in (you guessed it) writing poetry–I wrote, analyzed, and interpreted–all while wondering where my liberal arts degree would take me. Inundated with similes, allegories, symbols, and allusion, I learned how to [...]

Why Literature Matters (Despite What Those Last 50 Million Tweets Told You)

Why Literature Matters

If you’ve ever been inside an elementary school library from the year 1966 onward, you’ve probably laid eyes on the phrase “Reading is FUNdamental” at one point in your life. And it is. Especially if you want to create good content. In order to do that—to engage, entertain, and inform—one has to know how it’s [...]

4 Myths About Video Content

4 Myths of About Video Content

Moving pictures can be dangerous. Witness video of me, circa 1988, clad in acid-washed jeans with a shock of hair resembling a dump truck in full tilt. Same thing applies to a new generation of video and the media machine it feeds every second of the day. When it comes to branded video content—or even [...]

How to Become a ‘Rockstar’ Web Developer (Without the Risk of Fatal Bus Accidents)

scales for web developers

Musicians do some crazy stuff.   For example, they sit in a room, alone, and play scales: long sequences of notes — up and down, for hours.  And they never enjoy it.  Anyone who has lived with (or next door to) a musician can attest that these dreaded scales are not songs.  They aren’t melodic, [...]

How Writers Can Stop Being Scared of Their Own Voices

Tips on How Writers Can Stop Being Scared of Their Own Voices

The biggest roadblock for writers trying to perfect their voice isn’t using the correct grammar, proper spelling, or consistent syntax. It’s fear. One of my college professors once called me out for being too tentative in a story. I was writing a review of the movie “High Noon” and after a decent lead, I just [...]

We Have Ways of Making You Talk. Namely, Interviews.

interview tips, we have ways of making you talk

To the presidential candidate seated across the table, I must have seemed like tender meat ready to be shredded by wit sharpened on the pundit circuit. The year was 2000, and Pat Buchanan was running a half-hearted campaign. Interest was low enough that I, student reporter that I was, managed to get an interview at [...]

Why the Best Social Media Begins Offline

the art of social content creation

When I was notified last year that the content marketing firm where I work was moving offices—giving up its spacious, albeit outdated, digs for a new state-of-the-art studio three blocks up the road—I couldn’t help but be a little skeptical, uneasy even, of the changes in the offing.

How Crowdsourcing Can Revolutionize Your Approach to Content

Should This Post Be Crowdsourced?

A few months ago an international team of gamers solved a complex problem that had scientists baffled for years. For a decade industry experts from around the globe had been unable to figure out how a protein-cutting enzyme from an AIDS-like virus found in rhesus monkeys folds. In a final attempt to solve the riddle, [...]

5 Ways to Become a Better Writer in 2012

become a better writer in 2012

I wrote my face off in 2011. Both professionally and personally, I wrote more words this past year than any other in my life. I can now honestly tell people at parties that I’m a writer and not have it be some part I’m playing in my mind. I’ve worked my entire life to get [...]

Born to Write: 3 Lessons from Rock Stars to Writers

rockstars to writers

It’s rare that I’m surprised by music. I am a product of my father’s musical tastes, so as a teenager, I was baptized by Neil Young’s “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere”, Jethro Tull’s “Aqualung”, and the Moody Blues’ “Tuesday Afternoon”, rather than new releases by Foo Fighters or the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Call it [...]

Quality Down to the Last Crumb

Cheetos

Having grown up in a household in which we ate simply and fairly close to the land, I’m pretty sure I didn’t consume my first Cheeto until college. I don’t remember the exact occasion—I like to imagine it as a coming-of-age moment, along with my first taste of Twinkie and ferreting out the existence of [...]

7 Ways for Your Company to Break the Ice with the Blogosphere

blog ice breaker

Does your organization have a blog? Though it seems the evidence that blogging pays off is everywhere, some companies are still struggling to get a blog up and running. (Consider this 2011 HubSpot study where 69% of businesses surveyed attributed their success with lead generation directly to blogging. Business is built on consumer interest, and [...]

3 Things the Top 10 Viral Videos of All Time Have in Common

Old Spice Guy

Want to watch a baby do flips on rollerblades? How about people playing the piano with their feet? Maybe you’d rather see a biker riding on the tops of stores and jumping off bridges? Well I’m sure I have your attention now…or maybe you’ve already seen the videos I’m talking about on YouTube or some [...]

Is Your Content Worth Stealing?

is your content worth stealing, picture of a burglar alarm

I hope you steal this blog post. There won’t be an alarm that goes off. The Feds won’t come to get you, and no one will probably ever know that you did. It’s not a trick, it’s not a trap, and it’s not a lure. I actually want you to. Because that means I’ve done [...]

Kenny Powers, K-Swiss, and the Ramifications of Viral Success

kenny powers viral video

By now, you’ve probably seen the radical campaign from K-Swiss where Kenny Powers (a fictional character played by Danny McBride) takes over as CEO (ahem, mother***king CEO) of the company and reinvents their image via profanity-laced one-liners and no shortage of comic gold. (If you haven’t, scroll down for the video. Make sure you’re wearing [...]

5 Tips for Successful Magazine Covers

great magazine covers successful

You know it when you see it. It might catch your eye and prompt you to flip the pages. It might capture a famous person or an iconic moment and ask all the right questions. And sometimes … it might even make your jaw drop. Could it be the typography, the image, the colors, the [...]

The Anatomy of a Web Redesign Failure

web redesign failure, image of a construction site

All of the best practice documents in the world can’t prepare you for a thud that was supposed to be a splash when your big website redesign hits the market. Or should we say, misses the market. Designing a website is a difficult endeavor. Sure, everybody and their 11-year-old-nephew seems to be capable of launching their own [...]

How to Think About SEO Like a Human

seo as matchmaker

Gaming search engines is like lying on your profile on a dating website. You might get away with it for a while, but eventually, you’ll be exposed for what you really are. Posting a picture of a gorgeous model instead of your own? Falsely representing your wealth or your humanitarianism? The temptation may be strong, [...]

Is That Your Blog Talking to Itself in the Corner?

dunce in the corner

We talk to ourselves a lot in the world of content marketing. It’s pretty awkward. We do this any time our content doesn’t have a direct target – when it’s aimless. And aimless content, whether it’s an email, a billboard, a Tweet or a shout is the content that most likely to be ignored and [...]

How to Kill Creativity With One Simple Phrase: They Already Have That

they already have transportation

Every day, this four-word phrase murders innocent ideas before they had a chance to grow up. It suffocates its victims with a blanket of negativity. It is the leading killer of creativity. It runs rampant in the offices and minds of people in those offices. And it needs to be put behind bars, never to [...]

What’s Your Evil Twin Saying Between the Lines of Your Content?

content between the lines

I don’t want to freak anyone out, but… your evil twin might have co-opted your message. Don’t have an evil twin? I’ll take your word for it, but that leaves me wondering about the contradictory messages in your content. In fact, subtextual messages have been responsible for some of the most fraught, but enlightening, interactions [...]

SEO Killed the Analog Star

seo killed the analog star robot

Someone spouted this thought in the billion-voice echo chamber that is Twitter the other day: “Too many people are writing content for Google and not their readers.” The dude nailed it. Of course, five minutes later he Tweeted: “5 affordable ways to see Paris like a local”…which, of course, is something that’s been covered more [...]

Conquer the Writing Process (Or Let it Conquer You)

writing process

The interesting part about writing is that much of the “writing” process involves staring at a blank document on the computer screen. I rock back in my chair, I play with my hair, I stretch out my back. But all the while, the ideas are churning in my head (and that’s not just what I [...]

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