…and not be left by the roadside. 

You wouldn’t jump into the car and head North with no destination, map or GPS, so how is heading into the unknown of content creation and distribution any different?  Read more

…without being a Master Chef. 

You know that your content (blog, White Papers, web content etc) could make or break your business in 2013 but how do you create it? How do you create enough of it? How do get enough time?  Read more

Great content is like great cooking. 

We all know that content is all that matters and content marketing is the only way to market. Its a bit like MasterChef and My Kitchen Rules: they're novel ways to make cooking popular, but how different are the basics? You still have to create a great meal: you just have to do it in limited time in a highly competitive environment. Isn't that just like marketing? We'll show you how to create content quickly - and make it good enough to win over the toughest judges.  Read more

The new rules. 

Back in the 90’s there was a book called the ‘The New Rules’ which was all about dating. I thought it was a bit corny at the time but it was very popular; it became a cult and was even updated recently. Content marketing is a lot like dating – you’re using your content to engage others, so it pays to know the rules and, unlike the book, they’re not all written down.   Read more

Don't spray and pray. 

When I first started in marketing, some marketers used the 'spray & pray' technique, which meant chucking anything out there, hoping some might hit the right target and stick. It wasn’t a method I advocated then and don’t now: it’s a bit like trying to get a spray tan in a gale. The result won’t be effective – or pretty.  Read more

Sales people who talk too much can kill the sale, but techies who can't talk at all or who blurt out 'facts' at inconvenient times can too. Discover how I learned from bitter experience (I was the former) why selling is a skill that both sales and technical teams need - and why we developed Soft Skills for Techies.   Read more

A New Year, a New Set of Rules from Big Brother. 

Google has been carefully tweaking its search algorithms with updates such as Panda and Penguin to penalise sites that engage in keyword stuffing and fake link building. For Google, it’s all about improving the quality of search results so it will continue to devalue derivative and filler website copy in favour of original content of real value.  Read more

A recipe with 8 essential ingredients. 

The concept of the  Elevator Pitch comes from Hollywood, where aspiring scriptwriters would jump into the elevator with a producer and pitch their new script idea in the time it took for the elevator to reach the penthouse suite. If you think that’s a tough task, MGM boss Louis B. Mayer used to ask scriptwriters to write their synopsis on the back of his business cards. By comparison, the 30-45 seconds you have in an elevator seem luxurious.  Read more

The good news is your competitors are far from perfect. 

Despite the many new ways to deliver your message, words are still the main currency of our communications. Mastering words is more crucial now because everybody is a writer and publisher: everyone has a Facebook page, a blog, a Twitter page and everyone writes emails.  Read more

Small glitches with grammar that cause big problems. 

Whatever you write or speak about and whoever your audience, the fastest ways to lose credibility is to make silly grammatical errors. Sure, you might say that content is far more important than a minor grammar slip, but you'd be wrong: little slips can turn into almighty clangers.  Read more