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.

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.

Writing copy for the web vs print [A satire]

Source - used under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 licence

People don't read print the same way as they read content on the web.
The Web format allows publishers to influence readers' behaviour and perceptions. Through analytics and eye-scanning technology, we know what pages they've read previously, and what they're going to read next. Writers can present information in a logical sequence, supported by peripheral cues.
If you’re writing for print, however, you’re bound by an entirely different set of rules.

Seriously, what's so wrong with "click here"?

Image via 365psd

Over the past week, several publications and aggregators I follow have been ripping into the practice of using "Click here" as hyperlink text. This struck me as a little odd--"Click here" has been verboten in web design practice for as long as I can remember. I'd hardly consider it a buzz-worthy subject.

And is "Click here" really so bad as to warrant repeat hazings? I certainly avoid them myself, but I was never fully convinced that the alternatives I came with was much better.

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.

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.