On Words and Business

The heart of content marketing is providing information for your customers. But what information?

Assuming you’ve done your research into your customers and competitors and found a way to take a leadership role in your business or market sector, it is time to start solving your customers’ problems.

Start with this: they might not even know they have a problem. Before you can solve it you have to help them understand they have a problem. This is where your research and thought leadership come into play.

Once you’ve convinced them they have a problem, then you solve it. This isn’t as nefarious as it sounds. This isn’t about manufacturing a need. Every business has challenges they don’t recognize as such. This is about identifying those challenges and offering a solution.

Want to create a social media policy but don’t know how? Want to make sure your existing policy passes muster?

Check out Social Media Governance, a website with over 100 policies from companies like the BBC, FedEx, and Sun Microsystems. In addition, there are links to over 100 research reports about social media policy, some of them free.

A great resource.

Straight Talk with Nigel Hollis

Thoughts on marketing, branding, and communications from the folks at market research agency Millward Brown. Good stuff.

Apparently, a lot of people are glad to see the aughts go away. According to the Pew Research Center, this was the worst decade in 50 years.

Technology bright spots:

• 69% think cell phones are a change for the better
• 65% think the internet and email are changes for the better

Interestingly:

• 40% think that more people getting tattoos is a change for the worse
• 45% think that more people getting tattoos hasn’t made a difference

As I’ve said before, I’m not big on the lack of standardized categories for website content.

Like most, I’ve gotten used to searching Google for things. Although I’m not anti-Google, most of my searches are done reluctantly and with a sigh at the knowledge of all the dreck I’ll have to sort through. These days, sadly, it’s almost the only way to find something online.

Then…there is an outage. Here’s a great article on the single point of failure for finding content on the web.

It’s quite thought-provoking how important one’s perspective is to writing about and understanding an issue.

Right now, my work has me focusing on the history of the manufacturing industry in the United States. (My forthcoming book is a guide to careers in manufacturing, and I’ve been working on the industry history chapter.) In a way it never seemed before, the entire history of this country is all about manufacturing and business interests.

History for me has always been social or urban. Never military or business or religious or any other thing. So it’s quite an eye opener to be looking at the same stories and the same basic information from a different perspective.

It really opened my eyes. And it makes me realize that purposefully looking at the same information from another perspective is a good exercise to help my writing be more inclusive and perceptive.

Plus, it’s just really fascinating to see in a different light something I thought I knew.

What are your experiences of looking at something with a new perspective?