Can't content marketing also be visceral, rather than merely informative?

Look, a book on fashion. How quaint!

Can't content marketing can't be useful for brands that, by convention, rely heavily on photos and video? Say, for luxury cars? Is content marketing, with a toolbox full of white papers, podcasts, and professional reviews, etc, too dependent on rational decision-making? Can content marketing be adapted to make baser, more emotive appeals to buyers' desires?

Content marketing needs a better name

via Behance

“Content marketing” is not exactly the most intuitive term in the marketing industry today.

It doesn't help that some agencies think there’s nothing wrong with slapping the label “content marketing” over everything they already do as an ad outfit.

It also doesn't help that consultants, who mean to clarify things, explain themselves in such prosaic, self-serving truisms:

• "Content marketing is about engaging the audience" (And traditional advertising aims to bore the tears out of us all?)
• "Content marketing is all about quality content" (Whereas traditional marketing is a load of crap?)
• "Content  marketing is about the content" (Is there any such a thing as marketing without content?)

What is content marketing, exactly?

Here's my attempt at an explanation.

That population white paper, and 6 common content marketing mistakes

I don't usually write about politics because it distracts from the purpose of this blog. This blog is about content, not so much about public affairs. But the ongoing contention over the Singapore Government’s latest White Paper has important lessons about the place of content and publishing in public relations.

I want to take this opportunity to explain the concept of content marketing to the public relations people that make up the majority of my meatspace professional network. It may not be the biggest example of content-strategy-gone-south from Singapore, but it is the most mainstream in recent memory.

Obstacles to plain language

Business writing, as a style, is bankrupt. Today's audience seeks a plain-speaking, authentic voice.

But this is the funny thing about plain language: While universally acknowledged as a good thing, it 's actually quite difficult to find examples of it in real-life business.

Press releases work perfectly well, thank you very much

Every now and then I come across articles helpfully pointing out that press releases have stopped working, and it's time to switch to a digital content strategy. Sometimes I don't know if marketers in the digital space are just ignorant, or if they are being dishonest in order to push their brand of marketing.

Press releases are nothing to switch “away from”. A media strategy and a digital content strategy are different things, and if anything they are complementary, not mutually exclusive. Just because you’ve stopped issuing press releases doesn’t mean you’re on the way to SEO and content marketing success.

More likely, if you didn’t know what you were doing with your press releases, you probably don’t know what you’ll be doing with your content strategy.

In content management, beware the 'Talker'

I've just read a HBR blog describing a customer profile that salespeople need to avoid: the "Talker". Talkers are people whom, despite being a friend of yours (or your product); despite strong connections with purchasing decision makers; despite repeated assurances of assistance, somehow fail to close the deal for you.

This passage, in particular, struck a chord:

There is a troubling paradox in the Talker. This profile embodies much of what sales leaders tell salespeople to seek out in the ideal stakeholder: they are accessible, they provide great information, they act as a hub for networking, they are pro-supplier — the list goes on and on.

In the end, however, these very traits ultimately harm their credibility inside the organization. The access they grant to the supplier and their energetic backing of that supplier results in doubt amongst their peers. Indeed, our data show that Talkers are anywhere from four to six times less able to build consensus for a purchase compared to Mobilizers.

This reminded me of the KM (knowledge management)/content management/Intranet projects I've been involved in before. For some reason, there was always at least one "Talker" leading the project.

Responsive web content case study: gov.uk

One of the websites my colleagues and I have been paying attention to is the new UK government beta website. Clients have been asking us to think about what design lessons we can draw from it.

This is where I go crazy with infographics

While on a current project, I was asked to find opportunities to include infographics into the content mix. Being new to this whole infographics thing, I wondered if this print-medium artifact, which has really gotten popular this past year, really worked on screen from the usability perspective. I decided to do some research on Google to find out.

User expectations for government content

The Content Marketing Institute has just published helpful article on content development for government entities. If you are a inhouse content developer with a governmental organisation, or if you have a government client, you will find many useful tips inside the article.

This reminds me that I ought talk a bit about my current project: alpha.ecitizen.sg.

Surprise: When the message is not the medium

The idea of hiding features for users to discover is common to both content and platform, but the execution is quite different. In software, an easter egg must be well-hidden. In content, they must also be hidden--but in plain sight.

Who needs a lede?

Copyblogger founder Brian Clark has a classic piece on how to open your article with a bang. Those tips in his blog are basic strategies that belong in every writer's toolkit. (Or at least, we should all know them so that we can avoid the cliches).

They can be summarised as follows:

• the Question Opener ("What's a good way to start articles?")
• the Anecdote Opener ("'I'm really tired of this,' said Robert Scoble as this interview started.")
• the "Picture this" Opener ("Imagine: Wouldn't it be grand if all your readers paid you a dollar?")
• the Shocking Statistic Opener ("Study: 95% of your readers are bored")
• the Analogy Opener: ("What does your dog and my fruit basket have in common? Answer: Nothing.")

I happen to hold a somewhat contrarian view on the subject of ledes. I don't think blog content needs to have ledes at all.

Stop the sorry waste of ink

Have you ever read brochures being handed out at booths in exhibitions and conventions? Typcially, they are

• filled with copy on product features
• packed with "value propositions" that are nothing more than concatenations of buzzwords
• plastered with aspirational pictures of happy people at home or at work. Or with exciting, industry-specific stock pictures, say, photos of racks of servers.

I have no idea how effective these brochures are, even though I've even written some of them myself. I do know that a lot of them are left in bins, venue washrooms, and on the exhibition floor. I also don't really know why we continue to produce them. But I do know that our sales forces continue to ask for them.

The sympathetic design of Steve Jobs

Of all the obituaries on Steve Jobs, Slate published the one that I wished I wrote.