The Idea Mill
Insights + Observations About the Power of Content
Effective marketing programs should employ both bullhorns and bullseyes. I am extremely excited to announce my latest collaboration with Curtis Hays and his Collideascope teamlance: a podcast devoted to bridging the chasm between marketing and sales, called “Bullhorns and Bullseyes.
Find it wherever you get your podcasts. Or stream it now, read the transcript, and even watch the video cast of all three episodes, with more on the way soon!
Everything's a notification these days.
Are you finding it annoying?
Check in on virtually any social media platform, and you'll be bombarded with notifications, badges and prompts. About...well, just about anything.
It used to be that you'd only receive timely, important and relevant notifications, specific to your own behaviors and actions on any given platform. Now, if some random connection posts something, comments on something, or so much as bats an eyelash emoji online, rest assured, you'll get a notification.
Here’s how you can start taking some of your time and attention back…
I am proud to share the news that my second fiction novel, The Fatal Flaw, has been released and is now available on Amazon.com.
Very few content creators go into a piece of writing with the notion, “I hope readers skim this piece!” But, in fact, that’s exactly what you want them to do.
The binary isn’t between whether readers will skim your article or read it in its entirety; it’s whether they will skim it or skip it altogether.
And thus becomes one of the primary purposes of developing effective content for marketing purposes: the skim. Facilitate that, and you will earn the readers’ trust, interest and engagement. That initial skim, therefore, becomes the introduction to you, your expertise and the subject matter of the discrete piece of thought leadership. It is the portal into a deeper relationship between the author and reader.
The skim is the invitation to delve deeper. Without it, you’re risking the dreaded skip.
Mere “content” for content’s sake is generally not enough to fully allow an individual to differentiate, to establish a credible expert reputation, and to separate oneself from the competitive field of peers and rivals in the increasingly crowded marketplace of ideas. Sure, if you would’ve asked me ten years ago, “Is any content better than no content?” the answer would’ve been a reluctant “sure.” But today, the media are noisier, the voices are more plentiful, and our audiences have never been more distractible.
The good news? Most of the content out there is considered by decision makers to be subpar. There’s your opportunity: to elevate your subject matter expertise into thought leadership, and your thought leadership into new business opportunities. But you likely won’t achieve your aspirations by adding to the content tsunami. You must engage in thought leadership, not just content creation.
Ever since the announcement a couple of weeks ago that the Creative Mill has joined the Collideascope “teamlance” model, I've received a lot of questions about what it is and how it works. Curtis Hays, one of my co-collaborators, has a pretty good explainer at the collideascope blog, which I’ll link to here and excerpt below:
Brian Clark calls it the “teamlance” model.
As with just about everything in life, the old model is being democratized and decentralized in the world of marketing and advertising. While the big-agency model is still the right fit for many, others are discovering a new way of client service that offers the best of all possible worlds: experience, bandwidth, resources, flexibility and affordability.
Today we are announcing that we have entered into an informal (and even undocumented) partnership of the teamlance model with a long-time collaborator, Curtis Hays and his team at Collideascope. Meet the rest of the team here.
Brands can turn to teamlancing to maximize the flexibility of their operations with self-managing creative resources that are specialized, right-sized, and timed to their changing needs, whether project-based or for the long term.
The following originally appeared in the Further newsletter, which I highly endorse and what remains one of few things I read each and every week. Do yourself a favor and subscribe.
Written by the outstanding Trudi Roth, this piece captures my own thinking about the future and purpose of writing better than I ever could. With her permission, I reprint it in its entirety here.
As someone who makes her living by writing, you might think I’m petrified that AI will decimate my career.
Honestly, machines don’t scare me. It’s the foolish humans who are okay with completely abdicating their ability to think, communicate, and solve problems that I find alarming.
