Category: Contentions
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Contentions: The editing opportunity
With more people interested in writing with A.I. and A.I. word processing software, there’s probably going to be even more words floating around online. While it solves the problem of actually putting words on the screen—an A.I. can spit out hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of words in a second—some really important problems…
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Contentions: On Non-Coercive Marketing
Rob Hardy wrote a really great manifesto entitled, “Non-Coercive Marketing: A Primer.” Here are the principles, which he breaks down in full at his post: Optimize for aligned, empowered customers Surrender control, and embrace emergence Cede authority Treat people as ends, not means Enough is enough Play long games…
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“Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.”
People in Hong Kong have incredible taste in graphic tees. I was just running errands and saw a guy wearing a shirt that said, “Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.” This was the most thought provoking moment I’ve experienced in a mall. I instantly whipped out my phone and wrote it down. It articulates an…
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Contentions: What does a vision for your company’s media operation look like?
I’d previously written, when it comes to content marketing, “ROI is meaningless with vision.” (One problem with this field: we use content marketing to describe too many things.) One way to think about this is showing people why they should be interested in the problem your business is solving: the same way DeSerres promotes art…
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Contentions: Viewer discretion is advised
Beware people and products that position themselves to create a problem; to exacerbate a discomfort and dissatisfaction in your present life. For example, that job you were entirely satisfied with doesn’t look as appealing as the creator who claims to make passive income and is recording a video from a beach in Hawaii. Usually, someone…
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Contentions: “People don’t actually know that…”
… Your team works with a vast, fascinating, set of data. … Your team performed a migration in a way that nobody ever did before, and that was an awesome feat. … Your team is responsible for designing or developing some of the most exciting projects in the industry. Being the industry’s best kept secret…
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Contentions: Stop wasting your money, nobody wants your content marketing
The term, “content marketing,” is both one of the most well-understood use cases for writing in business—a good source of jobs directly related to writing—and still often one of the most poorly defined, mis-applied, and problematic initiatives for businesses. Former Animalz CEO Devin Bramhall describes this in her public resignation announcement at LinkedIn: “I became…
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Knocking on doors
How people find out about you matters a lot. Your current physician probably didn’t cold call you. You find good products and services through recommendations, media, and searches. Anyone who is cold calling you is implicitly telling you, “Not enough people trust me to do business with me yet.” That’s why cold calling is difficult.…
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Seek truth
If you’re an expert, your job isn’t to convince people to buy or do something. Your job is to see patterns, acquire information, and provide it to people in a concise and clear way. Seek truth through facts, expert opinions, surveys, anecdotes, and data. This doesn’t have to be complicated or cost even a single…
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Marketing as the sector of the future
Excerpted from Average is Over by Tyler Cowen: “Despite all the talk about STEM fields, I see marketing as the seminal sector for our future economy…. “It sounds a little silly, but making high earners feel better in just about every part of their lives will be a major source of job growth in the…