Category: Making Content
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What makes or breaks your B2B original research report often happens long before you start writing
Many marketers assume the success of a research report comes down to promotion, distribution, or budget. In reality, the reports that perform best are usually shaped by decisions made much earlier in the process.
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Most B2B research wouldn’t survive a peer review — and it’s costing us our credibility
Genuine research requires you to move beyond the brief, into your audience’s world. Nothing in the system rewards that move, at least for 90% of companies out there. But the 10% that prioritize this publish content that survives algorithmic changes and shapes perceptions for years to come.
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3 lessons on effective use of data from The Economist (+ fostering credibility without stats)
As B2B writers, we’ve accepted as gospel that a claim isn’t credible unless there’s a third-party claim to back it up. But I believe strongly that poorly used data is more detrimental to credibility than no data.
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Content marketing isn’t just for robots
If AEO content is at least partially about building for robots, and we can engineer AI to do that work, it’s time to focus on the rest of content marketing.
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I stopped guessing what to write and started eavesdropping instead
Most content calendars start with keyword research and capturing historical search volumes. Mine starts with listening to how people actually talk about their problems.
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What we can learn from animators about scaling content
In animation, as with any creative discipline, your results are only as good as the system behind it. The same is true for content marketing.
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Seeking: B2B content with range
Here’s the diagnosis hiding underneath most B2B content strategies: they default to the same two or three psychological jobs — inform me, guide me, advise me — and treat every other reason an audience might seek out content as someone else’s concern.
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My favorite AI project is a 75-page document nobody ever reads
It’s the single biggest unlock that has made our AI-assisted work actually good instead of just okay.
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Why everyone is talking about taste
Taste is a subset of judgment that’s inseparable from the person exercising it — a word for what’s at once skilled, and yet distinctly personal and human.
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What your content really needs is emotion
Nobody (external) cares about your content because nobody (internal) cares about your content. Your B2B content may be more interesting now, but still, it remains unmemorable because there is no real emotion behind it.
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This article is done, not perfect
More and more I wanted something concrete, a process for determining “when is this done?” After hours of building variations and trying to account for every corner case, I admitted that SOPs for choosing “done” on every piece of content weren’t happening. Instead, I’ve moved toward a three-part framework: purpose, limitations, value.