Chris co-founded Fenwick (formerly Find A Way Media)—an upscale content studio that specializes in clear and precise writing for B2B marketers. Amateur historian, aspiring outdoorsman, occasional stress baker. Join his newsletter for workplace writing wisdom. Follow Chris on Twitter @cgillespie317.
A lot of content marketers treat the design team like a vending machine – insert copy, press button, get graphic.
They make design the last step in the content creation production process. The result is nearly every piece of content is planned through the lens of a writer. By the time a typical creative brief fights its way past a tyrannical project manager and reaches a designer, it’s set in stone.Continue Reading
Updated June 16, 2022
When you finish this article, you will leave entirely and utterly convinced.
That’s every writer’s hope, right? Yet, a great deal of writing fails to convince anyone of anything because it’s poorly written, and that carries a tremendous cost.Continue Reading
Over the last five years, I’ve seen a lot of content operations. I’ve met founders in their garages and flown to corporate towers. One thing that’s true of all of them? They are their own worst enemy or even their worst super villain.
The amount of friction that prevents good content within an organization is intense. Sometimes, the more hands that touch it, the worse it becomes. I sometimes think if your company truly understood how hard your competitors are working to mangle their own content, you could plot to topple them by investing in them.
A version of this article was originally published in CCO magazine in April.
It wasn’t long ago that most of us believed journalists would be forever at odds with content marketing. Their firm desire to maintain a complete separation between editorial work and publishing work seemed sure to doom any joint project. But then many things changed. Brands became more adept at self-reflective storytelling. Newspaper profit margins went into freefall, and people’s trust in traditional media took a similar dive. Now, barriers have crumbled. Journalists are taking a seat in-house at brands and that’s great news for everyone involved.
Thanks to the rise in brand storytelling (and the demise of many news media outlets), journalists and marketers are reconciling their philosophical differences and uniting under a shared goal: to tell compelling, credible stories that inform and influence an audience. Here’s how to start a beneficial brand relationship with a highly trained writing pro.
If your company wants to be seen as a media outlet, your brand journalism can’t be light on ethics, riddled with errors, and sopping with self-interest that suffocates readers.
Real journalism is about building an audience by telling true stories. “Your content needs to meet journalistic standards if you want it to be taken seriously,” says Iris Mansour, a journalist turned content strategist. “Brands that aren’t entirely honest or self-aware have a much harder time building audiences.”
Below the erupting volcano of content – billions of new articles every month – a secret army is hard at work.
Wherever marketers create e-books, run webinars, promote blogs, and craft events, artisans are hammering, hacking, and whittling the words. These writers make content marketing run. Alas, much of what they produce is junk.
