Connect with us

MARKETING

Why Typewriter-Like Linear Thinking Works Better Than Tools for Content Creation

Published

on

Why Typewriter-Like Linear Thinking Works Better Than Tools for Content Creation

Marketers routinely discuss content production in terms of tools, tech, and processes. Use that app or this device, and we’ll produce better content.

We want to know which tools other marketers or content creators are using as if they might reveal the secrets to their success.

I’m not criticizing – I’m just as guilty.

It’s incredibly tempting to imagine a new tool could be the path to stress-free and frictionless creative brilliance. You know, like in all those movies where the great author sits at the typewriter and bashes out a classic novel, only pausing to load each new sheet of paper.

Why can’t I write like that? Perhaps I could if I used the same tools and adopted the same practices.

Advertisement

That’s a more comforting thought than the truth: Creativity is hard.

But treating creativity as the product of tools is like discussing the art of the novel by analyzing the brand of typewriter George Orwell used.

Would 1984 or Animal Farm have turned out different if Orwell wrote with pen and ink instead of his Remington Home Portable? Probably not. And if I bought a Remington Home Portable typewriter, would I be more likely to write a classic novel than I was before? Definitely not.

Sure, without a camera, you can’t make a video. Without a mic, you can’t make a podcast. The right tools can enable different kinds of creativity. But don’t mistake the tool for the task.

The right tools can enable different kinds of creativity in #ContentMarketing. But don’t mistake the tool for the task, says @kimota via @CMIcontent Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: You Can Write Faster With This Guide

A solution in search of a problem

Tools are helpful (if not essential) for getting work done. But tools aren’t solutions – no matter what the clichéd website copy says.

Advertisement

The word “solution” is a personal bête noire that I’m forever discouraging clients from using in their copy. It’s lazy, vague, and usually obscures what the product or service does.

Worse, referring to tools as solutions reinforces the idea that tools have the answers – even if we’re not sure of the question. It’s like holding a shovel and calling it a hole.

A shovel doesn’t tell you where to dig. Or how deep. Or what to do about that massive tree root you come across that threatens to scuttle your planting plans. (Yes, I’ve been working a lot in the garden lately. Why do you ask?)

I’m talking specifically about content creation tools here. Tools for distribution, analytics, asset management, and so on offer different benefits and may provide some guidance for where to dig, figuratively speaking.

But those are different tasks – more functional than creative. Tools are functional by definition. But in the creative process, too much functionality may be a bad thing.

Linear creativity: gone but not forgotten

Have you ever marveled at the handwritten manuscript of a famous novel?

Advertisement

Charles Dickens’ handwriting looks virtually impenetrable to modern eyes, and his manuscripts look like they must have been difficult to decipher even for his Victorian publishers.

Image showing a page from the handwritten manuscript of They Mystery of Edwin Drood, by Charles Dickens.

Image source

Creating like this is unavoidably linear. With each word indelibly applied to the page, there’s no going back – only forward. Mistakes would have to be serious to warrant tossing a page in the trash and rewriting a section.

Dickens produced only one manuscript of A Christmas Carol. No second manuscript. No V2.1, V2.2, and definitely no V4.6_Final_Final_FINAL. Rewriting the text to create a second draft would have been time-consuming. Minor mistakes were no reason to step out of the creative moment. Perfectionism just wasn’t viable.

Typewriters solved the problem of legibility – and were faster, too. But writers could still only compose in one direction. However, the typewriter era introduced the concept of cut-and-paste.

A typewritten manuscript is more uniform in spacing, making it easier to cut out and rearrange paragraphs before pasting them onto a fresh sheet. Stationers would sell long-bladed editing scissors, capable of cutting across a sheet of paper in a single snip. (You see them today in the icons that represent the cut feature in many apps).

Advertisement

Cut-and-paste was still a retrospective activity. Not anymore.

Word processors have dramatically changed how we write

Word processors gave us that instant ability to delete, revise, cut, paste, check spelling, format, add styles, and otherwise tinker with the words on the page – going far beyond anything that could be achieved with a typewriter.

The line between writing and editing blurred to become almost non-existent. Creativity is no longer linear.

If you spot a mistake higher up the screen, you face the urge to move the cursor and correct it instead of typing the next sentence. And if your writing flow stutters for just a moment – perhaps as you ponder your next point or the right word – the temptation to find easier problems to fix elsewhere in the draft is hard to resist. Suddenly, you’re revising, polishing, and rearranging previous paragraphs to feel productive instead of being genuinely productive by completing the draft.

Tools that let you revise, polish, and rearrange paragraphs make you feel productive but can get in the way of completing drafts, says @kimota via @CMIcontent #ContentMarketing Click To Tweet

Or is that just me?

Advertisement

Tinkering with styles and fiddling with layouts may result in a good-looking document, but at this point, it’s still an unfinished, good-looking document.

When the “perfect” tools weaken your content

Tools (or the insistence on the perfect tool) can affect content creation beyond writing, too. I worked on podcasts for a major brand a few years ago. Each episode featured interviews with small business owners about their use of technology.

No problem. All we needed to do, I suggested, was send each guest a Snowball mic with a few instructions on how to ensure good sound quality. We would then record each interview over Skype. With a little planning, I suggested, we could produce each podcast quickly and easily with minimal post-production. The guests could keep their mics as a thank you for taking part.

But the company’s marketing team was skeptical of anything too simple or low budget. Instead, they insisted that we use the company’s high-tech recording studio. Each guest flew to Sydney and stayed the night in a hotel. Then they spent half a day in the recording studio with a presenter (who also flew in), a sound engineer, some of the client marketing team, and me.

In this studio environment, many interviewees became self-conscious about their responses – even though they felt fine talking about the same topics over the phone just a few days earlier.

Meanwhile, the marketing team continually pressed the intercom to interrupt with suggestions and feedback. And once the guests realized multiple takes were possible, they also stopped the recording whenever they wanted to repeat an answer. “Sorry, I stuttered a bit there. Can I try again?” It didn’t matter if no one else noticed or that the response sounded perfectly natural. Perfectionism reigned.

Advertisement

The takes and retakes – along with the post-production costs – added up.

The sound quality may have been as good as any major broadcaster, but the interview quality suffered. The conversations were drained of spontaneity and zest, edited together from a mess of second, third, or fourth takes – a couple of minutes here, a few seconds there.

Do your tools help or hinder?

Just because tools enable you to do something doesn’t mean you should do it. Sometimes, the result might be little or no better than if you’d used the most basic tools.

When selecting tools for content creation – for yourself or the team – try not to be tempted by shiny features and specs that supposedly give end users more flexibility, customization, and control. All that does is make those users responsible for more decisions that ultimately matter less than the creativity they supposedly enable.

Technology can help most with creativity when it stays out of the way.

Some apps offer a stripped-down writing experience akin to using a typewriter. The simple writing tool Draft, for example, supports basic markdown language. However, it also provides what they call Hemingway mode, which enforces that linear writing discipline. Delete is disabled along with just about everything else. You can only type and type and type, with no going back. You can’t even move the cursor to a different spot.

Advertisement

When it’s time to edit, your team can collaborate on and mark up Draft articles before publishing them directly to your CMS, social channels, and more. Simple and minimalist from beginning to end.

I recently discovered Descript for rich media, which makes editing audio or video as easy as editing a transcript. I don’t think Descript will make my other editing tools redundant just yet. But for a simple rough cut, editing from the transcript keeps me focused on the content – the words being spoken, for example – instead of working in an editing console so complex it could be mistaken for a flight simulator.

These tools won’t make you more creative, but they’ll make being creative a little easier. Your chosen tools should support a workflow as simple and uninterrupted as possible. Consider whether each tool adds distractions or removes them. Does it introduce more steps or eliminate existing ones? Does it create a new set of notifications that, like those Tamagotchi toys in the ’90s, continually beg for urgent attention? Or does it remove all but the most critical decisions from the creative process?

Tools for creating #ContentMarketing should support a simple and uninterrupted workflow. Do the one you use add distractions or remove them, asks @Kimota (via @CMIcontent Click To Tweet

Microsoft Word has over 700 fonts, whereas a typewriter has just one. I’m not saying you should equip your team with typewriters. I’m just saying that Orwell never lost a moment’s thought to whether Animal Farm might look better in 12-point Helvetica.

All tools mentioned in this article are identified by the author. If you’d like to suggest a tool, please add it in the comments.

Advertisement

Want more content marketing tips, insights, and examples? Subscribe to workday or weekly emails from CMI.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute




Source link

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address

MARKETING

How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

Published

on

A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

Advertisement

Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

Advertisement

Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

Advertisement

“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

Advertisement

Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

Advertisement

Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

Source link

Advertisement
Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

MARKETING

Trends in Content Localization – Moz

Published

on

Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

Source link

Advertisement
Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

MARKETING

How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

Published

on

How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

(more…)

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

Trending

Follow by Email
RSS