#writtenbyemily

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Isabella Wright ♦ Cisfemale (she/her) ♦ 21 ♦ Civilians ♦ Medical Student

“All I’ve ever wanted was to help others - and medicine certainly provides a good first stepping stone for that.”

Isabella was a prime example of children being similar to their parents. Both of her parents firmly believed in doing good, even if their methods did not always get the credit that Isabella believed they deserved. As a child, she wanted for nothing - her family certainly wasn’t wealthy by any means, but they gave her books, and as her interests continued to develop, they gave her her own training medical supplies

Her parents always believed that training the mind was equally as important as anything else. Of course, they encouraged Isabella to have as much freedom as was possible, though said freedom certainly came with some limits. She was allowed to climb as many trees as she wanted, but her parents always kept detailed track of her, not wanting her to come to any harm. She was, after all, their shining light - their everything.

She took to the role naturally, and despite her innate curiosity, she was never someone who her parents had to worry too much about. They gave her the space that she needed (which wasn’t much - she started university with the full intent of living with them for the duration of her studies, and she genuinely enjoyed Sunday night dinners with both of them.

Though well-meaning, her parents’ watchful eyes aided in Isabella’s tendency toward naïvety - toward believing that much of the world would be the very same - the sort to look out for hers and others’ well-being. She also firmly believed that everyone deserved to be seen for who they were, and there was no fault in anyone’s existence. More than once, she was told that perhaps this wasn’t the best way to see the world, but she never sought to change it. She was practical, after all. She had a way of seeing things that worked for her, and changing that would have involved too much upheaval.

She held fast to her want to discover all that she could - to find a way of helping the whole world, herself, and so she eventually chose surgery as her main area of focus within medicine - and though she might have claimed to have thought about it for ages, anyone who knew her knew that such a match had always been destiny. Neurosurgery, specifically, because an understanding and appreciation of everyone’s minds was something Isabella valued immensely.

Isabella’s thoughts had always been too focused on academics to ever think about romance - despite her love of romantic tales (she’d beg her parents, even as a teenager, to recount the story of how they met) until the beginning of her second year at university, when she happened to meet Thomas - who was a few years older than her, mysterious, and one of the most intriguing people she’d ever met - and though she didn’t fall head over heels right away, soon enough she found herself in love, and a few years later - just this past summer - found herself engaged, and happy to the point that she took to pinching herself to see if this was simply all some sort of dream.

Everything she’d wished for was falling into place - engaged to the love of her life, on track for the career she’d dreamed about ever since she was a child, and a continuing never ending desire to keep on discovering more about the world. After all, no matter how much she liked things shiny and bright, Isabella's curiosity was not so easily sated.

+ / - Smug, kind-hearted, altruistic, naïve, curious, uptight, perfectionist, creative

Isabella played football (soccer) as a child, but stopped when she went to university. She’ll still sometimes play a pick up game here and there, but she’s much more focused on schooling and her future as a doctor at this point.

She got her appendix taken out when she was eleven. After the surgery, she proceeded to ask her doctors dozens of questions about the whole process, as she was rather disappointed that she couldn’t be awake during the event.

Has a collection of hot sauces in her and Thomas’ home - she’s up to about a dozen different sorts now and will absolutely add some to her takeaways if she doesn’t find them spicy enough.

She has a tendency to sketch as a method to help her calm down and relax - though she’s certainly not an expert of any sort, her appreciation for detail has helped her be at least moderately skilled at the craft.

Absolutely loves trying new kinds of foods, and is the sort of person to almost always have a snack or meal of some sort on her.

She is fluent in Spanish and English, and started to try to teach herself Japanese when she met Thomas. She also knows a decent amount of Latin on the scientific side of things due to her long-lasting love of medicine. One day, she would love to learn Arabic.

FC : Inde Navarrette

[a-breton]

The 2 Things You Need to Know From the Best CMWorld Talks (Including Tina Fey’s)

After I interviewed Tina Fey at Content Marketing World, several people asked if she was as nice in person as she seemed on stage.

Their inquiries called to mind something my colleague Robert Rose raised on the same stage at the beginning of Content Marketing World.

“Trust is the new player … We have the power to shape beliefs,” he said. “(Content marketing) is our opportunity … to become a or the trusted source of interesting things.”

#Contentmarketing is your opportunity to become a trusted source, says @Robert_Rose Click To Tweet

Sure, Tina was interesting and funny and gave great advice to content creators, but what the audience really wanted to know was whether the person they heard on stage was as genuine, earnest, self-deprecating, and humorous behind the scenes.

They also wanted to know if Andrew Davis really didn’t know what was in the “mystery box” he brought to the stage during his high-energy presentation on curiosity. And, does Joe Pulizzi really write down his goals each day as he urged the audience to do?

Their questions – and Robert’s assertion – struck a chord I heard repeatedly during Content Marketing World.

To build and grow an audience, you need to earn its trust.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

You Must Win Every Moment of Trust to Win the Moment of Truth

Discover the Real Value of the E Word (and How to Embrace It)

It takes more than words

But how do you – as a marketer and as a brand – get an audience to trust you?

You (and your content) must be authentic.

You (and your content) must have meaning, a meaning that resonates with your brand and your desired audience.

Yet content is one of the reasons we’re in an epidemic of meaninglessness, Kathleen Diamantakis of The New York Times’ T Brand Studio said. Fortunately, content also can be the solution.

#Content can add to the epidemic of meaninglessness, but can also be a solution. @KathleenDia @TBrandStudio Click To Tweet

“If we can achieve meaning, we can achieve vitality, well-being, life satisfaction,” Kathleen said. Her role as managing director of strategy at T Brand (and its experiential agency Fake Love) is to help brands play a more meaningful role in the world.

Kathleen shared an inspiring example Fake Love created for the soda brand 7UP. As part of its year-long Music Lifts You Up campaign, which centered on electronic dance music and targeted millennials, 7UP and EMD prodigy Martin Garrix teamed up with experiential artists to create a once-in-a-lifetime music experience for an all deaf audience.

As impressive as 7UP’s concert was, a big-budget event isn’t the only way to create meaningful content. Kathleen shared another example that, while less inspirational, is meaningful for most of us – Walgreen’s mobile app. It allows customers to reorder and pick up prescriptions at locations other than their “home” pharmacy and pushes reminders so people don’t miss doses (among other useful things).

Content’s meaning is in the eye of the beholder – and that eye looks at content differently depending on time and circumstance.

Give meaning to the ordinary

Professional photographer Dewitt Jones, who spent 20 years with National Geographic, shared an interesting perspective on meaning and authenticity in his talk. While he showed dozens of beautiful images and inspiring messages, his story of a dandelion field really resonated with me.

When he first visited the yellow-dotted field of dandelions, he didn’t want to spend the time to shoot it. When he came back, the beautiful yellow of the dandelions had turned into a colorless field of fluff balls – boring white fluff balls. But he didn’t walk away. Instead, he reframed his thinking ­– and found something extraordinary, which Emilie Moreland shared in this tweet:

“So many things begin to change in life when you don’t stop at one right answer.” – @dewittjones #CMWorld pic.twitter.com/msJx7EpuKu

— Emilie Moreland (@writtenbyemilie) September 5, 2018

How often do you approach a piece of content dreading its creation? You’re bored with the topic. You face writer’s block. You can’t think of an interesting way to tell a mundane story.

What if you followed Dewitt’s advice and adjusted your thinking: Reframe obstacles into possibilities. Imagine the extraordinary in the ordinary.

Reframe obstacles into possibilities. Imagine the extraordinary in the ordinary. @dewittjones #cmworld Click To Tweet

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: 27 Ideas to Break Your Creative Slump

Blow up and start anew (sort of)

When Ann Handley got an inquiry from a reader about why he hadn’t received her e-newsletter in a while, she greeted the response as most of us would – she gave an explanation, excuses really, for why she hadn’t been sending it out.

But then she reframed her thinking. She took the critical inquiry as the impetus to reflect on the value of her newsletter, Total Annarchy. Then she blew it up and sent the pieces to rehab.

When she reshaped and recommitted to it, she shared more of herself and her thoughts. She made it more authentic.

That authenticity has been well received. The 3,000 subscribers at relaunch had grown to 10,000 by early September. And, given how many people received the “can’t-process-now-because-of-too-many-requests” message when they tried to sign up during her presentation, I’m guessing that number is a lot more today.

The ability to create meaningful and authentic content – to deliver what her brand and her audience need and want in a creative and engaging way – is just one of the reasons Ann also became the first inductee into the Content Marketing Institute Hall of Fame.

ICYMI: @annhandley was honored with our first-ever CMI Hero Award! We love you, Ann!

#CMWorld pic.twitter.com/k3anodKjk3

— Content Marketing (@CMIContent) September 11, 2018

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: How the Best Newsletters Get – and Keep – Readers’ Attention

Meaning and authenticity never end

Though I didn’t hear all 200-plus speakers at Content Marketing World, I know meaning and authenticity were key ingredients in each presentation. Even if the speakers never used those words, they were talking about them.

Do SEO better? Create quality content that resonates with your target audience.

Enhance your buyer personas? Get a better understanding of what is meaningful to your audience.

Develop an influencer strategy? Select influencers who fit your brand, are transparent about relationships, and whose followers like what they share.

Meaning and authenticity were ingredients in all 200 #CMWorld talks, says @EditorStahl Click To Tweet

Successful content marketing thrives on authenticity and meaning. If you ensure that your content has those two ingredients, you can take your content marketing program to the next level. Game on!

Oh … wait.

Did you really want to know if Tina Fey was the same person behind the scenes as she was on stage? (How’s that for a curiosity gap?)

Will my answer make her comments less or more valuable to you? Will you dismiss her wonderful insight (“Writing is the worst … Everything up to Command-P is the worst.”) if you don’t like my answer?

“If there’s one thing that writers know, it’s that writing is THE WORST!” – Tina Fey in the house at #CMWorld

pic.twitter.com/47ENPbmFv5

— Amanda Bates (@mandibleCLE) September 6, 2018

Most likely, the truth will affect how you interpret Tina’s appearance. Same for Drew’s. Same for Joe’s.

But this article talks about the need to be authentic, so I’ll give you the truth.

Tina Fey is genuine, insightful, and lovely in every way. We chatted for about an hour before we stepped on stage. We talked about all sorts of things – regular things. Drew’s box really was a mystery. And Joe most definitely practices what he preaches.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: This Goal-Setting Activity That Made All the Difference

Feeling inspired by these examples? There’s so much more. You can watch hundreds of presentations from Content Marketing World 2018. Sign up for CMWorld video on demand today.

 Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

from http://bit.ly/2Qre2Kr

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Marielle Huang ♦ Cisfemale (she/her) ♦ 38 ♦ Civilians ♦ Choreographer/Teacher at the Royal Ballet

“I’m starting to wonder if hope’s overrated. All it does is leave you stuck with too many memories.”

(pregnancy/teen pregnancy and divorce tw)

Marielle had big dreams for as long as she could remember. But as a half-Asian girl growing up outside of London, she wasn’t always sure if those dreams would become reality. That didn’t stop her from having them. The second child of parents who were themselves still nearly children, she’d always worked to make do for herself. It wasn’t something her parents asked of her, but simply something that she naturally took on - as easy as pirouetting around the living room of their home. Her parents claimed that she danced before she walked, and by the time she was five years old, she’d been fully brought into that world.

Her local dance studio became a second home to her - and as she grew, she did her best to find any excuse she could to spend as many hours there as she could - from volunteering to clean when she was nine, to teaching classes on her own by the time she was in secondary school. It was where she felt most herself - certainly, she did well in school, but there was something different when she went to her studio. She dreamed of attending the Royal Ballet School, but it was too expensive, her parents said. Far away in London, too - impractical.

When she was in secondary she met and fell in love with a boy. She’d never thought that love of any sort might derail her plans, but the second line on the pregnancy test told her more than she needed to know. Being a parent at eighteen was certainly not a part of her carefully planned out life - nor her boyfriend’s. Boyfriend who soon became fiancée who soon became husband - and while he went off to university, Marielle elected to stay behind, at least for a few years, to raise their daughter. She didn’t especially fault him for going off to London - after all, before they’d become parents, they had both talked about escaping to the city together.

She did begin to find fault in him when he handed her divorce papers. Not even a university graduate and already with a preschooler and an ex-husband. Unlike her ex, she used her daughter’s existence to fuel her dreams, to show her daughter that even if circumstances were complex, you could still make the best of them. After all, she wanted nothing more than to be a role model.

Soon after that she decided that although she loved dance like nothing else, she found herself even more drawn to the art of choreography - the ability to create beauty, and to show the world so many different stories… It was a dream come true. It suited her, too - helping others, rather than being the center of attention herself. Giving others all they needed to best succeed.

After a few years working on some West End shows, she finally landed a dream job - Choreographer for the Royal Ballet. She was only twenty-eight when she started - and she knew that her co-workers sometimes gave her more than a few sideways glances, that perhaps some of them thought that she didn’t deserve the spot, but she’d never thought to mind those sorts of things. Her focus was on what she loved most of all, and once she had enough solid footing, she turned it around, starting working with underserved youth interested in the arts - kids who, like her, might have not otherwise had the possibility of exploring what was still a far too privileged world.

She didn’t like to think about her daughter’s father any more than she had to - but his face gracing the news made that difficult - and his story of whatever had gone on in that foreign country had only catapulted him to even greater fame. Marielle didn’t want to waste any energy on that, but it was the fact that he used their daughter - someone who he hadn’t even really seen in years - for gain - that truly disgusted her.

She wouldn’t let that stop her from living the best life that she could. Trying again was, after all, second nature to her.

+ / - imaginative, nostalgic, untrusting, careful, pragmatic, compassionate, stubborn, reserved

Marielle never had movie star posters up in her room, but instead had maps of the world, many of which had crayon circles on them from when she was a child, marking places she wished she could go.

She’s never gotten rid of her wedding ring, but it is buried in a box at the back of her sock drawer.

She is allergic to kiwis - and unfortunately found this out when her older brother bought her a lot of kiwis as a treat when she was four years old (from his hard-earned money from helping one of their neighbors with cooking).

When she isn’t choreographing or teaching at the Royal Ballet, Marielle makes an effort to go and volunteer and teach classes for underserved individuals - mostly children, but she does also teach a seniors class.

FC: Gemma Chan

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Lydia Caine ♦ Cisfemale (she/her) ♦ 25 ♦ Media ♦ Researcher / Assistant at the BBC

“Each and every person works together to weave a bigger story. It undermines the beauty of the world to think otherwise.”

Biography coming soon.

+ / - Personable, self-doubting, compassionate, excitable, unassuming, loyal, unsuspecting, clever

She got a tattoo to honor her brother after finding out that he got one for her. For him, she got a sunflower, in tribute to her name for him, and how she admires how he always goes toward the light. It’s on her ribs, on the same side as her heart, because her brother is her favorite person in the entire world.

Lydia has taught herself a few different languages, including: French, Arabic, and Hebrew. She’s not entirely fluent in any of them, but she’d like to be someday, and would like to learn more, as she believes it’s one of the best ways to understand the world around her, and she’d like to be able to read as many documents in their original language as possible.

When she was little, she used to fall asleep with books (yes, plural) in her bed - because she believed (and still does) that it is important to have a balance in the literature that you consume - which did lead to an incident when she was five and woke up to a small impression in her cheek from an encyclopedia on South America. She credits that with being the moment she decided she’d be a journalist, and has made the joke that the profession “left an impression” on her, literally. She’s bad at jokes.

She can’t whistle, at all.

She can, however, make a perfect lotus pose and has been able to do so since she was six. It’s her favorite way to work, read, or think. Other than the time she was briefly very into hanging off the family couch upside-down.

Faceclaim: Josephine Langford