Tag Archives: content marketing

Always Remember…and Differentiate

I’ve railed against copying the competition with “me too” messaging…and this morning I ate my own wildebeest food and did something about it.

While Bredemarket usually doesn’t mark significant dates, I observed 9/11 on my social channels. While 9/11 is relevant worldwide, it is especially relevant to Bredemarket’s identity/biometrics customers because of its revolutionary impact on our industry.

But I didn’t use the tried-and-true messaging with an image of the former World Trade Center and the words “never forget.” After 23 years, we’ve seen that message thousands of times. It blends into the landscape, like a mention of the band the Dead Kennedys that no longer raises an eyebrow.

So instead I differentiated Bredemarket’s message and said “always remember” with an image of the destruction to the Pentagon. Perhaps that will wake people up to what happened that day.

Apologies to Shanksville. We will always remember you also.

The Pentagon, 2001.

WHY Ask Why?

LHC shared this bit of history from the advertising world.

If you don’t remember, “Why ask why? Try Bud Dry” was a short-lived advertising tagline from a short-lived Budweiser product from some short-lived part of the early 90s…

But “why ask why” is not just an old advertising slogan. It’s also an excellent question in its own right.

If you’ve read my writing for any length of time, you know I spend a lot of time on the questions why, how, and what.

Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle. From https://blog.hubspot.com/customers/3-takeaways-from-start-with-why

Heck, I even wrote a book about those (and three other) questions. Then I rewrote the book when I came up with a seventh question.

But during the last few years I failed to realize one true power of these interrogative questions—and other interrogative questions such as who (an important question for identity folks).

The power, according to Camp Systems, is this:

In negotiating, if you start asking questions with these words, you’ll invite more thoughtful and thorough answers.

Now look at what happens when you start a question with a verb….These questions can be answered in a single word, and it’s usually yes, no, or maybe.

I won’t go into detail about why the Camp Systems devotees—the “start with no” people—despise “maybe” responses and REALLY despise “yes” responses. 

For my present purpose I’ll simply say that you receive a lot more information from interrogative questions.

And if you want to maintain a customer focus, don’t you want information from the customer so you can understand them?

Whoops, let me rephrase that. What are the best types of questions to ask when you really want to understand a customer?

Practice, practice, practice…

AI Articles in Ten (Not Five) Minutes—But I Can’t Tell You Why

More on the “human vs. AI vs. both” debate on content generation, and another alternative—the Scalenut tool.

The five-minute turnaround

Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=118555856.

I’ve been concerned about my own obsolescence for over a year now.

I haven’t seen a lot of discussion of one aspect of #generativeai:

Its ability to write something in about a minute.

(OK, maybe five minutes if you try a few prompts,)

Now I consider myself capable of cranking out a draft relatively quickly, but even my fastest work takes a lot longer than five minutes to write.

“Who cares, John? No one is demanding a five minute turnaround.”

Not yet.

Because it was never possible before (unless you had proposal automation software, but even that couldn’t create NEW text).

What happens to us writers when a five-minute turnaround becomes the norm?

The five-minute requirement

I returned to the topic in January, with a comment on the quality of generative AI text.

Never mind that the resulting generative AI content was wordy, crappy, and possibly incorrect. For some people the fact that the content was THERE was good enough.

OK, Writer.com (with a private dataset) claims to do a better job, but much of the publicly-available free generative AI tools are substandard.

Then I noted that sometimes I will HAVE to get that content out without proper reflection. I outlined two measures to do this:

  1. Don’t sleep on the content.
  2. Let full-grown ideas spring out of your head.

But I still prefer to take my time brewing my content. I’ve spent way more than five minutes on this post alone, and I don’t even know how I’m going to end it yet. And I still haven’t selected the critically important image to accompany the post.

Am I a nut for doing things manually?

You’ve gone from idea to 2500+ word articles in 10 minutes.

By GFDL, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1109869.

Now that I’ve set the context, let’s see what Kieran MacRae (quoted above) has to say about Scalenut. But first, let’s see Kieran’s comments about the state of the industry:

Sure, once upon a time, AI writing tools would write about as well as a 4-year-old.

So what does Scalenut do?

With Scalenut, you will reduce your content creation time by 75% and become a content machine. 

The content gets written in your tone of voice, and the only changes I made were adding personal anecdotes and a little Kieran charm.

From https://www.scalenut.com/.

But…why?

Why is Scalenut better?

Kieran doesn’t say.

And if Scalenut explains WHY its technology is so great, the description is hidden behind an array of features, benefits, and statistics.

Maybe it’s me, but Scalenut could improve its differentiation here, as outlined in my video.

Differentiation, by Bredemarket.

What Scalenut does…and doesn’t do

I should clarify that copyrighting is but one part of Scalenut’s arsenal.

Scalenut is a one-stop-shop AI-powered SEO writing tool that will see you through keyword selection, research, and content production. Plus, you get full access to their copywriting tool, which can create more specific short-form content like product descriptions.

You optimize SEO content by adding NLP keywords, which are the words that Google uses to decide what an article is about.

MacRae cautions that it’s not for “individuals whose writing is their brand,” and Scalenut’s price point means that it’s not for people who only need a few pieces a month.

But if you need a lot of content, and you’re not Stephen King or Dave Barry or John Bredehoft (not in terms of popularity, but of distinctness), then perhaps Scalenut may help you.

I can’t tell you why, though.

(And an apology for those who watch the video; like “The Long Run” album itself, it takes forever to get to the song.)

From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Odcn6qk94bs.

If You Don’t Want Generic Content For Your Identity/Biometrics Firm

For better or worse, I write my own content. If I’m going to write yours, then I should write mine.

So I’m always amused when I receive pitches to write for the Bredemarket blog. Invariably these pitches do NOT mention:

  • Biometrics. If they’re going to write identity/biometrics content, I want to know their credentials.
  • The seven questions. Or any details of how they work.
  • Wildebeests. Enough said.

By Danijel Mihajlovic – https://thenextcrossing.com/wildebeest-migration-kenya, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=96024366

But a recent pitch excelled in its, um, genericism. Here’s the relevant part:

I run a white-label marketing company and am reaching out to ask if you need help with content creation? I work with several other marketing agencies on campaigns like Airbnb’s.

I’m not sure how Bredemarket relates to Airbnb, but it really doesn’t matter because they have worked on campaigns LIKE Airbnb. So I do not know what they’ve done. (Although ghostwriters have this problem.)

Ghostwriters like me. But I’ve never worked for companies like Airbnb.

I recently sent out a mailing that was hopefully much more targeted. I knew my hungry people (target audience), so even though it was a mass mailing (OK, not “mass”), it was relevant.

If you didn’t receive the mailing, you can view the repurposed version here.

Contact Bredemarket if you need content that benefits from my 29+ years of identity/biometrics experience.

Are My 15 Second Videos Too Long?

You’ve probably noticed that I’ve created a lot of Bredemarket videos lately.

But…

Even Bredemarket’s “short” 15 second videos may be TWICE AS LONG as they should be.

The Microsoft 8 second study

In 2015, Time magazine reported on the results of a Microsoft study:

Researchers in Canada surveyed 2,000 participants and studied the brain activity of 112 others using electroencephalograms (EEGs). Microsoft found that since the year 2000 (or about when the mobile revolution began) the average attention span dropped from 12 seconds to eight seconds.

As many noted, a goldfish’s attention span is 9 seconds.

Celestial eye goldfish image public domain.

Some argue that the 8 second attention span is not universal and varies according to the task. For example, a 21 minute attention span has been recorded for drivers. If drivers had an 8 second attention span, we would probably all be dead by now.

But watching a video is not a life-or-death situation. Viewers will happily jump away if there’s no reason to watch.

So I have my challenge.

Ironically, I learned about the 8 second rule while watching a LinkedIn Learning course about the 3 minute rule. I haven’t finished the course yet, so I haven’t yet learned how to string someone along for 22.5 8-second segments.

Little 15…Second Reels

Last week I created two promotional reels. You probably saw the reels for my identity/biometric services and Inland Empire services.

I wanted to share the latter on NextDoor, but that service wouldn’t accept the video.

Thinking the 45 second length was the issue, I decided to create a 15 second version of the Inland Empire video…and a 15 second version of the (50 second) identity/biometrics video while I was at it.

For those of you who would like to”a nice surprise…every once in a while.”

Identity/biometric.
Inland Empire.

By the way, I’m considering creating a new Inland Empire video…with an agricultural theme. (Fruits, not cows.)

Inland Empire Firms: Does Anyone Know Who You Are?

Inland Empire firms: does anyone know who you are?

Who can help your firm create content?

  • Blog posts?
  • Case studies?
  • White papers?
  • Social media?
  • Market and competitive analyses?

Contact Bredemarket: https://bredemarket.com/contact/

Bredemarket Inland Empire Services.