Category: Radix Podcast

Radix Copycast Episode 16 – Can copywriters abandon Microsoft Word?

Posted on by The Radix Team

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eBooks, infographics, video scripts, scrolling sites: each year seems to increase the variety of B2B content types that need copy. Never before have designers and copywriters been brought so closely together (as discussed in episode 9).

Microsoft Word has been the copywriter’s tool of choice for decades, but is it up to the challenge of modern and increasingly digital copywriting?

I’m joined by Fiona to discuss whether Word still rules, or whether newer writing tools (desktop or cloud-based) are in a position to replace it as the must-have software for copywriters.

Listen now to find out:

  • What copywriters and their clients really need from a word-processing tool
  • Alternatives to Word: could Google Docs, LibreOffice or Scrivener ever rule the roost?
  • Format-specific apps: how do tools like Celtx, Final Draft and Balsamiq stack up?
  • How to bring designers, freelancers, agencies and stakeholders into the same happy fold

… and more

Download the episode here (right-click and “save as” to download). Or listen in the player at the top of the page.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Music by Industrial and Marine.

Radix Copycast Episode 17 – Storytelling in B2B, the final frontier

Posted on by The Radix Team

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This episode is an update to and complements episode 3 of the Radix Copycast.

Storytelling seems to be climbing back up the agenda in content marketing, judging by the number of blog posts and articles we’ve seen recently. But what exactly do we mean by storytelling in marketing, and what kind of storytelling techniques can copywriters adopt?

Fiona and I welcome back television comedy writer James Henry (Green Wing, Smack the Pony, Campus), to talk about the structure of classic storytelling and how it can be adapted for content marketing.

Listen now to find out:

  • What ‘storytelling’ actually means in B2B marketing
  • How to create believable, empathetic characters
  • What it means to break down a three-act structure into 60 seconds of video
  • Which of the seven basic plots can be easily applied to B2B marketing

… and more

Download the episode here (right-click and “save as” to download). Or listen in the player at the top of the page.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Music by Industrial and Marine.

*The stardate was calculated using this website.

Radix Copycast Episode 18 – How to write for B2B on Twitter

Posted on by The Radix Team

 

Twitter can be a powerful channel in B2B technology marketing, second only to LinkedIn. But success depends heavily on your copy – and with only 140 characters or fewer to play with, it’s a big challenge for a writer to create something that’s on-message, eye-catching, and compels people to click or share.

@ mentions and hashtags (#) have been a big part of Twitter since its launch, but can feel like they’re using up a tweet’s valuable character count when a tweet may need to contain a shortened URL and a picture link (tweets with images can receive 150% more retweets that tweets without images).

I’m joined by John and Steve to discuss what copywriters can do to make sure their tweets punch above their weight, and whether there are some elements to the social platform that simply don’t best serve a B2B audience.

Listen now to find out:

  • How to be succinct on Twitter
  • The art of hashtags
  • Ways to encourage people to click on links
  • When it is and isn’t okay to use @ mentions

… and more

Download the episode here (right-click and “save as” to download). Or listen in the player at the top of the page.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Music by Industrial and Marine.

Please excuse the echoing in this episode, we’ve moved into new offices and our podcast fort isn’t quite able to handle the new sound demands.

Radix Copycast Episode 19 – Bringing comics to B2B marketing

Posted on by The Radix Team

Comics-in-B2B-marketing-header-v1It’s not just Hollywood that’s been finding uses for comic books in recent years. B2B brands have also been using comics, strips and books, to reach new and existing audiences.

In the past few years, we’ve seen B2B-focused companies like Google, Moz, MailChimp and others experiment with using comic books and strips as marketing content. On social platforms such as LinkedIn, business focused comic strips and single comic panels have been finding a new home. We’ve also seen an increase in visual note taking at conferences, where entire seminars are broken down into cartooned bits of information, as was seen at the recent Content Marketing World.

In this episode, Fiona and I examine the potential uses of comics in B2B marketing and give some tips on how you can go about creating your own comics.

Listen now to find out:

  • Which B2B brands are using comics
  • When to use comics in instead of infographics
  • What’s in a good business comic
  • How to write a script for a B2B comic

… and more

Download the episode here (right-click and “save as” to download). Or listen in the player at the top of the page.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Unsure how long a B2B comic should be? Then read this comic length guide.

Music by Industrial and Marine.

Radix Copycast Episode 20: Using emotion in B2B copy

Posted on by The Radix Team

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B2B and emotion aren’t often mentioned in the same sentence, but next month these strange bedfellows form the theme of the B2B Marketing conference.

And last year they were the subject of a major survey by CEB and Google, which revealed that emotion plays a surprisingly big role in B2B buying decisions.

So does this mean it’s time to start pulling on the heartstrings of B2B buyers? If so, how do you gauge when and where to get emotive in copy? And is it possible to take things too far?

Fiona is joined by David McGuire, MD of the B2B copywriting agency Lungfish, and associate writer here at Radix, to talk about why and how B2B marketers can best use emotion in marketing content.

Listen now to find out:

  • Why B2B marketing needs to get emotional
  • Which emotions marketers and copywriters should appeal to
  • How to bring more emotive language into your copy
  • Examples of B2B brands making great emotional connections
  • … and more

Download the episode here (right-click and “save as” to download). Or listen in the player at the top of the page.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter for more copywriting tips and insights.

Music by Industrial and Marine.

Radix Copycast Episode 21: 10 trends that rocked B2B copywriting and content marketing in 2014

Posted on by The Radix Team

 

In 2014 we’ve seen predictions of an impending content shock, an increased appreciation for well written copy, stirrings of discontent with tried and tested formats (like eBooks) and a lot more play out in B2B marketing.

Overall, 70% of B2B marketers are creating more marketing content than they were a year ago. And as you’ll hear when we discuss the continued adoption of marketing automation – it definitely seems like brands are producing more content to feed their automation machines. But is this content always informative and interesting, and created with the customer in mind?

In this episode, Fiona and I analyse 10 copywriting and content marketing trends that have rocked B2B this year. And not all of them may be with us in 2015.

Listen now to find out:

  • How native advertising turned audiences against it
  • What Google’s continuing algorithm changes mean for copywriters
  • Why better storytelling techniques mean better B2B videos
  • Why more marketers are appreciating the value of good copy
  • The benefits of customer focused content

… and more

Download the episode here (right-click and “save as” to download). Or listen in the player at the top of the page.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Alternatively: add our RSS to your preferred podcast player.

Music by Industrial and Marine.

Useful links

BrightTalk: The CMO Content Marketing Show

Radix: Is it game over for native advertising?

Sophos: Your future self called: Zombies

Adobe: Mean Streets – Wife

Radix Copycast Episode 22: Five smart strategies to freshen up your B2B content

Posted on by The Radix Team

Wrapping up 2014, we began to realise something: what if content marketing begins to get stale in 2015, because no one is innovating – what if we all just end up following “best practice”? Steve articulated this best in our end of the year video on copy and content.

Research published in 2014 by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs has found that 86% of B2B marketers now use content marketing, with CMI now considering content marketing a “formal business discipline”.

The same research found little change between the content tactics being used by businesses in comparison to the previous year. The signs are there that B2B brands could become set in their ways after adapting to a way of marketing that is renowned for having challenged many traditional marketing assumptions.

In this episode, Fiona and I explain five tactics we can all use to help keep our content fresh and relevant for our audiences.

Listen now to find out:

  • Five ways you can start innovating with your content today
  • How to use free tools like Twine, Haiku Deck and AudioBoom to do something different
  • What you can do to freshen up existing content
  • How to look to your audience for inspiration
  • … and more

Download the episode here (right-click and “save as” to download). Or listen in the player at the top of the page.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Alternatively: add our RSS to your preferred podcast player.

Music by Industrial and Marine.

Useful links

Holger Schulze: B2B Content Marketing Spotlight Report

Radix: Help – my client wants my copy to be ‘more sparkly’! What do I do?

Radix Copycast Episode 23: What “intelligent content” means for B2B copywriters

Posted on by The Radix Team

 

Content marketing is on the move. The next stage in its evolution will be “intelligent” content, according to Joe Pulizzi of the Content Marketing Institute, and a host of other luminaries slated to speak at next month’s Intelligent Content Conference in San Francisco.

According to Noz Urbina, one of the leading lights of the intelligent content movement:

“We need to think of language at the level of “systems”, not words or pages. Intelligent content is free from format, rich in semantic and structural metadata, and automation-system-ready.”


It seems that intelligent content is content that adapts itself on the fly to the needs and wishes of the person consuming it. It’s guided partly by what the user is doing at the moment of consuming the content, partly by the device they’re using, and partly by what the content delivery platform already ‘knows’ about the user and what they’ve done previously.

What does it mean for writers?

For the people writing content that’s destined to be adaptive, we think it will lead to some big changes in mindset and approach.

As Noz Urbina says above, adaptive content is “free from format”. Writers can no longer assume their words will be consumed in a linear fashion, with the user starting at the beginning and following the writer’s narrative thread to the end. Instead, individual users will take different paths through the content, depending on where they are, what they’re doing and what they’re interested in.

The difference between writing traditional content and writing adaptive content may therefore be like the difference between writing a novel or screenplay, and writing a choose-your-own-adventure book or videogame. In all cases, there is a story, but in the latter formats, the user selects the narrative path, rather than the writer.

For more on the challenges we think intelligent/adaptive content will present for copywriters and B2B marketers, listen to the podcast as we discuss:

  • How copywriting practices and business models will need to change
  • How it will affect collaboration between writers, designers and marketers
  • Whether writing apps like MS Word are still fit for purpose
  • What you can do practise creating non-linear content
  • … and more!

Download the episode here (right-click and “save as” to download). Or listen in the player at the top of the page.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Alternatively: add our RSS to your preferred podcast player.

Music by Industrial and Marine.

Mentioned this episode

2014: The year social content dominated B2B technology marketing?

Radix Copycast Episode 24: Doug Kessler talks intelligent content and copywriting

Posted on by The Radix Team

B2B marketing has been going through a great many changes over the past three years, from the rise of content marketing to the adoption of marketing automation by many brands.

Today, 86% of B2B marketers use content marketing and 65% of information technology companies have adopted marketing automation.

But what about new technologies, and ways of producing and presenting content? Emily gives us the lowdown from this year’s Technology for Marketing & Advertising as regards new technology trends on show.

As we discussed in episode 23, intelligent content is a huge meteor that could be about to crash into content marketing – but many copywriters don’t even suspect it’s on its way.

So we’re delighted to have an interview with one of the B2B marketing sector’s top visionaries (not to mention one of its best copywriters and one of our favourite clients); the man that warned us about Crap: Doug Kessler, co-founder and Creative Director of Velocity Partners. In our exclusive interview, Doug shares his thoughts with us on intelligent content and what it means for B2B copywriters.

Listen now to find out:

  • Which marketing technology trends were on show at TFM&A 2015
  • Whether intelligent content will catch on in marketing organisations…
  • …and if so, whether it means copywriters will need to learn new skills
  • Six key B2B marketing takeaways from TFM&A
  • … and more

Download the episode here (right-click and “save as” to download). Or listen in the player at the top of the page.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Alternatively: add our RSS to your preferred podcast player.

Music by Industrial and Marine.

Useful links

6 not-so-surprising marketing lessons from TFM&A 2015

Intelligent Content Demystified: A Practical, Easy-to-Understand Explanation

Radix Copycast Episode 25: Creating truly useful B2B marketing content

Posted on by The Radix Team

 

Useful content is essential to good content marketing. It’s about giving away a bit of your expertise to help your audience do their job more easily or to make better decisions. The aim is to build an appreciative community of fans who will one day come to buy a product or service from you.

But in practice, useful content can be hard to create. It’s more than just a blog post that discusses a current industry trend or a SlideShare highlighting a specific issue. From ROI calculators and how-to guides to workbooks and checklists, useful content is content that actually, practically helps people do their job better. And getting it right means really getting to grips with what your audience needs.

In this episode, Fiona and I explore how to identify content ideas that are useful and how to go about writing them.

Listen now to find out:

  • The hallmarks of truly ‘useful’ content
  • What you can do to identify ideas for useful content that your audience wants
  • The best formats for useful content
  • Tips on writing useful content
  • … and more

Download the episode here (right-click and “save as” to download). Or listen in the player at the top of the page.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes here.

Alternatively: add our RSS to your preferred podcast player.

Music by Industrial and Marine.

Useful links

Velocity’s B2B Content Marketing Strategy Checklist

fridaygirl.com’s Admin 101