Tag Archives: planning content

Welcome to the emojincey ward

1 Mar

emojincey ward

The digital sphere can be complicated for marketers and business operators, trying to keep up with all the new features social media is offering as well as apps and other whizz bang offerings.

I use the term whizz bang because when you really look at a lot of these innovations, they offer the excitement of the new. And we have been trained to upgrade from old to new even when the new features aren’t that special.

In the olden days marketing was relatively simple.

  • Create the message
  • Match it to your target market
  • Choose the best media option
  • Run the ad or the campaign.

Now targeting requires sorting through many variables to do with lifestyle and behaviours.

Ads or posts are run and testing is conducted using the analytics.

Often we are advised to run separate campaigns to ‘test’ the efficacy and effectiveness.

We are told to be strangely unique to cut through and to tell stories not to just sell.

TV channels have been replaced by internet influencers who command vast audiences.

It’s so un marketing in the traditional sense where a product or service was promoted to a market.

OK … that’s simplistic.

And there’s likes and follows. Shorthand ticks of approval from our ‘community.”

Other shorthands include the emoji.

now featuring an array of cute visages with stand out emotions. And gifs.

Like it or not, we are in the age of shorthand … short attentions span.

Ultra convenience services such as UBER Eats and Netflix stop people socialising.

But people are people and will no doubt get bored with social which is why they have to keep changing and updating and adding features.

Great advertising is still about the creative. Cut through only occurs when people stop and take notice.

So let’s open the emojincey ward where people are people and emotions aren’t a quick flick, insert and like.

emoji image:  

I dare you to watch this video

9 Aug

Have you got a coupla minutes?

My kid is 12 and he loves his technology. I don’t mean that he just likes it a lot … he loves it. I like technology too. I’m using it now. But I also love books. I am auto didactic. No not that. I have always read a lot. As a kid I just tore up history books (those illustrated ones) and began reading classics via the Classic Comics Illustrated range which introduced me to Turgenev and Victor Hugo. I knew about myths and legends from Norse to Roman and later on I discovered my mother’s books. It took me a week to get over the first time I opened The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir and Henry Miller … well he was amazing for a kid who watched the Beverly Hillbillies.

I am not anti technology because I think it’s the greatest tool of creativity and self expression since that hungarian Bic invented the biro but I’m afraid that it’s got some limitations too.

My kid showed me this video and I think it sums things up quite well and has repercussions for us all business-wise or not:

 

 

 

 

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.

 

In just 60 seconds

6 Jan

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According to an article published in the second half of 2013, this is what happens on the ‘net’ every 60 seconds.

To quote the article in the UK Daily Mail, published July 30:

‘In just a single minute on the web 216,000 photos are shared on Instagram, a total of £54,000 ($83,000) sales take place on Amazon, there are 1.8 million likes on Facebook and three days worth of video is uploaded to YouTube. 

Cashback site Qmee has created an infographic that shows this information as well as how many tweets are sent, photos are viewed, Skype calls are made, domains are registered and more in 60 seconds.

The graphic pulls information and figures from PC Mag, Business Insider and other sites to create a the snapshot.’ 

So what does this say to businesses who are trying to market themselves in 2014?

You better get some fresh content.

Google loves new and updated content.

Content that is relevant to your market.

PLAN DO ACT CHECK

Lessons learned from House of Cards

28 Dec

House of CardsHouse of Cards is an American remake of a BBC drama featuring the oh so Machiavellian Francis Urquhart or old FU (BBC) renamed for the US series as Francis Underwood and starring Kevin Spacey.

Both series are well made and gripping in a politico thriller kind of way. And Kevin Spacey is just amazing playing an amoral, unethical and complex Washington power broker.

One of the main characters is a young journalist with an eye for breaking news which she isn’t even getting close to on the big, traditional newspaper she works for.

Sick of covering C grade stories, she hungers for something more.

She is also aware that traditional print newspapers are losing ground to online forms of news.

Without giving the plot away, she finds herself being a conduit for real news. She talks the editor into running her stories. She gets some recognition. She leaves the paper to join an online blog.

Here’s the lesson I learnt from A House of Cards:

“Will it get me in 8 seconds?” The blog editor asks her regarding a proposed post

“That’s all we have.”

8 seconds to hook the reader.

Can you hook them in 8 seconds or less? I’m sure I lost you in the first paragraph.

Now I don’t think that short grabs work for everything. Long copy works for some products and some stories. People still like to read.

Think it through. What are your key objectives?

And, here’s to old FU!

Hello SILO … you’d better be flexible!

3 Dec

ImageI work on many projects with many different organisations. Corporations, authorities, not for profits and small to medium businesses and I often find that I’m cast adrift between mountains of giant silos.

Silos form when the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.

I’m not casting aspersions (or aspidistras) at all the hard working people I interact with. I’m just making an observation. Silos form when people are rushing to meet change.

Change happens rapidly these days. Policies change, then procedures or ways of doing things. Regulations and laws change when governments change or government policy changes. Change happens when businesses are growing exponentially and new people are brought on board.

Silos also form when there’s a lack of communication across organisations, strategic business units (SBU’s) and teams.

Silos can also form when people don’t share.

Silos affect content developers too. We can be working away using some accepted template, or creating content in a suggested way and then … it’s not quite right.

Can this be a problem? Yes and no.

Clever consultants can pick a silo a milo off (sorry, it rhymed.)

Clever consultants communicate widely.

Clever consultants are flexible and don’t go into spasms of disappointment  and take things personally regarding their work.

My mum told me that a truly sane person has an ingrained ability to change their minds!

I tell my kid all the time, life is full of paradoxes … be flexible and open minded.

And smile a lot          : )

Frank Sinatra and content development. I did it my way

29 Sep

APPROVEDI love Frank Sinatra. His phrasing was amazing (sorry about that one!)

One of my favourites is his rendition of ‘My Way.’ Originally a french song and re-written by legend Paul Anka, it’s a testament to uniqueness, bravery. resilience and self belief. Ol’ Blue Eyes put in all the blows, hits and lingering disappointments. This song is about living and by the soaring end, this listener is in no doubt that Frank lived a life.

I’m a my way kind of person. Strong minded and creative. I often run on instinct fuelled by experience > what’s going to work and what’s not.

But here’s the thing: when you’re planning websites; developing content (products, knowledgebases, social platforms etc.,) always communicate with your stakeholders (internal and external) regularly, get approval and formal sign off. 

This is not always easy. You have to pitch it right and differently depending on your audience. The cost/benefit analysis.

Many great ad campaigns have been ruined by ‘the client.’ They just want the logo bigger. They often don’t share your enthusiasm for standing out in a crowded marketplace. But they are the client nevertheless, nervous or not.

Set up a ‘milestone’ approval system so that everyone’s on the same page. I do love cliches.

And stay brave!!

Leonardo da Vinci and content planning

24 Sep

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I have developed content for a number of businesses as well as creating and delivering training programs (aka Instructional Design.)

Content can be for non-static websites; marketing programs or social media.

One thing became clear to me in the process. That is the importance of planning.

Having a series of plans that start with the Big Picture (see above,) is a good way to not only focus on what you are building, but also becoming ready to create and stay on track with projects.

Creativity is pure. We know that. Artists are born that way or are they? Real art is intuitive, it’s just there in moments of genius or is it?

Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo (both successful businessmen) produced ‘rough’ studies before creating their masterpieces.

My friend, famed Australian artist Rodney Pople, executes a number of sketches and daubs before he knows he’s on the track.

Writers plan and signpost using a variety of methods. Chapter headings is one way to write a novel.

Having a ‘helicopter view’ of what you are trying to achieve and then implementing it is a good way to plan and build.

It can be visual or text based. I find that visual is better.

Just get it all down and make your map.