Being in the content creation business means the Fed-Ex and UPS trucks pull up every other day with an armload of books. Three months ago, with our shelves at the breaking point, we delivered an entire pickup truck of mostly new books to The Salvation Army. Last week we found our office shelves full again, so we took inventory and then we took action.

With all the books, magazines, and catalogs that arrive, we have trained ourselves to be expert snapshot readers, page glancers, and generally proficient at “judging a book by it’s cover.” With so many different types of media and so much information available, we have to filter our time, and our eyes, in order to focus on information that is relevant, informative, and well written. Sometimes that’s a decision based on experience, and sometimes on just a first glance.

The Design Makes a Difference

On the web, an article printed in Helvetica Light 10 does not make for good reading, doesn’t alias well and is going to stop me from getting any further than sentence four. On the other hand, a poorly designed book cover can be the difference between 50 sales and 50,000—or a book review vs. a last minute dusting and gifting.

There are books like Made to Stick with bold cover art that draws you into the content. And then there’s the other by a so-called marketing whiz that lacks a visually engaging cover and sports uber-cramped chapters printed on a bright-white stock. Great content that goes unread sadly becomes kindling, or hopefully new paper. I read Made to Stick cover to cover, while the other marketing book (featured on many content marketing sites) went unread. Time will tell if I pick it back up.

With all the talk about content driving sales and corporations being more cognizant of the role of content, content producers, managers, and marketers should put more emphasis on the relationship between the writer and the graphic designer.

A Few Tips for Filtering Your Media

Catalogs—you get too many; we do, too. Find a good article here about Catalog Choice.

Magazines—hook up with a business or friend to exchange magazine subscriptions. Put an ad listing on Craigslist in the arts section—many artists use glossy magazines for collage.

Books—Donate to your local library.

There are only a few magazines that keep my interest from cover to cover: Esquire, Dwell , the New York Times Magazine and a bunch of indies we can discuss another day. The reason I am engaged from page 1 to page whatever is the content and the manner in which the content presented— Esquire especially. For those of you involved in print and the web, here is an interesting article in the New York Times about Business Week becoming more “weblike”…more

In business, over-committing is like driving an Ferrari with the parking brake on. You feel and sound like you are humming along, but in reality you are dragging the proverbial ass. Don’t let your marketing copy, success stories, case studies, and other corporate collateral be something you do in between meetings. Instead, make a smaller list. Prioritize. Delegate. Outsource.

In a recent interview we conducted with bestselling author Timothy Ferriss (of fourhourworkweek fame), he gave us this gem:

“One of the most important things is determining this: which activity is the one activity, if completed, would leave you satisfied with your output for the day?” …more

More great advice from David Scott Meerman, author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to Use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing and Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly:

“A journalist skillfully creates interesting stories about how an organization solves customer problems and then delivers those stories in the form of ebooks, white papers, content rich web pages, podcasts, and video…more

I had to endure a week of translating eight hours of Marketing Speak into a coherent article this week and just about lost my mind in the process. It got me thinking about how the success of many organizations has relied on the daring, and sometimes eccentric, saying or doing what flew in the face of convention and how most just try not to ripple the water.

There is certainly the time and place to be innocuous and blend in, but not with content. Being brainwashed by terms like “best of breed” and “Best practices,” I wanted to share some (so called) “best” sites.

Best Stuff—speaks to a young audience but presents content in an unusual manner. I found myself clicking through a dozen or so “best stuffs” before getting bored. It struck me as a more visual version of tags but it does have corporate communication potential.

Best Buy—a primo electronics retailer (with the exception of their music department), but their website is all about product. SALE, 30% OFF, GIFT, all smacked me in the face when I reach the home plate, and not being a big fan of gradients, I got little antsy browsing. There is some UGC but it is buried and doesn’t have many reviewers.

Best Western—having stayed a few Best Western hotels in my day, I can say the following things: there was a bed, they had coffee in morning, and not any major problems to report. The majority of their website is marketing copy, but about 10 clicks in is a little section called “The Travel Mom” featuring Emily Kaufman. In this section, attractions local to Best Western locations are highlighted, and I began to feel like Best Western was showing me around town.

Next we will focus on the content brave.