Public Relations & Social Media Insight

Yes, Growth Hacker is an enormously overwrought buzzword. But, companies are sorely looking for people to take up the mantle and work on startup marketing. College grads and career-changers, be warned. When you search around for a job at your favorite startup (perhaps even on Mashable’s job board?), you’ll start seeing the buzziest of job descriptions: “Growth Hacker.”

The name sounds simple enough, but it’s easy to be confused about what a growth hacker is meant to do around the office, and how it differs from other, more traditional positions. Here’s a breakdown of what companies mean by “growth hacker” and when and how you can become one yourself....

Wrap your mind around this: One of the most important factors that traditional publishers use to decide whether to acquire a book is the marketing platform of its author.

You’d think that the main reason for approaching a traditional publisher is to reap the benefits of the publisher’s marketing, and you wouldn’t have to bring your own. Life is full of mysteries, and whether you’re working with a traditional publisher or you are an artisanal publisher (a.k.a., “self-publisher”), the potency of your marketing platform can determine your success. There is no scenario under which thousands of social-media followers is not a good thing, so here are 10 social-media tips for authors of any kind....

...One has to look no further than the pages of a USA Today to see just how the charticle has taken its rightful place as a journalistic vehicle for today’s time and attention-starved news consumers. A few minutes with quick visual coupled with scannable text and we know just about everything going on in the world.In fact, some writing sites even advise would-be writers to skip the feature article and submit a quick-impact charticle for consideration.

What is a Charticle?

Charticles – as defined by Omaha World-Herald Deputy Presentation Editor Josh Crutchmer – are combinations of text, images and graphics that take the place of a full article. They are often used by bloggers and journalists alike to express one big idea with a bit of narrative provided by the supporting text that follows or sets up the big visual or chart that’s usually the feature in the post. In many cases, the chart featured in the charticle could likely stand on its own, as in, the data is typically that compelling. Moreover, that’s also what makes it worth writing about. The charticle is singular in focus and offers a great opportunity for expressing a succinct thought leadership point of view on a relevant bit of data....

It’s one of my favorite pieces of writing advice from Ray Bradbury, and it’s blindingly brilliant in its utter simplicity. If you want to identify the ideas you should write about, the themes you can write passionately and believably about, follow this advice: Make a list of ten things you love, ten things you hate, and ten things you fear. Write to celebrate the things you love, and write to destroy the things you hate and fear.

Bradbury put it this way in an interview with his biographer, Sam Weller: “You can’t write for other people. You can’t write for the left or the right, this religion or that religion, or this belief or that belief. You have to write the way you see things.

I tell people, Make a list of ten things you hate and tear them down in a short story or poem. Make a list of ten things you love and celebrate them. When I wrote Fahrenheit 451 I hated book burners and I loved libraries. So there you are.”...

I’m working on the followup to Steal Like An Artist, my book about how to be more creative in the digital age. It’s been a real pain in the ass. Here are five things that have helped:

1. Shut up and write the book.

Ebooks have become a high priority for both consumers and the authors of the latest publications. Authors, publishing houses, and consumers alike are all beginning to choose the digital copy ... ...

Many of these publishers are getting started with a number of controversial titles to draw attention to themselves. Though they may not be able to draw the big name authors, quite yet, these small mcommerce companies are including controversial titles among their offerings in order to help to help to build recognition.

For instance, one of the latest ebook launches that was meant to attract attention includes one written about Anne Hathaway, the actress, and how her popularity has generated considerable “hatred”. This was released by Entertainment Concepts Press.

Many of these publishers, including the one mentioned in the above example, are focusing exclusively on mcommerce. These books will not be published on paper, but will instead be sold over mcommerce as ebooks that can be read on ereaders, tablets, and even the occasional smartphone or laptop screen. All of the major bookstores that sell online are jumping on the digital bandwagon and have built up an extensive list of downloadable offerings. This is especially popular for the bookstores that have their own ereaders and tablets to sell, as well.

According to Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, when discussing the topic of ebooks over mcommerce, “We’re now seeing the transition we’ve been expecting.” This was a statement that was made in late December 2012. He added that “After five years, ebooks is a multi-billion dollar category for us and growing fast — up approximately 70 percent last year. In contrast, our physical book sales experienced the lowest December growth rate in our 17 years as a book seller, up just 5 percent.”...

There are two kind of writers: planners and pantsers.

Planners (or, sometimes, plotters, if you’re talking about fiction) already know everything they’re going to say, at least to some extent. They know in advance what their topics are going to be. They’ve already written at least a few test headlines. They may have even jotted down some notes or subheads for the post. They already know what keywords they’re gunning for and they already know what sort of call to action they want at the end. They do this because generally a good blog post contains these elements.

Pantser is shorthand for the phrase flying by the seat of your pants, which (for my ESL friends) is an English idiom for improvisation. So if you fly by the seat of your pants, then you’re a pantser, see?

Neither way of writing is better than the other when the end result is good. However, if the end result is not as good as it should be (no, you’re not a special exception, I’m talking about you), however, pantsing is more likely to blame than planning, in my opinion....

Use these examples and key points to convince your clients and your peers to rise above the sea of jargon we all navigate every day... .

.. So before you reach for jargon when you create content, ask yourself questions like, “What message am I trying to communicate here?” “Will my target audience find it both relatable and compelling, or am I resorting to jargon as a crutch because I don’t honestly know what I’m attempting to say?” Or, even worse, “Am I inventing made-up language to create what can be promptly dismissed as pseudo science?”

If the answer to that last question is “yes,” then you’ll risk allowing jargon overload to defeat the purpose of the content by undermining the messaging campaign. An influential teacher inspires desired outcomes from students (i.e., acquired knowledge) by demystifying the unknown. As content marketing professionals, we should push ourselves — and our clients — toward this same standard....