The deliciously dangerous and euphoric period of a con game.
A con game is a form of marketing. The only difference is the quality of the product.
Advertising agency culture. The key to solving racism in the industry.
How decisions on race can get blended and hidden in agency culture.
The power of consistent content. What Facebook’s content lawsuit reveals.
How the content we consume can actually consume us.
Businesses have a plan for essential workers. Automate the essential part.
Viruses in a supply chain aren’t a problem for the emerging robots and smart devices.
Breathe. You do it to live. Now use it to live better.
How breathing can help you clear the air of stress and other health issues.
Voice experiences will be the future or the end of your business.
With 843 million business users projected next year, the business of voice will be your business.
How Can I Help?
Make a big difference, one person at a time. Steal this idea.
Working from home? Meet your new boss. Structure.
Routine and structure. Bring it on home while you’re working from home.
The B(r)and is breaking up. How music services like Spotify are killing artist brands.
What you don’t see (artist metadata) can’t hurt you. But it will hurt musicians.
Don’t fear, embrace uncertainty. Opportunity waits on the other side.
Uncertainty is not your enemy. It’s your partner. See why success goes to those willing to work with it.
As careers navigate COVID-19, big wins must start with small thinking.
COVID-19 may set us back but consistent, small steps forward overcomes and turns into big wins.
The gods of technology demand a sacrifice.
Why the technology we adopt demands personal trade offs to enjoy its convenience.
When function follows form. And how content strategy is affected.
What happens by not incorporating content strategy upfront or when you make it an afterthought.
Hey kids, want some yummy apps?
Why the stated user appeal of an app is not always the ultimate intent of an app.
What’s the buzz about buzzwords?
Less about sharing information more about signaling your identity to groups.
Genderfication. Why women are woefully scarce in tech firms and tech firm leadership.
Stats show that when men arrive in a field, pay and prestige go up. For women, the opposite.
Can a minimalist buy a $1,400 iPhone?
While that sounds like a Zen riddle, it is not. The answer is very simple.
What is Natural Language Processing?
It’s how AI assistants learn to listen and understand you.
Health. Wealth. Love. Your three everyday happiness investments.
Why investing in health, wealth and love is important for creating true happiness in life.
Working and consulting in tech in 2020. Five predictions.
The change will consume marketers, consultants and employees that fail to adapt.
Looking back at 2019 to think forward: Hit Rewind Here.
Some articles and programs that stood out in 2019.
Looking back at 2019 to think forward: Happiness.
Are you chasing happiness, or your own tail?
Looking back at 2019 to think forward: Voice Assistants Killing Brands
Voice. The technology so disruptive that brands dare not speak its name.
Looking back, thinking forward: Fight Club’s 20th Anniversary.
A look at a movie that’s influenced men’s identities over the last 20 years.
Looking back, thinking forward: Kayfabe
The lie we’ll agree to be true. Wisecrack’s discussion of Kayfabe.
Why I’ve learned to accept grace.
Why I’m thankful for learning how to be thankful.
The needle in a haystack. Why the need for content strategy is universal and timeless.
Why it’s in our nature to make finding the things we want hard to find.
Anger and texting. The drinking and driving of content creation.
Angry? Why you can hit the keys on your phone or computer. Just don’t hit send.
Xiaoice. Proof a good conversational UI connects and drives engagement.
How the leading chatbot connects through empathy.
Woke companies and narcoleptic brand values.
As long as a company’s highest value is profit, their values will always be fragile.
F# You. Pay Me. A Talk by Mike Monteiro.
Content is not just your business. If you want to keep crafting content, so is being paid on time.
Fake News Wars. The UX Strikes Back.
How better UX could solve Facebook’s fake news problem.
Love. Did media teach you everything know about it?
We already struggle with love. Maybe the problem is where we learn it.
Tone and delivery. Content metadata designed for humans.
Information that describes what your words really mean.
The one true message of advertising.
Advertising owns you when it owns the narrative about yourself.
Cognitive capacity. Why a VUI can’t work like a GUI.
Two different interfaces. Two different sets of user demands.
The headline is dead. Long live the headline.
Its job is no longer is to tell you. Now it’s simply to sell you.
Freedom, Growth and Control. Pick two. The dilemma of social media platforms.
See what choice they’ve already made.
What does it mean to be a professional writer?
Depends on what you’re truly being paid for.
Clickbait. Writing the good, the bad and the ugly.
The content trap most of us can’t resist.
Obsessive Truth Disorder. How Trump controls news cycles and drives some insane.
And why the solution to reclaim your control is mindfulness.
Writing push notifications for mobile apps.
Give better experiences to you app users with these push notification tips.
The Searchable You. Part 3. Balancing and curating your searchable life online.
Tips for balancing your searchable profile on the Internet
Why brand content is critical with the rise of voice assistants.
Hey Siri, buy whatever brand you think best, I don’t care.
The Searchable You. Part 2: You may let go of your past. The internet won’t.
You may not be your past. But with the internet, your past will haunt you.
Emojis and memes. Our modern-day newspeak.
“Double plus good” vs. the poop emoji. See how both narrow our use of language.
The Searchable You. Part 1. Keep your resume. Your Google and Facebook, please.
Your digital life is like your DNA in a crime scene. And employers are the detectives.
All hail the innovators and content strategists… with slings and arrows!!!
The innovators are the first, but rarely the last ones standing.
The great streaming media swindle, I mean, trade-off.
Streaming. Today Cheap prices. Lots of content. Tomorrow…?
Out of content ideas? Tips for serving leftover content.
Tips for using existing content to make new content readers will love.
Tech platforms. The Venus fly trap for business and consumers.
Land your business on or subscribe to a tech platform and you might find yourself trapped.
The secret to copywriting summed up in a movie.
The job isn’t focused on what you write. It’s how they feel.
Likes on Facebook are like F&cks. Why I don’t give a lot of them.
You make not “like” what Facebook is doing with the feelings you express.
Soylent green is people! And advertising is turning into a tax on the poor.
What was once shared a media experience is now designed to extract value from the less affluent.
The real cause for unequal pay for women in sports we don’t like to talk about.
Don’t blame organizations. Check your mirror.
Data’s destroying the client-agency relationship.
Data is giving companies incredible marketing insights. So what are agencies contributing?
How to be a Zen Type A. Be open to plan B.
Learn to focus on the goal, not a particular road to it.
What killed advertising? Initial reports indicate a suicide.
An industry that missed that transition from Mad Men to Math Men.
Why I avoid wearing logos.
It is a sign of quality or personal taste or an attempt for social approval?
I’m stealing this content strategist’s blog content.
If you can’t beat it, share it.
Goals are big dreams. Achieving them is all about little choices.
What big things in life do you want to do? The (little) choice is yours.
Everyday is training day for THAT day.
Why the boring, repetitive moments in life create the great ones.
Montages make self-improvement look easy. It ain’t.
The Cliff’s Notes of understanding struggle and growth.
Writing as punishment.
Use writing to discipline kids, and surprise, they don’t like writing.
Every day is training for THAT day. A mindful moment.
Why the days you are successful began long ago in your past.
What is content sprawl and why it frustrates users.
The official digital content disease of large organizations.
The rule for remakes.
A lot of movies are being remade, A lot shouldn’t. Here’s a few greenlighting rules.
Your perfectionism is about fear.
No one’s perfect. Why understanding that is key to being your best and fearless you.
How to write for voice assistants.
When writing for voice assistants, you must keep in mind that you are delivering a simultaneous mix of content, interactive rules, story-flow feedback, brand experience, and voice-driven design. A mix…
Do the work and transform.
A thought to be mindful of meeting challenges to your life goals. A dream is just a map to a destination. And while the beginning of a journey begins with…
Why firms hedge on offering content strategy.
Agencies, customer experience firms, and design firms bill for copywriting. No earth-shattering news there. Content strategy? That’s another story. Firms “kinda do” content strategy. It can be found as either…
Is mindfulness going the way of bottled water?
Is commercialization turning it into a sellable brand more than a serious practice?
Writing content for the “yeah, yeah, yeah” factor.
Keep content engaging to users with increasingly smaller attention spans.
Trying to unlock your potential? You might be your own jailer.
Don’t blame others for keeping you back from greatness. You have the key to escape.
The new definition of content strategy.
How content strategists can explain what you do in just four words.
Having a bad day? A little perspective.
Adrian Paul Ghislain Carton de Wiart had every reason to hate life. He didn’t. See the power of attitude.
5 words that make writers cringe.
For a writer, to hear them is to hate them. See my top 5 words.
In the age of data privacy, many see us naked.
Privacy is not about exposure. It’s about control. See how we are losing that control.
Can Grampa use it? Seniors. The ultimate UAT for UX.
Deliver a better website or app experience by making it easy for those with the greatest challenges.
Meditation, mindfulness and the famous people who swear by it.
Who’s got time for meditation and mindfulness. These people do.
How to say, “I’m sorry.” Creating error messages.
Mistakes are human. 404 error messages are not. How to tell users “I’m sorry” to improve the user experience.
Top 10 content development tools.
The important tools are the ones you use the most. Here are the tools that I look at almost every day.
Our product and content have two masters. Who rules?
In the IOT world, your products don’t work for you. They are employees of their makers. There may be consequences.
Tasty news vs. nutritional news. A problem of empty calories.
How infotainment is taking the place of real news. And why we don’t care.
Writing for digital product flow? Think Bird Box.
What digital designers and content developers can learn from the Netflix movie Bird Box about the importance of helping users see.
Emotions, mindfulness and the Law of Thermodynamics.
Old emotions don’t go away. They just become your ulcer. How mindfulness manages your emotions and health.
Content strategy: Three critical tips for killer content.
Looking to create content that satisfies users? Three content strategy tips you need to know.
Sci-fi content, where anything is possible. Except changing anything.
Don’t want to change the world? You might be a Sci-fi fan. Why this group is incredibly resistant to change.
Our Content Strategist-in-Chief. Donald Trump.
Hail to the tweet. How Donald Trump uses content strategy to dominate the national media narrative.
Life is just a vacation from death. How to be mindful of life.
Your life is only a vacation from death. What are you going to do with your time off?
The fatal fallacy in marketing technology to business.
Learn why people across a company look at your sales pitch about technology fearfully.
Don’t give in to the dark side of social media.
Mixing anger and social media is a bit like drinking and driving. A combo that won’t play well. See how to avoid it.
Content strategy and the art of suggestive sell.
Learn what you imply about a product can double sales more than what you actually show or say about it.
How embracing advertising’s mindset keeps you poor.
Someone you love is desperately counting on you to avoid advertising’s temptations to live for today: your future self.
Actionizing client feedback to your content strategy.
Feedback is a language. One you and your client need to speak and understand. Learn tips to help hear and help each other.
The 10 commandments of social media.
Rules to live by and facts to be mindful of when using social media.
How design and content strategy are related. And aren’t.
Should a content strategist be a subset of a design group, a UX team or serve as an independent collaborator? Find out.
Resolutions. Don’t focus on a new year. Focus on a new you, now.
Ready to make big changes in your life? Why January 1st is the wrong day to start acting on New Year’s resolutions.
Keeping Christ and your calm at Christmas. 7 things to be mindful of.
Why does Christmas “The Most Wonderful time of the year”, stress us out? Find out along with 7 mindfulness stress-reducing tips.
Twas the night before Christmas. A content strategy remix.
The untold (remixed) story about Santa’s late night visit to a content strategist and team at a customer experience firm.
Lemonade. The movie. Being mindful of what matters.
A 2009 movie about layoffs in advertising can help us to be mindful of making the right choices to live our best life today
Content marketing and The Hero’s Journey.
Improve content strategy and content marketing through Joesph Campbell’s famous Hero’s Journey.
Dieter Rams is sad about design and content.
A world of fleeting content and over design? Design god Dieter Rams thinks so and says so in the new movie Rams.
What is content marketing?
Make connections and build know, trust and like through engagement with your content. Learn more.
Fear. Society’s way of saying “get back in line.”
Learn how to understand and face your fears. Plus use mindfulness to walk past the fear holding you back and reach your life goals.
10 reasons content strategy impacts your business.
Ten reasons why a content strategy to manage content is critical to building and growing the modern business.
Thanksgiving is Mindfulness. How to make everyday Thanksgiving.
See how Thanksgiving is simply having mindfulness around food and family and learn 3 quick ways to bring mindfulness into your life every day.
Content Strategy Review – Ford F-150 Edition
A quick review of the content strategy and persuasion techniques for a Ford F-150 television ad.
Peace of mind? Content marketers want piece of mind, too. Yours.
A lifetime of marketing messages in your brain are trying to tell you what to do and how to act. Here’s how to stop them.
What’s a content audit? The 5 critical steps.
Learn the five important phases and tools to an effective content audit.
How symbols empower and weaken us.
As symbols serve as containers and signals for our values, see how they influence our mindfulness and perceptions.
Why content strategy IS the Internet.
Learn why failing to have this mindset is a mistake as well as learn the three parts of an effective content strategy.
Mental Palate Cleanser. The “Oh My God, Becky” Edition
Press pause on the cacophony of news and yelling and check out some interesting listens and reads…
How creative marketing content persuades you.
See how a spoonful of creativity helps the inhibition go down for making purchases.
What is content strategy? How to explain it to others.
Got 5 minutes to learn how to explain content strategy to your boss or client? You should probably read this explainer.
Content strategy insights for creators and consumers.
An introduction to the content, reason and purpose of the Content + Mindful blog as a resource for content creators, strategists and consumers.
Using mindfulness to master manipulative content.
Find yourself reacting with “OMG!,” bursts of anger or hate-consuming media? How mindfulness can help.