They push for a “hard sell” when the target audience isn’t looking for an advertisement. They’re passive-aggressive about critical deadlines. And they’ll never tell you what they want when they demand a redo on content you produced (they only give less-than-constructive criticisms, like, “I Hate Hate Hate it!” before bouncing it back to you. Grrrr…).

Content marketing professionals serve challenging clients and internal stakeholders like these all the time. Fortunately, most clients are perceptive enough to recognize their shortcomings, and try to manage them without impacting the quality of the work itself. But the reality is that there will always be those who impose obstacles that can threaten any chance they have of achieving content marketing success. Continue Reading

We live in the Age of Jargon-Geddon, buried under a blizzard of buzzwords.

For example, during the day, we use expressions such as “core competencies” (meaning: “what we’re good at“), “best of breed” (are we talking about show dogs?), and “ideate” (as opposed to “think?”).

After work, those of us who are parents attend school meetings, where educators tell us (with straight faces) that we must improve “enrichment processes to elevate engagement structures.” Translated from jargon into English (you know, the language we send our kids to school to learn to use properly and clearly), this means: “We need to do a better job of keeping our kids interested in class.”

I’ve even taken part in a lively debate over whether content marketers, too, are guilty of resorting to jargon to describe what we do, in an attempt to mystify work that is (let’s face it) not exactly as complex as quantum physics. Continue Reading

In a blog posted in January, Content Marketing Institute Founder Joe Pulizzi spoke of the rise of once-traditional journalists working on the brand side as one of three critical content marketing trends that signal big industry changes ahead.

I can certainly vouch for that trend, because I was one of those journalists. Continue Reading