Recording the weekly Brand Newsroom podcast is the most fun I have every week. I know my co-hosts Nic Hayes and James Lush feel the same way. I didn’t have any broadcast experience when I started so it was stressful for me. We didn’t always make it easy for ourselves on the produ … | Continue reading
Does your organisation show off the happiness of its employees? Most growing businesses know the value of showcasing satisfied employees insofar as it can improve recruitment processes, save time and money, and increase access to top levels of talent. Yet what most businesses fai … | Continue reading
Is there a more hated term in business than ‘content marketing’? Even the people who dedicate their livelihood to it aren’t crazy about it. With content marketing agencies failing around the world, a hopeful faction from traditional marketing, advertising, and PR is waiting for c … | Continue reading
There’d hardly be a bookshelf in the country that doesn’t have at least one Lonely Planet guidebook on it somewhere. Today, James, Sarah and Nic are joined by Lonely Planet’s director of sales and marketing, Chris Zeiher, who explains how a company with a printed product made the … | Continue reading
It should have been a huge life decision, but in the end it was quite easy. About 18 months ago I packed in a job I absolutely adored, as Marketing & Media editor at the West Australian newspaper, for a job outside traditional media, in a content marketing agency. As journalists … | Continue reading
If the whole idea of standing up and talking in front of an audience, regardless of size, fills you with utter fear, this is the public speaking and presentation training course for you. The reality is that so much of our inability to perform well is psychological. So imagine how … | Continue reading
We are all the media now. You, me, the brands we work with: We can all create and distribute our own content and build our own audiences. We’ve never been so powerful. Australian marketers use an average of eight different kinds of content to engage their audiences. Whether it’s … | Continue reading
It’s obvious, really, that psychology is a big part of marketing. After all, we’re talking about human behaviour and trying to influence that behaviour. James has a master’s degree in psychology, so the BNR team leans on his expertise to explore how to use psychology to succeed a … | Continue reading
Recently, I saw something very rare — several great presentations! I was MCing a large event here in Perth. The audience was full of teachers and educators keen to learn more about how STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) are such a vital part of lear … | Continue reading
Not everyone is a natural in front of the camera. Are you one of those people who seizes up the minute that little red light comes on? Does you CEO look like they’re being probed by a Spanish Inquisition when an interviewer asks them a question? We’ve recently completed filming … | Continue reading
Search Engine Optimisation: Is it the magic sauce we need to add to our content to help us reach our audience? Or is it an old-fashioned dark art we no longer need to worry about? To discuss the state of SEO in 2017, the BNR team is joined by someone who really knows his stuff,.. … | Continue reading
Trying on a pair of jeans in a store’s changing room the other day, I overheard another shopper ask the assistant, “does it look OK?” I’ve no idea what the person was buying but I know the question was directed at a sales assistant because the answer she got was: “Yeah, great; y … | Continue reading
While at Detroit Metropolitan Airport recently to catch a flight to Kansas City, I learned a little something about audience. I’m actually surprised I’m not still being detained by Transportation Security Administration agents. Let me explain. For a couple of years now, my husban … | Continue reading
There was some big news in the content marketing space here in Australia last week. Less than two years after media monitoring and data firm iSentia bought Australia’s best-known content marketing agency, King Content, for A$48 million, the company has killed off the brand, close … | Continue reading
As a content strategist, my work involves not only writing content marketing strategies but presenting them to clients when they’re completed. In general most strategies I write include, amongst other things, recommendations for regular posting to at least two social media channe … | Continue reading
iSentia has finally dropped the axe on its failing content marketing agency, King Content. It’s easy to imagine content marketing agencies across Australia, and the global markets where King Content operated, dancing on the company’s grave. But we shouldn’t be. King Content’s ha … | Continue reading
The Brand Newsroom team is joined by experienced broadcaster and voice-over artist Alex Lush to talk about voice overs. BNR received an email from an avid Brand Newsroom listener, Brenda, who asked how important it was to get the right voice to do your voice over. It’s a great qu … | Continue reading
Working at a creative agency, we see a huge range of people walk through our doors: from photographers and actors, through to bankers and mining professionals. What they all have in common is an interest in getting their project off the ground. Some feel inspired and full of idea … | Continue reading
You’re ironing your shirt one morning when all of a sudden your iron makes a loud BANG, sending the little red light off. You flick the switch off and on again to no avail. It’s completely stuffed. After cursing the appliance, you whip out your phone and type “top-rated irons” in … | Continue reading
Jeremy Stewart of Launchpad Creative joins Nic and Sarah to talk about websites. How often should you update your website? What difference can a refresh make to the effectiveness of your site? And what sorts of things should we be updating all the time? Here are some key take-out … | Continue reading
I first started talking about content as a business asset in 2010. Earlier this month the Content Marketing Institute released a new Content Management & Strategy Survey showing 92% of marketers believe it’s an asset, too. In the past seven years we’ve had a massive shift in our … | Continue reading
How do you sell something if it doesn’t exist yet? It’s not a trick question. It’s a real-life business dilemma. How do you show a prospective buyer how fantastic it would be to live in an off-the-plan apartment, for example? And how do you show your audience something that’s i … | Continue reading
Nic Hayes and Sarah Mitchell are joined by Lush’s senior producer Ian Bignell for a conversation about how to succeed at producing video for social media. Every day half a billion people are watching videos on Facebook. More than half of all of us are watching video online every … | Continue reading
When you’re planning a corporate video production there are myriad questions you need to answer: Everything from what’s possible on your budget through to when and where to physically film it. In many instances, in so many ways, using a white screen studio is a great way to keep … | Continue reading
I recently spent a night in Paris in 1899. Don’t worry; you read that correctly. It was for an event called “Secret Cinema”, which takes place in London every year and celebrates a cult film by bringing its setting and characters to life, using actors, before a screening of the … | Continue reading
The Brand Newsroom team gets a bit introspective today. They’re talking about podcasting and whether it’s a worthwhile part of the marketing mix for your small business. This is episode 148 of Brand Newsroom and the team has learnt a thing or two along the way. So let’s take a lo … | Continue reading
Writing a content marketing strategy requires knowledge and skill. A truly great content marketing strategy also requires ignorance. If you’re embarking on a content initiative, you’ll want to know when ignorance is bliss and when it isn’t. You’ll save money and get a better retu … | Continue reading
Wondering about white papers? If you’re up to date with research on content marketing effectiveness, you’ll have come across the term ‘white paper’ more than a couple of times; however, when it comes to actually creating white papers, the logistics leave many marketers scratching … | Continue reading
Today, the BNR team is talking about team building. How do you pull together the right communications team for your business? What do you do in-house? When should you bring in outside expertise? How do you know a PR consultant or writer is the right fit for your team? Here are so … | Continue reading
Have you ever wondered how much it costs to create a corporate video? Have you ever been asked to come up with a budget for a video and found yourself blindsided or downright confused by the varied quotes you get? I’m not surprised. (And I’ve spent my career making these videos. … | Continue reading
A picture is worth a thousand words, so they say. I couldn’t imagine what a video is worth, then. Collectively, we watch around one billion hours of video per day and that’s just YouTube’s figures; we haven’t even included the numbers from other video, so that figure is, astonish … | Continue reading
The BNR team has a discussion about leadership — taking a close look at management and building a successful team, and asking what works and what doesn’t. Here are some key take-outs: Teams like leaders who lead by example. Leaders need to show courage. There’s a crisis of trus … | Continue reading
The rise of online video has been staggering over the past few years. It simply dominates the way content is consumed online and the statistics surrounding it do nothing to disprove this: More video content is uploaded to the internet in 30 days than the major US television netwo … | Continue reading
Just because you can do it, doesn’t mean you should. Using marketing technology is one of those things. Email automation, especially drip email, could be destroying your brand. If you’re using drip email campaigns for lead generation, chances are you’re doing more harm than good. … | Continue reading
Customer centricity. It’s the latest marketing buzzword. What is it? Well, it’s all about prioritising your customer’s specific needs, observing them objectively in order to understand these needs, and developing products and service offerings to deliver on these needs. Today the … | Continue reading
My husband and I are in the process of relocating to Kansas City (well, actually, he’s there and I’m back in Michigan until our house sells). I recently travelled with him to Missouri to help move into our apartment and to get utilities, phone, internet and cable set up. While th … | Continue reading
The internet has given us many wonderful things: social connectivity; convenience in shopping, banking, and education; immediate news; and so on. Something that does not fall into this category is the nauseating clickbait headline. You know the ones: “What you’ll read next will s … | Continue reading
Ninety per cent of the information our brain processes is visual and 40 per cent of people respond better to something visual than they do to text. Jeremy Stewart is a digital marketing consultant at Launchpad Creative and really understands graphics and design — so he’s the perf … | Continue reading
Effective communication isn’t just about what you say; it’s also about how you say it. That’s called “tone of voice” — and getting it right can be the difference between success and failure. Whether you sound formal or casual, humorous or serious, respectful, enthusiastic or irr … | Continue reading
Have you ever met a person who improves the energy in a room just by walking through the door? They’re the people you want to be near – the folks you lean a little closer to so you don’t miss a word. Invariably, they pull from a deep well of charisma to make everyone around... | Continue reading
Sarah has had enough. Having been bombarded by drip email campaigns for years, she lets fly at this increasingly popular — but often very annoying —marketing strategy. But, does it work? And, if you’re going to use it, how do you get it right? While Sarah might hate the tactic, … | Continue reading
Not all headlines are created equal. Newspaper editors have known this for years. Now, with the internet and social media, the art of headline writing is no longer the province of a few clever sub-editors, it’s a skill individuals, brands, writers, freelancers, bloggers — practic … | Continue reading
‘Customer Centricity’: If you’re a marketing professional you’ll have heard the term. In fact, in May I attended the B2B Marketing Leaders APAC conference and ‘customer centricity’ was a term used in most of the presentations that took place over three days. A common assertion wa … | Continue reading
Here are some key take-outs: Often small businesses are falling into content marketing because they recognise the marketplace is there for businesses to provide a value add for their audience. Business owners often have a hard time getting their head around the idea of “giving aw … | Continue reading
Have you heard about the latest content marketing trend? In all honesty, I hope not. At conferences, in boardrooms and in marketing planning sessions around the world, the idea of a ‘quick and easy’ content marketing strategy is being floated. I would avoid it at all cost. If … | Continue reading
Everyone writes, but how good are you at getting your point across? Are you finding and telling the right stories for your business? Do words flow out of your fingers and onto your keyboard, or is it one big struggle? Are you happy with the finished product? Do you spend a lot o … | Continue reading
It’s easy to suck. Getting that first sentence right — finding the perfect words to capture the reader’s attention and hold it — can be tricky. For some of us, it’s a delicious challenge. Do I paint a picture or hit them with the facts? Do I metaphorically punch the reader in the … | Continue reading
Our guest this week is the director of Perceptive Marketing, Sandra Brewer, who joins the BNR team to talk about how to manage marketing for a portfolio of brands. This to answer to a question from a listener, Adrian Jones, who noted that companies with multiple brands must have … | Continue reading