Locations Here at Projectline, we’ve recently started a project to capture all the places we work and bring together our team around the world. Every weekday morning at 10:42 am, our team is invited to send in a picture of where they are, what they’re doing, or who they’re with. Each Monday, we’ll choose our favorite picture of the previous week and share its story here.
Hey, where did Ish go? Truly making our new office space in PA his own. Even his cup matches!
Welcome to the Projectline Weekly Roundup. We know that the week can move pretty fast. Since Fridays sometimes offer a chance for a breather, we wanted to share links to some of the articles we liked this week. As always, we’d love to get your take, so feel free to leave a comment or chat us up on Twitter. Happy reading and have a great weekend!
Content Strategy/Marketing
Why It’s So Easy to Get Marketing All Wrong— This post gives some good reasons why marketing should be more involved at the content creation stage. The comments to this post are also very good.
Universal Concern that Creativity is Suffering at Work and School—Adobe released an interesting study about creativity. Of course they tied it into the release of their Creative Suite 6 programs, but I won’t hold that against them. There is still some interesting data here about creativity and creativity is vital to successful marketing.
Social Media
The Rise of Digital Influence—This nifty little “how-to” guide from the smart folks at the Altimeter Group looks at the interesting world of the influencer. The concept of the social media influencer is still largely misunderstood. This post helps to pull back the curtains a bit.
A few weeks ago, I attended the web conference An Event Apart. Because my day-to-day role involves helping clients plan how to get content on the web, I went to pick up some new tips and hints. However, what I took away was that, while there are new opportunities and platforms for getting your content to your audience, the key is to not forget core principles. Mobile platforms are very trendy; the organizers added a day to the event to focus solely on mobile. But, it turns out, putting all of your resources in a shiny new box just for the sake of the shiny new box beckons trouble.
Lesson #1: Create Once, Publish Everywhere
So what’s a web designer/content strategist to do? The highlight of day one, Karen McGrane’s “Adaptive Content” session, focused on this issue. McGrane urges to first develop a content strategy around “writing for the chunk, not for the page.” This strategy involves breaking down content into a series of reusable chunks that can be repositioned into any layout, in any platform. A headline is always a headline. A lead is a lead, a sidebar a sidebar, and so on. By storing your content in chunks in the CMS, you can then create specific designs for specific platforms without having to lay out each piece of content multiple times. You’ll also want to set specific parameters around the length of each chunk of content—that 150 character short description may look good on a webpage, but might annoy a reader on a mobile device.
McGrane points to NPR as a good example of this theory. NPR uses and reuses the same content across their website, member stations’ sites, and a variety of mobile apps. Take a look at the deck presented last October by NPR’s Zach Brand, which shows where the “COPE: Create Once, Publish Everywhere” process came from. In it, you’ll see screen captures of the process by which a single piece of content is disseminated across multiple channels, as well as detailed schematics of their CMS API architecture (for the more technically-inclined content strategist).
If you are tied into the global customer reference and evidence marketing community, then you know that a new industry conference is coming our way this May in Boston: The International CRP (Customer Reference Program) Community Event.
Projectline is a proud member of International CRP Community and very honored to be sponsoring the event this year. Along with many other industry leaders and practitioners, Projectline’s own Nick Martin will be speaking on the 2nd day of the conference on the growing connection between social media and search, and why content is the key to unlocking the value of both. You’ve never met Nick? Well, let us introduce him!
We hope to see you May 14-16, but if you can’t make it to Boston, follow @projectline, @CRKSN, and @NickBMartin for live tweets from the event or check out the Customer Reference Knowledge Sharing Network on LinkedIn.
Claire Taylor is a member of the Projectline UK office.
The recent Corporate Philanthropy Day got me thinking about volunteering in the workplace—is it just a mantra that companies want their employees to buy in to? To my surprise, I found upon researching the subject that even in today’s tough economy, job-seekers are looking to prospective employers to offer more than just the usual benefits when attracting new hires. People are looking for ways to increase their own value, both as an employee and personally, and so companies that offer community programs rank higher up this list.
From my own perspective, it was important to find a role where employee volunteering is valued and encouraged. What’s great about Projectline is that they really want to make a difference. Employees are granted time off to volunteer and can choose causes close to their hearts. Having worked in a community affairs role for a previous employer, I’ll always remember how good it felt each time one of my community projects came to fruition—no matter how big or small.
Volunteering now plays an important role in the recruitment process, too. And many companies believe that providing employees with the right opportunities to engage in community programs means that they can attract, recruit, and retain the best talent. An old college friend of mine who now works in HR for a multinational pharmaceutical company was recently discussing the merits of volunteering in the recruitment process, in that it can positively differentiate job-seekers, particularly given that graduates and young people don’t usually have years of work experience to fall back on. It’s definitely a plus and gives employers insight into who can take the initiative when it comes to their work/life priorities and how that attitude translates into the workplace.
Here at Projectline, we’ve recently started a project to capture all the places we work and bring together our team around the world. Every weekday morning at 10:42 am, our team is invited to send in a picture of where they are, what they’re doing, or who they’re with. Each Monday, we’ll choose our favorite picture of the previous week and share its story here.
Last Friday a few Projectliners gathered in our Seattle conference room to stream some of the presentations from a recent MarketingProfs conference. Colleen Gillon is mesmerized by the B2B social tech smarts coming her way.
Welcome to the Projectline Weekly Roundup. We know that the week can move pretty fast. Since Fridays sometimes offer a chance for a breather, we wanted to share links to some of the articles we liked this week. As always, we’d love to get your take, so feel free to leave a comment or chat us up on Twitter. Happy reading and have a great weekend!
Content Strategy
Content Curators Are The New Superheroes Of The Web—With more and more content being produced each day, it is becoming increasingly important to filter it to save time . Content curation is a way to highlight the best of the best.
Optimize This! 10 Q&As on Customer-Centric Marketing with Lee Odden—I categorized this under content strategy, but it could probably fit anywhere in this post. So much ground is covered here around modern marketing concepts. Definitely worth the read.
Social Media
Top 10 Twitter Spelling Mistakes—We’ve all done it—made spelling mistakes on Twitter, that is. But these mistakes are particularly glaring, earning them a coveted spot in the Top 10.
