#I also am also following the line to become a teen and young adult specialist

[kawaguardian-blog]

If my dad could just stop...

Telling me I should join the navy/air force as a stationed counsellor/therapist so that I can get free education and support, that would be great. Thanks.

[rolandfontana]

Top NYC ‘Raise the Age’ Official Joins National Juvenile Justice Reform Group

Felipe Franco

Felipe Franco, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s point person overseeing the rollout of the juvenile justice reform known as “Raise the Age” will leave his post this month to join the staff of a major foundation, reports the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Franco, the deputy commissioner for the Division of Youth and Family Justice within the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS), will serve a six-year term on the city’s Board of Corrections as a de Blasio appointee.

Franco will  join the staff of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a national grant maker focused on juvenile justice and child welfare reform.

He has also just been appointed to serve on the regulatory body for the city’s jails,

“Under Felipe’s leadership, ACS has implemented some of the most transformative juvenile justice policies and initiatives in history, including Close to Home and Raise the Age, and we’ve positioned New York City as a national model for juvenile justice reform,” said Commissioner David Hansell in a statement e-mailed via a spokesperson.

“We have a strong leadership team in place at ACS and will continue to improve the lives of children and families involved in the juvenile justice system.”

Photo by peretzpup via Flickr

A source at ACS told The Chronicle of Social Change that Hansell has identified someone to take Franco’s place on an acting basis, and the agency will conduct a national search for a permanent replacement.

On the Board of Corrections, Franco will replace an outspoken critic of the Department of Corrections’ treatment of youth and young adults. Former family court judge Bryanne Hamill has repeatedly said the department moved too slowly to eliminate the use of punitive segregation for detained young adults, voting in the minority on related issues.

In his separate, paid job with the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Franco will serve as a senior fellow for young adult practices. Starting in early November, he “will lead cross-cutting work in partnership with Casey’s child welfare and juvenile justice units, among other Foundation units,” according to Casey spokesperson Carol Abrams.

“Felipe’s work will focus at the intersection of systems to ensure that young people do not become disconnected and those that are, get reconnected as quickly as possible. He will support particular efforts around permanency for older youth in child welfare.”

Hansell concurred in his statement: “Felipe’s new role at the Annie E. Casey Foundation is a testament to the success we’ve had in New York City and I am confident that he will help jurisdictions across the country achieve that same type of success.”

New York City’s juvenile system has shrunk rapidly since Franco was hired in 2014 by former Commissioner Gladys Carrión. According to city data, youth detention admissions plummeted 32 percent through the first three fiscal years of Franco’s tenure, in line with long-running statewide trends and declining youth arrests.

Franco was retained by Carrión’s successor David Hansell — appointed atop ACS in early 2017 — to continue moving the system in a rehabilitation-oriented, pro-social direction for youth.

One of the most high-profile moments of Franco’s time with ACS came after Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) signed the Raise the Age law, requiring all 16- and 17-year-olds to be moved out of the adult jail facilities on Riker’s Island by last October 1. Riker’s Department of Corrections guards followed those teens to Horizon Juvenile Center in the Bronx as part of a temporary joint management arrangement with ACS.

A steady stream of reports soon after the transfer detailed rampant violence between guards and youth in Horizon. ACS Commissioner David Hansell has pushed back the date for ACS taking full control of the facility, and corrections guard unions continue to blast the city’s handling of the facility. City sources in Horizon told The Chronicle Franco has been on site near-daily at times to manage the situation.

“Last October was hard even with him there, so we are just going to have to be vigilant moving forward,” said one person who works with youth in Horizon. This person requested anonymity in order to speak candidly about the Bronx facility whose staff they collaborate with.

Yet, Franco’s job involved more than Horizon. He oversaw hundreds of detention beds for adjudicated youth, and dozens of programs aimed at preventing criminal behavior and diverting youth out of detention.

He managed implementation of Close to Home, a renowned residential treatment program that allows judges to sentence youth to placement near their home communities. As part of Raise the Age, he also led the creation of a new position at ACS, called youth development specialists, who will staff the city’s two higher-security youth detention facilities, including Horizon.

“He developed something that may not be flashy but it’s terribly important: The new title [youth development specialist] allows New York City to hire people with justice-involved backgrounds, and upgraded salaries so we get better people working in juvenile detention,” said David Condliffe of the Center for Community Alternatives.

Unlike traditional jail guards, the specialists are being trained to serve as “role model, mentor and guide” to detained youth, according to hiring guidelines. The agency is planning to hire 700 people for the job, with a starting salary of $46,013.

“He’s been nothing short of a true pioneer in rethinking and implementing all of the reforms that we’ve done for young people in New York City, whether it’s Close to Home when he was with OCFS, reforming how New York City houses juveniles and being an advocate for Raise the Age,” said Condliffe.

According to multiple sources who attended ACS’s recently quarterly meeting with nonprofits that serve foster youth, Commissioner Hansell’s announcement of Franco’s departure took many by surprise.

“A good number of people had no idea. It didn’t seem to be a secret, but ACS has been very quiet about it,” said one nonprofit executive in attendance.

Michael Fitzgerald, editor of the Chronicle of Social Change, is a John Jay/Tow Juvenile Justice Reporting Fellow. John Kelly contributed reporting to this story. 

Top NYC ‘Raise the Age’ Official Joins National Juvenile Justice Reform Group syndicated from https://immigrationattorneyto.wordpress.com/

[conniecogeie]

The Right Way to Balance Business and Fun in Your Content Marketing

When a brand is new and growing, they tend to be freer—and often more fun and creative—with their content. A young brand’s very survival depends upon making a splash, catching attention, and being new and distinctly different.

As a brand matures and new marketing talent is brought in, the tendency is to start looking toward the more established brands in the industry and embrace a slicker, cleaner, more consistent look and feel. Metaphorically speaking, many brands jump straight from cargo shorts and graphic tees to suits and ties, leaving the seemingly frivolous stuff behind.

Then they find themselves in a conundrum. While the professional new attitude works well at certain points of the customer journey, it often falls flat higher up in the funnel. What’s a content marketer to do? Is it possible to be both fun and serious? Or do we have to embrace one and abandon the other?

Questions like these can be especially challenging during the “teen years” of a brand, says Zach Rainey, marketing communication specialist at Japanese ad agency Nippon SP Center Co., Ltd. “They think that since the ball started rolling, it’s time to stiffen up and be an adult already. But if they’ll keep in mind how they built their audience in the first place, they might relax a bit.”

At Workfront, we’ve spent the last couple of years juggling and experimenting with the right blend of playful content—think zombies, superheroes, and the Nine Levels of Hell—and more authoritative assets that answer customer questions and pain points outright. Along the way, we discovered five key lessons any content marketing team can use to more effectively balance the fun (a.k.a. engaging, creative, edgy) and the serious (a.k.a. direct, no-nonsense, buttoned-up) for their brands.

A touch of humanity is increasingly essential for your brand in this age of authenticity. Click To Tweet 1. Listen to the Market

What are people downloading, clicking, and responding to? Don’t forget to look at both social media and demand generation, which requires an open line of communication with the people who run your social media marketing efforts and PR.

“My advice is to stay focused on the audience that engages the most,” both currently and in the past, says Rainey. “What content worked? What built the foundation of your audience?” Perhaps those wacky posts you released when your brand was young helped contribute to your current image in a significant way. It could be a mistake to abandon them completely.

“The most common observation of mine,” says Vivek Nair, head of marketing at Talent & Analytics India, “is when you start out your content marketing efforts, you reflect your brand’s true values (fun, helpful, etc). But as business grows, your focus shifts, and most content folks will focus on churning out quantity rather than quality that matches your values.” Instead, Nair recommends deciding on your brand persona (What do you stand for? Why do you exist?) and “producing content for your target audience and customers with an intention of helping them.”

2. Approach Content by Function

Content at the top of the funnel can be a very different animal than content at the bottom. Without a little fun or edginess, you won’t last long in the realm of old media and social media. But the closer you get to the point of sale, especially in B2B, the more corporate and authoritative you may need to become.

“Some of the tech brands I write for have been doing a mix of playful and more technical pieces,” says Michael Belfiore, New York Times technology journalist and author. “In general I would say that the more playful pieces can be a good icebreaker that can funnel people into more ‘serious’ assets.”

It’s also important to realize that, even for bottom-of-the-funnel content, what sounds dry and boring to content marketers may actually be exciting to the intended audience—especially if it directly addresses their needs and questions.

“It is correct to strive for content that is not dry, but don’t forget that it’s our audience we serve, not our personal preferences,” says Samantha Stone, founder and CMO at The Marketing Advisory Network. “Be sure the tone and information is rich enough to excite your readers, even if it doesn’t appeal to the fun-loving marketer within.”

3. Just Be Human

While you’re trying to find your brand’s sweet spot, remember that content marketing doesn’t have to be laugh-out-loud funny, heavily themed, or wildly creative in order to be effective. The most important thing is to be relatable and human, whether you serve a B2B or B2C audience. After all, even in B2B marketing, you’re trying to engage with the actual humans inside the business.

“B2B buyers use more than their reason to assess a brand,” says Shelly Lucas, director of content marketing for Dun & Bradstreet. “Emotions also play a role, yet few B2B organizations do a good job humanizing their brands. If your company sells marketing technology, but your content comes off flippant, misinformed, or otherwise unaware, it won’t be useful to your audience. Even more than that, it will breed mistrust. Content creators need to develop a human voice that’s engaging, knowledgeable (do your research!), and has a definitive point of view.”

Many brands fall into the trap of thinking that “knowledgeable” and “authoritative” are synonyms to “dry” and “boring”—that every effort to inject personality into the brand will undermine its prestige. But it is possible to be seriously helpful and somewhat playful at the same time.

“In our B2B case, our audience mostly consists of wood flooring contractors,” says Adam Williams, head of marketing at Palo Duro Hardwoods in Denver. “My goal is that our content be authoritative and professionally presented, but relatable. Human. I want our audience to know we aren’t suit-and-tie people so removed from understanding their daily challenges and needs, that we get them, that we are them. So, the content needs some conversational touches.”

4. Be Flexible with Branding Guidelines

It’s common for branding guidelines to be built with a few types of content in mind, like ebooks, for instance, without taking into account how those guidelines will translate to social or the corporate blog. This can put content marketers in a difficult position. You either follow the guidelines to the letter to please your creative director, while failing to engage effectively with your audience, or you wow the audience but end up diluting and undermining the brand over time. You have to work with your individual art director or creative director to find a middle ground—and usually both parties will have to give a little.

Luckily, there are some creative directors who understand that overly strict guidelines will only stifle the brand. “We have established strong brand touchstones—a brand guide, asset templates, and great example pieces—that represent the visual brand that we are striving for,” says Workfront creative director David Lesue. “The team knows to draw from them when creating anything new. But they also know that those touchstones aren’t inflexible. The brand is a living, evolving thing that design gets to push—over time—into new directions.”

5. Avoid Overly Narrow Campaigns

If you want to pull off campaigns that succeed across channels and up and down the funnel, they need to be built for flexibility, not for total uniformity on every piece that goes out. This goes for both messaging and images.

I’ve frequently attended brainstorm sessions where great ideas didn’t make the cut, simply because they weren’t translatable to enough of our potential audiences and channels. The best concepts are those that can be adapted for a playful video to share on Facebook as well as an informative whitepaper or ebook.

Of course, this tip mainly applies to big, multi-faceted campaigns that involve all levels of the marketing organization. The more juice you can squeeze out of that orange, the better. You’ll also be launching smaller, more targeted campaigns throughout the year. Keep an eye on which of those resonate the most; you never know when a lone-wolf asset will inspire your next comprehensive campaign.

Party in the Front, Business in the Back

Whether you’re producing B2B or B2C content, there’s room for a bit of personality in even the most serious brand. In fact, a touch of humanity is increasingly essential in the age of authenticity we live in today.

While it’s true that too much fun and frivolity can make a brand seem young and immature, the pendulum can easily swing too far the other way, making your brand come across as cold and overly corporate. It takes trial and error to strike the right balance for your business. A great place to start is the “party in the front, business in the back” strategy. Create playful top-of-the-funnel content that directs people to more serious content down the line, and adapt as needed.

Please note: While I borrowed the “business in the front, party in the back” tagline (and reversed it) from that infamous ‘80s haircut known as “the mullet”—sported by such style legends as John Stamos, Michael Bolton, and Andre Agassi (who later admitted his was a wig!)—I am in no way advocating for a return of the hairdo itself.

Get a weekly dose of the trends and insights you need to keep you ON top, from the strategy team at Convince & Convert. Sign up for the Convince & Convert ON email newsletter.

http://ift.tt/2q2BpR6

[rodneyevesuarywk]

The Right Way to Balance Business and Fun in Your Content Marketing

When a brand is new and growing, they tend to be freer—and often more fun and creative—with their content. A young brand’s very survival depends upon making a splash, catching attention, and being new and distinctly different.

As a brand matures and new marketing talent is brought in, the tendency is to start looking toward the more established brands in the industry and embrace a slicker, cleaner, more consistent look and feel. Metaphorically speaking, many brands jump straight from cargo shorts and graphic tees to suits and ties, leaving the seemingly frivolous stuff behind.

Then they find themselves in a conundrum. While the professional new attitude works well at certain points of the customer journey, it often falls flat higher up in the funnel. What’s a content marketer to do? Is it possible to be both fun and serious? Or do we have to embrace one and abandon the other?

Questions like these can be especially challenging during the “teen years” of a brand, says Zach Rainey, marketing communication specialist at Japanese ad agency Nippon SP Center Co., Ltd. “They think that since the ball started rolling, it’s time to stiffen up and be an adult already. But if they’ll keep in mind how they built their audience in the first place, they might relax a bit.”

At Workfront, we’ve spent the last couple of years juggling and experimenting with the right blend of playful content—think zombies, superheroes, and the Nine Levels of Hell—and more authoritative assets that answer customer questions and pain points outright. Along the way, we discovered five key lessons any content marketing team can use to more effectively balance the fun (a.k.a. engaging, creative, edgy) and the serious (a.k.a. direct, no-nonsense, buttoned-up) for their brands.

A touch of humanity is increasingly essential for your brand in this age of authenticity. Click To Tweet 1. Listen to the Market

What are people downloading, clicking, and responding to? Don’t forget to look at both social media and demand generation, which requires an open line of communication with the people who run your social media marketing efforts and PR.

“My advice is to stay focused on the audience that engages the most,” both currently and in the past, says Rainey. “What content worked? What built the foundation of your audience?” Perhaps those wacky posts you released when your brand was young helped contribute to your current image in a significant way. It could be a mistake to abandon them completely.

“The most common observation of mine,” says Vivek Nair, head of marketing at Talent & Analytics India, “is when you start out your content marketing efforts, you reflect your brand’s true values (fun, helpful, etc). But as business grows, your focus shifts, and most content folks will focus on churning out quantity rather than quality that matches your values.” Instead, Nair recommends deciding on your brand persona (What do you stand for? Why do you exist?) and “producing content for your target audience and customers with an intention of helping them.”

2. Approach Content by Function

Content at the top of the funnel can be a very different animal than content at the bottom. Without a little fun or edginess, you won’t last long in the realm of old media and social media. But the closer you get to the point of sale, especially in B2B, the more corporate and authoritative you may need to become.

“Some of the tech brands I write for have been doing a mix of playful and more technical pieces,” says Michael Belfiore, New York Times technology journalist and author. “In general I would say that the more playful pieces can be a good icebreaker that can funnel people into more ‘serious’ assets.”

It’s also important to realize that, even for bottom-of-the-funnel content, what sounds dry and boring to content marketers may actually be exciting to the intended audience—especially if it directly addresses their needs and questions.

“It is correct to strive for content that is not dry, but don’t forget that it’s our audience we serve, not our personal preferences,” says Samantha Stone, founder and CMO at The Marketing Advisory Network. “Be sure the tone and information is rich enough to excite your readers, even if it doesn’t appeal to the fun-loving marketer within.”

3. Just Be Human

While you’re trying to find your brand’s sweet spot, remember that content marketing doesn’t have to be laugh-out-loud funny, heavily themed, or wildly creative in order to be effective. The most important thing is to be relatable and human, whether you serve a B2B or B2C audience. After all, even in B2B marketing, you’re trying to engage with the actual humans inside the business.

“B2B buyers use more than their reason to assess a brand,” says Shelly Lucas, director of content marketing for Dun & Bradstreet. “Emotions also play a role, yet few B2B organizations do a good job humanizing their brands. If your company sells marketing technology, but your content comes off flippant, misinformed, or otherwise unaware, it won’t be useful to your audience. Even more than that, it will breed mistrust. Content creators need to develop a human voice that’s engaging, knowledgeable (do your research!), and has a definitive point of view.”

Many brands fall into the trap of thinking that “knowledgeable” and “authoritative” are synonyms to “dry” and “boring”—that every effort to inject personality into the brand will undermine its prestige. But it is possible to be seriously helpful and somewhat playful at the same time.

“In our B2B case, our audience mostly consists of wood flooring contractors,” says Adam Williams, head of marketing at Palo Duro Hardwoods in Denver. “My goal is that our content be authoritative and professionally presented, but relatable. Human. I want our audience to know we aren’t suit-and-tie people so removed from understanding their daily challenges and needs, that we get them, that we are them. So, the content needs some conversational touches.”

4. Be Flexible with Branding Guidelines

It’s common for branding guidelines to be built with a few types of content in mind, like ebooks, for instance, without taking into account how those guidelines will translate to social or the corporate blog. This can put content marketers in a difficult position. You either follow the guidelines to the letter to please your creative director, while failing to engage effectively with your audience, or you wow the audience but end up diluting and undermining the brand over time. You have to work with your individual art director or creative director to find a middle ground—and usually both parties will have to give a little.

Luckily, there are some creative directors who understand that overly strict guidelines will only stifle the brand. “We have established strong brand touchstones—a brand guide, asset templates, and great example pieces—that represent the visual brand that we are striving for,” says Workfront creative director David Lesue. “The team knows to draw from them when creating anything new. But they also know that those touchstones aren’t inflexible. The brand is a living, evolving thing that design gets to push—over time—into new directions.”

5. Avoid Overly Narrow Campaigns

If you want to pull off campaigns that succeed across channels and up and down the funnel, they need to be built for flexibility, not for total uniformity on every piece that goes out. This goes for both messaging and images.

I’ve frequently attended brainstorm sessions where great ideas didn’t make the cut, simply because they weren’t translatable to enough of our potential audiences and channels. The best concepts are those that can be adapted for a playful video to share on Facebook as well as an informative whitepaper or ebook.

Of course, this tip mainly applies to big, multi-faceted campaigns that involve all levels of the marketing organization. The more juice you can squeeze out of that orange, the better. You’ll also be launching smaller, more targeted campaigns throughout the year. Keep an eye on which of those resonate the most; you never know when a lone-wolf asset will inspire your next comprehensive campaign.

Party in the Front, Business in the Back

Whether you’re producing B2B or B2C content, there’s room for a bit of personality in even the most serious brand. In fact, a touch of humanity is increasingly essential in the age of authenticity we live in today.

While it’s true that too much fun and frivolity can make a brand seem young and immature, the pendulum can easily swing too far the other way, making your brand come across as cold and overly corporate. It takes trial and error to strike the right balance for your business. A great place to start is the “party in the front, business in the back” strategy. Create playful top-of-the-funnel content that directs people to more serious content down the line, and adapt as needed.

Please note: While I borrowed the “business in the front, party in the back” tagline (and reversed it) from that infamous ‘80s haircut known as “the mullet”—sported by such style legends as John Stamos, Michael Bolton, and Andre Agassi (who later admitted his was a wig!)—I am in no way advocating for a return of the hairdo itself.

Get a weekly dose of the trends and insights you need to keep you ON top, from the strategy team at Convince & Convert. Sign up for the Convince & Convert ON email newsletter.

http://ift.tt/2q2BpR6

[fairchildlingpo1]

The Right Way to Balance Business and Fun in Your Content Marketing

When a brand is new and growing, they tend to be freer—and often more fun and creative—with their content. A young brand’s very survival depends upon making a splash, catching attention, and being new and distinctly different.

As a brand matures and new marketing talent is brought in, the tendency is to start looking toward the more established brands in the industry and embrace a slicker, cleaner, more consistent look and feel. Metaphorically speaking, many brands jump straight from cargo shorts and graphic tees to suits and ties, leaving the seemingly frivolous stuff behind.

Then they find themselves in a conundrum. While the professional new attitude works well at certain points of the customer journey, it often falls flat higher up in the funnel. What’s a content marketer to do? Is it possible to be both fun and serious? Or do we have to embrace one and abandon the other?

Questions like these can be especially challenging during the “teen years” of a brand, says Zach Rainey, marketing communication specialist at Japanese ad agency Nippon SP Center Co., Ltd. “They think that since the ball started rolling, it’s time to stiffen up and be an adult already. But if they’ll keep in mind how they built their audience in the first place, they might relax a bit.”

At Workfront, we’ve spent the last couple of years juggling and experimenting with the right blend of playful content—think zombies, superheroes, and the Nine Levels of Hell—and more authoritative assets that answer customer questions and pain points outright. Along the way, we discovered five key lessons any content marketing team can use to more effectively balance the fun (a.k.a. engaging, creative, edgy) and the serious (a.k.a. direct, no-nonsense, buttoned-up) for their brands.

A touch of humanity is increasingly essential for your brand in this age of authenticity. Click To Tweet 1. Listen to the Market

What are people downloading, clicking, and responding to? Don’t forget to look at both social media and demand generation, which requires an open line of communication with the people who run your social media marketing efforts and PR.

“My advice is to stay focused on the audience that engages the most,” both currently and in the past, says Rainey. “What content worked? What built the foundation of your audience?” Perhaps those wacky posts you released when your brand was young helped contribute to your current image in a significant way. It could be a mistake to abandon them completely.

“The most common observation of mine,” says Vivek Nair, head of marketing at Talent & Analytics India, “is when you start out your content marketing efforts, you reflect your brand’s true values (fun, helpful, etc). But as business grows, your focus shifts, and most content folks will focus on churning out quantity rather than quality that matches your values.” Instead, Nair recommends deciding on your brand persona (What do you stand for? Why do you exist?) and “producing content for your target audience and customers with an intention of helping them.”

2. Approach Content by Function

Content at the top of the funnel can be a very different animal than content at the bottom. Without a little fun or edginess, you won’t last long in the realm of old media and social media. But the closer you get to the point of sale, especially in B2B, the more corporate and authoritative you may need to become.

“Some of the tech brands I write for have been doing a mix of playful and more technical pieces,” says Michael Belfiore, New York Times technology journalist and author. “In general I would say that the more playful pieces can be a good icebreaker that can funnel people into more ‘serious’ assets.”

It’s also important to realize that, even for bottom-of-the-funnel content, what sounds dry and boring to content marketers may actually be exciting to the intended audience—especially if it directly addresses their needs and questions.

“It is correct to strive for content that is not dry, but don’t forget that it’s our audience we serve, not our personal preferences,” says Samantha Stone, founder and CMO at The Marketing Advisory Network. “Be sure the tone and information is rich enough to excite your readers, even if it doesn’t appeal to the fun-loving marketer within.”

3. Just Be Human

While you’re trying to find your brand’s sweet spot, remember that content marketing doesn’t have to be laugh-out-loud funny, heavily themed, or wildly creative in order to be effective. The most important thing is to be relatable and human, whether you serve a B2B or B2C audience. After all, even in B2B marketing, you’re trying to engage with the actual humans inside the business.

“B2B buyers use more than their reason to assess a brand,” says Shelly Lucas, director of content marketing for Dun & Bradstreet. “Emotions also play a role, yet few B2B organizations do a good job humanizing their brands. If your company sells marketing technology, but your content comes off flippant, misinformed, or otherwise unaware, it won’t be useful to your audience. Even more than that, it will breed mistrust. Content creators need to develop a human voice that’s engaging, knowledgeable (do your research!), and has a definitive point of view.”

Many brands fall into the trap of thinking that “knowledgeable” and “authoritative” are synonyms to “dry” and “boring”—that every effort to inject personality into the brand will undermine its prestige. But it is possible to be seriously helpful and somewhat playful at the same time.

“In our B2B case, our audience mostly consists of wood flooring contractors,” says Adam Williams, head of marketing at Palo Duro Hardwoods in Denver. “My goal is that our content be authoritative and professionally presented, but relatable. Human. I want our audience to know we aren’t suit-and-tie people so removed from understanding their daily challenges and needs, that we get them, that we are them. So, the content needs some conversational touches.”

4. Be Flexible with Branding Guidelines

It’s common for branding guidelines to be built with a few types of content in mind, like ebooks, for instance, without taking into account how those guidelines will translate to social or the corporate blog. This can put content marketers in a difficult position. You either follow the guidelines to the letter to please your creative director, while failing to engage effectively with your audience, or you wow the audience but end up diluting and undermining the brand over time. You have to work with your individual art director or creative director to find a middle ground—and usually both parties will have to give a little.

Luckily, there are some creative directors who understand that overly strict guidelines will only stifle the brand. “We have established strong brand touchstones—a brand guide, asset templates, and great example pieces—that represent the visual brand that we are striving for,” says Workfront creative director David Lesue. “The team knows to draw from them when creating anything new. But they also know that those touchstones aren’t inflexible. The brand is a living, evolving thing that design gets to push—over time—into new directions.”

5. Avoid Overly Narrow Campaigns

If you want to pull off campaigns that succeed across channels and up and down the funnel, they need to be built for flexibility, not for total uniformity on every piece that goes out. This goes for both messaging and images.

I’ve frequently attended brainstorm sessions where great ideas didn’t make the cut, simply because they weren’t translatable to enough of our potential audiences and channels. The best concepts are those that can be adapted for a playful video to share on Facebook as well as an informative whitepaper or ebook.

Of course, this tip mainly applies to big, multi-faceted campaigns that involve all levels of the marketing organization. The more juice you can squeeze out of that orange, the better. You’ll also be launching smaller, more targeted campaigns throughout the year. Keep an eye on which of those resonate the most; you never know when a lone-wolf asset will inspire your next comprehensive campaign.

Party in the Front, Business in the Back

Whether you’re producing B2B or B2C content, there’s room for a bit of personality in even the most serious brand. In fact, a touch of humanity is increasingly essential in the age of authenticity we live in today.

While it’s true that too much fun and frivolity can make a brand seem young and immature, the pendulum can easily swing too far the other way, making your brand come across as cold and overly corporate. It takes trial and error to strike the right balance for your business. A great place to start is the “party in the front, business in the back” strategy. Create playful top-of-the-funnel content that directs people to more serious content down the line, and adapt as needed.

Please note: While I borrowed the “business in the front, party in the back” tagline (and reversed it) from that infamous ‘80s haircut known as “the mullet”—sported by such style legends as John Stamos, Michael Bolton, and Andre Agassi (who later admitted his was a wig!)—I am in no way advocating for a return of the hairdo itself.

Get a weekly dose of the trends and insights you need to keep you ON top, from the strategy team at Convince & Convert. Sign up for the Convince & Convert ON email newsletter.

http://ift.tt/2q2BpR6

[kraussoutene]

The Right Way to Balance Business and Fun in Your Content Marketing

When a brand is new and growing, they tend to be freer—and often more fun and creative—with their content. A young brand’s very survival depends upon making a splash, catching attention, and being new and distinctly different.

As a brand matures and new marketing talent is brought in, the tendency is to start looking toward the more established brands in the industry and embrace a slicker, cleaner, more consistent look and feel. Metaphorically speaking, many brands jump straight from cargo shorts and graphic tees to suits and ties, leaving the seemingly frivolous stuff behind.

Then they find themselves in a conundrum. While the professional new attitude works well at certain points of the customer journey, it often falls flat higher up in the funnel. What’s a content marketer to do? Is it possible to be both fun and serious? Or do we have to embrace one and abandon the other?

Questions like these can be especially challenging during the “teen years” of a brand, says Zach Rainey, marketing communication specialist at Japanese ad agency Nippon SP Center Co., Ltd. “They think that since the ball started rolling, it’s time to stiffen up and be an adult already. But if they’ll keep in mind how they built their audience in the first place, they might relax a bit.”

At Workfront, we’ve spent the last couple of years juggling and experimenting with the right blend of playful content—think zombies, superheroes, and the Nine Levels of Hell—and more authoritative assets that answer customer questions and pain points outright. Along the way, we discovered five key lessons any content marketing team can use to more effectively balance the fun (a.k.a. engaging, creative, edgy) and the serious (a.k.a. direct, no-nonsense, buttoned-up) for their brands.

A touch of humanity is increasingly essential for your brand in this age of authenticity. Click To Tweet 1. Listen to the Market

What are people downloading, clicking, and responding to? Don’t forget to look at both social media and demand generation, which requires an open line of communication with the people who run your social media marketing efforts and PR.

“My advice is to stay focused on the audience that engages the most,” both currently and in the past, says Rainey. “What content worked? What built the foundation of your audience?” Perhaps those wacky posts you released when your brand was young helped contribute to your current image in a significant way. It could be a mistake to abandon them completely.

“The most common observation of mine,” says Vivek Nair, head of marketing at Talent & Analytics India, “is when you start out your content marketing efforts, you reflect your brand’s true values (fun, helpful, etc). But as business grows, your focus shifts, and most content folks will focus on churning out quantity rather than quality that matches your values.” Instead, Nair recommends deciding on your brand persona (What do you stand for? Why do you exist?) and “producing content for your target audience and customers with an intention of helping them.”

2. Approach Content by Function

Content at the top of the funnel can be a very different animal than content at the bottom. Without a little fun or edginess, you won’t last long in the realm of old media and social media. But the closer you get to the point of sale, especially in B2B, the more corporate and authoritative you may need to become.

“Some of the tech brands I write for have been doing a mix of playful and more technical pieces,” says Michael Belfiore, New York Times technology journalist and author. “In general I would say that the more playful pieces can be a good icebreaker that can funnel people into more ‘serious’ assets.”

It’s also important to realize that, even for bottom-of-the-funnel content, what sounds dry and boring to content marketers may actually be exciting to the intended audience—especially if it directly addresses their needs and questions.

“It is correct to strive for content that is not dry, but don’t forget that it’s our audience we serve, not our personal preferences,” says Samantha Stone, founder and CMO at The Marketing Advisory Network. “Be sure the tone and information is rich enough to excite your readers, even if it doesn’t appeal to the fun-loving marketer within.”

3. Just Be Human

While you’re trying to find your brand’s sweet spot, remember that content marketing doesn’t have to be laugh-out-loud funny, heavily themed, or wildly creative in order to be effective. The most important thing is to be relatable and human, whether you serve a B2B or B2C audience. After all, even in B2B marketing, you’re trying to engage with the actual humans inside the business.

“B2B buyers use more than their reason to assess a brand,” says Shelly Lucas, director of content marketing for Dun & Bradstreet. “Emotions also play a role, yet few B2B organizations do a good job humanizing their brands. If your company sells marketing technology, but your content comes off flippant, misinformed, or otherwise unaware, it won’t be useful to your audience. Even more than that, it will breed mistrust. Content creators need to develop a human voice that’s engaging, knowledgeable (do your research!), and has a definitive point of view.”

Many brands fall into the trap of thinking that “knowledgeable” and “authoritative” are synonyms to “dry” and “boring”—that every effort to inject personality into the brand will undermine its prestige. But it is possible to be seriously helpful and somewhat playful at the same time.

“In our B2B case, our audience mostly consists of wood flooring contractors,” says Adam Williams, head of marketing at Palo Duro Hardwoods in Denver. “My goal is that our content be authoritative and professionally presented, but relatable. Human. I want our audience to know we aren’t suit-and-tie people so removed from understanding their daily challenges and needs, that we get them, that we are them. So, the content needs some conversational touches.”

4. Be Flexible with Branding Guidelines

It’s common for branding guidelines to be built with a few types of content in mind, like ebooks, for instance, without taking into account how those guidelines will translate to social or the corporate blog. This can put content marketers in a difficult position. You either follow the guidelines to the letter to please your creative director, while failing to engage effectively with your audience, or you wow the audience but end up diluting and undermining the brand over time. You have to work with your individual art director or creative director to find a middle ground—and usually both parties will have to give a little.

Luckily, there are some creative directors who understand that overly strict guidelines will only stifle the brand. “We have established strong brand touchstones—a brand guide, asset templates, and great example pieces—that represent the visual brand that we are striving for,” says Workfront creative director David Lesue. “The team knows to draw from them when creating anything new. But they also know that those touchstones aren’t inflexible. The brand is a living, evolving thing that design gets to push—over time—into new directions.”

5. Avoid Overly Narrow Campaigns

If you want to pull off campaigns that succeed across channels and up and down the funnel, they need to be built for flexibility, not for total uniformity on every piece that goes out. This goes for both messaging and images.

I’ve frequently attended brainstorm sessions where great ideas didn’t make the cut, simply because they weren’t translatable to enough of our potential audiences and channels. The best concepts are those that can be adapted for a playful video to share on Facebook as well as an informative whitepaper or ebook.

Of course, this tip mainly applies to big, multi-faceted campaigns that involve all levels of the marketing organization. The more juice you can squeeze out of that orange, the better. You’ll also be launching smaller, more targeted campaigns throughout the year. Keep an eye on which of those resonate the most; you never know when a lone-wolf asset will inspire your next comprehensive campaign.

Party in the Front, Business in the Back

Whether you’re producing B2B or B2C content, there’s room for a bit of personality in even the most serious brand. In fact, a touch of humanity is increasingly essential in the age of authenticity we live in today.

While it’s true that too much fun and frivolity can make a brand seem young and immature, the pendulum can easily swing too far the other way, making your brand come across as cold and overly corporate. It takes trial and error to strike the right balance for your business. A great place to start is the “party in the front, business in the back” strategy. Create playful top-of-the-funnel content that directs people to more serious content down the line, and adapt as needed.

Please note: While I borrowed the “business in the front, party in the back” tagline (and reversed it) from that infamous ‘80s haircut known as “the mullet”—sported by such style legends as John Stamos, Michael Bolton, and Andre Agassi (who later admitted his was a wig!)—I am in no way advocating for a return of the hairdo itself.

Get a weekly dose of the trends and insights you need to keep you ON top, from the strategy team at Convince & Convert. Sign up for the Convince & Convert ON email newsletter.

http://ift.tt/2q2BpR6

[dainiaolivahm]

The Right Way to Balance Business and Fun in Your Content Marketing

When a brand is new and growing, they tend to be freer—and often more fun and creative—with their content. A young brand’s very survival depends upon making a splash, catching attention, and being new and distinctly different.

As a brand matures and new marketing talent is brought in, the tendency is to start looking toward the more established brands in the industry and embrace a slicker, cleaner, more consistent look and feel. Metaphorically speaking, many brands jump straight from cargo shorts and graphic tees to suits and ties, leaving the seemingly frivolous stuff behind.

Then they find themselves in a conundrum. While the professional new attitude works well at certain points of the customer journey, it often falls flat higher up in the funnel. What’s a content marketer to do? Is it possible to be both fun and serious? Or do we have to embrace one and abandon the other?

Questions like these can be especially challenging during the “teen years” of a brand, says Zach Rainey, marketing communication specialist at Japanese ad agency Nippon SP Center Co., Ltd. “They think that since the ball started rolling, it’s time to stiffen up and be an adult already. But if they’ll keep in mind how they built their audience in the first place, they might relax a bit.”

At Workfront, we’ve spent the last couple of years juggling and experimenting with the right blend of playful content—think zombies, superheroes, and the Nine Levels of Hell—and more authoritative assets that answer customer questions and pain points outright. Along the way, we discovered five key lessons any content marketing team can use to more effectively balance the fun (a.k.a. engaging, creative, edgy) and the serious (a.k.a. direct, no-nonsense, buttoned-up) for their brands.

A touch of humanity is increasingly essential for your brand in this age of authenticity. Click To Tweet 1. Listen to the Market

What are people downloading, clicking, and responding to? Don’t forget to look at both social media and demand generation, which requires an open line of communication with the people who run your social media marketing efforts and PR.

“My advice is to stay focused on the audience that engages the most,” both currently and in the past, says Rainey. “What content worked? What built the foundation of your audience?” Perhaps those wacky posts you released when your brand was young helped contribute to your current image in a significant way. It could be a mistake to abandon them completely.

“The most common observation of mine,” says Vivek Nair, head of marketing at Talent & Analytics India, “is when you start out your content marketing efforts, you reflect your brand’s true values (fun, helpful, etc). But as business grows, your focus shifts, and most content folks will focus on churning out quantity rather than quality that matches your values.” Instead, Nair recommends deciding on your brand persona (What do you stand for? Why do you exist?) and “producing content for your target audience and customers with an intention of helping them.”

2. Approach Content by Function

Content at the top of the funnel can be a very different animal than content at the bottom. Without a little fun or edginess, you won’t last long in the realm of old media and social media. But the closer you get to the point of sale, especially in B2B, the more corporate and authoritative you may need to become.

“Some of the tech brands I write for have been doing a mix of playful and more technical pieces,” says Michael Belfiore, New York Times technology journalist and author. “In general I would say that the more playful pieces can be a good icebreaker that can funnel people into more ‘serious’ assets.”

It’s also important to realize that, even for bottom-of-the-funnel content, what sounds dry and boring to content marketers may actually be exciting to the intended audience—especially if it directly addresses their needs and questions.

“It is correct to strive for content that is not dry, but don’t forget that it’s our audience we serve, not our personal preferences,” says Samantha Stone, founder and CMO at The Marketing Advisory Network. “Be sure the tone and information is rich enough to excite your readers, even if it doesn’t appeal to the fun-loving marketer within.”

3. Just Be Human

While you’re trying to find your brand’s sweet spot, remember that content marketing doesn’t have to be laugh-out-loud funny, heavily themed, or wildly creative in order to be effective. The most important thing is to be relatable and human, whether you serve a B2B or B2C audience. After all, even in B2B marketing, you’re trying to engage with the actual humans inside the business.

“B2B buyers use more than their reason to assess a brand,” says Shelly Lucas, director of content marketing for Dun & Bradstreet. “Emotions also play a role, yet few B2B organizations do a good job humanizing their brands. If your company sells marketing technology, but your content comes off flippant, misinformed, or otherwise unaware, it won’t be useful to your audience. Even more than that, it will breed mistrust. Content creators need to develop a human voice that’s engaging, knowledgeable (do your research!), and has a definitive point of view.”

Many brands fall into the trap of thinking that “knowledgeable” and “authoritative” are synonyms to “dry” and “boring”—that every effort to inject personality into the brand will undermine its prestige. But it is possible to be seriously helpful and somewhat playful at the same time.

“In our B2B case, our audience mostly consists of wood flooring contractors,” says Adam Williams, head of marketing at Palo Duro Hardwoods in Denver. “My goal is that our content be authoritative and professionally presented, but relatable. Human. I want our audience to know we aren’t suit-and-tie people so removed from understanding their daily challenges and needs, that we get them, that we are them. So, the content needs some conversational touches.”

4. Be Flexible with Branding Guidelines

It’s common for branding guidelines to be built with a few types of content in mind, like ebooks, for instance, without taking into account how those guidelines will translate to social or the corporate blog. This can put content marketers in a difficult position. You either follow the guidelines to the letter to please your creative director, while failing to engage effectively with your audience, or you wow the audience but end up diluting and undermining the brand over time. You have to work with your individual art director or creative director to find a middle ground—and usually both parties will have to give a little.

Luckily, there are some creative directors who understand that overly strict guidelines will only stifle the brand. “We have established strong brand touchstones—a brand guide, asset templates, and great example pieces—that represent the visual brand that we are striving for,” says Workfront creative director David Lesue. “The team knows to draw from them when creating anything new. But they also know that those touchstones aren’t inflexible. The brand is a living, evolving thing that design gets to push—over time—into new directions.”

5. Avoid Overly Narrow Campaigns

If you want to pull off campaigns that succeed across channels and up and down the funnel, they need to be built for flexibility, not for total uniformity on every piece that goes out. This goes for both messaging and images.

I’ve frequently attended brainstorm sessions where great ideas didn’t make the cut, simply because they weren’t translatable to enough of our potential audiences and channels. The best concepts are those that can be adapted for a playful video to share on Facebook as well as an informative whitepaper or ebook.

Of course, this tip mainly applies to big, multi-faceted campaigns that involve all levels of the marketing organization. The more juice you can squeeze out of that orange, the better. You’ll also be launching smaller, more targeted campaigns throughout the year. Keep an eye on which of those resonate the most; you never know when a lone-wolf asset will inspire your next comprehensive campaign.

Party in the Front, Business in the Back

Whether you’re producing B2B or B2C content, there’s room for a bit of personality in even the most serious brand. In fact, a touch of humanity is increasingly essential in the age of authenticity we live in today.

While it’s true that too much fun and frivolity can make a brand seem young and immature, the pendulum can easily swing too far the other way, making your brand come across as cold and overly corporate. It takes trial and error to strike the right balance for your business. A great place to start is the “party in the front, business in the back” strategy. Create playful top-of-the-funnel content that directs people to more serious content down the line, and adapt as needed.

Please note: While I borrowed the “business in the front, party in the back” tagline (and reversed it) from that infamous ‘80s haircut known as “the mullet”—sported by such style legends as John Stamos, Michael Bolton, and Andre Agassi (who later admitted his was a wig!)—I am in no way advocating for a return of the hairdo itself.

Get a weekly dose of the trends and insights you need to keep you ON top, from the strategy team at Convince & Convert. Sign up for the Convince & Convert ON email newsletter.

http://ift.tt/2q2BpR6

[maryhare96]

The Right Way to Balance Business and Fun in Your Content Marketing

When a brand is new and growing, they tend to be freer—and often more fun and creative—with their content. A young brand’s very survival depends upon making a splash, catching attention, and being new and distinctly different.

As a brand matures and new marketing talent is brought in, the tendency is to start looking toward the more established brands in the industry and embrace a slicker, cleaner, more consistent look and feel. Metaphorically speaking, many brands jump straight from cargo shorts and graphic tees to suits and ties, leaving the seemingly frivolous stuff behind.

Then they find themselves in a conundrum. While the professional new attitude works well at certain points of the customer journey, it often falls flat higher up in the funnel. What’s a content marketer to do? Is it possible to be both fun and serious? Or do we have to embrace one and abandon the other?

Questions like these can be especially challenging during the “teen years” of a brand, says Zach Rainey, marketing communication specialist at Japanese ad agency Nippon SP Center Co., Ltd. “They think that since the ball started rolling, it’s time to stiffen up and be an adult already. But if they’ll keep in mind how they built their audience in the first place, they might relax a bit.”

At Workfront, we’ve spent the last couple of years juggling and experimenting with the right blend of playful content—think zombies, superheroes, and the Nine Levels of Hell—and more authoritative assets that answer customer questions and pain points outright. Along the way, we discovered five key lessons any content marketing team can use to more effectively balance the fun (a.k.a. engaging, creative, edgy) and the serious (a.k.a. direct, no-nonsense, buttoned-up) for their brands.

A touch of humanity is increasingly essential for your brand in this age of authenticity. Click To Tweet 1. Listen to the Market

What are people downloading, clicking, and responding to? Don’t forget to look at both social media and demand generation, which requires an open line of communication with the people who run your social media marketing efforts and PR.

“My advice is to stay focused on the audience that engages the most,” both currently and in the past, says Rainey. “What content worked? What built the foundation of your audience?” Perhaps those wacky posts you released when your brand was young helped contribute to your current image in a significant way. It could be a mistake to abandon them completely.

“The most common observation of mine,” says Vivek Nair, head of marketing at Talent & Analytics India, “is when you start out your content marketing efforts, you reflect your brand’s true values (fun, helpful, etc). But as business grows, your focus shifts, and most content folks will focus on churning out quantity rather than quality that matches your values.” Instead, Nair recommends deciding on your brand persona (What do you stand for? Why do you exist?) and “producing content for your target audience and customers with an intention of helping them.”

2. Approach Content by Function

Content at the top of the funnel can be a very different animal than content at the bottom. Without a little fun or edginess, you won’t last long in the realm of old media and social media. But the closer you get to the point of sale, especially in B2B, the more corporate and authoritative you may need to become.

“Some of the tech brands I write for have been doing a mix of playful and more technical pieces,” says Michael Belfiore, New York Times technology journalist and author. “In general I would say that the more playful pieces can be a good icebreaker that can funnel people into more ‘serious’ assets.”

It’s also important to realize that, even for bottom-of-the-funnel content, what sounds dry and boring to content marketers may actually be exciting to the intended audience—especially if it directly addresses their needs and questions.

“It is correct to strive for content that is not dry, but don’t forget that it’s our audience we serve, not our personal preferences,” says Samantha Stone, founder and CMO at The Marketing Advisory Network. “Be sure the tone and information is rich enough to excite your readers, even if it doesn’t appeal to the fun-loving marketer within.”

3. Just Be Human

While you’re trying to find your brand’s sweet spot, remember that content marketing doesn’t have to be laugh-out-loud funny, heavily themed, or wildly creative in order to be effective. The most important thing is to be relatable and human, whether you serve a B2B or B2C audience. After all, even in B2B marketing, you’re trying to engage with the actual humans inside the business.

“B2B buyers use more than their reason to assess a brand,” says Shelly Lucas, director of content marketing for Dun & Bradstreet. “Emotions also play a role, yet few B2B organizations do a good job humanizing their brands. If your company sells marketing technology, but your content comes off flippant, misinformed, or otherwise unaware, it won’t be useful to your audience. Even more than that, it will breed mistrust. Content creators need to develop a human voice that’s engaging, knowledgeable (do your research!), and has a definitive point of view.”

Many brands fall into the trap of thinking that “knowledgeable” and “authoritative” are synonyms to “dry” and “boring”—that every effort to inject personality into the brand will undermine its prestige. But it is possible to be seriously helpful and somewhat playful at the same time.

“In our B2B case, our audience mostly consists of wood flooring contractors,” says Adam Williams, head of marketing at Palo Duro Hardwoods in Denver. “My goal is that our content be authoritative and professionally presented, but relatable. Human. I want our audience to know we aren’t suit-and-tie people so removed from understanding their daily challenges and needs, that we get them, that we are them. So, the content needs some conversational touches.”

4. Be Flexible with Branding Guidelines

It’s common for branding guidelines to be built with a few types of content in mind, like ebooks, for instance, without taking into account how those guidelines will translate to social or the corporate blog. This can put content marketers in a difficult position. You either follow the guidelines to the letter to please your creative director, while failing to engage effectively with your audience, or you wow the audience but end up diluting and undermining the brand over time. You have to work with your individual art director or creative director to find a middle ground—and usually both parties will have to give a little.

Luckily, there are some creative directors who understand that overly strict guidelines will only stifle the brand. “We have established strong brand touchstones—a brand guide, asset templates, and great example pieces—that represent the visual brand that we are striving for,” says Workfront creative director David Lesue. “The team knows to draw from them when creating anything new. But they also know that those touchstones aren’t inflexible. The brand is a living, evolving thing that design gets to push—over time—into new directions.”

5. Avoid Overly Narrow Campaigns

If you want to pull off campaigns that succeed across channels and up and down the funnel, they need to be built for flexibility, not for total uniformity on every piece that goes out. This goes for both messaging and images.

I’ve frequently attended brainstorm sessions where great ideas didn’t make the cut, simply because they weren’t translatable to enough of our potential audiences and channels. The best concepts are those that can be adapted for a playful video to share on Facebook as well as an informative whitepaper or ebook.

Of course, this tip mainly applies to big, multi-faceted campaigns that involve all levels of the marketing organization. The more juice you can squeeze out of that orange, the better. You’ll also be launching smaller, more targeted campaigns throughout the year. Keep an eye on which of those resonate the most; you never know when a lone-wolf asset will inspire your next comprehensive campaign.

Party in the Front, Business in the Back

Whether you’re producing B2B or B2C content, there’s room for a bit of personality in even the most serious brand. In fact, a touch of humanity is increasingly essential in the age of authenticity we live in today.

While it’s true that too much fun and frivolity can make a brand seem young and immature, the pendulum can easily swing too far the other way, making your brand come across as cold and overly corporate. It takes trial and error to strike the right balance for your business. A great place to start is the “party in the front, business in the back” strategy. Create playful top-of-the-funnel content that directs people to more serious content down the line, and adapt as needed.

Please note: While I borrowed the “business in the front, party in the back” tagline (and reversed it) from that infamous ‘80s haircut known as “the mullet”—sported by such style legends as John Stamos, Michael Bolton, and Andre Agassi (who later admitted his was a wig!)—I am in no way advocating for a return of the hairdo itself.

Get a weekly dose of the trends and insights you need to keep you ON top, from the strategy team at Convince & Convert. Sign up for the Convince & Convert ON email newsletter.

http://ift.tt/2q2BpR6

[mercedessharonwo1]

The Right Way to Balance Business and Fun in Your Content Marketing

When a brand is new and growing, they tend to be freer—and often more fun and creative—with their content. A young brand’s very survival depends upon making a splash, catching attention, and being new and distinctly different.

As a brand matures and new marketing talent is brought in, the tendency is to start looking toward the more established brands in the industry and embrace a slicker, cleaner, more consistent look and feel. Metaphorically speaking, many brands jump straight from cargo shorts and graphic tees to suits and ties, leaving the seemingly frivolous stuff behind.

Then they find themselves in a conundrum. While the professional new attitude works well at certain points of the customer journey, it often falls flat higher up in the funnel. What’s a content marketer to do? Is it possible to be both fun and serious? Or do we have to embrace one and abandon the other?

Questions like these can be especially challenging during the “teen years” of a brand, says Zach Rainey, marketing communication specialist at Japanese ad agency Nippon SP Center Co., Ltd. “They think that since the ball started rolling, it’s time to stiffen up and be an adult already. But if they’ll keep in mind how they built their audience in the first place, they might relax a bit.”

At Workfront, we’ve spent the last couple of years juggling and experimenting with the right blend of playful content—think zombies, superheroes, and the Nine Levels of Hell—and more authoritative assets that answer customer questions and pain points outright. Along the way, we discovered five key lessons any content marketing team can use to more effectively balance the fun (a.k.a. engaging, creative, edgy) and the serious (a.k.a. direct, no-nonsense, buttoned-up) for their brands.

A touch of humanity is increasingly essential for your brand in this age of authenticity. Click To Tweet 1. Listen to the Market

What are people downloading, clicking, and responding to? Don’t forget to look at both social media and demand generation, which requires an open line of communication with the people who run your social media marketing efforts and PR.

“My advice is to stay focused on the audience that engages the most,” both currently and in the past, says Rainey. “What content worked? What built the foundation of your audience?” Perhaps those wacky posts you released when your brand was young helped contribute to your current image in a significant way. It could be a mistake to abandon them completely.

“The most common observation of mine,” says Vivek Nair, head of marketing at Talent & Analytics India, “is when you start out your content marketing efforts, you reflect your brand’s true values (fun, helpful, etc). But as business grows, your focus shifts, and most content folks will focus on churning out quantity rather than quality that matches your values.” Instead, Nair recommends deciding on your brand persona (What do you stand for? Why do you exist?) and “producing content for your target audience and customers with an intention of helping them.”

2. Approach Content by Function

Content at the top of the funnel can be a very different animal than content at the bottom. Without a little fun or edginess, you won’t last long in the realm of old media and social media. But the closer you get to the point of sale, especially in B2B, the more corporate and authoritative you may need to become.

“Some of the tech brands I write for have been doing a mix of playful and more technical pieces,” says Michael Belfiore, New York Times technology journalist and author. “In general I would say that the more playful pieces can be a good icebreaker that can funnel people into more ‘serious’ assets.”

It’s also important to realize that, even for bottom-of-the-funnel content, what sounds dry and boring to content marketers may actually be exciting to the intended audience—especially if it directly addresses their needs and questions.

“It is correct to strive for content that is not dry, but don’t forget that it’s our audience we serve, not our personal preferences,” says Samantha Stone, founder and CMO at The Marketing Advisory Network. “Be sure the tone and information is rich enough to excite your readers, even if it doesn’t appeal to the fun-loving marketer within.”

3. Just Be Human

While you’re trying to find your brand’s sweet spot, remember that content marketing doesn’t have to be laugh-out-loud funny, heavily themed, or wildly creative in order to be effective. The most important thing is to be relatable and human, whether you serve a B2B or B2C audience. After all, even in B2B marketing, you’re trying to engage with the actual humans inside the business.

“B2B buyers use more than their reason to assess a brand,” says Shelly Lucas, director of content marketing for Dun & Bradstreet. “Emotions also play a role, yet few B2B organizations do a good job humanizing their brands. If your company sells marketing technology, but your content comes off flippant, misinformed, or otherwise unaware, it won’t be useful to your audience. Even more than that, it will breed mistrust. Content creators need to develop a human voice that’s engaging, knowledgeable (do your research!), and has a definitive point of view.”

Many brands fall into the trap of thinking that “knowledgeable” and “authoritative” are synonyms to “dry” and “boring”—that every effort to inject personality into the brand will undermine its prestige. But it is possible to be seriously helpful and somewhat playful at the same time.

“In our B2B case, our audience mostly consists of wood flooring contractors,” says Adam Williams, head of marketing at Palo Duro Hardwoods in Denver. “My goal is that our content be authoritative and professionally presented, but relatable. Human. I want our audience to know we aren’t suit-and-tie people so removed from understanding their daily challenges and needs, that we get them, that we are them. So, the content needs some conversational touches.”

4. Be Flexible with Branding Guidelines

It’s common for branding guidelines to be built with a few types of content in mind, like ebooks, for instance, without taking into account how those guidelines will translate to social or the corporate blog. This can put content marketers in a difficult position. You either follow the guidelines to the letter to please your creative director, while failing to engage effectively with your audience, or you wow the audience but end up diluting and undermining the brand over time. You have to work with your individual art director or creative director to find a middle ground—and usually both parties will have to give a little.

Luckily, there are some creative directors who understand that overly strict guidelines will only stifle the brand. “We have established strong brand touchstones—a brand guide, asset templates, and great example pieces—that represent the visual brand that we are striving for,” says Workfront creative director David Lesue. “The team knows to draw from them when creating anything new. But they also know that those touchstones aren’t inflexible. The brand is a living, evolving thing that design gets to push—over time—into new directions.”

5. Avoid Overly Narrow Campaigns

If you want to pull off campaigns that succeed across channels and up and down the funnel, they need to be built for flexibility, not for total uniformity on every piece that goes out. This goes for both messaging and images.

I’ve frequently attended brainstorm sessions where great ideas didn’t make the cut, simply because they weren’t translatable to enough of our potential audiences and channels. The best concepts are those that can be adapted for a playful video to share on Facebook as well as an informative whitepaper or ebook.

Of course, this tip mainly applies to big, multi-faceted campaigns that involve all levels of the marketing organization. The more juice you can squeeze out of that orange, the better. You’ll also be launching smaller, more targeted campaigns throughout the year. Keep an eye on which of those resonate the most; you never know when a lone-wolf asset will inspire your next comprehensive campaign.

Party in the Front, Business in the Back

Whether you’re producing B2B or B2C content, there’s room for a bit of personality in even the most serious brand. In fact, a touch of humanity is increasingly essential in the age of authenticity we live in today.

While it’s true that too much fun and frivolity can make a brand seem young and immature, the pendulum can easily swing too far the other way, making your brand come across as cold and overly corporate. It takes trial and error to strike the right balance for your business. A great place to start is the “party in the front, business in the back” strategy. Create playful top-of-the-funnel content that directs people to more serious content down the line, and adapt as needed.

Please note: While I borrowed the “business in the front, party in the back” tagline (and reversed it) from that infamous ‘80s haircut known as “the mullet”—sported by such style legends as John Stamos, Michael Bolton, and Andre Agassi (who later admitted his was a wig!)—I am in no way advocating for a return of the hairdo itself.

Get a weekly dose of the trends and insights you need to keep you ON top, from the strategy team at Convince & Convert. Sign up for the Convince & Convert ON email newsletter.

http://ift.tt/2q2BpR6

[christinesumpmg]

The Right Way to Balance Business and Fun in Your Content Marketing

When a brand is new and growing, they tend to be freer—and often more fun and creative—with their content. A young brand’s very survival depends upon making a splash, catching attention, and being new and distinctly different.

As a brand matures and new marketing talent is brought in, the tendency is to start looking toward the more established brands in the industry and embrace a slicker, cleaner, more consistent look and feel. Metaphorically speaking, many brands jump straight from cargo shorts and graphic tees to suits and ties, leaving the seemingly frivolous stuff behind.

Then they find themselves in a conundrum. While the professional new attitude works well at certain points of the customer journey, it often falls flat higher up in the funnel. What’s a content marketer to do? Is it possible to be both fun and serious? Or do we have to embrace one and abandon the other?

Questions like these can be especially challenging during the “teen years” of a brand, says Zach Rainey, marketing communication specialist at Japanese ad agency Nippon SP Center Co., Ltd. “They think that since the ball started rolling, it’s time to stiffen up and be an adult already. But if they’ll keep in mind how they built their audience in the first place, they might relax a bit.”

At Workfront, we’ve spent the last couple of years juggling and experimenting with the right blend of playful content—think zombies, superheroes, and the Nine Levels of Hell—and more authoritative assets that answer customer questions and pain points outright. Along the way, we discovered five key lessons any content marketing team can use to more effectively balance the fun (a.k.a. engaging, creative, edgy) and the serious (a.k.a. direct, no-nonsense, buttoned-up) for their brands.

A touch of humanity is increasingly essential for your brand in this age of authenticity. Click To Tweet 1. Listen to the Market

What are people downloading, clicking, and responding to? Don’t forget to look at both social media and demand generation, which requires an open line of communication with the people who run your social media marketing efforts and PR.

“My advice is to stay focused on the audience that engages the most,” both currently and in the past, says Rainey. “What content worked? What built the foundation of your audience?” Perhaps those wacky posts you released when your brand was young helped contribute to your current image in a significant way. It could be a mistake to abandon them completely.

“The most common observation of mine,” says Vivek Nair, head of marketing at Talent & Analytics India, “is when you start out your content marketing efforts, you reflect your brand’s true values (fun, helpful, etc). But as business grows, your focus shifts, and most content folks will focus on churning out quantity rather than quality that matches your values.” Instead, Nair recommends deciding on your brand persona (What do you stand for? Why do you exist?) and “producing content for your target audience and customers with an intention of helping them.”

2. Approach Content by Function

Content at the top of the funnel can be a very different animal than content at the bottom. Without a little fun or edginess, you won’t last long in the realm of old media and social media. But the closer you get to the point of sale, especially in B2B, the more corporate and authoritative you may need to become.

“Some of the tech brands I write for have been doing a mix of playful and more technical pieces,” says Michael Belfiore, New York Times technology journalist and author. “In general I would say that the more playful pieces can be a good icebreaker that can funnel people into more ‘serious’ assets.”

It’s also important to realize that, even for bottom-of-the-funnel content, what sounds dry and boring to content marketers may actually be exciting to the intended audience—especially if it directly addresses their needs and questions.

“It is correct to strive for content that is not dry, but don’t forget that it’s our audience we serve, not our personal preferences,” says Samantha Stone, founder and CMO at The Marketing Advisory Network. “Be sure the tone and information is rich enough to excite your readers, even if it doesn’t appeal to the fun-loving marketer within.”

3. Just Be Human

While you’re trying to find your brand’s sweet spot, remember that content marketing doesn’t have to be laugh-out-loud funny, heavily themed, or wildly creative in order to be effective. The most important thing is to be relatable and human, whether you serve a B2B or B2C audience. After all, even in B2B marketing, you’re trying to engage with the actual humans inside the business.

“B2B buyers use more than their reason to assess a brand,” says Shelly Lucas, director of content marketing for Dun & Bradstreet. “Emotions also play a role, yet few B2B organizations do a good job humanizing their brands. If your company sells marketing technology, but your content comes off flippant, misinformed, or otherwise unaware, it won’t be useful to your audience. Even more than that, it will breed mistrust. Content creators need to develop a human voice that’s engaging, knowledgeable (do your research!), and has a definitive point of view.”

Many brands fall into the trap of thinking that “knowledgeable” and “authoritative” are synonyms to “dry” and “boring”—that every effort to inject personality into the brand will undermine its prestige. But it is possible to be seriously helpful and somewhat playful at the same time.

“In our B2B case, our audience mostly consists of wood flooring contractors,” says Adam Williams, head of marketing at Palo Duro Hardwoods in Denver. “My goal is that our content be authoritative and professionally presented, but relatable. Human. I want our audience to know we aren’t suit-and-tie people so removed from understanding their daily challenges and needs, that we get them, that we are them. So, the content needs some conversational touches.”

4. Be Flexible with Branding Guidelines

It’s common for branding guidelines to be built with a few types of content in mind, like ebooks, for instance, without taking into account how those guidelines will translate to social or the corporate blog. This can put content marketers in a difficult position. You either follow the guidelines to the letter to please your creative director, while failing to engage effectively with your audience, or you wow the audience but end up diluting and undermining the brand over time. You have to work with your individual art director or creative director to find a middle ground—and usually both parties will have to give a little.

Luckily, there are some creative directors who understand that overly strict guidelines will only stifle the brand. “We have established strong brand touchstones—a brand guide, asset templates, and great example pieces—that represent the visual brand that we are striving for,” says Workfront creative director David Lesue. “The team knows to draw from them when creating anything new. But they also know that those touchstones aren’t inflexible. The brand is a living, evolving thing that design gets to push—over time—into new directions.”

5. Avoid Overly Narrow Campaigns

If you want to pull off campaigns that succeed across channels and up and down the funnel, they need to be built for flexibility, not for total uniformity on every piece that goes out. This goes for both messaging and images.

I’ve frequently attended brainstorm sessions where great ideas didn’t make the cut, simply because they weren’t translatable to enough of our potential audiences and channels. The best concepts are those that can be adapted for a playful video to share on Facebook as well as an informative whitepaper or ebook.

Of course, this tip mainly applies to big, multi-faceted campaigns that involve all levels of the marketing organization. The more juice you can squeeze out of that orange, the better. You’ll also be launching smaller, more targeted campaigns throughout the year. Keep an eye on which of those resonate the most; you never know when a lone-wolf asset will inspire your next comprehensive campaign.

Party in the Front, Business in the Back

Whether you’re producing B2B or B2C content, there’s room for a bit of personality in even the most serious brand. In fact, a touch of humanity is increasingly essential in the age of authenticity we live in today.

While it’s true that too much fun and frivolity can make a brand seem young and immature, the pendulum can easily swing too far the other way, making your brand come across as cold and overly corporate. It takes trial and error to strike the right balance for your business. A great place to start is the “party in the front, business in the back” strategy. Create playful top-of-the-funnel content that directs people to more serious content down the line, and adapt as needed.

Please note: While I borrowed the “business in the front, party in the back” tagline (and reversed it) from that infamous ‘80s haircut known as “the mullet”—sported by such style legends as John Stamos, Michael Bolton, and Andre Agassi (who later admitted his was a wig!)—I am in no way advocating for a return of the hairdo itself.

Get a weekly dose of the trends and insights you need to keep you ON top, from the strategy team at Convince & Convert. Sign up for the Convince & Convert ON email newsletter.

http://ift.tt/2q2BpR6

[byronheeutgm]

The Right Way to Balance Business and Fun in Your Content Marketing

When a brand is new and growing, they tend to be freer—and often more fun and creative—with their content. A young brand’s very survival depends upon making a splash, catching attention, and being new and distinctly different.

As a brand matures and new marketing talent is brought in, the tendency is to start looking toward the more established brands in the industry and embrace a slicker, cleaner, more consistent look and feel. Metaphorically speaking, many brands jump straight from cargo shorts and graphic tees to suits and ties, leaving the seemingly frivolous stuff behind.

Then they find themselves in a conundrum. While the professional new attitude works well at certain points of the customer journey, it often falls flat higher up in the funnel. What’s a content marketer to do? Is it possible to be both fun and serious? Or do we have to embrace one and abandon the other?

Questions like these can be especially challenging during the “teen years” of a brand, says Zach Rainey, marketing communication specialist at Japanese ad agency Nippon SP Center Co., Ltd. “They think that since the ball started rolling, it’s time to stiffen up and be an adult already. But if they’ll keep in mind how they built their audience in the first place, they might relax a bit.”

At Workfront, we’ve spent the last couple of years juggling and experimenting with the right blend of playful content—think zombies, superheroes, and the Nine Levels of Hell—and more authoritative assets that answer customer questions and pain points outright. Along the way, we discovered five key lessons any content marketing team can use to more effectively balance the fun (a.k.a. engaging, creative, edgy) and the serious (a.k.a. direct, no-nonsense, buttoned-up) for their brands.

A touch of humanity is increasingly essential for your brand in this age of authenticity. Click To Tweet 1. Listen to the Market

What are people downloading, clicking, and responding to? Don’t forget to look at both social media and demand generation, which requires an open line of communication with the people who run your social media marketing efforts and PR.

“My advice is to stay focused on the audience that engages the most,” both currently and in the past, says Rainey. “What content worked? What built the foundation of your audience?” Perhaps those wacky posts you released when your brand was young helped contribute to your current image in a significant way. It could be a mistake to abandon them completely.

“The most common observation of mine,” says Vivek Nair, head of marketing at Talent & Analytics India, “is when you start out your content marketing efforts, you reflect your brand’s true values (fun, helpful, etc). But as business grows, your focus shifts, and most content folks will focus on churning out quantity rather than quality that matches your values.” Instead, Nair recommends deciding on your brand persona (What do you stand for? Why do you exist?) and “producing content for your target audience and customers with an intention of helping them.”

2. Approach Content by Function

Content at the top of the funnel can be a very different animal than content at the bottom. Without a little fun or edginess, you won’t last long in the realm of old media and social media. But the closer you get to the point of sale, especially in B2B, the more corporate and authoritative you may need to become.

“Some of the tech brands I write for have been doing a mix of playful and more technical pieces,” says Michael Belfiore, New York Times technology journalist and author. “In general I would say that the more playful pieces can be a good icebreaker that can funnel people into more ‘serious’ assets.”

It’s also important to realize that, even for bottom-of-the-funnel content, what sounds dry and boring to content marketers may actually be exciting to the intended audience—especially if it directly addresses their needs and questions.

“It is correct to strive for content that is not dry, but don’t forget that it’s our audience we serve, not our personal preferences,” says Samantha Stone, founder and CMO at The Marketing Advisory Network. “Be sure the tone and information is rich enough to excite your readers, even if it doesn’t appeal to the fun-loving marketer within.”

3. Just Be Human

While you’re trying to find your brand’s sweet spot, remember that content marketing doesn’t have to be laugh-out-loud funny, heavily themed, or wildly creative in order to be effective. The most important thing is to be relatable and human, whether you serve a B2B or B2C audience. After all, even in B2B marketing, you’re trying to engage with the actual humans inside the business.

“B2B buyers use more than their reason to assess a brand,” says Shelly Lucas, director of content marketing for Dun & Bradstreet. “Emotions also play a role, yet few B2B organizations do a good job humanizing their brands. If your company sells marketing technology, but your content comes off flippant, misinformed, or otherwise unaware, it won’t be useful to your audience. Even more than that, it will breed mistrust. Content creators need to develop a human voice that’s engaging, knowledgeable (do your research!), and has a definitive point of view.”

Many brands fall into the trap of thinking that “knowledgeable” and “authoritative” are synonyms to “dry” and “boring”—that every effort to inject personality into the brand will undermine its prestige. But it is possible to be seriously helpful and somewhat playful at the same time.

“In our B2B case, our audience mostly consists of wood flooring contractors,” says Adam Williams, head of marketing at Palo Duro Hardwoods in Denver. “My goal is that our content be authoritative and professionally presented, but relatable. Human. I want our audience to know we aren’t suit-and-tie people so removed from understanding their daily challenges and needs, that we get them, that we are them. So, the content needs some conversational touches.”

4. Be Flexible with Branding Guidelines

It’s common for branding guidelines to be built with a few types of content in mind, like ebooks, for instance, without taking into account how those guidelines will translate to social or the corporate blog. This can put content marketers in a difficult position. You either follow the guidelines to the letter to please your creative director, while failing to engage effectively with your audience, or you wow the audience but end up diluting and undermining the brand over time. You have to work with your individual art director or creative director to find a middle ground—and usually both parties will have to give a little.

Luckily, there are some creative directors who understand that overly strict guidelines will only stifle the brand. “We have established strong brand touchstones—a brand guide, asset templates, and great example pieces—that represent the visual brand that we are striving for,” says Workfront creative director David Lesue. “The team knows to draw from them when creating anything new. But they also know that those touchstones aren’t inflexible. The brand is a living, evolving thing that design gets to push—over time—into new directions.”

5. Avoid Overly Narrow Campaigns

If you want to pull off campaigns that succeed across channels and up and down the funnel, they need to be built for flexibility, not for total uniformity on every piece that goes out. This goes for both messaging and images.

I’ve frequently attended brainstorm sessions where great ideas didn’t make the cut, simply because they weren’t translatable to enough of our potential audiences and channels. The best concepts are those that can be adapted for a playful video to share on Facebook as well as an informative whitepaper or ebook.

Of course, this tip mainly applies to big, multi-faceted campaigns that involve all levels of the marketing organization. The more juice you can squeeze out of that orange, the better. You’ll also be launching smaller, more targeted campaigns throughout the year. Keep an eye on which of those resonate the most; you never know when a lone-wolf asset will inspire your next comprehensive campaign.

Party in the Front, Business in the Back

Whether you’re producing B2B or B2C content, there’s room for a bit of personality in even the most serious brand. In fact, a touch of humanity is increasingly essential in the age of authenticity we live in today.

While it’s true that too much fun and frivolity can make a brand seem young and immature, the pendulum can easily swing too far the other way, making your brand come across as cold and overly corporate. It takes trial and error to strike the right balance for your business. A great place to start is the “party in the front, business in the back” strategy. Create playful top-of-the-funnel content that directs people to more serious content down the line, and adapt as needed.

Please note: While I borrowed the “business in the front, party in the back” tagline (and reversed it) from that infamous ‘80s haircut known as “the mullet”—sported by such style legends as John Stamos, Michael Bolton, and Andre Agassi (who later admitted his was a wig!)—I am in no way advocating for a return of the hairdo itself.

Get a weekly dose of the trends and insights you need to keep you ON top, from the strategy team at Convince & Convert. Sign up for the Convince & Convert ON email newsletter.

http://ift.tt/2q2BpR6

[christinesumpmg1]

The Right Way to Balance Business and Fun in Your Content Marketing

When a brand is new and growing, they tend to be freer—and often more fun and creative—with their content. A young brand’s very survival depends upon making a splash, catching attention, and being new and distinctly different.

As a brand matures and new marketing talent is brought in, the tendency is to start looking toward the more established brands in the industry and embrace a slicker, cleaner, more consistent look and feel. Metaphorically speaking, many brands jump straight from cargo shorts and graphic tees to suits and ties, leaving the seemingly frivolous stuff behind.

Then they find themselves in a conundrum. While the professional new attitude works well at certain points of the customer journey, it often falls flat higher up in the funnel. What’s a content marketer to do? Is it possible to be both fun and serious? Or do we have to embrace one and abandon the other?

Questions like these can be especially challenging during the “teen years” of a brand, says Zach Rainey, marketing communication specialist at Japanese ad agency Nippon SP Center Co., Ltd. “They think that since the ball started rolling, it’s time to stiffen up and be an adult already. But if they’ll keep in mind how they built their audience in the first place, they might relax a bit.”

At Workfront, we’ve spent the last couple of years juggling and experimenting with the right blend of playful content—think zombies, superheroes, and the Nine Levels of Hell—and more authoritative assets that answer customer questions and pain points outright. Along the way, we discovered five key lessons any content marketing team can use to more effectively balance the fun (a.k.a. engaging, creative, edgy) and the serious (a.k.a. direct, no-nonsense, buttoned-up) for their brands.

A touch of humanity is increasingly essential for your brand in this age of authenticity. Click To Tweet 1. Listen to the Market

What are people downloading, clicking, and responding to? Don’t forget to look at both social media and demand generation, which requires an open line of communication with the people who run your social media marketing efforts and PR.

“My advice is to stay focused on the audience that engages the most,” both currently and in the past, says Rainey. “What content worked? What built the foundation of your audience?” Perhaps those wacky posts you released when your brand was young helped contribute to your current image in a significant way. It could be a mistake to abandon them completely.

“The most common observation of mine,” says Vivek Nair, head of marketing at Talent & Analytics India, “is when you start out your content marketing efforts, you reflect your brand’s true values (fun, helpful, etc). But as business grows, your focus shifts, and most content folks will focus on churning out quantity rather than quality that matches your values.” Instead, Nair recommends deciding on your brand persona (What do you stand for? Why do you exist?) and “producing content for your target audience and customers with an intention of helping them.”

2. Approach Content by Function

Content at the top of the funnel can be a very different animal than content at the bottom. Without a little fun or edginess, you won’t last long in the realm of old media and social media. But the closer you get to the point of sale, especially in B2B, the more corporate and authoritative you may need to become.

“Some of the tech brands I write for have been doing a mix of playful and more technical pieces,” says Michael Belfiore, New York Times technology journalist and author. “In general I would say that the more playful pieces can be a good icebreaker that can funnel people into more ‘serious’ assets.”

It’s also important to realize that, even for bottom-of-the-funnel content, what sounds dry and boring to content marketers may actually be exciting to the intended audience—especially if it directly addresses their needs and questions.

“It is correct to strive for content that is not dry, but don’t forget that it’s our audience we serve, not our personal preferences,” says Samantha Stone, founder and CMO at The Marketing Advisory Network. “Be sure the tone and information is rich enough to excite your readers, even if it doesn’t appeal to the fun-loving marketer within.”

3. Just Be Human

While you’re trying to find your brand’s sweet spot, remember that content marketing doesn’t have to be laugh-out-loud funny, heavily themed, or wildly creative in order to be effective. The most important thing is to be relatable and human, whether you serve a B2B or B2C audience. After all, even in B2B marketing, you’re trying to engage with the actual humans inside the business.

“B2B buyers use more than their reason to assess a brand,” says Shelly Lucas, director of content marketing for Dun & Bradstreet. “Emotions also play a role, yet few B2B organizations do a good job humanizing their brands. If your company sells marketing technology, but your content comes off flippant, misinformed, or otherwise unaware, it won’t be useful to your audience. Even more than that, it will breed mistrust. Content creators need to develop a human voice that’s engaging, knowledgeable (do your research!), and has a definitive point of view.”

Many brands fall into the trap of thinking that “knowledgeable” and “authoritative” are synonyms to “dry” and “boring”—that every effort to inject personality into the brand will undermine its prestige. But it is possible to be seriously helpful and somewhat playful at the same time.

“In our B2B case, our audience mostly consists of wood flooring contractors,” says Adam Williams, head of marketing at Palo Duro Hardwoods in Denver. “My goal is that our content be authoritative and professionally presented, but relatable. Human. I want our audience to know we aren’t suit-and-tie people so removed from understanding their daily challenges and needs, that we get them, that we are them. So, the content needs some conversational touches.”

4. Be Flexible with Branding Guidelines

It’s common for branding guidelines to be built with a few types of content in mind, like ebooks, for instance, without taking into account how those guidelines will translate to social or the corporate blog. This can put content marketers in a difficult position. You either follow the guidelines to the letter to please your creative director, while failing to engage effectively with your audience, or you wow the audience but end up diluting and undermining the brand over time. You have to work with your individual art director or creative director to find a middle ground—and usually both parties will have to give a little.

Luckily, there are some creative directors who understand that overly strict guidelines will only stifle the brand. “We have established strong brand touchstones—a brand guide, asset templates, and great example pieces—that represent the visual brand that we are striving for,” says Workfront creative director David Lesue. “The team knows to draw from them when creating anything new. But they also know that those touchstones aren’t inflexible. The brand is a living, evolving thing that design gets to push—over time—into new directions.”

5. Avoid Overly Narrow Campaigns

If you want to pull off campaigns that succeed across channels and up and down the funnel, they need to be built for flexibility, not for total uniformity on every piece that goes out. This goes for both messaging and images.

I’ve frequently attended brainstorm sessions where great ideas didn’t make the cut, simply because they weren’t translatable to enough of our potential audiences and channels. The best concepts are those that can be adapted for a playful video to share on Facebook as well as an informative whitepaper or ebook.

Of course, this tip mainly applies to big, multi-faceted campaigns that involve all levels of the marketing organization. The more juice you can squeeze out of that orange, the better. You’ll also be launching smaller, more targeted campaigns throughout the year. Keep an eye on which of those resonate the most; you never know when a lone-wolf asset will inspire your next comprehensive campaign.

Party in the Front, Business in the Back

Whether you’re producing B2B or B2C content, there’s room for a bit of personality in even the most serious brand. In fact, a touch of humanity is increasingly essential in the age of authenticity we live in today.

While it’s true that too much fun and frivolity can make a brand seem young and immature, the pendulum can easily swing too far the other way, making your brand come across as cold and overly corporate. It takes trial and error to strike the right balance for your business. A great place to start is the “party in the front, business in the back” strategy. Create playful top-of-the-funnel content that directs people to more serious content down the line, and adapt as needed.

Please note: While I borrowed the “business in the front, party in the back” tagline (and reversed it) from that infamous ‘80s haircut known as “the mullet”—sported by such style legends as John Stamos, Michael Bolton, and Andre Agassi (who later admitted his was a wig!)—I am in no way advocating for a return of the hairdo itself.

Get a weekly dose of the trends and insights you need to keep you ON top, from the strategy team at Convince & Convert. Sign up for the Convince & Convert ON email newsletter.

http://ift.tt/2q2BpR6

[mariasolemarionqi]

The Right Way to Balance Business and Fun in Your Content Marketing

When a brand is new and growing, they tend to be freer—and often more fun and creative—with their content. A young brand’s very survival depends upon making a splash, catching attention, and being new and distinctly different.

As a brand matures and new marketing talent is brought in, the tendency is to start looking toward the more established brands in the industry and embrace a slicker, cleaner, more consistent look and feel. Metaphorically speaking, many brands jump straight from cargo shorts and graphic tees to suits and ties, leaving the seemingly frivolous stuff behind.

Then they find themselves in a conundrum. While the professional new attitude works well at certain points of the customer journey, it often falls flat higher up in the funnel. What’s a content marketer to do? Is it possible to be both fun and serious? Or do we have to embrace one and abandon the other?

Questions like these can be especially challenging during the “teen years” of a brand, says Zach Rainey, marketing communication specialist at Japanese ad agency Nippon SP Center Co., Ltd. “They think that since the ball started rolling, it’s time to stiffen up and be an adult already. But if they’ll keep in mind how they built their audience in the first place, they might relax a bit.”

At Workfront, we’ve spent the last couple of years juggling and experimenting with the right blend of playful content—think zombies, superheroes, and the Nine Levels of Hell—and more authoritative assets that answer customer questions and pain points outright. Along the way, we discovered five key lessons any content marketing team can use to more effectively balance the fun (a.k.a. engaging, creative, edgy) and the serious (a.k.a. direct, no-nonsense, buttoned-up) for their brands.

A touch of humanity is increasingly essential for your brand in this age of authenticity. Click To Tweet 1. Listen to the Market

What are people downloading, clicking, and responding to? Don’t forget to look at both social media and demand generation, which requires an open line of communication with the people who run your social media marketing efforts and PR.

“My advice is to stay focused on the audience that engages the most,” both currently and in the past, says Rainey. “What content worked? What built the foundation of your audience?” Perhaps those wacky posts you released when your brand was young helped contribute to your current image in a significant way. It could be a mistake to abandon them completely.

“The most common observation of mine,” says Vivek Nair, head of marketing at Talent & Analytics India, “is when you start out your content marketing efforts, you reflect your brand’s true values (fun, helpful, etc). But as business grows, your focus shifts, and most content folks will focus on churning out quantity rather than quality that matches your values.” Instead, Nair recommends deciding on your brand persona (What do you stand for? Why do you exist?) and “producing content for your target audience and customers with an intention of helping them.”

2. Approach Content by Function

Content at the top of the funnel can be a very different animal than content at the bottom. Without a little fun or edginess, you won’t last long in the realm of old media and social media. But the closer you get to the point of sale, especially in B2B, the more corporate and authoritative you may need to become.

“Some of the tech brands I write for have been doing a mix of playful and more technical pieces,” says Michael Belfiore, New York Times technology journalist and author. “In general I would say that the more playful pieces can be a good icebreaker that can funnel people into more ‘serious’ assets.”

It’s also important to realize that, even for bottom-of-the-funnel content, what sounds dry and boring to content marketers may actually be exciting to the intended audience—especially if it directly addresses their needs and questions.

“It is correct to strive for content that is not dry, but don’t forget that it’s our audience we serve, not our personal preferences,” says Samantha Stone, founder and CMO at The Marketing Advisory Network. “Be sure the tone and information is rich enough to excite your readers, even if it doesn’t appeal to the fun-loving marketer within.”

3. Just Be Human

While you’re trying to find your brand’s sweet spot, remember that content marketing doesn’t have to be laugh-out-loud funny, heavily themed, or wildly creative in order to be effective. The most important thing is to be relatable and human, whether you serve a B2B or B2C audience. After all, even in B2B marketing, you’re trying to engage with the actual humans inside the business.

“B2B buyers use more than their reason to assess a brand,” says Shelly Lucas, director of content marketing for Dun & Bradstreet. “Emotions also play a role, yet few B2B organizations do a good job humanizing their brands. If your company sells marketing technology, but your content comes off flippant, misinformed, or otherwise unaware, it won’t be useful to your audience. Even more than that, it will breed mistrust. Content creators need to develop a human voice that’s engaging, knowledgeable (do your research!), and has a definitive point of view.”

Many brands fall into the trap of thinking that “knowledgeable” and “authoritative” are synonyms to “dry” and “boring”—that every effort to inject personality into the brand will undermine its prestige. But it is possible to be seriously helpful and somewhat playful at the same time.

“In our B2B case, our audience mostly consists of wood flooring contractors,” says Adam Williams, head of marketing at Palo Duro Hardwoods in Denver. “My goal is that our content be authoritative and professionally presented, but relatable. Human. I want our audience to know we aren’t suit-and-tie people so removed from understanding their daily challenges and needs, that we get them, that we are them. So, the content needs some conversational touches.”

4. Be Flexible with Branding Guidelines

It’s common for branding guidelines to be built with a few types of content in mind, like ebooks, for instance, without taking into account how those guidelines will translate to social or the corporate blog. This can put content marketers in a difficult position. You either follow the guidelines to the letter to please your creative director, while failing to engage effectively with your audience, or you wow the audience but end up diluting and undermining the brand over time. You have to work with your individual art director or creative director to find a middle ground—and usually both parties will have to give a little.

Luckily, there are some creative directors who understand that overly strict guidelines will only stifle the brand. “We have established strong brand touchstones—a brand guide, asset templates, and great example pieces—that represent the visual brand that we are striving for,” says Workfront creative director David Lesue. “The team knows to draw from them when creating anything new. But they also know that those touchstones aren’t inflexible. The brand is a living, evolving thing that design gets to push—over time—into new directions.”

5. Avoid Overly Narrow Campaigns

If you want to pull off campaigns that succeed across channels and up and down the funnel, they need to be built for flexibility, not for total uniformity on every piece that goes out. This goes for both messaging and images.

I’ve frequently attended brainstorm sessions where great ideas didn’t make the cut, simply because they weren’t translatable to enough of our potential audiences and channels. The best concepts are those that can be adapted for a playful video to share on Facebook as well as an informative whitepaper or ebook.

Of course, this tip mainly applies to big, multi-faceted campaigns that involve all levels of the marketing organization. The more juice you can squeeze out of that orange, the better. You’ll also be launching smaller, more targeted campaigns throughout the year. Keep an eye on which of those resonate the most; you never know when a lone-wolf asset will inspire your next comprehensive campaign.

Party in the Front, Business in the Back

Whether you’re producing B2B or B2C content, there’s room for a bit of personality in even the most serious brand. In fact, a touch of humanity is increasingly essential in the age of authenticity we live in today.

While it’s true that too much fun and frivolity can make a brand seem young and immature, the pendulum can easily swing too far the other way, making your brand come across as cold and overly corporate. It takes trial and error to strike the right balance for your business. A great place to start is the “party in the front, business in the back” strategy. Create playful top-of-the-funnel content that directs people to more serious content down the line, and adapt as needed.

Please note: While I borrowed the “business in the front, party in the back” tagline (and reversed it) from that infamous ‘80s haircut known as “the mullet”—sported by such style legends as John Stamos, Michael Bolton, and Andre Agassi (who later admitted his was a wig!)—I am in no way advocating for a return of the hairdo itself.

Get a weekly dose of the trends and insights you need to keep you ON top, from the strategy team at Convince & Convert. Sign up for the Convince & Convert ON email newsletter.

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Ordinary internet Safety Suggestions

Set up -step verification on all of your devices on the way to enmesh your self in an interconnected internet of technological dependency from that you cannot get away.

Back To highschool Net Safety Pointers For Dad and mom Now that youngsters might be Again to elegance and have schoolwork, their time spent on a line substantially will increase along with patterned and predictable instances they get right of entry to the Net. on line predators, cyberbullies and cyberstalkers put together themselves for what they wish may be every other year of unsuspecting businesses of inclined, discouraged and high risk taking kids. Similarly to on line adult predators, youngsters and young adults who’re cyberbullies and cyberstalkers will fill cyberspace looking to taunt and harass their friends.

For proactive Dad and mom who plan to practice & institute Internet Safety, I’ve compiled a checklist & Tips to help ensure all of your bases are protected. The list furnished is a short injection of Net Protection attention. I am hoping my tick list helps insulate your child from abuse and ends in a secure and exciting college yr.

IPredator: A toddler or person who engages in mental and/or bodily victimization of others motivated by; peer recognition, malice, spite and criminal or deviant drives the use of digital communications era, telecommunications or cellular gadgets.

1. FBI’s Parents Internet Safety Guide: Visit the FBI’s internet site and carefully examine their top notch assessment referred to as “A Discern’s Guide to Internet Protection.” Before moving directly to step, make sure you’ve written down and feature clean get entry to on your nearby police department’s cellphone numbers.

2. Become Cyber Stealth Savvy: Cyber Stealth is a term used to define how online users engaged in nefarious activities use the anonymity data and communications technology offers everybody on the line to their advantage as they plan their subsequent cyber attack. Encourage your children to usually be cautious of others they meet online and teach them at the procedures of cyber stealth.

three. Offline Distress Dictates on-line Response (ODOR): In case you’ve already examined my article, you may immediately recognize this idea. A child is in particular susceptible to engage in high-chance behaviors on-line if he/she is feeling discouraged, irritated or distressed. Do no longer pass directly to the following step until you’re confident your baby is feeling endorsed, strong or being monitored by a professional or relied on cherished one. Of loads of articles and research I have researched, a toddler’s mental repute especially correlates with their online behaviors. If there are ongoing conflicts at home, latest stressful occasions or some other anxiety and/or distressing activities within the home, it’s very critical to screen your baby’s on-line usage.

Simply as critical as your toddler’s domestic environment is your child’s school surroundings.

Given you can not be with your baby whilst they’re at college, it is crucial to preserve everyday contacts with school officers concerning your baby’s attitudes and behaviors on faculty grounds. Even though lecturers in school are a priority, your toddler’s demeanor with teachers and fellow students speaks to their mental and emotional welfare. Research has immediately linked an infant’s school and home environments to their on line activities.

4. Personal statistics Prevention Making plans: The primary and most crucial trouble to deal with along with your baby is the quantity of personal information they share online. Getting your toddler to exercise minimal launch in their call, contact information, images and passwords to their social websites are fantastically applicable. If I were to make an approximation of the several hundred articles I have to examine on Internet Safety and cyber security, 99% percent of them listing limit of sharing Personal statistics on-line being essential to Internet Safety.

It can’t be emphasized sufficient, however, kids who disclose their touch statistics, Private facts and photos freely are at a miles higher danger of being centered through an iPredator. The intention as a web Protection proactive Discern isn’t always to absolute restriction or forbade your baby from sharing Non-public facts, however, to train them on being highly cautious and consistently aware when, why and what they divulge to others.

Research has validated that the vast majority of taunting, abuse, cyber crime and sexual assault that kids endure is most probably coming from their friends and/or acknowledged adults in preference to unknown adult online sexual predators.

5. friends, Dad and mom & the PTA: Given you can not screen your toddler’s online sports when they’re no longer in your presence, it’s paramount to get admission to the ones those who will be. Your baby’s buddies, their buddy’s Parents, and their college are the three prime social targets you should be in normal touch with. The intention is to provoke and preserve open verbal exchange together with your baby’s pals and their Mother and father concerning Net Protection expectations. Simply because you have got limited your toddler from positive on line activities doesn’t mean your child’s pals are confined or their Mother and father have online house guidelines.

the use of your capacity to be cordial and polite, preserve a consistent open speak along with your baby’s social circles. concerning your toddler’s faculty surroundings, it is vital to have an open communicate with college officials and/or the PTA to make sure Net Safety and cyber security mechanisms are in the region. Before the college 12 months starts, touch faculty officers and look into their Net Protection measures, instructional emphasis on Net protection and tactics for cyberbullying, cyberstalking, sexting, cellular device utilization during school hours and cyber crime related to adolescent existence.

6. Recognize Your baby’s Social Networking websites: As of 2011, Fb, Twitter, MySpace, Tagged and MyYearbook are some of the most popular social networking sites youngsters and teenagers appearance too for his or her cyber identity, digital recognition, and online social relationships. Way to the Net and virtual generation, many children and teens appearance to the virtual universe for his or her developmental milestones and 6ba8f6984f70c7ac4038c462a50eeca3.

Unluckily, iPredators additionally pick out those sites as their most favored websites spending most of their unfastened time trolling for unsuspecting, naive, discouraged or excessive-chance youngsters. Given the four hundred-500 popular global social websites and growing, it is of the maximum significance to spend time together with your infant discussing digital citizenship and cautious online communications.

7. Smartphones & Mobile phones Want Extra Smarts: A phone is a wi-fi phone with voice, messaging, scheduling, 1ec5f5ec77c51a968271b2ca9862907d and Net capabilities. Research and advertising fashion specialists’ undertaking income of smartphones will exceed Private computers via the end of 2012. In 2012, 500 million smartphones are projected to be offered. Despite the benefits of mobile virtual technology, children and teenagers have become Greater depending on their cell telephones Greater than ever Earlier than.

the latest research has cautioned youngsters who are depressed, annoying and/or discouraged spend Greater time interacting with their mobile gadgets and much less time being common children. it’s vital that as a Discern you display the amount of time your baby spends on their cellular smartphone and call your cellphone carrier approximately additional protection functions that they’ll offer. If a mobile phone or smartphone is to your toddler’s destiny, make sure to have the shop you purchase the smartphone from deploy or Set up all the vital Protection and filtering devices and software.

8. Weekly virtual Dinner: The term may additionally sound absurd, however making it a habit to speak about the circle of relatives’s digital behavior at the least once weekly at some stage in dinner is both proactive and helpful. In modern day dual economy and single Figure households, dinnertime is one of the few weekly activities that are consistent, predictable and social. As Just noted, it is the family’s virtual habits and interactions discussed and now not the kid’s weekly interrogation. through all circle of relatives contributors discussing their Internet sports, children will feel Greater relaxed to reveal information relevant to Internet Protection and their online activities.

during those weekly discussions, usually make sure to speak about the importance of being notably cautious of sharing Personal facts on-line. It is also fairly recommended to speak about effective, useful elements and tales about online usage to make the weekly discussions honest and balanced. Prior to every weekly digital dinner dialogue, its notably endorsed to announce to all involved that any data shared concerning online sports will now not purpose punishment, retribution or embarrassment. This weekly announcement can be redundant, but it reaffirms on your kids that they may not be punished for their mistakes or irresponsible behaviors.