Social media is a strange business. You know people for years, but only as a round picture in your browser. Sheldon Levine and I have known each other since early in the social media days but didn’t meet in person until he moved from Toronto to Vancouver. Sheldon and I talked about one of his…
I was really excited to finally get a chance to chat with Chuck Frey. We’ve been in each other’s orbits for probably a decade, but we haven’t actually spoken until now. We talked about how to use mind mapping for writing, ideas, even project management. It’s a great synchronicity because not an hour before I…
Ever have those fan boy/fan girl moments where you get to talk with someone who you’ve admired for years? Yeah that was this episode. I got to talk with none other than Brett Terpstra who: Wrote for The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) Worked at AOL Was the developer behind Engadget and TechCrunch Created the Markdown…
This week I have my first guest on the show! Cassandra Jowett is the Senior Director of Marketing at Path Factory. Six years ago she started an in person group in Toronto for other content marketers. Now this group has gone virtual with over 400 people in an invite-only Slack group. In this episode, hear…
I was thinking about how I approach writing, how I approach what we call blogging now (aka content marketing). It’s just not the same. I’ve noticed the posts where I have to tone down “Tris”, they don’t seem to have the same impact as the ones where I can be a little more free. Now…
It’s been a while, but I thought it was time to podcast again I love making podcasts. My first one was my “Walkabout Podcast” I started in 2005 and ran for a year or so. Just me walking around the neighborhood talking about marketing. Later Jim Turner and I did a show on Blog Talk…
Lack of process is the kryptonite to any content marketing strategy I’ve seen it happen time and time again. People develop a great content strategy then nothing seems to work out. They’re not achieving their goals and the whole effort starts to lose steam. The whole content strategy they spent so much time on fails….
This is how I’ve approached SEO for over a decade. No matter what Google does with its algorithms, the content I write ranks. I follow Matt Cutts’ advice from WordCamp 2009 (when he still worked at Google): Write descriptive headlines Use headings to separate sections and highlight big points Use descriptive link text (ie never/rarely…
In the decade plus I’ve been doing content marketing for startups, SMBs, and enterprises, there’s one sure thing that will derail any content marketing effort: not having established production, approval, and publishing processes. Without processes and plans, as people get busy with other things, content marketing becomes an “oh yeah we should post something, but…
Life gets in the way. My goal, as I ramp up my content marketing and freelance writing business, was to post here everyday. Following the example of Mark Evans and others, I wanted to post something interesting and insightful each day. Something to get people thinking. But I haven’t posted everyday. Not even close. Funny…