The Cutting Room

Click the link if you'd like to be brought directly to the edit: https://www.youtube.com/live/GMo9Zlw65Ys?feature=share&t=1864

In this episode of The Cutting Room, I'm joined by Eddie Shleyner, an industry-leading copywriter and expert on writing with brevity. We'll be discussing the importance of brevity in writing, as well as some tips on how to write with more clarity and concisely. Whether you're a copywriter, blogger, or just trying to write more effectively, this interview will help. If you're looking to improve your writing skills, be sure to watch this video! Eddie's insights on writing with brevity will help you to write more effectively and capture your audience's attention.

Eddie Shleyner is the founder of Very Good Copy and the lead copywriter at G2. He has consulted for Gong, Ramp, Drift, Helps Scout, and Whereby and has written for Forbes, Hootsuite, and DataBox. When he discovered the art of copywriting and marketing, he used a combination of story and takeaways to create concise, clear, and emotionally engaging articles that incentivize readers to take action.

"Quality comes from quantity. Maybe one in 20 ideas will make it into an article. What makes a good idea is that combination of story and takeaway."

In this episode, we discuss:

1. What are the three pillars of effective content marketing?
2. What are the best strategies for incentivizing people to engage with content?
3. How can creative professionals trust their intuition to identify a good idea?

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Click the link if you want to be brought directly to the live edit:

https://youtu.be/snkp8H94wx8?t=1815

To get access to many of the docs featured on the show, go to https://thecontentstudio.com/the-vault/

We mean ”annoying," but say “stupid.”

We mean “intense,” but say "crazy."

We mean “boring,” but say "lame."

We can’t pretend that words don’t matter.

It's easy to fall into, “you know what I mean” word choice.

Emily Triplett-Lentz shared with us her insights on inclusive language, ableism, and the value of examining why we say what we do, and how to communicate with intention.

We also touched on modern etiquette and kindness in content creation.

Here are some topics we discussed:

• The importance of inclusive language and common ableist phrases
• Finding out what customers truly care about (hint: not content)
• The evolving etiquette of connecting with others through tech

Here are our favorite quotable moments:

“The more I got into it, the more I realized a lot of these words, that segments of our audience maybe take issue with, are kind of lazy language choices anyway. So, why wouldn't you choose more precise, specific language that makes your content better?”

​

“The really fun thing about that is really precise, specific language, what's good for accessibility and inclusivity, is also really good for SEO. Really, really descriptive alt text, or anchor links, and things like that. So there's a lot of overlap there.”

​

“What does my edit look like? The first read through, I sit on my hands. People assume I'm being metaphorical…

​

I literally sit on my hands. The temptation to go into copy editing mode is so strong...I come from a journalism background. I see a typo or anything, and I just want to get in there. That's such a disservice to both you and the writer. Even knowing this, consciously knowing this, I'll still be afraid that I won't catch something the second time I go through it.”

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You know when you just hit it off with someone? ​ That's how it was with Brendan and I. ​ Honestly, I haven't felt so aligned with someone's outlook in such a long time. ​ And that's why Brendan's conversation went a little (ok a lot) long. ​

Some things we talked about: ​

👉 The ridiculous state of content marketing today.

👉 How the phrase "customer-centric" has become hollowed out. (and what we can do about it)

👉 Creating intellectual properties around customer's problems.​ ​ ​

These were our favorite quotable moments:

"If your whole content strategy has come out of some SEMRush keywords, we've lost the plot." ​

"We're repurposing stuff that doesn't have a purpose to begin with." ​

"People want a listical, that's what they want. Then my brain went 'Nobody wants a listical. Ever. Nobody wants that.

"No summary here will ever give this episode justice, but I will say this, my notebook was filled with fresh insights that I can't wait to start bringing into my conversations. ​

I think you'll like this one.

If you'd like to watch while Brendan edits live go here: https://bit.ly/Brendan-hufford

If you'd like to get direct access to the doc, and others from the show, go to https://thecontentstudio.com/the-vault/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

"The internet is a living document."

Originality in content creation is vital, and the ability to constantly adapt to remain in the game, if not be ahead. That means, you have to be willing to take what you know about your audience's behavior, and take an informed risk.

In this episode, Emily Anne Epstein joins me to discuss the importance of originality and adaptability in content creation and the need to understand and be attached with the audience. She emphasizes on the role of storytelling, data analysis, and collaboration to achieve successful content. Emily also deals with the importance of editing and having a room for feedback to constantly improve the quality of the content. We stress that there should be alignment with the organization's goals and values and to always aspire for improvement. Overall, the episode provides insights and advice on how to create effective and engaging content in the ever-changing landscape of the internet.

In this episode, we discuss:

• The importance of originality in content creation and the need to constantly adapt to the ever-changing landscape of the internet.
• Emily's Philosophy of content marketing and its ways on how to understand and connect with the audience. 
• The role of data in content creation and the need for an effective analysis. An understanding of the metrics should be observed as it adds value to the work and to regularly check out what did well and why.
• Ideation and inspiration include the significance of reading and being an expert in the topic, possessing an open mind to inspiration, and making a diverse team to bring about new content ideas.
• Understanding business goals of the organization and ensuring its alignment with the ideas of collaborators to move in unison towards success.
• Adapting to the ever-changing internet and never expecting yesterday’s strategies will work at present. There should be experimentation and risk-taking in content creation.

These were our favorite quotable moments:

- "It's inspiration so you're having this conversation every single day where you get to put something out there in the world and then there's this democratic process where the world will tell you if they liked it or not and you can then take that information and say okay i'm gonna do 50 more stories about that."

- "You can't expect yesterday to work today."

- "I really wanna understand what the goals of the piece are so that question who is it for? how does it help them? where is this content going to be you know sent out? Does it align with the brand mission and values? Is this person who's writing about it an expert? Do they have authority on this topic? And is the answer that is the most important um in there which is so what? So what right?"

- "Being edited, being open, also getting things wrong is really important. You know when I started in content marketing, I didn't necessarily understand all of the ins and outs and the technical aspects of editing this type of work, but I did know that I can make any stories stronger, and that's really what I focused on, which is what I asked from other people. What is your expertise? I can make words better, so that's what I focused on."

If you'd like to watch Emily edit live, click on this link and you'll be brought directly to it on our youtube channel: https://youtu.be/Vz6qHRypxBE?t=1656

If you'd like access to this doc, and many other guests, go to https://thecontentstudio.com/the-vault/

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Click the link if you want to be brought directly to the live edit: https://youtu.be/cF7PcnTeJFg?t=1772

Today's guest in this episode is Erica Schneider, the Head of Content at Grizzle. In a world filled with AI-generated content, it has become crucial to maintain originality and relevance.

To catch replays of The Cutting Room or to catch the next live session, go to https://thecontentstudio.com/the-cutting-room to sign up for our email list.

The following are quotable moments:

0:44 - In my mind, content marketing is relevant communication.

0:55 - Essentially, it's meeting your audience where they are, at a stage where it's relevant to them in their customer journey in the format that makes sense from (for?) where they're reading your content

1:29 - We are at a stage now where the top page 1 of the SERP all looks very similar because everyone is playing the SEO game.

1:47 - You don't have to regurgitate what everyone else is doing

Good content speaks to your audience. 

1:54 - If you want to be credible and build authority on the stage, you've to be unique and connect with people in a way that keeps you top of mind, and the best way to do that is to put a lot of effort into editorial.

2:23 - What makes good content is if it speaks directly to your target audience.

2:54 - Good content speaks to your audience; it's specifically trying to accomplish whatever goal you have.

4:47 - Philosophically, every H2 should tie benefits to the outcome.

7:39 - The readers' research is everything 

7:57 - There is an oversaturation of people that are experts in the strategy side of things, which is so great — it's so important. But there is no oversaturation of experts in the editorial side of things.

 9:14 - Our strategy for that was to create super original thought-leadership pieces that' also tap into strategy.

10:05 - So tough because you still have to satisfy the robot

10:33 - There's the art of storytelling, which is to use storytelling throughout your content, and there's business storytelling, where businesses are literally creating stories like mini-movies.

11:02 - If you're doing SEO, a great way is to use storytelling in your introduction.

12:32 - Inject literal anecdotes, advice, or example from either the founders or people that work for them throughout the strategy.

14:29 - The pre-game is to familiarize myself with the brief if I' haven't done it myself with the brief and the outline.

15:31 - Context-switching is what every editor or writer should do if they work with more than one clients.

19:30 - If they're not hearing constructive criticism or pushback or if they are not invested in to help them improve, they get circled around.

20:09 - We want people that are hungry and want to improve their writing; we want people that want to produce valuable work, not just people who want to get paid.

22:53 - The first thing I'll do is: I'll skim-read the outline next to me and make sure the H2s follow the orders of operation that make the most sense. And that, of course, depends on your strategy and how you want to present your argument if you'll go for an SEO path or not.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Click the link if you want to be brought directly to the live edit: https://youtu.be/WDpTmyHHnXk?t=2293

"I don't care about my rankings." As one of the pioneers who popularized SEO and with Moz being one of the oldests SEO software companies, this statement from Rand Fishkin, founder of Moz and co-founder of SparkToro made my eyebrows raise. But why did Rand make such a surprising remark? 

Rand's insights are valuable, as evidenced by the following key points from the episode:

• There is an abundance of content these days that creation is simply not enough. To stand out and capture attention, you have to do more than invest in the quality or quantity of your content. This is where tactics like positioning, having a PoV, and making common enemies come into play.

• Yes, you should invest in distributing content, but it’s not going to be a success unless the content itself is great. Formulaic crap doesn't do all that well.

•  People mostly share content that reinforces their opinions or beliefs. So, create opinionated content to earn amplification.

• And the big one: “I don’t care about my rankings.” These days, Rand doesn’t worry about SEO again. Instead, in Sparktoro, they focus on impacting people, and doing that through other channels they can own and control, mostly outside of search channels. He advises marketers not to rely on any single channel or source e.g. Google.

• I first heard about the concept of episodic content in this episode. According to Crowd content, “episodic content is content published by marketers and site owners as a series of multiple posts that build on each other.” The keyword here is “build on each other.”

Rand employs this strategy in Sparktoro with their Office Hours series (I’ve attended a few of those myself), which has about 14,000 people tuning in these days. And there are people who would stumble on older episodes, enjoy them, subscribe to be alerted of new ones, and the whole thing builds up like that. 

Another example of episodic content is The Cutting Room by Tommy Walker. There are almost 40 episodes at the time of writing. You can watch these previous episodes, and subscribe to the channel to know about newer episodes.

In essence, brands should commit to creating episodic content as it helps in building a return audience and establishing brand authority.

• The rule of one in copywriting states that your copy should focus on only one big idea, one reader, one promise, and one CTA. A modified version of that rule in content marketing is to focus on one reader. Don’t try to appeal to everyone in your content. It should however repel people that are not a good fit. That way, only your target audience will be attracted, and hopefully convert.

• Finally, smaller companies should revel in their advantage as they can take the risks the bigger guys cannot. So go ahead and do the crazy marketing tactics. Carve out a market sector by finding your audience, focusing on them, and increasing them gradually.

The above is just a glimpse into the juiciness of this episode with Rand Fiskin and doesn’t do it justice.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Click the link if you want to be brought directly to the live edit:

https://bit.ly/3As1Dxy

In this episode of The Cutting Room, we spoke with Margaret Jones, Head of Content at Airtable. Margaret brought some amazing insight not just on creating and editing better content, but also navigating an organization that has grown from 5 to 70 marketers in just over a year.

​

Listen in as Margaret Jones, Head of Content at Airtable, discusses her approach to content marketing and managing a growing content team. Margaret shares her process for handling input from various stakeholders, which involves using a form in Airtable to gather input and identifying common needs across the organization to efficiently create content

​

For the first time on the show, we talked about:

👉 Prioritizing requests.

👉 Developing and scoring authors.

👉 Smart intake processes from internal stakeholders.

Plus, she went hard on the live edit.

💬 Here are some of our favorite quotable moments💬

"Content is like the air that the marketing team breathes."

"[We're] basically coming to all of our stakeholders and looking for key themes across the org, or patterns and things that people are looking for...because you can't do everything."

"One of my priorities as an editor is not just to make the piece awesome, but it's also to make the writer feel more empowered next time that they're writing a piece."

Margaret also provided us with an amazing resource in this Airtable base, which acts as a rubric for scoring different aspects of an author's piece.

Airtable | Everyone's app platform

Margaret's live edit:

"Content is like the air the marketing team breathes." | The Cutting Room ft. Margaret Jones

If you'd like to join us for the next live edit:

The Cutting Room: Live Edits with the Masters of Content

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.