Essays The True North Formula In his book Profit First, Mike Michalowicz outlines a common scenario that prevents businesses from making a profit. The problem is that most business owners use the following accounting formula: Revenue - expenses
Essays Why Email Marketing Is a Missed Opportunity for Agencies After 40 years in the game, email still outperforms other channels with the highest ROI, at $44 per $1 spent. But for agencies offering email marketing, it's also a force multiplier that complements
Essays Airtable + Zapier: Everything You Need to Run a High-Volume Editorial Workflow The longer I work in content marketing, the more I realize that there are so many little things that make a great content program. It's about much more than great writing. A great
Essays How to Edit Your Own Writing This is an excerpt of a course I put together for MarketingProfs called the Marketing Writing Bootcamp. It's a 13-part series that includes courses from amazing writers like Joanna Wiebe and
Essays How to Write Content That Doesn't Sound Like Content Marketing Oh Twitter. What happened to you. You used to be so fun and interesting, and now all that’s left is fucking content marketing.— John O'Nolan (@JohnONolan) September 26, 2016
Essays Work in Slow Motion Years ago, a mentor told me a story about NFL quarterback Joe Montana. He wasn’t the fastest guy on the field and didn’t have the strongest arm, but he saw the
Essays Physical Requirements I saw this the other day in a job description and it really depressed me. I won’t call out the company—I’m sure there’s some legalese that requires them to
Essays Why I Write a Newsletter I've been sending a weekly email newsletter for nearly two years. I pay Mailchimp $67.50 out of my own pocket every month to do that and sometimes wonder if it's worth it
Essays Blogs Are Libraries, Not Publications I've written before that content marketers should not make the mistake of treating their blog like a true editorial publication. Content marketing teams usually don't have the people or the resources to
Essays The Content Promotion Lie "Promotion" and "distribution" are the two most distracting words in content marketing for two important reasons: They put the focus on the business, not the reader. (The truth is
Essays Good Work Habits Are the Key to Less Stress Technology is stressing you out. But don't worry, it's not just you. The tools we use at work are engineered to keep us engaged. Our phones keep work just a few feet away
Essays Graduate from Analogies Analogies are a powerful way to communicate ideas, but they are also a crutch. We need to be able to explain ideas to readers without analogies and cliches. Relying on someone else's words
Essays The Difference Between a First Draft and Second Draft "Most first drafts can be cut by 50 percent without losing any information or losing the author’s voice." — William Zinsser Intercom's recent post In Praise of Editing has me thinking
Essays The Work Habits Manifesto Isn't it interesting that the Internet simultaneously makes our work more and less efficient? On one hand, we can video chat with remote coworkers all over the world. On the other, buzzing notifications,
Essays Workplace communication is lazy and broken Technology kind of sucks. Seriously, how many tools or software products have actually made your life better recently? I'll bet almost none. In fact, I'll bet at least a few made your life
Essays The [Persona] + [Use Case] Formula UPDATE: I created a worksheet so you can easily brainstorm 50 topics for your own business. It includes a PDF that walks you through the process and spreadsheet to help you pair personas
Essays How to work without a computer Work is the process of creating value. Don't mistake sitting at a computer for working. Some of your best work can (and should!) happen with no internet connection at all. Even more importantly,
Essays The Hub and Spoke Content Strategy Content strategy tends to be either overcomplicated or vague. And often both. There's plenty of ways to approach it, but here's a simple template that can be repurposed over and over again. Blog
Essays The Problem with Habit-Forming Tech in Marketing A few hundred years ago, sugar was essentially absent from the human diet. Today, according to the New York Times, it's "used in approximately 75 percent of packaged foods purchased in the
Essays Big Wins for Content Marketing Or, Unsexy Strategies for Long-Term Growth. If you want to retire early, there are two important rules you should follow. The first is that time in the market is far more important than
Essays When to Sell This post originally appeared on the Vero blog. It's important to understand when to sell your product and when to learn more about your potential customers. Many marketers believe that acquiring an email
Essays Why You Should Learn From Success, Not Failure This post originally appeared on the Vero blog. It's a common misconception that people learn more from failure than success. But in fact, just the opposite is true. Here's Basecamp co-founder Jason Fried's
Essays Say Goodbye to Comfortable No doubt you've had butterflies in your stomach at some point in your life. Maybe it was before you pitched the last game of the high school playoffs or did a sales presentation
Essays Defining “Hard Work” for a New Generation of Laborers Ashton Kutcher’s speech at the Teen Choice Awards got me thinking about what hard work means to my generation. “I believe that opportunity looks a lot like hard work,” he says. Right