Writing

For The Love of Content (or, A Marketer’s Musings on the Tug-of-War Between Meaning and Machinery)
Writing

For The Love of Content (or, A Marketer’s Musings on the...

For the past decade, something has been rattling at the foundation of content marketing. An unspooling of a discipline that once felt purposeful but somehow got lost, took the wrong exit, and...
Mariana Fernandes 11 min read
05/29/25
Confessions of an AI Addict
Writing

Confessions of an AI Addict

I never intended to be an addict. Nobody does, I suppose. But the temptations, they’re too powerful. They’ve made me lazy, dishonest, selfish, needy, over-confident — every sin under the sun.I’ve...
Tim Metz 12 min read
05/22/25
Code Is Now Content: How We Built Our SEO Calculator With AI
Writing

Code Is Now Content: How We Built Our SEO Calculator With AI

“Software is now content,” writes Dan Shipper, co-founder of Every. His statement captures a shift most of us haven’t yet grasped: marketing teams — like yours! — can now build apps with AI and...
Tim Metz 14 min read
02/20/25
Blockbuster Blogs: How Breakthrough Ideas Are Born
Writing

Blockbuster Blogs: How Breakthrough Ideas Are Born

Words can plant ideas in your mind forever. You read them, they click, they stick. Often, we attribute such insights to books — Growth Hacking, Inbound Marketing, The Lean Startup.Books certainly...
Tim Metz 13 min read
12/05/24
Stay Strong: Never Let AI Fill Your Blank Page
Writing

Stay Strong: Never Let AI Fill Your Blank Page

The blank page syndrome. We all know it, we’ve all been there.You stare at your screen, and you don’t know how to begin.Staring becomes procrastination. Procrastination becomes anxiety, and it’s...
Tim Metz 11 min read
07/25/24
Goodbye Hallucinations, Hello AI Research: Advanced Tactics for Content Teams
ToolsWriting

Goodbye Hallucinations, Hello AI Research: Advanced Tactics...

Our in-house innovation lead, Tim Metz, explores new ideas and technologies for our customers and content. In this article, he shows how content teams can use AI tools in their research...
Tim Metz 13 min read
11/28/23
Autopilot Link-Building: How To Create Content That Attracts Links Organically
StrategyToolsWriting

Autopilot Link-Building: How To Create Content That Attracts...

Manual link-building isn’t for the faint of heart. You knock on many doors, endure countless rejections, and occasionally score a few backlinks — campaign after campaign after campaign.It’s a...
Ajdin Perco 8 min read
07/26/23
From Numbers to Nuggets: How Sacra Transforms Data Into Research Worth Reading
Case StudiesStrategyWriting

From Numbers to Nuggets: How Sacra Transforms Data Into...

Take an ounce of business analysis. Add a dash of narrative, a sprinkling of journalism, and a pinch of content marketing. Stir until it simmers with insight, then serve to critical startup...
Tim Metz 7 min read
06/29/23
How to Write a Case Study (That Actually Closes Deals)
Writing

How to Write a Case Study (That Actually Closes Deals)

Blindfold a dozen marketers. Ask them to describe the guiding principles of a case study. You’ll hear the same answers again and again.Make the customer the hero of the story. Follow a recognizable...
Ryan Law 8 min read
02/27/23
Write Like a Champion: 4 Performance Frameworks Stolen From Elite Athletes
Writing

Write Like a Champion: 4 Performance Frameworks Stolen From...

Content marketing never ends. As long as your company wants to grow revenue, earn market share, and build relationships, there will always be posts to write, launches to prepare for, ebooks to...
Sara Coggin 13 min read
02/13/23
The Content Cyborg: How to Use AI Writing Tools in Content Marketing
Writing

The Content Cyborg: How to Use AI Writing Tools in Content...

AI is a force multiplier for great writers. It took us a long time to say that. Two years of experimenting with a host of generative writing tools — GPT-3, Copy.ai, Writer, Jasper, and ChatGPT. But...
Angela Rollins 11 min read
01/23/23
Recipes vs. Movies: When to Use Storytelling in Content Marketing
Writing

Recipes vs. Movies: When to Use Storytelling in Content...

“You should add some more narrative to your articles,” my editor said in our regular catch-up.“Sure,” I answered. “I’ll write a fictional story for one of my clients.”The next day, I found my...
Tim Metz 11 min read
09/19/22
The Busy Writer’s Design Toolkit
Writing

The Busy Writer’s Design Toolkit

Most blogs still depend on tired old stock photography. But what if you could create unique, scroll-stopping visuals without any expense or real skill? What if you could create content marketing...
Ryan Law 7 min read
08/22/22
Steal This Strategy: How to Write Like Animalz
Writing

Steal This Strategy: How to Write Like Animalz

This is the Animalz content marketing strategy. Take it.We’ve been working on a guide to writing Animalz-style content with a view to helping our team contribute to the blog. Then we thought: why...
Ryan Law 8 min read
07/26/22
Beyond Inclusive Writing: 3 Lesser-Known Principles of Inclusive Content
Writing

Beyond Inclusive Writing: 3 Lesser-Known Principles of...

As content marketers, thousands, if not millions, of people see our content. We have a large cultural impact footprint. With that influence comes a duty to create content that contributes to the...
Angela Rollins 9 min read
07/18/22
From Docs to Blocks: 6 Note-Taking Tips to Overcome Writer’s Block
Writing

From Docs to Blocks: 6 Note-Taking Tips to Overcome Writer’s...

A writer’s biggest worry is running out of time, inspiration, or both before yet another deadline. There’s still research to do, the outline to restructure, and that perfect quote to find somewhere...
Tim Metz 14 min read
01/11/22
The Problem with “Writing is Thinking”
Writing

The Problem with “Writing is Thinking”

Writing is an incredible tool for furthering your own understanding. It challenges you to articulate ideas in a coherent way. It highlights gaps in your logic. It functions like an analytical...
Ryan Law 9 min read
11/24/21
The Four Forces of Bad Content
Writing

The Four Forces of Bad Content

Most blog posts suffer from the same problem: they feel like content marketing. The reader is never allowed to forget that what they’re reading is, first and foremost, a marketing asset.This is...
Ryan Law 15 min read
09/22/21
The Content Writing Guide: How to Write Blog Posts That Readers Care About
Writing

The Content Writing Guide: How to Write Blog Posts That...

Writing well is a superpower. Great writers are great thinkers, capable of using the written word to impose structure on nebulous ideas and simplify the complex. They’re persuasive, able to create...
Ryan Law 23 min read
07/05/21
Hook, Line, Sinker: How to Write an Introduction
Writing

Hook, Line, Sinker: How to Write an Introduction

The largest fish ever caught by rod and reel was a 2,664-pound great white shark. That’s over a ton of prehistoric saw-toothed terror, dangling from one end of an impossibly thin braided wire. At...
Gail Marie 10 min read
06/01/21
Persuasive Writing In Three Steps: Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis
Writing

Persuasive Writing In Three Steps: Thesis, Antithesis,...

Great writing persuades. It persuades the reader that your product is right for them, that your process achieves the outcome they desire, that your opinion supersedes all other opinions.But spend...
Ryan Law 9 min read
04/14/21
Persuade Like a Lawyer: How to Write to Convince a Jury of Readers
Writing

Persuade Like a Lawyer: How to Write to Convince a Jury of...

Weak arguments are like chains: If one claim breaks, the whole argument falls apart. Lawyers—i.e., people who argue as a profession—know better. Instead of linking chains, lawyers weave claims into...
Nick Moore 12 min read
03/23/21
The Animalz Method for Writing High-Quality Content
Writing

The Animalz Method for Writing High-Quality Content

Many content marketing agencies say they can define high-quality content. Some say it’s original and relevant. Others say it uses data and achieves marketing objectives. Few know how to do those...
Gail Marie 15 min read
03/16/21
How to Write a Blog Post Outline
Writing

How to Write a Blog Post Outline

A road trip across America can take a thousand different roads and take in a thousand different sights.Your map makes the journey possible. It helps you to plot a clear route from point A to point...
Gail Marie 8 min read
03/10/21
How to Interview Someone for an Article
Writing

How to Interview Someone for an Article

Over the course of a few hundred interviews, we’ve learned a few things. For one, interviewing doesn’t always come naturally. It can be intimidating, time-consuming and awkward.But learn to embrace...
Ryan Law 9 min read
02/10/21
The Idea Farm: How to Sow, Grow, and Harvest Great Blog Post Ideas
Writing

The Idea Farm: How to Sow, Grow, and Harvest Great Blog Post...

Coming up with great blog post ideas is hard.The best articles are helpful, and thought-provoking, and original. You have to attract the right people. You have to motivate those people to action....
Ryan Law 12 min read
10/13/20
Why Readers Can Smell Fakes a Mile Away
Writing

Why Readers Can Smell Fakes a Mile Away

We’ve all been on the receiving end of advice that we didn’t follow. Sometimes advice is obviously bad, and we disregard it because it’s wrong, or misguided, or overly simplistic. But other times,...
Ryan Law 7 min read
09/22/20
MECE: How to Think, Write & Persuade Like a McKinsey Consultant
Writing

MECE: How to Think, Write & Persuade Like a McKinsey...

Mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive (MECE) is one of the core problem-solving frameworks in management consulting. It can also be a powerful method for better writing.Consulting firms like...
Ryan Law 8 min read
06/29/20
High-Concept Content: the Hollywood Framework for Crafting Popular Content
Writing

High-Concept Content: the Hollywood Framework for Crafting...

Snakes on a Plane front-loads everything that’s interesting about the film into four short words. It’s a pithy summary of the entire plot. Walking into the cinema, the audience has clearly defined...
Ryan Law 7 min read
06/17/20
How to Write a Tweetstorm
Writing

How to Write a Tweetstorm

Tweetstorms used to be a hacked-together means of avoiding character limits on Twitter messages. Today, they’re everywhere. Twitter, especially if you follow founders, venture capitalists, and...
Jan-Erik Asplund 15 min read
01/20/20
How to Write Prolifically Without Spewing Junk
Writing

How to Write Prolifically Without Spewing Junk

In just five years, rapper Tupac Shakur produced more than 700 songs. By 35, inventor Thomas Edison had more than 100 patents to his name. In his lifetime, author Isaac Asimov wrote nearly 500...
Blake Thorne 10 min read
11/04/19
BLUF: The Military Standard That Can Make Your Writing More Powerful
Writing

BLUF: The Military Standard That Can Make Your Writing More...

BLUF is a military communications acronym—it stands for “bottom line up front”—that’s designed to enforce speed and clarity in reports and emails.The basic idea is simple: put the most important...
Jan-Erik Asplund 10 min read
09/09/19
10 Ways to Create a Healthy Feedback Culture at Any Company
StrategyWriting

10 Ways to Create a Healthy Feedback Culture at Any Company

As a child, I asked my parents the same question over and over: on a scale of 1 to 10, how “good” was the thing I just did? An underwater somersault, a dance move, a picture I drew. I wanted to...
Devin Bramhall 10 min read
07/16/19
How to Level Up Your Content Marketing Career: Work at Animalz
Writing

How to Level Up Your Content Marketing Career: Work at...

The best way to accelerate your career is to seek out an environment that facilitates rapid growth. That means surrounding yourself with great people and challenging problems. Animalz is that place...
Jimmy Daly 5 min read
05/21/19
How to Level Up Your Content Marketing Career: Work at Animalz
Writing

How to Level Up Your Content Marketing Career: Work at...

The best way to accelerate your career is to seek out an environment that facilitates rapid growth. That means surrounding yourself with great people and challenging problems. Animalz is that place...
Jimmy Daly 5 min read
05/20/19
Content Marketers Ask “Why?” Before You Write a Single Word
Writing

Content Marketers Ask “Why?” Before You Write a...

“Why?” is one of the most powerful questions a content marketer can ask.I first learned how to wield “why” almost 10 years ago, when I took a job as a marketing manager for a local ecommerce...
Nicole Kohler 6 min read
03/12/19
5 Ways to Write Better Blog Post Titles
Writing

5 Ways to Write Better Blog Post Titles

Writing titles for blog posts is hard because it requires a different type of thinking than you use for general writing.When you finish writing an article, you understand the topic you’ve just...
Jan-Erik Asplund 10 min read
08/28/18
How to Grow a Blog the Hard Way
StrategyWriting

How to Grow a Blog the Hard Way

[CDATA[<em]]“I think it would be quite disingenuous if I sat down and started writing an article about the future of design. I could write it, but I’d likely miss the subtleties and nuance a...
Jimmy Daly 11 min read
06/18/18
How to Make People Care About Your Content: Find the Right Angle
Writing

How to Make People Care About Your Content: Find the Right...

This article originally appeared on Risk Capital.In 2004, psychologist and neuroscientist Ullrich Ecker ran a study on article headlines. Participants were asked to read either a fact- or...
Jan-Erik Asplund 10 min read
06/04/18
11 Commercial Writing Skills
Writing

11 Commercial Writing Skills

“So, what are you going to do with that English major?”Every liberal arts major has heard some version of that question. Sadly, it represents a gross misunderstanding of the job market. Companies...
Jimmy Daly 9 min read
02/19/18
Content Marketing Personas: How to Reach Your Target Audience
Writing

Content Marketing Personas: How to Reach Your Target...

Writing for personas doesn’t work very well.And that’s not because it’s a bad idea, it’s simply because it’s rarely executed in a way that generates a useful outcome. Most personas follow a similar...
Jimmy Daly 14 min read
01/04/18