Should you have a blog as a marketer?


“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” Ernest Hemingway

As we all bloggers know, Hemingway did nail the writing process in his quote above. Yes, it’s hard; yes, it’s time-consuming; no, it’s never right the first time around. Writing is rewriting. For a 1000-word blog post, I would say the average blogger would write at least 10 drafts before he is reasonably satisfied with the result. He is lucky if he has an editor to help with the polishing, but that is not usually the case.

However, in this day and age of content marketing, you would be crazy as a marketer if you did not sit down at least once a week to create or repurpose some  written content to post on the Internet. Let me highlight in this post the features of good blog posts and how your business could benefit from them.

Figure Writing Reflected in a Mirror by Bacon, Francis, 1976

Figure Writing Reflected in a Mirror by Bacon, Francis, 1976

1. Search engine optimization: provided you offer useful and original content, employing the relevant key words, blogging will help your business show up on the SERPs (search engine results pages) of your prospective clients. I don’t know many people today who will not go to Google at some point during the buying cycle to do a search before actually purchasing a product or service. So, to be available, to show up, it will help to have a carefully SEOed (search engine optimized) blog to pop up on the first page.

2. Answer your customers questions: the buying process – the cycle your prospects go through before committing to a purchase –  consists of the the following phases: first, the prospect needs to identify a need or problem; second, they will try to learn about possible solutions; third, they will start shopping for the ideal solution; afterwards, when they are ready, they will look for directions to actually buy it (online or offline); finally, when they start using the product, they might have problems or questions about it, so you need to offer them prompt customer service. Your blog needs to account for each one of these phases and provide the appropriate answers to help them at the stage they are, moving them along the sales funnel. It takes close communication between Marketing, Sales and Customer Service to identify the customers most frequently asked questions and issues, and try to solve them through your blog content. So it’s time to cooperate (there’s no need to tell me how hard this can be, but it’s worth trying): salespeople and customer service professionals need to develop their marketing skills, while marketers should learn more about the customers from sales and customer service so they can provide qualified leads.

3. Thought leadership: by covering content that speaks to the different needs of your customers at the different stages of the buying process you will soon develop a reputation of an expert in the field. Even if you don’t get conversions in terms of sales at the first moment, your customers will grow to trust your opinions and respect your points of view. When the time comes for them to make a buying decision, who do you think they will turn to?

4. Style: your blog is not supposed to be a work of art if you are a marketer. So write as simply and elegantly as possible, as if you were actually “talking” to the prospect. A marketer’s blog is not a piece of literature, so tone down your message, and be objective and direct. Of course it would help to be aware of the reading level of your audience, but “according to many reports (including the U.S. National Center for Education Statistics’ 1992 Adult Literacy survey), the average reading level is the 7th or 8th grade. Combine that with reports of increasingly low-attention spans of Internet users who require even milder language and you’re looking at a reading level of the 6th or 7th grade”  (http://blog.ezinearticles.com/2013/10/ezinearticles-asks-what-reading-level-should-you-target.html) . If you really wish to fine tune your text’s level of difficulty, there are some tools on the Internet (try the Readability Test Tool, for example, http://read-able.com) that will allow you to measure it.

5. The title: the importance of a catchy title to crown your blog post cannot be underestimated. This is the first impression you will make on the reader, and you only have a couple of seconds to entice them. So think carefully about it. Putting yourself in the shoes of a journalist may help, after all, this is your headline. Research says that questions are a good way to go, as they tease the reader into looking for the answer in the text.

6. Promoting and Repurposing: to make the most of all the effort you put into writing your piece, promoting your blog is a must. Use your social media channels with this objective. Putting links to your blog post repeatedly, however,  may not be the solution (although you’ll have to do it occasionally). Be careful not to make your audience feel spammed. Another solution is to repurpose your content and distribute it in different formats to suit the different social media channels: write a summary of the content as an image (for Instagram); use the photos you put in your blog post with a link to it (Instagram, Facebook); write a headline for your blog with a link to it (Twitter); turn it into an infographics poster (Pinterest); use the main points for a slide presentation (slideshare), etc.

As with most things in life, practice makes perfect. Some people say they blog everyday so they can improve.  Research indicates that to be excellent at a skill you need to have spent at least 10,000 hours at it (read Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers”  for a deeper explanation on this). Maybe you don’t have that  amount of time available anymore, but I would say it’s never too late to get started. What you can’t afford to do as a marketer is NOT to have a blog. How about starting today?

Au revoir

Jorge Sette

Salespeople need to become marketers


Please click on the image to access the text: SALESPEOPLE NEED TO BECOME MARKETERS.

What are Your Favorite Works of Art?


Living in São Paulo is an advantage for those who love what is usually called High Art, as we have a fair number of museums in the city. Of course, we lack the spoiling infinite choices of those who live in places like London, Paris and New York, but things could be worse.

However, going to a famous exhibition in Sampa is not without its frustrations and annoyances, as there are usually long lines on the weekend and the facilities are far from excellent. Besides, I’m quite addicted to audio tours, which, unfortunately, are not very common in Brazilian museums. I can’t stand guided tours, so I never join those little groups of people who follow a uniformed museum employee listening in awe whenever the guide decides to stop in front of a painting of her choice to spill out all the memorized knowledge in artificial intonation. I tend to run in the opposite direction.

So it’s not surprising that my best experiences in art viewing will have taken place abroad. The objective of this post is to share and discuss with my audience four of the great masterpieces I’ve already had the chance to see in person. I don’t think there is anything wrong in admiring pieces of art through apps, books or video, but I’m sure we all agree that the experience of standing only a couple of centimeters away from a great sculpture or painting in a beautiful museum can not be beaten.

The pieces I chose to write about here are not necessarily listed in any special order. They represent some of the art I feel most moved by – either because of their sheer beauty, or because they may be related to a special moment in my life. Two of them are based on stories I may have read or heard: I love pictorial representations of mythology. They are among my favorites. Also I did not have to think long and hard before selecting the pieces for the post. They are the ones that first came to my mind:

1. Samson and Delilah, by Peter Paul Rubens: I first saw this painting while roaming through the rooms of the National Gallery in London last time I was there. My eyes were immediately drawn to it for its vibrant colors, strong subject matter and unique distribution of lighting. You can see Samson, of biblical fame, sound asleep on Delilah’s lap while his hair, source of huge strength, is being treacherously cut off. The Philistines are already waiting there on the doorstep to take him away and blind him. The painting by Rubens is highly sensual and yet poignant, and, to me, its relevance can also be traced to my childhood, when I first heard the story and was deeply impressed by it.

Samson and Delilhah, 1609, by Peter Paul Rubens. National Gallery

Samson and Delilhah, 1609, by Peter Paul Rubens. National Gallery

2. The Lady of Shallot, by Waterhouse: I have a funny personal anecdote about this painting. I had discovered it on an app about art and fallen in love with its bright colors and hippie-like atmosphere (although it was painted almost 100 years before the “flower power” movement). I have always been a fan of the romantic sixties and its music. Pre-Raphaelites, therefore, with their drama and romance, feature among my favorite painters. Well, a couple of years ago, I was in London for work and had an afternoon off. I decided to invest the time visiting the Tate Gallery, with the sole purpose of seeing this particular painting. My surprise was that, as I entered the museum, for some reason, I marched straight up to the room where the picture was hanging, without ever having been there before.  I had passed other rooms on my way into the museum, but somehow this was the first room I got into, after making a left off the main passageway. I could only interpret this, of course, as fate. The Lady of Shallot, just like a magnet, had dragged me to the place. She probably was as eager to meet me as I was. The painting itself is a bit too high on the wall and the colors are somewhat faded in comparison to the copy I had on the app. But still it’s impressive, and remains one of my favorites of all time.

The Lady of Shallot, 1888, by John William Waterhouse, Tate Gallery.

The Lady of Shallot, 1888, by John William Waterhouse, Tate Gallery.

3. The Thinker, by Rodin: In my teenage years in Recife my mother used to introduce me to her friends who came to our house as “the thinker”, the son who would spend hours either reading or staring into the void in front of our backyard garden with his mind going places she could not fathom. When I was still in high school, she gave me a little marble figurine in the shape of Rodin’s The Thinker, which she had acquired as a souvenir in Europe. This little gift is one of my most treasured objects and I keep it in my living room to this day (see picture below). Therefore, years later, I teared up with emotion when I first laid eyes on one of the versions of The Thinker, brought to the Pinacoteca in Sao Paulo as part of a huge Rodin exhibition in the mid-nineties (we had to stand in line for hours, and, once inside, needed to rush through the pieces as if in a car race, so many people attended the event everyday). A couple of years later, however, I could indulge in as much Rodin as I wanted too, roaming freely around the rooms and gardens of his Museum during a sunny summer day in Paris.

My little version of THE THINKER by Rodin. My living room.

My little version of THE THINKER by Rodin. My living room.

4. Mars, the God of War, by Velázquez: The pressures against growing old  – or really, the prejudice one confronts after reaching 30 – are mounting in today’s infantilized society, and it’s hard not to feel progressively inadequate and afraid. Obviously one keeps postponing – for himself – the cutting off date after which you should be considered old: it’s usually at least 10 years ahead of your current age. Therefore it was with a warm feeling of relief and reassurance that I came across this riveting Velázquez’s painting at Museo del Prado in Madrid: it dares to show the god of war, Mars, as an emaciated and tired middle-aged man, with his stunning shield lying on his feet. My conclusion was that, if even the gods need to confront the aging process, it should be OK for the rest of us.

Mars, God of War, 1640, by Velázquez. Museo del Prado.

Mars, God of War, 1640, by Velázquez. Museo del Prado.

There are many more pieces I’d love to write about. I promise my loyal readers to get back to the subject in future posts. For now, I believe this will give you a preview of my taste in Art.

What about you? What are your favorite pieces of art? Share them with us.

NOTE: You might want to check out our language and art eBooks available  from AMAZON.COM. Click here for further info:  http://wp.me/p4gEKJ-1lS

 

Teaching English with Art

Teaching English with Art

 

Au revoir

Jorge Sette.

Heart of Darkness: the horror, the horror


After meeting Colonel Kurtz in the powerful portrayal given by Marlon Brando in “Apocalypse Now”, when the movie first launched, I always wanted to get to know the original character he was based on: the mysterious Englishman lost in the jungles of Africa created by Joseph Conrad in his novella “Heart of Darkness”. If you, like me, are into dark themes and water (be it sea or river), this is the book for you.

For many years I hesitated to start the book. The  language on the first page looked obscure, and I was not sure I had the energy to go through it. I even downloaded  it in different versions (I believe they were free). The copies lay on my iPad for a couple of years now. Then I came across it in the beautiful voice of Kenneth Branagh, as an audiobook, but, for some reason, I kept losing my concentration whenever I reached Parque Villa Lobos – a nice recreational area in Sao Paulo – on my bike, and could not follow the story from then on. Well, the audiobook at least showed me that if I got past the first couple of pages, with their detailed description of ships coming and going on the Thames at dusk, things would get more interesting. So I resumed the book. And did not regret it.

Brando_Apocalypse Now

Marlon Brando as Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now.

Although the novella is written in prose, as you embark in the story within the story, which tells of seaman Marlow’s time as a captain of a French steamboat  working in the business of ivory trade somewhere in Central Africa, going up the Congo river, “a mighty big river, that you could see on the map, resembling an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country, and its tail lost in the depths of the land”,  it turns into a somber and gripping poem which becomes hard to put down. Although the book is short, the reader’s experience is very deep and lasting.

Marlow is in search of a tradesman named Kurtz, who seems to have lost contact with the ivory trading company they both work for. He was famous for having been an excellent employee, sending tons and tons of ivory down the river back to the headquarters. But for now, rumor has it something may have happened to him, as all communication seems to have ceased. Is he dead? Could he be ill? After all not many white men remained healthy, physically or mentally, after a couple of months in those desolate and warm latitudes.

Of course, as with all great works of art, the book lends itself to many interpretations and can be read on many levels. I believe that, at some point, Conrad was even accused of racism for the use of  the word nigger many times, and also for treating the natives as an indiscriminate living mass, not considering them as human individuals in the story. For today’s ears, it is certainly uncomfortable to read the word nigger inserted without any qualification or explanation within a passage, but let’s not forget the story is told from the point of view of Marlow, the seaman we don’t know much about. We know, however, that Marlow is aware that even London, “the biggest and greatest town in the world”, started off as a dark and uncivilized place, and that the Romans must have gone through something similar to what he is going through right now, floating on that snake of a river, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by looming trees and sighing vegetation, under a scorching sun.

The book explores this fascinating encounter of a civilized man with the primitive world, which seems to exert a powerful pull over him, making him reconsider the values White Europe stands for. Therefore, it’s a harsh criticism of the barbaric colonialism in Africa, which, under the guise of a civilizatory mission, invaded and exploited those virgin regions of the world for pure material profit, causing a lot of destruction and pain along the way. The book questions what really is civilization and what terrible energies get unleashed when Paris and London clash with the Congo in the figure of Kurtz: “the horror, the horror”.

Others say that the book is about the battle between good and evil (stay in the boat and be safe or go on land like Kurtz and lose your soul to corruption due to lack of restraint). Whatever interpretation you lend to the story, the fact is that Heart of Darkness is one of the most poetic books I have ever read. Its account of a boat trip along that methaforically muddy river in the primitive jungle that pulsates like an alien heart will stay with me for years. It also made me appreciate the boldness and creativity of director Francis Ford Coppola, who transported the story to a totally different context (the Vietnam war in the late sixties and early seventies),  managing to make the themes and topics of the book even more relevant in a new era of barbarism.

Have you read the book?  What did you think of it? Share your opinion with us.

Au revoir

Jorge Settte.

 

 

Why Maleficent doesn’t work as a fairy tale


Maleficent, the new Disney movie that tells the story of Sleeping Beauty from the point-of-view of its original Nemesis – the evil fairy godmother – had all the potential to awe audiences, going way beyond its stunning visuals, if they had decided to work on more complex and original levels, paying closer attention to how mythology and its archetypes (typical characters) sustain great storytelling.

One can’t help but think of Wicked, that, first as novel, and then as a successful Broadway musical, also narrated the backstory of an evil character, the Wicked Witch of the West, of The Wizard of Oz fame, from the difficulties she had as a (literally) green child all the way to her adulthood, when she gets to meet Dorothy and her shoes. Although both Maleficent and Wicked chose to tell the story from the point of view of the alleged villain, the latter accomplished a lot more artistically.

Maleficent as a character is carefully construed to represent a strong role model for girls. Angelina Jolie looks stunning in the role, and will visually fascinate girls and boys alike. Boys, however, will surely be more entertained by the great number of superhero-like action scenes and predictable visual effects. It’s unfortunate, however, that the story is too weak to replace the original in children’s imagination, as it’s a lot less dark and scary in its connotations. Fairy tales are not supposed to be watered-down versions of their originals, and it’s a shame that Disney progressively goes in this direction with every new version they produce.

These are some of the problems that weaken Maleficent (Spoiler alert: you may want to watch the movie before reading the following):

Angelina Jolie as Maleficent

Angelina Jolie as Maleficent

1. The hero/heroine archetype of the story keeps shifting (is it Prince Phillip? Aurora? Or Maleficent herself?) Stories need a well-defined hero with a clear objective. The hero can and should be flawed (so there’s nothing wrong with Maleficent’s rage and wish for revenge from a dramatic stance). However, the whole story should be about her journey, and the transformation she goes through along what is commonly called the dramatic arc. Maleficent the movie does not really have any of its characters growing or changing through experience in its almost two hours of storyline. In this version, Maleficent has always been a strong and benevolent fairy, protective or the moor and its creatures. Then she makes one mistake led my revenge or jealousy, and spends the rest of the movie trying to fix it. This does not a good story maketh.

2. I’m sure that, for young moviegoers, the three little “good fairy-godmothers” are visually enchanting and can even be funny at times (especially the one played by Imelda Staunton), and they dutifully fill the role of tricksters, an important kind of archetype, providing the comic relief every story needs. However, adults will miss the irony and wit usually delivered by such characters in more sophisticated versions of kids’ movies.

3. Diaval, the raven, is too weak as a mentor, another essential archetype in effective stories. Maleficent, both as a movie and as a character, would have benefited a lot more if she had a more intriguing, wiser, and possibly older tutor to rely on. It would have given the movie a much stronger structure.

4. King Stefan, who starts off as Maleficent’s first love, does not have a clear archetypal role in the story. He’s too lame as a shadow/nemesis, and not very convincing as a shapeshifter (archetype usually filled by the heroine’s romantic interest). Similarly, young prince Phillip fails to awaken the sleeping princess with his cold teenage kiss: I don’t think we need to say anything more about his role in the story after this flop. Therefore, the movie really relegates male figures to totally secondary and pathetic roles.

5. Aurora’s role also does not fit in within the mythological structure of effective storytelling, being neither a hero nor a shadow, or any other essential archetype. She roams around the moors, beautiful and wide-eyed, without any specific dramatic function. The couple of scenes in which both Aurora and Prince Phillip, at different moments, unconsciously float in the air in the wake of Maleficent clearly indicate that these characters lack what is fundamental in archetypes of more importance: agency. Frankly, these levitation scenes boarder the ridicule.

6. The movie climax, packed with action and pyrotechnics, does not look any different from the last superhero movie you may have watched. The grand finale depicts lots of deus-ex machina solutions ( “Into a dragon”, orders Maleficent, before her loyal raven becomes a fire-spitting monster. Well, that is an easy way out, right? Worse: he fails! Maleficent will need to get her creepy dead wings back to succeed.

Speaking of those wings: at first, the scene in which they are cut off looked like this was going to be one of darkest and best moments of the movie, and could easily stand for all the feminist and environmentalist metaphors the movie repeatedly uses. However, the fact that they fly back and reattach themselves to their owner in a climactic scene at the end spoils all the dark beauty and menacing effect of the former scene. Now the wings are just another deus ex-machina-kind of solution employed by poorly-creative scritpwriters. Besides, one wonders why the wings did not decide to do this years before.

Now it’s your turn. Share with us your opinion on Maleficent.

For more on storytelling I would suggest you read two other posts in this blog:  “The Power of Storytelling – The Mythological  Structure ” (http://wp.me/p4gEKJ-F2) and “More Storytelling Tips for Marketers” (http://wp.me/p4gEKJ-UK).

Au revoir

Jorge Sette.

4 Influential Marketing Books You Should Read


4 Influential Marketing Books You Should Read

Click on the the image to access the full text. We suggest another two books in the text.

Getting started with content marketing


Getting started with content marketing

For the full text, click on the image.

Using Instagram to Promote your Business (summary)


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Under the Skin: ET for adults


What does Earth look like through the eyes of an alien? If you ever wondered about it, now you have a plausible answer: it looks like Scotland! The language is weird, humanity is mostly friendly and naive, and the views are breathtaking. It’s a cold  and lonely place in general, but you will have plenty of opportunity to be on the receiving end of much warmth: especially if you look like a dark-haired and full-lipped Scarlet Johansson. However, the place can have its dangers.

After using only her sexy voice to play an operating system with which Joaquin Phoenix’s character falls deeply in love in the academy award-nominated  movie Her, the actress takes on another risky role in director Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin. Now she’s nothing less than a predator alien in the shape of a beautiful woman, who spends most of her time driving along desert streets on the hunt for lonely men – who cannot believe their luck! Only, contrary to the preys’s idea, the plan is not sex, but to turn them into ET food.

Under the skin, the movie

Under the Skin, the movie

Under the Skin is not a movie for the masses. It’s slow at times and there’s hardly any dialogue. Just like 2001 a Space Odissey in its day, it does not explain everything you want to know: I guess you would need to read the novel it’s based on to find out all the details. However, Scarlet Johansson has enough star quality to carry the movie on her spotless shoulders. And the viewer will see a lot more than her shoulders, as the movie features a great number of explicit nude scenes.

The plot is also not without flaws, as, in my opinion, the change of the main character from alien predator to traveler open to new experiences and excited about discovering a new world is too sudden. However, the movie lasts the right amount of time, it does not drag and finishes exactly when it should.

It’s worth pointing out, as well, that it portrays one of the most poignant scenes in movie history: an abandoned toddler crying on an amazingly beautiful and desolate beach, waiting for its parents to come back from the sea. In addition to this, the underwater scene which shows men being turned into alien food is also very original.

Kudos to Ms Johansson, who does not play safe or shies away from challenging endeavours. I wonder what her next role will be.

Au revoir

Jorge Sette

Using Instagram to Promote your Business


The personal uses of Instagram are quite known to everyone, especially teenagers and young adults: you may use the platform to post as many photos of your cat as you wish. Don’t ever believe it if anyone tells you they bore them to death, it’s not true. We all love to see each other’s cats on Instagram (or on any other social media platform for that matter) – endlessly. We can never get enough of it. Another thing that we love to see is your selfies. Post as many as you can, as we can hardly survive a couple of hours without seeing your crazy looking eyes with a fake grin staring back at us from the iPhone screen. Food you are about to eat, or has just cooked yourself, and numberless shots of your legs and feet dangling over the swimming pool on a sunny day are also big hits. So there’s nothing to teach you there.

But how can you use this powerful platform, which is able to congregate 500 million active users – and growing – to tell the story and consolidate the personality of your brand? Can you use Instagram for marketing purposes even if you are not in the photography business? Of course you can. And this happens to be the objective of this blog post. We want to help you use Instagram as yet another tool of your content marketing arsenal. Here are a few tips:

1. Build a list of followers: the first thing you need to do is, of course,  add as many clients as you can to your Instagram community. You can use your Facebook and Twitter profiles to help you find friends you already have on these platforms. Using relevant and popular hashtags on your posts will also be very useful to help you get found. Don’t overdo it, though: the last thing you need is to look spammy.

2. Backstage peeks: you can use Instagram to show the world how and where you work. Behind-the-scenes views of  your office, your colleagues at work, the cafeteria (if you are lucky to have one) and its wonderful offers, the projects in the pipeline, discreet shots of your happy-hour gatherings at the local bar… Everyone loves to take a peek inside the company they do business with. It breeds familiarity, which makes it easier for the customer to relate to and trust more.

3. Showcase your products: you can use Instagram as an effective virtual shop window for what you sell. Take enticing pictures of your product and refer customers to your website for more information and purchase. Or give the information straightaway as the caption of your post. Be selective in choosing these pictures, as you don’t want to appear amateurish in displaying your product.

4. Set up a picture contest: remember that content marketing should be more about your client than anything else. It must be a way of celebrating the clients and their association with your brand. If they do not see the benefit of looking at your pictures and have a chance to participate in the conversation, it will be hard to build a long-term relationship with them – and that’s what you need. So why don’t you give them an opportunity to appear on your Instagram? Set up a picture contest somehow related to the product or service you sell, and ask them to enter their pictures (if you sell cat food, this will be heaven, as the customers will have yet another chance to show Tiger relishing your product for the whole world to see. Total win-win.). Set clear rules about what can be shown in the photo beforehand and let them know. Then you may portray all the suitable entries, and give the winner something special, like a coupon or a discount on their next purchase.

Tiger can't have enough. Example of Instagram contest picture

Example of Instagram photo contest

5. Post awesome pictures related to your business: if you have a language school, for example, you could post amazing branded pictures of the countries in which they speak that language; some kind of typical food; local festivals; touristic locations; historical places, etc.Try to avoid being corny though.

6. Your personal pictures: people prefer to relate to companies as if they were people. In this case, if you feel comfortable, personalize the relationship with your customers by posting some of your private pictures: vacationing, having fun somewhere nice in the company of your family and friends, etc. Marketing gurus say privacy is no longer an existing concept – I beg to disagree – but I can certainly attest the success of many brave people out there who expose themselves totally on the web (if you decide to do it, you’ll be walking a tightrope, though).

7. Images are not necessarily photos: you can post quotes, memes or whatever inspiring thought you might want to share on Instagram. There are a number of apps which will allow you to build professional looking images on the web using amazing backgrounds with phrases on them. PowerPoint or Canva, for example, can do the job.

As long as you get started, you will find out that many more ideas will pop up in your mind as you think of original ways to entertain, educate or inform your audience about your brand. I wish you all the best in your endeavors as an Instagram content marketer.

Don’t forget to post your comments and share your stories with us.

Jorge Sette