Tag Archives: communications

Tip and tricks for creating great content part one

21 Oct

Training in Digital Transformation and Social Media Marketing necessitates me to keep up with a whole range of apps and software.

This is almost a full-time job as new ones emerge constantly.

I follow you tubers: subscribe to blogs; talk to influencers and industry pros; check out thought leaders on social media such as Twitter and news sites.

I mean …  who’s got the time

You probably don’t, so I’ve decided to start posting regularly on some of the amazing tools.

Content is king!

I always say that marketing used to be easy … well, easier. And that’s true.

With the rise of digital and the power of social media, today’s marketers need to be on top of their game. Yes Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is crucial but the creative is KEY no matter if you’re creating videos, graphics, blogs like this, paid ads around various applications.

You may also be planning on creating a MARTECH STACK – adding tools to your arsenal. But what tools do you need. NOTE: It’s easy to get overwhelmed and spend time on creating stacks that don’t help.

PART ONE > Video creations tools

With the ongoing success of TikTok (a social media platform for creating, sharing and discovering short videos), and the waning attention span digital has created, creating engaging videos is a must.

Here’s a list of tools:

I have provided links to most of them. Some have free versions with limited features. Most offer subscription plans to match your business and budget.

Check them out. Let me know how you go.

Stay tuned for Part 2.

Have fun creating.

 

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Manglement v’s Management

22 Sep

Mangle

source: https://www.findmypast.co.uk/

Leadership and Management have never been more important in this era of disruption that some are calling the 4th Industrial revolution where:

  • Traditional business models are breaking down and being replaced by big tech (the so called FAANGS of Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google)  – add to that the gig guys = UBER et al.
  • Traditional politics and government seems to be in a freefall with demagogues and political de-stabilizers running amok.
  • Traditional Work and employment being replaced by AI, robotics and software.
  • Intergenerational skepticism regarding the threat to the environment and climate change

This can lead to manglement (see above illustration of the old fashioned mangle … used to wring clothes out manually.)

Manglement leads to problems in organisations and businesses such as:

  • Lack of communication = people unsure of their role or status or even what they need to accomplish
  • Loss of motivation from former high performers who feel misunderstood and sidelined
  • Heightened loss of a positive culture
  • ‘Office’ gossip and backbiting

Manglement breaks down teams, loses productivity and often leads to high performers taking their talents elsewhere.

Manglement doesn’t care. Manglers don’t have the emotional intelligence to understand or even care. They see people as just numbers. They are unaware of the impact that this type of non management has on the people and ultimately the organisation.

Leaders and managers know their people and the value they bring and they communicate, consult and recognise.

Sometimes they even reward.

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Did Leonardo Da Vinci have a Macbook Pro?

7 Oct

McKinsey Quarterly recently published an article about the rising importance of creativity in the digital world … and it’s good news!

The creative economy

As we labour away in a frenetic 4th Industrial Revolution where WORK is being transformed by algorithms and bots … some of us wondering where we will fit, the one shining star is digital creativity.

Screen Shot 2018-10-07 at 10.35.49 am

See machine learning is great for programmed processes but not so great for human creativity. That’s where Leonardo fits in. I know for sure he didn’t have a Macbook Pro but his fecund mind and total genius produced art and engineering and product design.

leonardo-da-vinci-fa2252

Who cares if you are marketing on Instagram, Facebook or Youtube – it’s still all about great content and that has to start with big ideas.

Screen Shot 2018-10-07 at 10.36.54 am

This has to start with an existential approach to business thinking and that will come from the top.

source: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/five-fifty-Creating-Creatives

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Do what it takes to stand out

1 Jan

Rombaut shoe copyAs I delve deeper and deeper into the world of digital marketing and social media, discovering countless apps, knowledge bases, channels, classes and courses, tips, tricks (hacks), opinions, videos, podcasts and webinars, influencers, etc. – it can tend to be overwhelming.

One thing hasn’t changed though and that’s the need to be creative. To have big ideas (thanks David Ogilvy) and to be brave.

It doesn’t matter what medium you are on – achieving cut through is more important than ever.

It might get people to stop just for a second.

AIDA = Attention Interest Desire Action

 

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I love this

7 Mar

comminications mistake

I shouldn’t but I do love this.

Looks like they need a communications coordinator real bad!

I’ve changed the name of the recruiter to protect the guilty.

Attention to detail … and when in serious doubt use spellchecker.

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Communication sandwich

6 Jan

Crowds

I’m on a break and spending time with the people I care about. This means that I don’t have to get up when the alarm goes (who called it an alarm?) This means that I have some extra time to attend to things. Some of the things I attend to are digitalised. Well, to do with the internet and technology which is moving a lot faster than I can type or breathe probably.

I’m involved in communications which is a broad field if you really think about it.

Communications can be encyclopaedic or minuscule like gestures.

In business it’s about branding, positioning and ultimately selling.

I’m taking some time now to check out the digital world and it’s BIG. Bigger than ever before.

Everyone’s in there having a go.

Check out Linkedin > the business connections portal. Everyone’s up there posting and commenting and liking. This’ll be there.

Then there’s Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, Twitter, instagram, youtube, vimeo ….

It’s hard to get a solo as my mum used to say.

I’m wondering if I should get a sandwich board and stand in the city somewhere.

The giant chicken suit might work too.

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Raymond Chandler, his hat, and the mechanics of writing

11 May

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I admire Raymond Chandler and I love his hat. It’s straw unlike his writing.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with him, Chandler was probably the godfather of the hard boiled private eye. That may sound like a Bedouin dish but it’s a description of a certain literary genre.  The pulp school of crime fiction. Chandler was an interesting character himself. Raised partly in the barren mid west of Nebraska and partly in an English public school, his metaphysical trajectory included stints as an accountant for an oil company and an alcoholic. The alcohol produced blackouts, he forgot to go to work and he lost his comfortable job which left him holding his hat. It was the tail end of the depression and Chandler lived at that time in Los Angeles. It was a lawless, corrupt place with bruising you couldn’t see.

Chandler had been dabbling in poetry since he was a schoolboy. He now had an opportunity. He decided to become a writer.

At that time, there was a magazine called The Black Mask. A pulp offering launched in 1850 by journalist H. L. Mencken and drama critic George Jean Nathan as a money maker to prop up a more literary offering, The Smart Set, “a magazine of cleverness”, was an American magazine of literature and culture.

Chandler was an intelligent man who approached his pulp writing with a scientific mien. Like Ernest Hemingway he laboured over unfussing his writing. It was all about the mechanics.

Chandler’s most famous invention was Philip Marlowe, the world weary gumshoe … sorry I had to say that. His novella’s – The Big Sleep and Farewell My Lovely are classics of the genre.

He wrote sentences like this

‘It was a good crowd for a Tuesday but nobody was dancing.”

Here’s to Raymond Chandler.

Do you think there’s some merit in cutting out the flap doodle.

On the internet no one reads anymore.

Remember Raymond when your writing.

Everybody loves Raymond.

 

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The politics of great coffee

30 Jan

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My cousin is a coffee nut. She’s an aficionado. Coffee is important to her. She appreciates good coffee.

What I mean is, when she forks out between $3.50 – $4.50 for a takeaway coffee she hopes it’s going to be well made.

The problem is that you can count on your hand the number of places where the coffee is properly made. Where there’s a trained barista working the ‘piano.’ Where the taste and the blend, the colour and thickness of the froth are just as important as the silly leaf pattern.

She can be embarrassing too, this cousin of mine. It’s pretty confronting going to get a coffee with her. You know why? She speaks her mind. She tells them if the coffee is not up to her standards. She tells them and I back slowly away.

I’m tainted with that english politeness. Here in Australia, we were colonised by the British and that’s one of the hangovers. Politeness. We tend to seethe not speak up. We vote with our feet.

Is that good? NO.

Last week my cuz was in her local cafe (she lives out of Sydney.) She happened to compliment the young lady making the coffee. It was good. Up to her standards. The owner overheard this and exclaimed … ‘Oh. Coffee politics!’

No it’s not coffee politics at all. If you run a cafe, you make coffee. The coffee is supposed to be good at a cafe, hence the name … cafe.

Is it strange to expect your customers to not care about the coffee you serve?

Go on. Invest in your self, your staff.

Train them up. Give them the goal to make prize winning coffee. Make them proud!

And, get out of the kitchen if you can’t stand the heat.

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Edvard Munch and social networking

28 Jan

the scream

I haven’t posted anything for a while because I’ve been busy living my real life.

That’s the life I have that’s actual not virtual.

My real life includes spending time with my family > my son is starting his 1st year of high school (that’s what we call it here in Australia,) and there were text books and stationery and uniforms to buy … oh and a digital tablet too! Cost a lot of money.

He’s full of anticipation and some nerves I guess. We’re happy and sad hoping to hang on to our little guy for a while longer before he thinks we’re total freaks.

Meanwhile, I’m checking emails and the emails that communicate new posts from Facebook, blogs I follow, tweets from Twitter.

Made me want to SCREAM…

Too much now. Way too much.

As a marketer or a communicator both in the business and personal worlds … give us all a break.

Ask yourself:

Is this relevant?

Will it piss people off? (pardon me)

Does it add any value?

Like in sales, know when to shut up. Don’t oversell after you’ve heard those words, ‘I’ll take it.’

Just smile and start gift wrapping.

In the real world, we have real lives to live too.

Don’t we?

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Anchorman 2. When is too much marketing too much?

15 Jan

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I love Will Ferrell and I think Steve Carell is a genius. This newish brand of just plain silly comedy out of the US is funny. And in my book, any excuse for a laugh. I was really looking forward to seeing Anchorman 2 with my family. The first Anchorman was great. And I know Will Ferrell is not to everyone’s taste.

But when I first heard about the 2nd Anchorman instalment I was kind of excited.

And then I heard about it, and I heard about it, and I heard about it again.

Transit ads on buses. The usual internet blitz. Cardboard moustaches. A hell of a roadshow. Youtube ads and trailers.

Saw the film and loved it.

But guess what?

The box office results have been disappointing.

What could have gone wrong? A stellar cast. Great script. Funny as …

No. Too much marketing!

To quote the Steven Zeitchik’s Los Angeles Times story (December 23, 2013)

‘That heaping plate of Ron Burgundy over the past few months (there was also that anchoring of news in North Dakota, the relentless Dodge Durango commercials, the Newseum exhibition, the underwear cross-promotion) made people feel like they had gotten their fill of the character.’

I don’t know about you, but I don’t like being repeatedly bashed over the head.

Be strategic and subtle. Plan your marketing. Give ’em time to breathe.

But let them know you’re there.

Anyway … I loved the film!

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