A Marketer's Approach to Creating Ethical Content

Dan Shewan is a web content specialist and journalist based in New England. He is a regular contributor to the WordStream blog, where he writes about everything from emerging search technologies to content marketing strategy. Dan’s essays and journalism have been featured in a wide range of publications in print and online, including The Guardian, Pacific Standard, The Daily Beast, The Independent, Dig Boston, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and many other outlets.

In 2013, Buffer shocked the world of content by publishing the salaries of every member of staff on its payroll.

Many people dismissed Buffer’s commitment to radical transparency. They said it was crazy, that it would tank investment, that merciless headhunters would poach Buffer’s best and brightest.

The naysayers were wrong.

Thanks to the courage of startups like Buffer, blogging about employee salaries is no longer viewed as exposing sensitive proprietary information; it’s seen as a positive, desirable brand attribute, and rightly so. But something that far fewer companies seem willing to talk about or even acknowledge is the profoundly negative impact that many of the companies we rely upon and work with are having on their workers, their users, and society as a whole – and our complicity in it.

The ease and convenience promised by today’s tech often comes at great cost. Facebook may be able to offer advertisers the ability to target dozens of highly granular audience segments, but Facebook faced intense criticism when reports surfaced that it had shared sensitive data about the psychological well-being of schoolchildren in Australia and New Zealand with an advertiser. Twitter may be unbeatable for interacting with large audiences in real time, but Twitter has failed utterly to consistently enforce its own abuse policies and protect its users, and even issued temporary bans to victims of abuse. Amazon may be able to offer consumers delivery in one hour or less through Amazon Now, but the average Prime subscriber probably hasn’t heard of Amazon Flex, a virtually invisible network of independent contractors that delivers millions of packages for Amazon using their own vehicles, as part of a system with virtually no workplace protections in which drivers are forced to compete for delivery assignments using an Uber-style app.

Few companies are willing to risk losing revenue, users, or future acquisition prospects by weighing in on what are seen as largely political issues. Unfortunately, as inconvenient as it may be for Silicon Valley’s most prosperous startups, you can’t be an agent of transformative social change while enjoying the benefits of political neutrality. When you set out to “disrupt” things like public transportation by reinventing the bus for wealthy white people, or seek to capitalize upon an already predatory housing market rife with discrimination, you become part of the political landscape – particularly if you knowingly and repeatedly break the law in the pursuit of profit.

To complicate matters, many of us – especially straight white men – enjoy positions of such immense privilege that we’re more concerned with the click-through rates of our e-commerce campaigns than we are about the news of workers in Amazon’s fulfillment centers in Scotland who were reportedly forced to live in tents in the woods because they couldn’t afford to commute.

Simply put, it’s easy to ignore inequality and exploitation because we either directly benefit from them, or they don’t affect us.

Initiating a Dialogue About Ethics in Content

Sadly, there has been virtually no meaningful public discussion about the pervasive, structural inequality in tech among the content marketing community. For an industry with so much self-described “thought leadership,” this is as surprising as it is disappointing. It seems we’re much more comfortable talking about the ethics of accepting bribes from brands than whether we should be working with immoral tech companies in the first place.

Having difficult conversations about inequality in tech doesn’t necessarily mean trash-talking valued partners; all it requires is a commitment to the truth and the courage to voice it. Editorially speaking, there are very few ways to put a positive spin on a project like Uber’s Greyball tool or Palantir’s Investigative Case Management system, and even fewer ethical justifications for doing so – but content doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and it doesn’t happen by accident. Someone has to write Palantir’s copy. Someone like you or me.

It’s never easy to be the person asking uncomfortable questions when everybody just wants to finish their work and go home. But we have to be those people, and one of the best ways to start talking about ethics in content is to frame these conversations as an extension of your company’s brand values.

If your company offers a way to ask questions of senior management, such as a regular company meeting, ask how – or if – ethical business practices factor into your company’s growth strategies. If you’re comfortable doing so, consider running a series of workshops to talk about how your company’s partnerships reflect your brand values. If your editor asks you to write something that conflicts with your personal ethics, ask how this content truly serves the best interests of your audience.

What else can you do? Before you start your next content project, ask yourself some difficult questions:

• Does this content overlook, rely upon, or otherwise obscure unethical business practices to make its case or provide value to the reader?
• How racially, economically, and socially diverse is the audience you’re writing for, and is this audience truly representative of the kinds of people who could benefit from your content?
• Does any aspect of this content project conflict with your personal morals? If so, what would you need to do or change in order for you to stand by your content in good conscience?
• Will your content meet the ethical standards of professional journalists? If not, why not?

We don’t need to resort to hyperbole or invective to start a conversation about unethical business practices in tech, but we do need to agree that the current system is unsustainable and that we all have to try harder and do better. Yes, we all have bills to pay, but we also have a responsibility to speak out against business models that encourage the exploitation of the disenfranchised and reward callous disregard for basic human decency.

And if we really can’t get behind ethics in content for its own sake, there’s always the profit motive for a more ethical approach to business.

How to Create and Organize Visual Assets in a New Role

Nisreen Galloway is a digital marketer and foodie with a strong background in writing, graphic design, and social media. She began her marketing career as an intern at Yelp and then worked at several B2B and B2C companies in the food and luxury markets, focusing on content marketing, graphic design, and social media management. Nisreen lives in Boston with her loving boyfriend, fridge full of spaghetti squash, and temperamental, but adorable cat Lilly.

My first full-time content marketing job out of college, I was lucky enough to have thousands of visual assets at my exposure. There were high quality photos, HD videos, and dozens of opportunities to create original content. As I created content calendars and social campaigns, it was easy to find the images I needed without draining our budget or struggling to meet deadlines.

At my next position, I was not so lucky. There were a few images hiding in buried folders and forgotten websites, but for the most part. there was nothing up to current brand standards. Luckily, we had a deep marketing budget, but there was no action plan for creating more content. Did a new product launch mean we needed several new photoshoots or just a few product shots? Did we need video of every event or just a few? Each decision was crucial to the marketing campaigns and assets for the year, and the first couple months were definitely a learning process. If you’re starting a new role with limited content, there are a few ways you can ensure your success.

Step 1: Assess and Organize

Determining what visual assets are already available when you start in your role is important. Are there photos from an old photoshoot hiding on a server? Is there a forgotten Flickr account with event photos you can use? Headshots? Having a solid idea of what’s available means you can organize the imagery in a central location, archive content that’s no longer relevant to the brand, and create a plan to move forward. When assessing backlogged content, it’s helpful to determine if any imagery can be updated or reused. One of my favorite pieces of content marketing that food and fashion bloggers are infamous for is showing their growth through comparison articles. Try taking a similar angle with your company’s old content to showcase your brand story, logo transformations, or even celebrate a company anniversary.

Step 2: Create a plan

It’s important to align your visual assets with your content strategy and goals for the year. If you want to grow your social presence, it might make sense to focus on acquiring more videos. If your focus is on email marketing, then creating pertinent graphics and photos may be your focus. Whatever your goals are, having an outline of your needs and wish-list items will help you better plan photoshoots, events, and the must-have moments to capture. If you’re operating on a small budget, try to think of places where you can double-up on asset creation. For example, if you need to update team headshots, consider also grabbing video Q&As with the team to use on social down the line. Doubling your efforts at each photoshoot will save you time and money.  

Step 3: DIY Visual Assets

If you’re working with a really small marketing team, you may not have the resources to hire professional photographers or video teams. Consider looking into things like Adobe Stock Photos or other stock photography websites and come up with a plan. iStock even offers some video clips that can be easily edited to create outstanding visuals for website upkeep or make your blogs stand out. For your social needs, it’s widely accepted to use a DSLR or an iPhone to grab images, or stage a mini shoot in your office. Get creative and don’t be afraid to try something out of the box — the best visual assets often resonate when they’re followed by great content.

Starting with little to no visual assets can be hard, but by having a plan, staying organized, and using the most of the free and downloadable resources online, you’re sure to slowly create a library that can easily support your content marketing needs.

3 Tips for Hiring a Stellar Content Writer

Kaite Rosa is Senior Director of Marketing at Payfactors. Prior, Kaite held content-focused roles at Boston-area companies including Virgin Pulse, Lionbridge, and Brafton. She has also reported for Boston-based online publication VentureFizz, and New York City-based online publications Mobile Marketer and Luxury Daily. Follow her on Twitter @kaiterosa.

Hiring a new content writer to your team is rarely an easy task. Today’s talent market is incredibly tight, and the big-time Boston-area companies offering unprecedented perks can make things that much more competitive. Not only that, but screening for strong writing skills isn’t exactly simple -- even for the seasoned content pro.

So how can you make hiring a little easier the next time you’re looking to expand your team? Here are some of the tried-and-true tactics I’ve used to find stellar content writers.

CAST A NARROW NET

I work for a tech startup, and our marketing team is still in its infancy. I know firsthand how tough it can be to clearly define what your new hire will be doing -- particularly when you’re still figuring out the team’s needs (and especially when you’re creating a new role from scratch).

Will your new hire be writing data sheets for product marketing? Helping your business development team with sales enablement content? Owning content for inbound and demand gen? Writing for the blog? Supporting product with technical copy? Interviewing the C-Suite for thought leadership pieces? Penning press releases? Crafting content for social media?

If you’re thinking, “Yes! All of it!” then let me be the one to break it to you: You’ve already set yourself up for failure.

A job description containing all of the above is innately flawed for two reasons.

First, one person can’t possibly own all those responsibilities successfully. It’s just way too much work for a single writer.

Second, the writer who kills it with your product marketing content is going to have a vastly different skill set than the one who writes creative copy for your demand gen offers.

ADJUST AS NEEDED

Instead of hopelessly searching for a content unicorn, narrow in on the near-term skills you absolutely need your new team member to have.

Maybe product can handle their own technical documentation for now, but you can’t wait another minute to find a writer who has a more creative slant to handle content for the blog. Outline your immediate must-haves, then adjust your job description (and job title!) to attract the kind of writer you need today.

Once you start reviewing resumes, reading writing samples and meeting candidates, be flexible. Maybe you’re looking for someone to own content for product marketing and sales enablement, but you end up finding an amazing candidate who’s also got a journalism background and would be great for interviewing execs and writing thought leadership content. Can you adjust that job description a bit further, to fit both your needs and the candidate’s strengths?

Be adaptable, and pivot when you need to.

GO BEYOND THE PORTFOLIO

While a writing portfolio is a great way to see what your candidate might be capable of, it’s impossible to know who edited that copy (and how many rounds of revisions it actually went through).

A take-home test may seem like a sure-fire way to weed out poor writers -- but it’s flawed, too. There are a billion variables that can skew an off-site writing test: a home environment very different from the workspace. An extended deadline. Outside help to edit.

Instead of sending your candidate home to work on a writing sample, prep a variety of quick assignments for your candidate to complete on-site.

For example, draft a bit of copy in advance for your candidate to edit. Sneak a few intentional errors in there -- some obvious, some not so obvious -- and see what they do with it.

The best writers not only catch the errors, but they’ll offer up suggestions to make your copy stronger, too.

Have your candidate use the piece they edit to craft some short content, like social media or ad copy. This’ll give you a sense of their ability to write clear, concise, compelling content.

At the same time, provide your candidate with a handful of statistics or some bullet points related to your product or industry. Ask them to use that information to storyline a quick blog, an infographic, or even a video script. This will show you how they approach a new project and help you understand how they think about visual content.

Finally, keep time to a minimum: I suggest giving no more than 30 minutes to complete the full test.

This tactic might seem unrealistic (cruel, even!), but it’s a solid way to figure out how your potential new hire works under stress and against a tight deadline.

When all is said and done, hold a quick debrief after the writing test. Ask the candidate to walk you through their work. What did they spend the most time on? What didn’t they get to? How did they decide what to work on first?

This helps shed light on how and why they prioritized all the projects. It also gives you a good look at how they approach the creative process.
 

Resurrect Your Deck Design: An ode to ugly presentations (and a mission to fix them)

Katie Burkhart is the founder of KBurkhart & Co. and serves as the lead brand strategist and designer. You can follow Katie on Twitter @KBurkhartCo and read her posts on the KBurkhart & Co blog.

Presentation decks are a special interest of mine. Why, you ask? Well, like many people, I spend a decent amount of time listening to presentations, which means I also spend a lot of time looking at decks that leave a lot to be desired.

I’d really like to help fix that.

Let’s be honest. How many of you have sat in the audience going, “Man, this is a great speaker! I’m tweeting quotes left and right. But…what happened to that slide deck? It just doesn’t measure up and I can barely read it…”

Hopefully a few hands went up.

One of the biggest flaws in presentation design, regardless of use case, is the compulsion to write out everything that might possibly come up on the slides themselves. This can often include reproducing the entire talk on the screen – in very small letters.

Taking this approach undermines your ability to deliver your message in an effective or engaging way. What you’ve put on your slides cannot be read or digested, but because you’ve put it there, your audience will likely attempt to read what you’ve written. They will then miss out on what you’re saying, as they can’t read and listen at the same time. Or worse yet, they will be frustrated at the onset and ignore your slides completely.

Additionally, the more you’ve used your deck as a safety net in case you forget something, the more likely you will be to read your slides to the audience (ouch!).  

Given this saga of woe, why is it that we keep creating presentations crammed with text and blurry images?

It’s because we believe that our presentation deck is supposed to be an exact duplicate of our verbal presentation and all of the related pieces of information.

Unfortunately, that’s incorrect.

Presentation decks are meant to support you, not be the presentation itself. You are the presentation.

What does that mean? Well, if your laptop dies five minutes before your keynote, if your file just won’t open on the venue’s technology, or even if the projector you’re supposed to use catches fire, you should still be able to deliver your presentation expertly.

This may sound really simple (and it is) but it requires a reframe in thinking. 

No more should you spend time copying your notes into your deck, or adding links that the audience can’t use anyway. You should spend your time making the content you’re presenting as valuable and as human as it can possibly be.

For some of us, that may mean ditching the deck entirely. Personally, I’d feel a little naked up there without something backing me up. 

So, if you’re going to have a deck — and you don’t want it to be your notes in PowerPoint format — what should you do?

Focus on one thing at a time.

“Every slide should try to do just one job. One,” says Avinash Kaushik in another great article on presentation design.

I could not agree more. It would be better to have more slides than to cram everything into ten.

Start by narrowing down what goes into your deck. Determine which points will be stronger because they’re underscored by a visual behind you, and which points could be communicated equally as well without the added support.

Then look at each slide as its own canvas. Take away everything you can until you only have left exactly what you need – and ensure that what remains has a specific reason for being there. Doing so will provide you the optimum balance of form and function, and will also allow your audience to fully understand the information on the slide without taking their eyes off of you for too long.

Focusing on one thing at a time will not only improve your deck design, but the caliber of your presentation as a whole. It will allow you to determine exactly what matters most, and to explore each point thoroughly – and thus deliver more value.

Limit the amount of statistics you include.

And while you’re working on revising your content, limit the amount of statistics you throw at your audience.

We’ve all watched that presentation that starts with a dozen numbers, and then they keep popping up throughout. You know a lot about the topic on which you’re presenting, but a constant barrage of data can be overwhelming to your audience because it makes no sense without context.

Concentrate on the story, then carefully select a handful of data points that support what you’re sharing. Narrowing it down to the statistics that make the most impact will better serve the story and the deck design.  

Design your presentation to support your brand.

Your deck should absolutely reflect your brand, preferably beyond sticking a tiny version of your logo in the corner.

Think about colors, fonts, and imagery, as well as the overall layout. Perhaps your graphics are linear, or perhaps they’re flat. Maybe your content always aligns to the bottom lefthand corner. Whatever you do, make sure it fits soundly within your brand identity and strategy.

More specifically, when selecting imagery, high-resolution photos are a must as they go a long way to show your level of polish and professionalism. Selecting images that support your brand and brand story go even further.

Consider whether your images should play up certain colors, if they should be black and white, or if perhaps you shouldn’t use images at all, but only graphics and icons instead. Once you know the style, take the time to source good, professional, high-resolution imagery both from an artistic as well as from a file quality perspective.

There are many places to obtain quality stock photos without cost. This likely means they carry a Creative Commons license and can generally be used attribution-free. Now, sometimes you just can’t find what you’re looking for on these sites or feel that you’ve seen the photo you’re planning to use in too many places. You may need to broaden your search to stock photography sites that charge a fee to license the photos, such as Shutterstock or iStock. If none of these options work for your brand, consider working with a photographer to take your own.

Your font selection should still be in line with your brand, but when it comes to presentations, use a standard font. What does that mean? It means that the custom font your brand uses needs to come out. There’s no guarantee that the font you’ve chosen will be installed on the computer from which you’ll be presenting and using a standard font will help you avoid any unexpected or undesired formatting changes.

Also remember to make your type large enough to read and with enough contrast to stand out. A good test is to print your slides out at home in black and white. If you can’t clearly read your text, there isn’t enough contrast.

Your overall layout should coordinate with the identity you’ve created through your other materials. That doesn’t mean it needs to look exactly the same, but it should feel like it belongs. If you’re not a designer, consider working with one to make a base template.

Your deck is an extension of your brand and like any other channel, it should support that brand accurately and consistently.

Embed any media you want to share.

In today’s digital age, it is no surprise that you would want to include video or other media in your deck. The most obvious way is by linking to that media. Avoid the temptation to do so. This method is very disruptive to your presentation, as it literally takes your audience out of your deck, forces them to refocus on something completely different, and then come back to your deck, all the while losing their focus on you. Inevitably, this technique also tends to lead to technical difficulties like error messages, eating up precious time and dinging your credibility because you can’t connect.

If you need to show a video or an infographic, figure out how to embed them into your deck. For example, versions of PowerPoint past 2013 will allow for this right in the program.

This is also a good time to mention that you should think about the file type and format to which you save your final version. This seems really silly to include, except for the fact that I’ve watched both experienced and novice presenters run into problems because they didn’t have their file in a format that worked the day of their presentation.

The best way to know if you’ve got the right type of file at the right aspect ratio is to consult with the venue at which you’ll be presenting. It’s also a great time to make sure they’re able to handle sound or video. Prior preparation prevents poor performance.

Be consistent.

Humans appreciate patterns. In fact, we’re the best when it comes to recognizing them in just about everything. Establishing and leveraging patterns in your deck design will help your audience to better understand your message and to remember you.

Consistency adds dramatically to your audience’s ability to digest the information you’re sharing. For example, use your fonts consistently throughout the deck. Your audience will start to look for the header in the same place, in the same color, if you establish it that way, which will help them grasp your slides with ease. Also consider limiting yourself to two or three fonts. It will make the design more consistent and cohesive.

The same goes for imagery. If you use black and white photos as part of your brand, make sure that they’re all black and white in your deck. More specifically, if you’re a photo-heavy brand, be cautious with the use of graphics, as it may be jarring.

When determining the layouts of your slides, select half a dozen options and stick to them. Seeing content in the same place on your slides will aid in their digestion, as well as the cohesiveness of your deck design.

As a bonus, think about key visual elements you can repeat. It will help your brand to stick in the minds of your audience.

Create a handout.

You do not have to have a handout for your presentation, but if this shift in thinking has made you really nervous that you won’t cover all of your points, think about making a handout (lawyers, I’m looking at you!).

You will undoubtedly know more about your topic than what shows up in the slides directly. Take all of that knowledge and make a nicely designed handout that your audience can take home. Brand it well so that you and your company get the recognition for your effort and thought leadership!

Keep it simple.

This tends to be my golden rule for most things, but it’s absolutely true when it comes to deck design. Putting this rule at the forefront will help you to make strategic design decisions, resulting in better focus and consistency.

It will also help you to make your presentation more human and bring the story to the forefront.

A deck can serve as excellent support to your presentation, engage your audience, and solidify your story. Just remember that you are the presentation, and the deck is a tool that you can make the most of, provided you keep it focused, keep it consistent, and keep it simple.