Content is king, as the saying goes, and that’s certainly true in a digital world. Consumer appetite for content is at an all-time high and continuing to grow. That’s great for organizations that have well-oiled content creation teams in place to meet the demand. For others, though, developing content on a regular basis that is high-quality and focused on issues and topics that resonate with their audiences can be a challenge. The gig economy can help. A wide range of freelancers and contract content creators are available to organizations to help produce content for any format. Continue reading “Best Practices for Finding Freelancers: Top Go-To Sources of Talent”
Category: Publishing
Sometimes I Just Can’t Be a Ghost…
by Linda Pophal
Having worked for organizations and their senior leaders and spokespeople for a number of years as director of corporate communications and marketing in various fields I’ve long been familiar—and quite comfortable—with the concept of ghostwriting. Ghostwriters write content for others. That content might be in the form of a speech, a presentation, an email, an article, a letter to the editor, a book-length manuscript, or a wide range of other applications. Continue reading “Sometimes I Just Can’t Be a Ghost…”
Finding Multiple Uses for Your Content to Extend Its Longevity and Reach
Content is always changing shapes, morphing into something new. Long before there was the written word, people gathered to tell stories around campfires. Before there was a printing press, there were handwritten books. Then, of course, came ebooks. Now, our content comes to us through a dizzying array of devices and platforms. Smart creators are using the growing number of delivery options to continue to reshape content into new—and sometimes improved—forms.
Continue reading “Finding Multiple Uses for Your Content to Extend Its Longevity and Reach”
What Niche Publishers Know That Mass Media Overlooks
While publishers continue to battle for audience, relevance, and engagement, some niche publishers are quietly making an impact—and money—from narrowcasting. Consider, for example, the following:
Emu Today & Tomorrow, a magazine for emu farmers
Twins, a magazine for parents of multiples, which launched in 1984
Spudman, a publication for potato farmers
The Chimney Sweep News, serving a decidedly niche market of chimney sweepers as the name suggests
These and other publications are finding success by casting a narrow net to appeal to smaller, more exclusive market segments. Publishers can draw inspiration and insight from the retail sector.
Continue reading “What Niche Publishers Know That Mass Media Overlooks”
How to Deal With Communication Dabblers
If you’re ever created content for any purpose, chances are you’ve encountered a dabbler. A dabbler is someone who, when asked to review copy (or who is responsible for reviewing copy because of their position), suffers from severe scope creep. They just can’t stop themselves from offering far more, and far more detailed, input than what was expected.
Dabblers like to dabble. It’s what they do. Unfortunately, what they do can create a lot of headaches, and much rework and added expense, for those in the business of producing and publishing content of any kind. Continue reading “How to Deal With Communication Dabblers”
Tips for Using Content Calendars
Social media marketing is an inexpensive and effective way to engage with your target market and position yourself as a thought leader. But to make it an effective tool, you need to be diligent in keeping your content up-to-date and post regularly. An infrequently-updated blog or social media page with stale posts can actually do more harm than good to your brand and engagement efforts. But many small business owners struggle to find the time to keep their social media profile up to date.
One solution to this is to use a content calendar.
Get Results With These 10 Tested Copywriting Tips
Whether you’re writing a brochure, copy for a newspaper ad, a script for a radio announcement or a page or blog for your website, there are some tried and true techniques that can help you make sure that your copy gets the results you’re looking for.
Think about writing copy as making a sales pitch to a customer. Your goal is to persuade that customer to do something – most likely to purchase your product or service. Here’s how: Continue reading “Get Results With These 10 Tested Copywriting Tips”
5 Steps to a Better Blog
We’ve been writing this blog for a long time – since 2009 actually! It actually draws more traffic than our website and we’ve also been recognized over the years, most recently by Feedspot as a “Top 30 Communication Blog.” Recently we were asked by a reporter to share our top tips for effective blogging; we thought we’d share here as well. Here are our “Top 5 Tips for Building a Better Blog”: Continue reading “5 Steps to a Better Blog”
How to Build a Blog That Generates Results
So you’ve finally put in the effort to develop a respectable blog. You’re posting regularly and consistently, and you’re posting about topical material relevant to your target audience. But nobody’s reading it. A common challenge we see with businesses trying to beef up their online presence is that they haven’t done enough to drive traffic to their blog. Here are some basic tips to help boost your blog traffic. Continue reading “How to Build a Blog That Generates Results”
Be Careful Out There! From Fake News to Fake Newsmakers—How to Best Protect Your Brand
In 2006, Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat character burst onto the big screen and became a huge success in the United States. Borat – a scruffy, socially awkward “journalist,” ostensibly from the Central Asian nation of Kazakhstan – took a cross-country trip through the United States, mostly in the South, and interacted with and interviewed numerous unwitting participants who became fodder for Baron Cohen’s movie.
While Borat had been a staple of Baron Cohen’s Da Ali G show for years, the 2006 film marked the first time many Americans had been exposed to the character. From college students and driving instructors to rodeos and local news stations, many Americans were fooled into believing they were being interviewed for a cultural program for consumption in Kazakhstan, something that would not be seen in the United States.
Hilarity, embarrassment and lawsuits followed. Continue reading “Be Careful Out There! From Fake News to Fake Newsmakers—How to Best Protect Your Brand”