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Author: Tom Nixon

  • That’s a Wrap!

    That’s a Wrap!

    Lessons Learned from Season 2 of Bullhorns and Bullseyes

    Curtis and I wrapped the final episode of Bullhorns & Bullseyes this week. We broke some news, reflected on lessons learned, celebrated a star-studded roster of guests, and pledged to do something a little different and daring next year. And we hope you’ll be a part of it!

    One of the themes from Season 2 was the concept of storytelling. This time of year you see it everywhere you look:

    ‣ Seasonal nostalgia
    ‣ Stories that tug at the heart strings
    ‣ Vignettes that keep you longing for yesteryear
    ‣ Tearjerkers you kick yourself for falling for

    These aren’t advertisements…they’re brand builders. And they’re more effective and memorable than the 11 months prior pushing sales and promotions combined.

    Think about it: When you get caught up in a story, you can’t help but stick around to see how it ends. When’s the last time a commercial pushing 15% off accomplished that much? Something to consider for 2026….more on that to come.

    Until then, check out the episode below, find it and subscribe here, and read all about it below the video!

    About Last Week…

    75 Episodes, Two Seasons, One Big Realization

    We never set out to build a marketing community. We just wanted to tell Mario’s story.

    But here we are, wrapping up Season 2 of Bullhorns & Bullseyes with 75 episodes behind us, a roster of marketing legends as guests, and something we didn’t expect: proof that authentic expertise shared consistently builds something bigger than a podcast.

    It builds authority. It builds relationships. It builds business.

    How It All Started

    Two years ago, Curtis asked Tom to write a case study about their 7-year relationship with Mario D’Aquila’s Assisted Living Home Care Services.

    Tom called back with a different idea: “Their journey is so detailed, I don’t think a case study can capture it all. Let’s tell the story on a podcast.”

    That conversation launched Bullhorns & Bullseyes. The first three episodes were Mario’s marketing transformation story.

    Now Mario’s appeared 5 times out of 75 episodes and just announced he’s starting his own podcast. The student becomes the teacher.

    The Unexpected Guest List

    What started as one client’s story became something we couldn’t have predicted. Season 2 alone featured:

    Marketing legends: Mark Schaefer on AI and humanity, Brian Clark on content marketing evolution, Gini Dietrich with the PESO model

    Industry innovators: Jesse Flores on the future of AI agents, Janet Tyler on agency transformation

    Storytelling experts: Kristian Alomá on narrative psychology and customer interviews

    Privacy attorneys, acquisition specialists, and business builders who shared practical insights you can’t find anywhere else

    Tom called it “a who’s who list of heavy hitters in the marketing industry.” But here’s what we learned: they didn’t come on because we’re famous. They came on because we’re genuinely curious about what works.

    The AI Thread That Ran Through Everything

    Season 2 became accidentally prophetic about AI’s impact on marketing.

    Mark Schaefer showed us how to add humanity to AI tools without losing efficiency. Jesse Flores painted a picture of an agentic web where websites become conversation partners. Gini Dietrich explained how AI search is changing the discovery process entirely.

    But the real insight came from Brian Clark: “Expertise and wisdom combined with AI is the secret component.”

    The marketers winning aren’t the ones avoiding AI or blindly embracing it. They’re the ones using AI to amplify their hard-won expertise and human judgment.

    The Tractor Story That Explained Everything

    Sometimes the best marketing insights come from the most unexpected places. Curtis’s story about buying a $35 tractor gas nozzle became the perfect example of how modern customer journeys really work.

    He saw a Facebook ad. Got a coupon but wasn’t ready. Watched organic YouTube reviews. Waited for the right color to come in stock. Eventually bought direct from the website.

    Zero attribution in any traditional system. Perfect customer journey in reality.

    Gini called it “a perfect PESO model customer journey” – paid advertising, earned reviews, shared social proof, and owned conversion path all working together.

    The lesson: Stop trying to control the customer journey. Start being present everywhere it might happen.

    What We Learned About Authority

    Here’s what 75 episodes taught us about building business authority:

    Consistency beats perfection. We missed some weeks. We had technical issues. But we kept showing up with valuable conversations.

    Questions matter more than answers. The best episodes weren’t lectures. They were explorations of real problems with people who’ve solved them.

    Stories stick better than strategies. Curtis’s tractor purchase taught attribution better than any framework. Mario’s journey showed DISC assessments in action better than any theory.

    Community builds itself. We didn’t set out to build a marketing community. We just kept having interesting conversations with smart people. The community formed around shared curiosity.

    The Business Impact We Didn’t Expect

    Neither Curtis nor Tom planned for podcasting to become a business strategy. But here’s what happened:

    Relationship acceleration: Guests became partners, advisors, and friends faster than traditional networking ever achieved

    Authority establishment: Industry leaders started referencing episodes in their own content and keynote presentations

    Business development: The conversations opened doors to opportunities that cold outreach never could

    Knowledge consolidation: Teaching forced deeper understanding of concepts both hosts thought they already knew

    Mario put it perfectly: “I actually hear a lot of folks say, ‘Oh my God, you work with Curtis? You work with Tom Nixon?’ So there’s something to this podcasting.”

    The Season 3 Tease

    Curtis revealed they’re working on something different for Season 3 – possibly a mini-course format that goes deeper on specific topics rather than just interview-style episodes.

    And yes, there will be a new hat. Curtis is taking his daughter shopping at “the Boot Barn” to find the perfect Season 3 headwear.

    Some things change. Some things stay the same.

    The Gratitude List

    Both hosts emphasized gratitude as they wrapped Season 2. Not just for guests who shared their time and expertise, but for listeners who engaged, shared, and applied what they learned.

    Tom’s reflection: “Thank you to the listeners and viewers and commenters. We appreciate it and you’ll have more opportunity to comment and let your voice be heard next season.”

    The podcast became a dialogue, not a monologue. That’s what made it work.

    What This Means for Your Business

    The Bullhorns & Bullseyes experiment proves something important: In an attention economy, the businesses that win are the ones that earn attention by genuinely serving their audience.

    Not with slick production values or celebrity guests, but with consistent curiosity about real problems and real solutions.

    The framework isn’t complicated:

    • Find topics your ideal customers actually care about

    • Have honest conversations with people who’ve solved those problems

    • Share insights without holding back the best stuff

    • Show up consistently, even when it’s inconvenient

    • Trust that authority builds itself when you focus on serving others

    Curtis and Tom didn’t set out to become marketing authorities. They just kept asking good questions and sharing what they learned.

    Two seasons and 75 episodes later, they’ve built something that generates business, creates relationships, and serves a community.

    All by deciding to tell one client’s story and never stopping the conversation.

    The Season 3 Promise

    The announcement is clear: they’re coming back with sponsors, new formats, and continued commitment to practical marketing insights you can actually use.

    But the real promise is the same one they’ve kept for 75 episodes: show up with curiosity, share what works, and trust that serving your audience well creates business results.

    Season 3 launches with new energy, new formats, and the same commitment to honest conversations about marketing that actually works.

    The question isn’t whether you should start your own podcast. The question is: What expertise could you share consistently that would serve your ideal customers?

    The Bullhorns & Bullseyes story shows that when you focus on serving others with what you know, everything else follows.

    See you all on the flip side!

  • Don’t Leave Out the Best Part of Your Story

    Don’t Leave Out the Best Part of Your Story

    Just the Facts, Ma’am?

    “A guy falls in love with two women and ends up picking the wrong one.”

    ***

    My daughter hates the way I press her for details whenever she shares things about her day to me.

    “Tell me about that,” I might press.

    “I just did,” she’d reply.

    No, you didn’t, I press on (if I dare). You told me the outcome of what happened. What matters to me is how you got here from there. The storyarch.

    Maybe that’s just the storyteller in me. Details matter. Overcoming adversity matters. The hero’s journey matters. I’m not just interested in the destination.

    👉 Something to keep in mind as you formulate messaging and marketing for your business: Don’t just tell people what you sell or do…show them how it will get them from where they are today (frustrated, overcharged, underserved) to where they want to be tomorrow (happy, satisfied, fulfilled).

    Less boring selling. More storytelling.

    As for that “story” I “told” at the beginning of this post?

    “A guy falls in love with two women and ends up picking the wrong one.”

    That is, if my daughter had her way, a retelling of two full seasons of Severance on Apple TV+.

    Kinda misses the point, doesn’t it? Leaves a lot out. Doesn’t really connect in any meaningful way.

    Case in point.

    (Ironically, Severance is my daughter’s favorite show right now. Maybe I’ll share this with her…)

  • Don’t Be a Hero

    Don’t Be a Hero

    The story you’re telling isn’t working.

    And it’s probably because you’ve chosen the wrong hero.

    Kristian Alomá just flipped everything we thought we knew about storytelling in marketing. His insight? We don’t buy products because of features and data. We buy them because of the stories we get to tell ourselves after we own them.

    That’s worth unpacking.

    When Data Met Psychology

    Curtis started this conversation from his usual place—the data. He’s spent years connecting marketing metrics to sales numbers, trying to tell complete stories through spreadsheets. But something was missing.

    “I always thought branding was a function of marketing,” Curtis said. “Create logo, create colors, those types of things. Then I realized that brand actually sat on top of marketing.”

    That shift changed everything. You can’t write ad copy until you understand why people really buy. And that’s where Kristian’s work gets fascinating.

    The Narrative Economy Will Have Winners and Losers

    Kristian has a PhD in psychology, specializing in consumer identity. His research led him deep into narrative psychology—the field that studies how we understand ourselves through stories.

    Here’s what he discovered: People don’t just buy things because the specs say it’ll solve their problem. They buy things because of the stories they get to tell about themselves as owners.

    “I buy Apple computers,” Kristian said. “I’m a Mac fanboy. Whenever I buy a new one, I feel a little bit more creative. Now, I don’t do anything differently than if I owned a Samsung. But I feel creative. I feel cooler.”

    The product didn’t change him. The story he told himself about being an Apple owner did.

    This isn’t manipulation. It’s human nature.

    Why Your Customer Is the Hero

    Here’s where most companies get it wrong. They position themselves as the hero of the story. (Sound familiar? It’s been a core theme of Season 2 of Bullhorns and Bullseyes!)

    “Look at our amazing features. See our incredible results. We’re the solution to all your problems.”

    But that’s not how psychology works.

    Your customer is already the protagonist of their own story. They’re trying to make sense of their lives, their choices, their identity. When you barge in as the hero, you’re competing with their need to be the center of their own narrative.

    Instead, what if you became the guide that helps them tell a better story about themselves?

    The Stories We Tell Ourselves

    This gets deeper than most marketers are willing to go.

    “People create, tell, consume, and craft stories to make sense of their lives,” Kristian explained. “Make sense of the things they do, who they are, the relationships they have.”

    Your customers are doing this constantly:

    “I’m a generous person because I give to this charity.”

    “I’m a creative person because I own this laptop.”

    “I’m an eco-friendly person because I bought this kind of car.”

    Some of these stories might not even be true. But they don’t have to be. They just have to feel true to the person telling them.

    Your job isn’t to create these stories. It’s to create platforms where customers can tell better stories about themselves.

    The Interview Truth

    Tom and Curtis have been wrestling with how to capture these stories from real customers. Surveys don’t work nearly as well to get the true story. CSAT scores miss the point.

    “’What are the questions going to be’ is the wrong question to ask,” Kristian said about clients wanting to pre-screen our customer interviews. “It’s really what stories do we want to try to get.”

    Tom described his process: “I recently talked to three clients in one day. Every interview was different, even though the map was the exact same, because they said something that I could hear their voice quiver. And I knew that was a scab to pick at.”

    You can’t script authentic discovery. You have to listen for the emotional moments and follow them.

    The goal isn’t testimonials from your favorite clients telling you how wonderful you are. The goal is understanding the transformation your customers went through and how they think about that change.

    The Legacy Mistake

    Most established companies make this error: they hide their history.

    They think talking about how long they’ve been around makes them seem old or outdated. So they focus on being cutting-edge and innovative.

    Wrong move.

    “I think a lot of organizations will hide and get embarrassed of their legacies,” Kristian said. “But that legacy is often where your best stories live.”

    Your history isn’t a liability. It’s proof that you’ve been helping customers tell better stories about themselves for decades.

    The Creative vs. Technical Divide

    Curtis had one of those light-bulb moments during this conversation. He’s been living in the data world, trying to prove ROI and optimize campaigns. But he realized something was missing.

    “I felt like truth was hidden in the intersection between the marketing data and the sales data,” he said. “But what I’ve learned is you have to tell the story before you can come up with ad copy. We have to understand actually why people buy before we can make any of these other decisions.”

    Math and magic. Data and narrative. They work together, but story comes first.

    You can’t optimize what you don’t understand. And you can’t understand buying behavior without understanding the psychology behind it.

    Your Story Audit

    Here’s where to start. Ask yourself these questions about your current messaging:

    Who’s the hero? If it’s your company, your product, or your founder, you’ve got work to do.

    What story do customers get to tell about themselves after they buy from you? Not what you want them to say about you—what they get to say about themselves.

    How does your legacy support their story? Your history isn’t about age. It’s about wisdom, reliability, and proven results.

    Then find a few customers and actually talk to them. Not a survey. Not a form. A real conversation where you listen for the moments their voice changes, where you hear emotion, where they reveal the transformation they went through.

    Don’t ask what they think about your product. Ask about their life before and after. Ask about the moment they realized they needed to change something. Ask about who they became because of that change.

    The Next Chapter

    The narrative economy isn’t coming. It’s already here.

    Your customers are already telling stories about themselves. The question is whether you’re helping them tell better ones. Or figuring out where you fit into THEIR stories…not the other way around.

    Start with understanding who they want to become. Then position your company, your product, your service as the guide that helps them get there.

    The hero’s journey isn’t about you. But you can be the mentor that makes their transformation possible.

    What story do your customers get to tell about themselves because they chose to work with you?

    Article republished with permission, originally appearing in the Amplify & Aim newsletter.

  • Rewiring the PESO Model in a Zero-Click World

    Rewiring the PESO Model in a Zero-Click World

    Content Strategy Has Shifted. This Time, for Good.

    Here’s the uncomfortable truth: your content strategy just died. And you probably don’t even know it yet.

    The symptoms are everywhere. Your blog traffic is flatlining. Social shares are down. Email open rates are stuck. But the real problem runs deeper than vanity metrics.

    AI collapsed the marketing funnel.

    People don’t browse anymore. They don’t click through 10 Google results. They don’t share your carefully crafted LinkedIn posts. They ask ChatGPT a question and trust the first answer they get.

    If you’re not in that short list of sources, you don’t exist.

    The Game Changed While We Were Playing It

    Gini Dietrich calls this shift “visibility engineering.” She’s the creator of the PESO model and has been watching this transformation unfold in real time.

    Here’s what she told us on a recent episode of the Bullhorns and Bullseyes podcast I co-host: “The way that LLMs are learning and the way that AI is answering questions is based on citation-ready content. Earned and owned are even more important today, even though you’re not driving people to your website.”

    Think about that. The robots are scraping your content to answer questions. But they’re not sending anyone to read it.

    This breaks everything we thought we knew about digital marketing.

    The old playbook went like this: Create content, optimize for search, drive traffic, convert visitors. It was a linear path from awareness to action.

    That funnel is dead. Perhaps.

    Welcome to the Discovery-to-Trust Flywheel

    In the new reality, people discover you in fragments. They encounter your ideas out of context. They make decisions long before you know they’re paying attention.

    Your prospect might see a snippet from your podcast in an AI summary. They might find your quote in someone else’s newsletter. They might hear your opinion referenced in a TikTok video.

    This fragmented discovery means one thing: consistency across every channel isn’t nice-to-have anymore. It’s survival.

    You can’t have your social team saying one thing, your PR team pitching another angle, and your website telling a third story. In a world where people piece together their understanding of your brand from scattered touchpoints, mixed messages kill trust.

    How LLMs Decide Who Gets Cited

    Here’s where it gets interesting. AI models determine credibility by looking for trust signals:

    • Are people sharing your content?

    • Do Substack authors quote you?

    • Are LinkedIn creators referencing your work?

    • Do TikTok news influencers mention your brand?

    • Are journalists including you as a source?

    These aren’t just vanity metrics anymore. They’re the training data that teaches AI who to trust.

    Gini put it this way: “What the AI is looking for is: are you credible and trustworthy? And we’re determining that based on whether people are sharing your content, whether you have a good reputation on the internet, and whether you have media talking about you.”

    This is why the PESO model matters more now than when Gini created it in 2014.

    Paid amplifies your authority signals. Earned provides third-party validation. Shared reinforces credibility at scale. Owned delivers the citation-ready assets that AI can scrape.

    But here’s the key: it all has to work together as one system, not four separate tactics.

    The Content Strategy That Actually Works

    Stop chasing keywords. Start answering real questions.

    Gini’s advice is beautifully simple: “Sit down and say, what kinds of questions do we get from sales, from customer service, when we’re talking to customers, when we’re talking to prospects? Create a list and then build thematic clusters around those lists.”

    This isn’t theory. It’s practical intelligence from the trenches.

    Your sales team hears the same objections every day. Customer service gets asked the same questions every week. Those conversations are gold mines for content that actually matters.

    But most companies ignore this treasure sitting in their CRM and support tickets. They chase trending topics and viral formats instead of solving real problems for real people.

    Here’s the shift: create content that demonstrates your expertise before anyone asks for it.

    When a journalist needs a source, they’ll remember your insights. When an influencer wants to reference best practices, they’ll cite your framework. When AI summarizes your industry, your voice will be included.

    Programming Your Reputation

    We’re not just managing reputations anymore. We’re programming them.

    Every piece of content you create, every interview you give, every quote you provide becomes part of the data set that AI uses to understand your brand.

    The window to define this is closing. Early movers are already setting the baselines that others will be compared against.

    If you’re not actively programming your trust signals, you’re passively allowing machines to write your reputation for you. And they might get it wrong.

    The Measurement Problem

    Here’s the challenge: we don’t have great tools to track whether we’re showing up in AI answers. The analytics dashboards we’re used to don’t capture this new reality.

    But structured trust leaves footprints. You can track whether you’re getting quoted in earned media. You can monitor whether your content is being referenced by thought leaders. You can measure whether your owned content is generating the authority signals that AI models recognize.

    The metrics matter less than the momentum. Are you becoming more recognizable in your space? Are you the expert people think of first? Are you building the kind of reputation that compounds over time?

    Your Next Move

    If you do nothing else this week, do this: audit the questions your customers actually ask.

    Talk to your sales team. Review your customer service tickets. Look at your most replied-to social posts. Find the patterns.

    Pick the most common question. Write one genuinely useful answer. Publish it where journalists and thought leaders can find it.

    Then do it again next week.

    This isn’t about going viral. It’s about becoming the reliable source that AI models learn to trust and cite.

    The companies that understand this shift will own their categories. The ones that don’t will become invisible.

    Which future are you building?

    Watch the Full Episode for More:

    Article republished with permission, originally appearing in the Amplify & Aim newsletter.

  • Storytelling Meets “Why Ask Why?”

    Storytelling Meets “Why Ask Why?”

    The Power of Visual Storytelling

    By now, if it’s two things you know about me, it’s this: I wholeheartedly believe in the power of storytelling…and I believe that the most powerful story begins and ends with WHY.

    A perfect example of both of these in action is this video. It’s not a testimonial; it’s a story. Do you find it to be more effective than a mere quote (that could’ve been a manufactured fabrication) on a website?

    Can you spot those three acts here? WHY-HOW-WHAT?

    [Disclosure: I played a very small role in the concept development phase of this video.]

    It’s effective for a number of reasons, not least of which is because it’s true…but because it’s a true STORY!

    Stop asking your customers for testimonials, and start asking if they’d be willing to tell their stories!

  • People, Not Pixels

    People, Not Pixels

    I, Not Robot

    Guest post: Curtis Hays, Collideascope

    We’re not writing for Google anymore. We’re not writing for algorithms. We’re writing for people.

    That was the heart of a moment from our conversation with Meagan Sweigart on this week’s Bullhorns & Bullseyes.

    Traffic to websites is down organically for most businesses. Gen AI is changing how people search. The old “keyword-first” playbook doesn’t work the way it used to.

    So what does work?

    🎯 Focus on your audience, not search engines.

    🎯 Use human language that answers real questions.

    🎯 Tell stories that make people feel understood.

    Because when someone asks ChatGPT where they should vacation, or how to solve a problem at work, it’s pulling from content written in a human way. And it knows who its users are; LLMs have memory.

    The irony? Writing for people is now the best way to rank.

    Bottom line: if your marketing strategy focuses only on keywords, you’re already behind.

    Are you ready to fully let go of the keyword-first mindset? If Google is, maybe it’s time you join them.

    Watch

    Find, follow, listen and subscribe here.

  • Only the Brave

    Only the Brave

    Audacity Is a Survival Skill (Especially in B2B)

    Let me start with a confession. Every time I say something clever like “don’t build your brand on rented land,” I’m likely quoting someone smarter than me. Someone like Mark Schaefer, for example..

    In our latest Bullhorns and Bullseyes episode, Curtis and I sat down with Mark to talk about his newest book, Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World.

    And wow… this wasn’t a “tips and tricks” episode. It was a mindset shift, entirely..

    Here’s the big idea:

    👉 Merely “competent” marketing is no longer good enough. We must be excellent. We must be human. And we must take chances.

    The experts keep warning us that, “AI is coming for your job.” Maybe so, maybe not…but only the parts of your job that are safe, predictable, and repeatable. AI can’t replace the part that’s unique to you as a living, breathing person with lived experiences: the bold, the human, and the emotionally resonant.

    Which is exactly why Schaefer makes this case: audacity is no longer optional. It’s essential.

    So what does audacious marketing actually look like?

    It’s not about gimmicks. It’s not being loud just for the sake of it. It’s not brash for the sake of bravado.

    It’s this:

    ✅ Courage over conformity
    ✅ Storytelling that evokes something real
    ✅ Disrupting who tells your story, where it’s told, and how it spreads

    As Mark put it: “If two-thirds of your sales are happening without you, the best marketing isn’t grabbing the bullhorn to shout from the hills how great you are…it’s handing it to someone else.”

    Read that again.

    The 20% That AI Can’t Touch

    We talked a lot in this episode about the 20%—the part of your work that’s irreplaceably human.

    For Mark, that’s his voice. His stories. The humor, the heartbreak, the hard-earned wisdom AI can’t fake. It’s what turns content into connection.

    And in B2B? That’s your edge.

    The safer your industry feels, the more ripe it is for disruption. Ditch the pandemic of dull. Show me. don’t tell me. Be the story your audience feels, not the spec sheet they scroll past.

    One Last Thing…

    You don’t need a Super Bowl budget to be audacious. You need guts. You need empathy. And maybe a cowboy hat. (Looking at you, Curtis.)

    So here’s your coffee-fueled call to action:

    👉 Listen to the episode.
    👉 Ask yourself: are we being competent… or compelling?

    Because in a world of “meh,” the bold brand wins. And Mark’s got the receipts.

    🎧  [Check out  the full episode with Mark Schaefer at bullhornsbullseyes.com]
    📘  [Grab Audacious at BusinessesGrow.com]

  • Better Words, Not Fewer.

    Better Words, Not Fewer.

    I keep seeing people advocate for shorter content.

    (including many I respect)

    Tight and concise. Shorter sentences. Less is more. Limited attention spans, and all of that.

    Yet movies keep getting longer. Three-hour stage plays have become the norm. People will binge their favorite TV programs for hours on end in single sittings.

    We don’t crave short. We demand great.

    In fact, if you’ve gotten this far, I suspect there’s a reason. You could have stopped at four words. I suspect many did. But some of you kept going.

    And that’s what you want your writing to do: invite the reader to keep going.

    My best writing instructors never put word-count parameters on assignments — minimum or maximum. “It needs to be as long as it needs to be,” they would suggest. “No longer, no shorter.”

    Make it great. It might be short and sweet; it might be deep and immersive. But it needs to be great, first and foremost.

    And look: This post just happened to be short!

  • Deep Thoughts, with Tom Nixon

    Deep Thoughts, with Tom Nixon

    Micro Blogs Digest

    I’ve been experimenting with very short posts on LinkedIn (contrasting my former style of very long posts…almost as if LinkedIn were my blog itself!).

    Here is a quick recap of some of the recent entries…

    What your customers are telling you is only half of the story. What they’re not telling you is the other 90%.

    ***

    Jargon and acronyms are the forts we build around our messaging when we we’re trying to hide something from the market.

    ***

    The art of effective copywriting is not to convince people of something they should know, but to ensure them that what they do know matters to you.

    ***

    Never assume something won’t work in practice, just because you’ve convinced yourself it won’t work in theory.

    ***

    The PRIMARY objective of any piece of long-form content is to convince someone to read it.

    This is accomplished (or not) in the headline, in the opening sentence, and in the first three paragraphs. (I call this “The Why Section.”)

    Failure to do this renders the rest of the piece irrelevant—no matter how good the content may be.

    In Closing

    Sometimes I turn micro posts into long-form content, like this one for the last micro-blog above.

    The Moral of the Story?

    Don’t let a preconceived obligation to write 1,000 words stop you when 50 might just be enough to get people to think about concepts that are important to you.

  • Nobody’s Going to Read All That! (So Why Write It?)

    Nobody’s Going to Read All That! (So Why Write It?)

    The PRIMARY objective of any piece of long-form content is to convince someone to read it.

    This is accomplished (or not) in the headline, in the opening sentence, and in the first three paragraphs. (I call this “The Why Section.”)

    Failure to do this renders the rest of the piece irrelevant—no matter how good the content may be.

    Here, skim for yourself…

    Is Your Content Skimmable — or Skippable?

    Very few content creators go into a piece of writing with the notion, “I hope readers skim this piece!” But, in fact, that’s exactly what you want them to do.

    The binary isn’t between whether readers will skim your article or read it in its entirety; it’s whether they will skim it or skip it altogether.

    And thus becomes one of the primary purposes of developing effective content for marketing purposes: the skim. Facilitate that, and you will earn the readers’ trust, interest and engagement. That initial skim, therefore, becomes the introduction to you, your expertise and the subject matter of the discrete piece of thought leadership. It is the portal into a deeper relationship between the author and reader.

    The skim is the invitation to delve deeper. Without it, you’re risking the dreaded skip.

    How to Use Skimmability to Further Engage the Reader

    People are busy. They are easily distractible. They are being hard-wired by social media and a multimedia universe to have shorter attention spans. You are competing with everything, at every millisecond, for the attention of an audience. Step one is NOT to get the reader to immerse themselves into your chosen topic. Step one, on the contrary, is to get them to skim.

    WHAT’S YOUR HOOK?

    The first five seconds are critical. Fail to capture the attention of a scrolling or otherwise distracted reader and you will have lost your opportunity to influence that audience member forever. All of that writing, all of that expertise…gone in an instant. The dreaded skip!

    There are two primary components to hooking a potential skimmer into your content funnel:

    1 – Is your headline engaging?
    Your headline has to immediately convey to a particular and distinct audience why your article is important and relevant to them. Why stop the scroll? What will be gained if I do? It needs to resonate with urgency. Anything less is an invitation to skip.

    2 – Is your open an invitation to skim, or are you burying the lede?
    Too often, writers reflexively withhold the a-ha moment for the dramatic close. The chief takeaway must lead your article, not recap it. If you can’t pay off your headline within the first 10 seconds of the reader’s investment in it, the reader will bounce (skip), and there will be nothing taken away other than a lasting impression that you wasted the readers’s time.

    WHAT’S YOUR MAGNET?

    A typical reader’s default inclination is to hit the back button. Get back to LinkedIn…delete the email newsletter…move onto another interest or priority. You must construct your article in a way that facilitates deeper investment. The goal here is to convert that initial 25-second investment (The Hook) into a 90-second session.

    As a tradeoff for their time and attention, readers will be looking for reasons to linger. Will the problem be solved? Is this piece a mere marketing message disguised as a blog? Are there immediately actionable insights to be gleaned?

    Create visual landmarks that facilitate a skim all the way to the bottom of the piece:

    1 – Use headings throughout.
    Break up your paragraphs with enticing headers that serve both as visual landmarks for the eyeball to moor to and advance ahead, rather than allowing them to drift off into a homogenous sea of ennui. Headers re-invite a reader to resist waning interest and stay more deeply invested in the article’s value proposition. (They also serve as useful SEO “juice” for the search engine spiders crawling your site.)

    2 – Employ bullet points and numbering.
    Any presentation of text that doesn’t present as a long-winded paragraph provides another valuable invitation to skim. Remember, your first goal is to earn the skim…not present the argument in full. Bullet points and numbers are additional visual cues to the reader that content is being served up in digestible chunks, allowing the reader to maximize the efficiency of however much time they choose to invest in your piece.

    WHAT’S YOUR CATALYST?

    The closing section should pay off the promise your Hook made at the outset. Remember that claim your article made at the open, as to why the piece was important and why the reader should care? Deliver on it in Act III.

    1 – List the takeaways.
    Give the reader three to five action items to implement right away to start chipping away at the challenge or opportunity your article examines.

    2 – Close on a high note.
    Believe it not, your final paragraph is more likely to be read by skimmers than much of the middle. Readers want to skip ahead to the big payoff they presume your saving up (the best for last). They figure you’ll summarize the most important points at the end, as we were taught way back in grade school. (Tell them what you’re going to say, say it, then tell them what you said.) Use this opportunity to echo The Hook, provide meaningful guidance on the provided action steps in The Magnet, or to offer the skimmer something next to do, read, watch or consider as The Catalyst to further the relationship.

    Now That They’ve Skimmed, Skip Back to the Beginning

    If you’ve gotten the reader this far — fully skimmed from top to bottom — it’s highly likely that you have, by then, earned his or her trust, attention, consideration and even intrigue. An effectively skimmable piece of thought leadership will provide that conduit to that next important step in the reader-audience relationship.

    No, this is not when the reader calls you and demands to hire you on the spot (typically speaking). This is when the reader has taken enough value away from the initial skim that they begin to read the fuller piece more closely and deeply.

    NOTE: This does not mean, necessarily, that the reader will start at the beginning and run through the piece in its entirety. What’s more likely is that the reader will continue to skip around, looking for nuggets of wisdom they missed on the initial skim. This is when full paragraphs get considered, digested and analyzed.

    Milk the Skims!

    If you’re lucky, the skim begets a read. The read plants a seed. The seed germinates into a reputation. That reputation is what begets consideration down the road when an opportunity arises for you to be on the short list of potential service providers.

    But, remember, the alternative to a skim is not a word-for-word deep-dive study…

    IT’S A SKIP.

    Be honest…you skimmed this article, didn’t you?

  • Less Pitching, More Empathy

    Less Pitching, More Empathy

    “The art of effective copywriting is not to convince people of something they should know, but to ensure them that what they do know matters to you.”

    — Me. I wrote that.

    By this, I mean to say: Too many fall into the trap of expecting their marketing copy to convince an audience to buy from them, based on features and not on outcomes. The website messaging pitches the features…without connecting to benefits. The brochure brags about speed. Storage capacity. A variety of colors and finishes.

    What if none of that matters to the prospective client or customer? What if, instead, the prospect cares first and foremost about their own pain, challenges or aspirations? Rule of thumb: If you’re leading with product features in your marketing copy, you’re talking right past the client or customer.

    Show Me Where It Hurts

    The best way to connect with customers is to demonstrate that you understand them. This is next to impossible if you haven’t taken the step of asking them what they truly value…what problems they need solving…why they are on the hunt for a new product, solution or service in the first place.

    WHY>>HOW>>WHAT. That’s the quickest pathway to convert a website visitor to an interested prospect. Demonstrate that you understand what matters to them; show them how you help others relieve the pain or achieve the gain; and then lead them on a journey that helps them self-select the product or service in your warehouse.

    Show me, don’t tell me. Comfort me, don’t sell me.

  • Ideas, Not Words

    Ideas, Not Words

    People Don’t Need More Words; They Need Better Ideas


    Your job as a thought leader is not to create content; it’s to deal in intellectual property.

    So says Jay Acunzo, author of Break the Wheel and a brand messaging strategist.

    People can get words anywhere they look these days. Thanks in part to AI, we are at no shortage for content. But what the world will continue to seek out is expertise. Fresh ideas. New approaches to solving problems.

    And if the content you’re publishing isn’t delivering on those needs, it might as well just be words on a page. In fact, it is. Or maybe worse.

    That’s Not How This Works. That’s Not How Any of This Works.

    Companies continue to increasingly report, “Our website isn’t performing in search the way it used to.” That comes as no surprise. As my colleague Curtis Hays continues to demonstrate, search engines aren’t indexing content and returning search engine result pages (SERPs) the way they did just months ago.

    • For one, 60% of searches or more result in zero-click results, meaning the user is getting the answer to their query before they even click on a link.

    • Secondly, Google is now actively working to sniff out AI-generated content and instead “prioritize original, high-quality content that satisfies user intent and provides value, moving away from content primarily optimized for search engines.”

    So if you’re relying on AI to word-stuff a blog post without providing any unique perspective, analysis, insights, or procriptive strategy, you’re just putting words on a page.

    And next to no one will notice. Not even Google.

    Said Nobody Ever:

    Few among us make a concerted effort to seek out words. Nobody thinks to oneself, “I’m going to consume some content this morning.”

    Instead, what we seek to do is become educated and informed. Solve a problem. Eliminate a pain. Identify a better way.

    That’s what thought leadership provides, properly executed. It brings the expert’s best ideas to light to deliver on a promise to inform, to enlighten, or to entertain, even.

    Yes, AI can make content generation easier and quicker. But so can an untrained intern. The deed you really need to accomplish is to demonstrate expertise. Differentiate. Endear trust.

    That’s what creates thought leaders in the first place. Better ideas, not an abundance of words.

    And if you think AI word slop is putting your brand in the best possible position to compete in the marketplace of ideas, well, I might want to have a word or two with you.