Published in Better Marketing·PinnedMember-onlyWhere Content Marketing And Customer Service MeetThe art of possibilities — Content marketing — it’s worth revisiting what it actually means. If I had to boil it down to a one-liner, I’d define it this way: It’s selling without hitting someone with a sales pitch. Mailchimp provides this more formal definition: Content marketing is a marketing strategy used to attract, engage…Marketing5 min readMarketing5 min read
Published in MuddyUm·PinnedMember-onlyWould You Like Salt With That?Sprinkle, sprinkle, little shaker — Doug: Hi, everyone! I’m Doug Blabbitt, and welcome to another episode of our podcast, You Need To Know This! I’m here with today’s guest, Dr. Nancy Crater, one of the world’s top sodium researchers, and we’re going to talk about those little white crystals. …Health7 min readHealth7 min read
PinnedMember-onlyBrands Can Learn a Lot From Baseball’s Greatest CharacterSome eggs-cellent advice from The Ol’ Perfessor — You’ve never heard of Casey Stengel?? Ah– you must be a young person: someone under the age of 50! Casey was one of major league baseball’s true eccentrics. He died back in 1975, but he still inspires, and his legend lives on. I was reminded of this when I read…Leadership5 min readLeadership5 min read
Published in ILLUMINATION·Jan 16Member-onlyLess Color, More Shared HumanityBecause the last thing the world needs is more division — The United States in celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day on Monday, January 16, 2023. It is, of course, named for the great civil rights leader. King was a unifier. Yes, blacks were treated like second-class citizens during the time he was most active, and he was certainly looking to…Martin Luther King4 min readMartin Luther King4 min read
Published in The Haven·Jan 11Member-onlyI Was Born Again On New Year’s EveAnd I have the video to prove it — Gosh, here it is The 17th Day of Christmas and I’m just getting around to wishing everyone a Happy New Year. I figured you’d all be hung over, see, and I wanted to give you time to sober up. Yes, I’m thoughtful that way. We always have a big New…Videos2 min readVideos2 min read
Published in ILLUMINATION·Jan 10Member-onlyMake Your Content EnjoyableAnd prospects will be a lot more inclined to take action — Have fun OK, you’re a marketer. You’ve written a post, and you want readers to respond to your call to action (CTA). How do you accomplish that? As you might expect, there are lots of opinions: Make the CTA simple… make it easy to find… tell readers exactly what you want them…Marketing4 min readMarketing4 min read
Published in ILLUMINATION·Oct 12, 2022Member-only7 Tips for Choosing the Right Visual ArtistTo help your brand stand out and get noticed — If you use social media and content marketing to build your brand, you need images. Why? To attract reader attention, and because readers are much more apt to share content that includes images. There are plenty of stock photos floating around, but they tend to look like, well, stock photos. …Artist5 min readArtist5 min read
Published in ILLUMINATION·Sep 28, 2022Member-onlyBite-Sized Marketing: 6-Second Video AdsWhy? Because they’re skip-proof — Six-second video ads — you’ve seem ’em, right? Google refers to them as bumper ads. They run as pre-roll ads on YouTube videos. Some longer pre-roll ads are skippable: you can skip the ad after watching it for 5 seconds. And most people do skip them. …Marketing3 min readMarketing3 min read
Published in ILLUMINATION·Sep 20, 2022Member-onlyCrafting A Content Marketing QuizA fun way to engage visitors and readers — Content marketing… if you’re a business, it’s all about getting noticed and getting people to engage with your content. That’s how you attract prospects. One way to do this is with a quiz. A quiz is a fun way for readers to learn something helpful, while allowing you to demonstrate…Marketing4 min readMarketing4 min read
Published in ILLUMINATION·Sep 12, 2022Member-onlyBrands Need To Deliver A Great User ExperienceSo what exactly IS User Experience? — Let’s say you’re a birdwatcher. You’ve got a feeder. You need to buy birdseed for it. Back in The Dark Ages (no computers or mobile phones), you’d go to a store made out of brick and mortar. …Marketing4 min readMarketing4 min read