Articles

More than Benjamins: The Secret Key of Effective B2C Financial Writing

We live in a society that places a lot of emphasis on money. Money makes the world go round. Cash rules everything around me. Buy low, sell high. Coffee is for closers. It’s all about the Benjamins. Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash. Even Andy Warhol famously said “Making money is art”. Far too often, this focus on money causes those in the financial industry to forget an extremely important fact: Effective Financial Content Isn’t About Money. That’s right. Repeat it aloud. Effective financial content isn’t about money. Again, with gusto: Effective financial content isn’t about money! Have I lost my mind? Maybe—but not about this. While money is perhaps the most important resource to individuals in western society, it’s also completely meaningless on its own (or, at least, it hasn’t since the gold standard was ditched about a century ago). Money doesn’t have intrinsic value—but...

Paging Dr. Google: The Dangers of Writing a Clinical/Medical Blog

If you operate in the clinical space—whether you’re a physician, psychotherapist, RMT, physiotherapist, optometrist, chiropractor, or dentist—having a regularly maintained blog can be a tremendous help, not only keeping your current patients informed, but also attracting new patients, establishing your authority, building up your SEO, and providing a resource for the world at large. (After all, regardless of your area of practice, your content can benefit everyone in some way—every human body operates with the same basic machinery, so-to-speak.) However, as helpful as informative blog posts can be, they can sometimes be a bit of a double-edged sword when it comes to patient wellness, causing unintentional consequences that can be dangerous—and, in some cases, even fatal. In this post, I hope to outline the potential dangers of well-intentioned articles, and follow with how you can make sure that the content you put out there to help your patients doesn’t inadvertently...

7 Content Considerations Every Law Firm Needs to Make

If you’ve read anything about Precision Impact, you’ll know that we write content for a number of highly technical industries, including law firms. As such, I’ve spoken to quite a few lawyers about how they approach their content, as well as digital strategists and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) experts. Each side has legitimate concerns with the other, and there is certainly merit in both perspectives. Lawyers tend to prefer to keep a hand on the wheel, regardless of how busy they might be. Some will outsource their writing to some form of expert, be it a writer or a marketing firm, but even they are concerned about the quality of their content. However, from the SEO perspective, content simply needs to be written and put out there, particularly when it comes to blog articles. Google hates an infrequently updated website, and most lawyers don’t have the time to write and...

The Science of Absurdity: A Reaction to “6 Bizarrely Specific Commercial Tropes that Need to Die”

I’m kind of a nerd. I think just about anyone who finds themselves gravitating towards highly technical topics tends to be—at least at some level. As such, I tend to consume a fair amount of nerd-centered media, one of which is Cracked, an online publication that is known for “X insane things that Y” types of list-based articles, many of which have to do with marketing. Sure, their tone is a bit cynical, but I’ve been reading their articles for well over a decade, and have been following their video content off and on since it was first introduced. That being said, a recent video of theirs didn’t seem to stick the landing with me. Usually when they have content about marketing, they’re presenting real absurdities, highlighting legitimate problems or concerns, or showcasing the worst-case-scenarios from well-intentioned but ill-thought-out marketing efforts. In their recent 6 Bizarrely Specific Commercial Tropes that...

Jingle Theory: The Marketing Math Behind Christmas Carols

It has begun. As it has every year around this time. As it will every year to come. The nightmarish soundscape synonymous with ravenous hordes packed tightly together as they drive themselves half-mad in pursuit of joy. Those tormentors of the service workers, drowned them in cheer until they wish themselves deaf. The scourge of jingling bells and caroling choirs. The drummer boys and tannenbaums. The Bing and the Bublé. The Christmas carol. Okay, that might be a little over-dramatic. But you can’t deny that Christmas carols—some of them, anyhow—can get a little bit old after a while. Particularly when you’re forced to listen to the same one or two albums over and over again for about two straight months. Even those who love the season have one or two songs (or, at the very least, renditions of songs) that they could do without—yet once a song enters the Christmas...

Retail is Dead; Long Live Retail: A Study on Evolving Your Business Alongside Your Industry

Reading some of the articles surrounding the current state of retail, I can’t help but think of that old ‘The king is dead! Long live the king!’ saying you hear in movies whenever a historical monarch passes. Given the fairly recent news of Toys R Us filing for bankruptcy protection, and the earlier bankruptcies of major retailers such as Payless and Radio Shack, it’s easy to see why many believe retail is dying. Of course, retail as a whole isn’t dying. Parents still buy toys for their children. People still wear shoes. Devices still need doodads to connect to other devices. (Yes, Radio Shack escaped bankruptcy a few years ago by partnering with Sprint and focusing on cell phones, but cell phones still require doodads of their own.) The reason why these long-established companies are going bankrupt is because retail has evolved, and these companies have failed to evolve alongside...

Cold Logic vs Mass Hysteria: An Exploration of Persuasive Tactics in the Tax Reform Debate

In recent months, the Canadian government has made a tax plan. And it’s… well, let’s just say that it’s not the most popular piece of legislation to cross the desk of small-to-mid-sized business owners. Naturally, there’s been a backlash. Most of the literature you can find on the matter has at least a soupcon of vitriol, and even those attempting to be impartial are obligated to mention the fervor with which the business owners disagree with the plan.

Should I Take a Writing Course For My Business Blog?

While on a run the other day, I passed by a learning annex that had a sign in the window for business blog writing workshops. As a content writer myself, I had two thoughts: “This is a good idea for a lot of business owners who want to maintain their own web content,” and “This is a bad idea for a lot of business owners who want to maintain their own web content.”

Fast vs Cheap vs Great: A Treatise for Impossible Expectations

There’s a Venn diagram floating around the creative marketing world that’s famous among graphic designers (pictured above). The joke is that you can only ask for two, and the one you don’t pick will burn you in the end. The joke plays with the notion of standards vs expectations—a notion that slaps entrepreneurs and business owners in the face time and time again.

Com-placehold-ency: The Dangers of the ‘Band-Aid Web Page’

Marketing is all about presentation. It’s how businesses put their best foot forward, and make sure that your first impression is always a good one. And still, a number of businesses often find themselves with sections of their websites—or even their entire web presence—walled off with a ‘coming soon’ placeholder page. It’s not just small or local businesses, either. Large companies, and even some marketing agencies, will find themselves hiding behind a placeholder website for months on-end.