creativity

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 [...]

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 [...]

7 Tips for Content Marketing Webinar Success

7 Tips for Content Marketing Webinar Success

According to CMI’s newly released 2012 B2B content marketing study, marketers give webinars the second highest effectiveness rating as a content marketing tactic. Why, then, do only 46 percent of marketers use them? They are, after all, another great way to showcase your quality content and position yourself as a thought leader in your marketplace. [...]

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, [...]

While Your Audience Checks In, Are You Checking Out?

are you checking out while your audience checks in?

I have a strange relationship with Foursquare; I use it compulsively, though the reasons why I do that are unclear. I check in at restaurants, movie theatres, shopping malls, and even at the veterinarian. I hadn’t realized how obsessed with the social check-in service I had become, until the day that I pulled out my [...]

The Best Year-End Lessons Don’t Come From Top-10 Lists (An Office Meditation)

The Best Year-End Lessons Don't Come From Top-10 Lists (An Office Meditation)

Don’t resist. Relax and let it happen. It shouldn’t hurt, though you might feel a tugging sensation. It’s okay to stop—just for a little while—the striving, planning, strategizing, evaluating that make your work so successful, that you hope makes you notable and valuable. It’s fine to step away from the carefully wrought echo chamber of [...]

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 [...]

A Magazine is Not a Broken iPad (No Matter What Your Baby Says)

broken ipad, not a magazine

Homer Simpson understands children. Well, his children. All right, maybe just Maggie because she rarely speaks. But he knows enough about the relative predictability of kids to have once uttered, “You couldn’t fool your mother on the foolingest day of your life if you had an electrified fooling machine.” Bravo, Homer. This is why you [...]

QR Codes: Misunderstood? Or Are We Missing the Point?

qr codes: are they misunderstood?

Until recently, I didn’t have a smartphone, so I never paid much attention to QR codes since I wasn’t able to scan them anyway. But now I’ve finally joined the ranks of 72.5 million (and growing) smartphone owners in the U.S. and I downloaded a free QR code scanner from the App store so I could try [...]

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 [...]

Give Me One Reason to Share It and I’ll Spread Your Post Around

reasons to share content

There are a lot of blips on our daily radars. We check our Twitter stream. We drop in on Google+. We comb through our RSS feeds. And for the most part, we ignore most of the content we see. Why? Because we’ve read it before. Because it sounds too familiar. Because it’s obvious. Because it’s [...]

Mr. Editor, Tear Down This Wall

Advertorial Wall

You know what word I hate? Advertorial. I’m not alone. For those of us who cut our journalistic chops in the newsroom, the division of editorial and advertising is as sacred as the constitutional separation of church and state. My first reporting gig out of college was covering the use of technology in education. Eager [...]

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 [...]

4 Ways to Get More Mileage Out of Old Content

nickelodeon old content all that, picture of a girl getting slimed

I’m a ’90s baby. I grew up during, at least what I believe to be, the peak of Nickelodeon’s programming. These classic Nick shows represented an iconic part of tv’s pop culture and had everything from talking babies (Rugrats), a dog and cat conjoined (Catdog), action shows (Legends of the Hidden Temple) and pretty much [...]

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 [...]

Goodbye, Voice of God (in Journalism)

voice of god is dead in journalism, picture of speakers

For political junkies, there was no more bizarre and fascinating news night than the 2000 election returns. Among the embarrassing moments that night—and there were quite a few—was when anchorman Dan Rather announced that Al Gore had won Florida, and then proclaimed, “If [CBS News] says someone carried a state, you can take that to [...]

Fighting Words: Marketing Lessons From the UFC

marketing lessons from the ufc

Your organization can learn a lot from the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). Yes, I’m serious. No, I don’t mean you can learn flying knees or triangle chokes, although those might come in handy when meetings get heated.

This Blog Post is Brought to You by Paper…Mostly

crumbled paper

This blog post was written mostly on a blank piece of paper. Yes, actual paper, with ruled lines and everything. I can’t remember the last time I sat down and scribbled away until I figured out what on earth I was writing about.

How to Starve Ideas to Death

tragedy of the commons

We’ve all had these meetings: Big ideas are being discussed. The future of the company is being diagrammed on a whiteboard. The word “should” is being used a lot. The greatest thing since sliced bread is being articulated with passion. Everyone is smiling. People are enthusiastic and everyone pats each other (and themselves) on the [...]

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 [...]

4 Tips to Develop Engaging Story Ideas

story ideas for editors

“That’s a story idea,” I would often think as a general assignment newspaper reporter and editor. So many of my friends’ and family’s stories about lively debates at their jobs, old friends they ran into or the TV shows they were obsessed with would often lead to an article idea relevant and interesting to our [...]

5 Ways to Break Creative Block

breaking creative block

The blank Word document taunts me without saying a word. Writer’s block has set in, even though my imagination is working just fine. I close my eyes and picture hurling my computer out the window. I can see the cables, mouse and keyboard trailing behind it for eight stories, then catching up after multiple thwacks [...]

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