The Beat - Summer 2019

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08 Summer 2019 COVER STORY to do and determine what would perform well with this particular tactic. Q: What is a marketing tool that you feel brands are missing out on? A lot of marketers miss out on email and newsletters. I am a firm believer in email and email newsletters because online, email is the only place where people and not algorithms are in control. Your audience is handing over their email address and saying, “Yes, tell me what you are all about.” That’s an amazing opportunity for brands and companies, but I think many are using it as a distribution strategy. They don’t respect it as an email newsletter to the degree that they should. I tell people to focus on doing their email newsletter well. Don’t worry about a lot of other things until you do that first. And when it comes to the content in your newsletter, offering something of real value is crucial. Q: You seem to place a high value on writing ability, but in many marketing departments, it seems as though the emphasis on words gets shoved aside. In an era of shorter attention spans, what is the importance of good writing skills? AH: First, I think we need to reframe what we mean when we talk about writing. Writing doesn’t necessarily equal long form. Writing short form is just as legitimate as any other kind of writing. I don’t think writing is old-school, and I don’t think good writing is going away. Writing is the backbone of how we communicate—it is emails, newsletters, blogs, video scripts, and storytelling in general. And it’s not about bloated writing and wasting your audience’s time. When you know how to write well, you know how to communicate well. Second, writing well is not a binary choice. I don’t believe that if you choose to focus on written content it means you don’t choose another area, like Instagram or another visual medium. Without a doubt, too many companies are not thinking about their tone of voice, which includes things such as the words on their website and social channels. Ask yourself if you have identified your tone and used it to differentiate from competitors. Q: Your latest book is called Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content. What do you mean by “everybody writes”? AH: In this day and age, everyone is a writer. If you have a website or a newsletter or you have an Instagram account or a Facebook page, you are a writer. I wrote the book DETERMINING YOUR By Ann Handley I get plenty of questions about how to find your brand’s voice. My recommendation is to think about three (or four) adjectives that best describe who you are as a brand and how you communicate. Write them down and then have a brainstorming session with your team. For example, at MarketingProfs, we got everyone in our marketing team together and determined who we are, what we are about, and how we want to communicate as a brand. Then we chose these words for the reasons I’ve explained here. 1. Accessible – We want to use clear language and short sentences. We want to explain buzzwords if we use them, speak in simple terms, and use jargon sparingly. We only use jargon to show other marketers that we get them and what they are doing. 2. Personal and Affiliative – In other words, we are marketers marketing to marketers, so we want to make it clear that we understand you and get you better than other companies who are not marketers. 3. Smart – Because we are selling training and education, we want to make that clear. 4. Enjoyable – We want to be sure we communicate in a fun way. For example, the communications around our B2B Forum are livelier than other areas of our communications because we care about the personal experience. We try to infuse this with a sense of fun. We don’t check everything against these attributes, but they are embedded in the organization, so our marketers know them and adhere to them. It’s also a great tool for our freelance writers to get a sense of who we are. We don’t use our brand guidelines as a strict prescription. We use them as bumpers at a bowling alley. The idea is certainly not to strip anyone’s voice away. That’s important. We say, “Here’s how we want you to use your own voice within these guidelines.” It doesn’t mean that everyone sounds the same, but it sounds like everyone comes from the same place. You are hearing from an individual, but it’s an individual who is part of this group. Once you determine what your voice will be, it’s important to be bold in your choice of content in order to communicate that voice well. In addition to MarketingProfs, here are three other brands that I believe communicate their authentic voice well. ❱❱❱
Summer 2019 09 BRAND VOICE 1In the B2B world, Uberflip is a content delivery and management platform. At styleguide.uberflip.com, the brand outlines exactly who they are as a brand and how they apply their voice. It’s online and accessible for everyone who writes for the brand, but it’s also available to their audience, so it keeps the brand accountable. They also use their platform to present their brand guidelines, so it serves as a marketing tool as well. Accessible Accessible, but not fluffy. We want our customers and visitors to feel as though they can approach us about anything and everything content marketing. Cheeky Cheeky, but not offensive. We have a personality and we’re not afraid to show it. Progressive Progressive, but not aloof. We want to stay ahead of the curve and implement new strategies and techniques to do so. 2In the B2C landscape, Freaker USA (freakerusa. com) is a very quirky company. I love that their quirkiness is embedded throughout everything they do and every way they communicate. 3Another B2C company, BarkBox sells to dog people who are obsessed with their dogs (like me). They use humor to great effect. In one of their emails, they used “customer profiles” (of dogs) and matched them with human qualities, then matched those qualities with a dietary supplement they sell, which I thought was hilarious and really caught my attention. because I saw a gap between people like you and me who self-identify as writers and studied writing and, on the other hand, people who think they can’t write. I think anyone is capable of producing good content—maybe not great writing, but if you know guidelines and embrace the rules, you are capable of creating ridiculously good content. With the book, I wanted people to read a manual that felt fun and didn’t feel like a chore to read. I also wanted it to be a companion to help people understand that everything they do in communication is writing—including sending personal mail and email—and understand what they can do to improve. I wanted to be an inspiration as well as a teacher and cheerleader. Q: How have organizations changed their setup or structure regarding external agencies in an effort to be more content focused? AH: I see companies using agencies as a creative resource. However, increasingly I see brands bringing the creation side of it in-house, and I counsel brands to do that because nobody will love the brand the way you do and no one can tell the story the way you do. Long term, I think you want your own people owning the story and telling it to the people you want to connect with. I believe this has a lot to do with the rise of influencers. I participate as a B2B influencer for a lot of companies, and when I’m talking to the people who are at the company themselves, it’s a much better relationship than when the agency is in the middle. For the most part, the smartest agencies will help the brand bring some of this in-house and function more as a creative strategy resource and then let the brand itself execute, although I’m sure an agency would argue the other side of that. ■ WIN ANN’S BOOK! SCAN the QR code or REGISTER at: drummond.com/giveaway
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