Archive
Brand Messaging Checklist: 10 Ways to Get it Right
February 3, 2020
Resources Brand Messaging Checklist: 10 Ways to Get it Right How do you know when your message is worth the effort to tell? Not only worth telling, but worth your audience consuming? To help build a well-oiled marketing machine, it helps to have clearly defined processes and checkpoints. Over the years, we’ve developed a checklist that grades our messaging ideas. It’s our top-requested resource. In fact, it’s the heart of one of our frequently given talks “Right & Wrong: Lessons in Shareable Content” which discusses how we rate and beat up our initial ideas until it passes this checklist. It’s…
A Starter Guide to a Career as a Strategist
February 3, 2020
Resources A Starter Guide to a Career as a Strategist What advice would you give college students pursuing a career in marketing? Learn to code instead? Invest in your 401k early?! The local Ad Club asked if I’d do just this. Specifically on how to get started as a Strategist. The following are the slides/sketches I offered up to the future talent in our industry. The Path I Took I started as a maker and a generalist. Early on, UX/UI design and animation was my jam. I could code well-enough, but it didn’t charge my batteries. So instead of pursuing…
The Best Content Measurement Tools
February 3, 2020
Resources The Best Content Measurement Tools We like to go beyond soft measurements and understand the full impact – some call this “ROI” – that our content generates. Our philosophy is that it’s important to understand the impact of tactics holistically. It’s easy to get stuck in meaningless metrics, so we define what our goals early and measure against them. Before you decide which tools you’re using, it’s important to know what you want to measure. What are your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)? If you’re sending an email, is your KPI simply opens or clicks, or is it a full-funnel…
3 Ways to get beyond the basics in Google Analytics
January 30, 2020
Resources 3 Ways to get beyond the basics in Google Analytics Reporting: it can sometimes be the the scariest word for marketers. Lucky for us, there are incredible tools, like Google Analytics (or GA for short), to help lessen the intimidation associated with reporting. Google Analytics helps to put data into perspective so we can make sense of it all. Having compiled more than a few dozen reports for clients over the past couple years, we’ve got a few recommendations on how to get more out of your basic GA reports. 1) Take Advantage of Secondary Dimensions One of the…
Right & Wrong: Lessons in Shareable Content
March 16, 2018
Resources Right & Wrong: Lessons in Shareable Content As marketers, we’re steeped in the best practices of developing and distributing content. But if we’re all following the same rules, how can your message stand out? It’s a not easy, so we developed a 10-point checklist to grade our ideas against before we set out to create a new content series. The funny thing is, we’re starting to use it for paid ad campaigns as well. It’s not an easy set of questions to pass. In fact most of our original ideas flunk it. BUT, from there we have a better…
Finding your brand voice
March 7, 2018
Resources Finding Your Brand Voice How can your brand’s voice play a part in serving your organization’s mission? Claire Bishop of Children International and our founder Justin Watkins walk through how brands can find the right voice and tone to communicate their mission to the right audience. To illustrate their point they discuss the process of finding CI’s voice and position that aligns with their mission and their audience. See the full deck here:Slideshare: Finding Your Voice. And for more examples of the Children International work check out the full case study. And be sure to meet some of the many kids CI supports around…
How your company can (really) adopt your brand voice
October 7, 2017
Resources How Your Company Can (Really) Adopt Your Brand Voice If you’re reading this, you probably understand the ins and outs of your organization’s brand perfectly. The hard part (and often the reason establishing a brand voice is important in the first place) is communicating that brand to the outside world, consistently. When developing a brand voice, establishing the guidelines is only step one. Step two – getting your organization to adopt it – is the bigger obstacle. So, how do you begin to bring to life the brand voice that you worked so hard to define? We’ve got a…
Google Analytics 101: Auditing Your Content
November 11, 2016
Resources Google Analytics 101: Auditing Your Content Google Analytics is usually seen as a purely quantitative tool. While you can certainly focus on stats, the data in GA can also tell you a lot about the effectiveness of your content and brand voice. If you’ve spent some time creating content with a defined, strong brand voice, there are a few top-level areas of GA that are worth a look to understand your content performance. Better Understand Your Current Audience While your website isn’t the only channel your audience will use, it’s a good baseline for seeing who you’re reaching the…
How to create a more strategic editorial calendar
November 7, 2016
Resources How to Create a More Strategic Editorial Calendar Editorial calendars can be overwhelming – if you’ve ever pulled up a big, color-coded spreadsheet in a meeting and watched eyes glaze over, you know what I mean. And often, content calendars can be either extremely cluttered with notes and deadlines, or a little too simple, containing just content titles, authors and publication channels. Finding the right balance of simplicity and strategy for your content calendar can make all the difference. Here are a few tactics to consider if you’re ready to take your content calendar to the next level: Rethink Your…
Tools for Next-Level Writing
September 4, 2016
Resources Tools for Next-Level Writing The internet is flooded with content covering every possible subject, and it’s growing every day. Sadly, a lot of this content is low quality and often gets in the way of the truly useful gems out there. For a consumer, sorting through bad content to find the information you need can be frustrating and overwhelming. As a marketer, the best way to set yourself apart from this mass of content is by producing quality work that is useful and well-written. If words like write and edit make you sweat, no worries. There are plenty of tools out there to help you…
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