Category: Contentions
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Foundational content
There are many, many, good entrepreneurs with good businesses who have a website with only a homepage. If you’re one of them, maybe you haven’t put much effort into marketing promotion. (You might say, “We’ve done zero marketing!”) Or you might have hired some marketing firms in the past—SEM, publicity, social media, etc.—but you haven’t…
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A return to my business writing practice
My strategy with making and shipping creative work has, generally, involved earning money through business writing (in the form of working independently as a marketing consultant, or in a marketing full time role) and investing it into creative projects. Projects like Creative Doing, pretty much all my writing online (including Medium), Prologue, The World According…
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The power of proof assets
Every so often, you send an important professional document to someone. The most universal experience is applying to a job, which you do by sending HR your resume. Your resume is a proof asset; it describes your experiences, accomplishments, and expertise. If you lead a business, you send many documents like this. For example, you…
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Figure out what’s working, and do more of it
When you start a new project, it’s useful to figure out what has worked for the team or company already. Most of this is a form of manual labor: setting meetings, asking questions, reading reports, proposing actual deliverables and completing them. It’s also a humbling exercise, to restrain the impulse to come up with answers…
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Simple questions to sense content marketing ROI
If you’re need a sense of how much ROI you’re getting on the writing and editing activities in your company, ask these simple questions: Does the content communicate how we see the world? What impact does it make if other people also buy into our perspective? Does the content add leverage to a launch moment?…
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Marketing readiness
A product’s features may be complete, but that doesn’t mean it’s ready for customers yet. Before they use the product, customers want to know: What does the product do? Who’s it for? What’s a good reason I should care? There are more questions you need to ask yourself: how can you get the customer’s interest?…
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Get your customer’s name right, or don’t ask at all
In 2012, Starbucks baristas started writing down their customers’ names on their cups. This convention spread around to other businesses. Since then, I’ve been asked my name a lot. Here is what I often seen on labels in response: Harper Harbor Harvard Trevor Herburger While most customers probably won’t mind, as long as the product’s…
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World building, observations, and names
A couple of years ago, I wrote about how one way to see branding was to build a world. I currently work as the director of marketing at FGX. One of the aspects that continues to energize me is the depth of thought the leaders put into defining the world of global IT logistics. They’ve…