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Featured Resources
Be a Superstar Reviewer: Four Tips for Getting What You Want from Your Copywriter
Tips for Selecting and Working with Subject Matter Experts
What Causes Marcom Projects to Fail
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The Content Bureau’s Elevator Pitch—in Words and Infographics
I recently had the pleasure of spending two days in Denver, Colo., with the incredible Ruth Burk, lead writer to many of our Denver-based accounts. During this trip, Ruth and I were shocked and horrified to discover that some of our most beloved clients—including one...
How to Write a Great Thought Leadership Blog Post
Thought leadership can take many forms—byline articles, white papers, keynote PowerPoint presentations, and more. One of the biggest trends in thought leadership is the blog post. Blog posts can highlight a point of view in a brief, easy-to-absorb format, using links...
Unsuckit.com: Jargon Therapy at Your Fingertips
Ah, jargon. The business writer’s bane. (And, let’s be honest here, very occasionally the business writer’s savior. It’s late. You’re on deadline. You need to shoehorn a 50-word description into a 30-word elevator pitch. It happens. But we aspire to better things.) If...
Skeuomorphism Gone Bad: When Visual Metaphors Fail
When people first started interacting with computers, software designers chose visual metaphors to help users acclimate to the new environment. The folder icon is a good early example. It immediately made sense that this was a place to store documents. The idea that...
The Anti-Dan Brown Primer: How Not to Write Like the Popular Author
The reviews are in for Inferno, the new thriller from The Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown, and everyone pretty much agrees that it’s a terribly written book, which is nevertheless a page-turner and will make bucketloads of cash. Rest assured that if you borrow ideas...
Serial Commas in Marketing Communications Provide Clarity, Without Contortions
In today’s post, the serial comma—also known as the Oxford comma. For those of us who may become rather focused on such things, the debate about “serial comma, yes or no?” can be serious business. Commas are wonderful tools. They convey changes of direction, clarify...
Check Your Jargon—Please
Your Highness: I’m clued in enough to laugh at those parodies of over-the-top business jargon that periodically make the rounds… but I’m also quite aware of the need to keep my job fit in by embracing the specialized language of my professional peers. What’s an...
Case Study Approvals—Without the Hassle
You’ve started a customer reference program, and found the perfect customer to feature. The draft has been through all your organization’s approval layers. After the customer approves the draft, it’s ready for publication. Approval should be a breeze. A day or two...
Be Yourself at Work
A beloved French boss, Bernard Miquel, gave me the best piece of business advice I have ever received: “If you can’t be yourself at work, change jobs.” When he shared this tidbit of wisdom, I was a twenty-something American in Paris, aspiring (pushing! shoving!) to...
Candy Heart Wisdom for B2B Marketers
The other night, I tore open a bag of candy “message” hearts. Actually, two bags, because I bought some of the jumbo-sized ones, too. Studying the mix of pastel hearts scattered on my table, I realized that these traditional Valentine’s Day treats can offer B2B...
Lessons Learned from Obama’s Fundraising Emails
Email marketing campaigns live or die based on their ability to lure recipients into reading beyond the subject line—instead of hitting the delete key. In the wake of the election, President Obama’s digital analytics and email fundraising teams have revealed the...
No Words Required: When Iconography Works Better
When is the last time you encountered a road sign with the words “Curvy Road Ahead”? More than likely, you saw a sign like this instead: This sign is highly effective. It’s clear the road ahead has twists and turns—and the squiggly arrow requires no translation. In...
Sorry, No, That’s Not What You Mean At All
Your Highness: I’m not much of a writer but, like so many of your loyal subjects, I have a job that often requires me to write. I want to be professional—and avoid embarrassing mistakes. I need an on-call editor. Or at least a cheat sheet. Please help! My dear...
The Creative Brief: Step #1 in Great Marketing Campaigns
Work in marketing long enough and you’ll feel it: the pit in your stomach when you and your creative team start talking past each other. “The creative team isn’t giving us what we want,” you assert. “Marketing doesn’t know what it wants,” the creative team counters....
Managing a Massive, Multi-Asset Marcom Project? Be a Partner to Your Copywriting Agency for the Best Results
When clients hire the Content Bureau to manage their massive, multi-asset marcom projects, it’s their ongoing engagement that plays a key role in the project’s success. In this post, one of the Content Bureau’s beloved clients, Kerry Anne Rothe, Senior Manager of...
Marketing Content and the Power of Storytelling
Once upon a time, it was a Mad Men world. Marketers worked by instinct, making enormous up-front investments with no clue whether campaigns would succeed or fail. Agencies grew more based on the thickness of their Rolodexes and their persuasiveness in pitch meetings...
How to Write Great Marketing Messaging
You’re tasked with creating solid and rich marketing messaging. Suddenly, everyone around you wants to weigh in on content—and the “messaging madness” ensues. Whether you’re developing the foundation for a multiproduct campaign or creating detailed product...
How to Run a Great Corporate Blog
Blogging is fun! Running a high-quality corporate blog, however, is a huge pain in the a$$ (and expensive, too). It should be. Your corporate blog may be your single most important marketing asset, after your search-engine-optimized website. Chances are, your posts...
How to Write a Concise and Complete (aka Great) 25-Word Product Description
What can you do with 25 words? Write a note to your kids about how to reheat dinner. Make a grocery list. How about tell a complete, compelling story? It’s possible to finesse about two dozen words into a product description that’s not so high-level it glosses over...
Comma Commentary: To Splice or Not to Splice
If you want to set off a heated argument among a bunch of writers, buy them a round of drinks and say, “So, comma placement. What’s the big deal, anyway?” As Ben Yagoda, a professor of English at the University of Delaware, wrote in The New York Times earlier this...
Choosing a Graph That Best Suits Your Data
You have a mountain of valuable data—but how can you use it to convey a poignant message? The answer: a simple but powerful bar, line, or pie graph that will help your audience quickly understand the meaning of your data. Here are a few basic types of graphs: Bar...
The Content Bureau “Rave of the Month” Is …
Friends, I’m going to let you in on a little Content Bureau secret. It’s called “The Rave Report,” and it is magic—the type of magic described by the genius Sally Thornton in my Valentine’s Day post. It puts a happy pink glow over one’s day, and makes work feel like...
The Beauty of an iPDF
Looking to pack a big content punch into a small file? Need to convey complex or detailed information, but don’t think your audience can stomach another 20-page white paper? Want your document to be visually interesting and interactive, too? Look no further than an...
Ideas for Valentine’s Day Procrastinators (or Those Who Otherwise Failed to Impress)
Valentine’s Day has already passed, but if that Whitman’s Sampler or bouquet of red roses didn’t win the affection of your sweetheart, it might be because your gift lacked creativity. (Consider that the aforementioned “gifts” can be purchased at the same place where...
I Am Madly in Love …
… with my job. And this is no casual fling, people. It’s been 12 years, and I am more smitten today than I was the day I left that big, rich, extremely attractive, and powerful consulting firm that had previously swept me off my feet. Here to explain this mad folly...
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