Author: Clay Delk

Clay Delk is Senior Content Strategist at Volusion, Inc., the leading e-commerce SaaS provider, where he oversees web, marketing and interface content. Clay also hosts the Austin Content meetup group. He writes about the intersection of copywriting, usability and design, and how it can help you create content that best serves your users. Read his blog, Method & Message, on Volusion.com, and follow him on Twitter @claydelk

By clay-delk published November 29, 2012

5 Content Marketing Blog Lessons You Can Learn from Taking Photos

photo skills - writing skillsLike many creative professionals, I’m also a photography buff. From DSLRs to point-and-shoot models to the surprisingly high quality shots from our cell phones, photography is more popular today than probably ever before. Need more proof? The folks at Infographic Labs reported that more than 250 million photos are uploaded to Facebook every day.

As with any other art form, we can study the most successful, creative, and appealing photographs to find ways to improve our own. But this goes beyond simply posting better photos on Facebook. As we all hone our amateur photography skills, we can also use those lessons to improve our work as writers and marketers.Continue Reading

By clay-delk published October 3, 2012

How to Build a Balanced Content and Design Marriage

marriage of content and design, CMIAlmost everything we create is published in or alongside some kind of design, be it a website, print layout, infographic, or blog post. But in our busy schedules, it’s easy to simply write the content and pass it on, without any thought for the design or the person creating it. Or, the opposite happens — where a design is already complete and we’re asked to simply “plug in the content.” Rarely do either of these situations work out well for the writer, the designer, or the end user.

I’m not here to start a chicken or egg debate — for me, it’s not a matter of content before design or design before content. This is about writing with design in mind. From the initial concept to the final publication, there are a lot of things that we as content creators can do to build a balanced, productive marriage of content and design. Continue Reading

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