Hi there,

This email should have hit your email inboxes yesterday morning, before #ContentChat. But it didn’t.

It was one part indecisiveness on the relevance of sending out an email newsletter during the current Russian attacks on Ukraine. And it was one part simply not being able to focus on what I could say here, at the top of the email, that would be meaningful and helpful to the #ContentChat community.

But today, as my social media timelines were filled with messages of love, support, and gratitude from the many amazing women in my life to mark International Women’s Day, I opened up this page and started writing.

I encourage you to seek out local organizations in your community that are engaged in grassroots fundraising efforts to help the Ukrainian people. For example, Sacramento, where I live, has one of the largest Ukrainian communities in the U.S. (estimated at ~100,000). Many small businesses here are donating proceeds from unique offerings or hold fundraisers here to show their support.

You can also help by giving to these global organizations:

• ​World Cental Kitchen, feeding Ukrainians and their families both in Ukraine and in the surrounding countries such as Poland, where many have fled during the fighting.
• ​IFAW is supporting Wildlife rescue efforts
• The Kyiv Independent newspaper has a Go Fund Me to support them to continue reporting on the situation in Ukraine
• This NPR article lists several organizations fundraising for Ukraine
• The Global Citizen compiled many ways in addition to charitable giving that you can help support Ukraine during this time of crisis

I also encourage you to think about how you can use your brand platforms and communication channels to help.
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Be kind to yourself this week, and reach out to the folks you love.

Coming Up on #ContentChat

Content Chat is a weekly Twitter chat focused on sharing expertise and ideas amongst the content marketing community. Join the conversation on Mondays at noon Pacific / 3 p.m. Eastern. Be sure to mark your calendar for these upcoming conversations:

• YESTERDAY on #ContentChat, we discussed how marketers could RE:Think Innovation with Carla Johnson (@CarlaJohnson), a world-renowned keynote speaker and author. Drawing from lessons in Carla’s book RE:Think Innovation, she and the community explored how content marketing teams can build a culture that supports innovation at every level. Check out the recap to see what you missed.
• Next week (March 14) on #ContentChat, we’ll join Anne Janzer (@AnneJanzer), writing and marketing book author, to discuss improving your email marketing and business emails. Be ready to share your email mistakes (we’ve all made them!), and we’ll share tips to improve your email content and better reach your recipient.

​Are you interested in being a guest for an upcoming edition of #ContentChat? We’d love to see your topic pitch via our Content Chat guest submission form.

Content Marketing + Related Jobs

​Content Specialist, Food Blogger Pro.
Food Blogger Pro is a membership site I belong to (for my gluten-free blog) focused on helping content creators start, grow, and monetize their blogs and online food businesses. Their team is looking for a content specialist to help plan, outline, and create blog and online course content to support Food Blogger Pro’s community of food creators and engage with the community on social media.

​Global Manager of Content and Integrated Marketing, Avison Young.
​Avison Young is a global commercial real estate brokerage and advisory firm that provides transaction, management, financial, and consulting services. The firm needs a content and integrated marketing pro to help build its content strategy to drive awareness and lead generation. In addition, the role will oversee the editorial strategy and operations, channel optimization, and analytics and measurement.

​Content Marketing Specialist, Frontline Education.
​Frontline Education is a leading provider of school administration software to help K-12 leaders proactively manage student services, business operations, and special education. The team seeks a content marketing specialist to partner with the greater marketing team and plan engaging content, including email campaigns, landing pages, social posts, and thought leadership content like white papers, blog posts, infographics, and interactive content.

​Vice President of Marketing, Quartzy.
​Quartzy is an operations platform for the life-sciences industry, helping thousands of scientists improve the efficiency of their research through well-designed, meaningful tools for labs and companies. Their brand is recruiting a vice president of marketing to develop long-term marketing strategies around existing and new market segments, set company goals, and build and manage the marketing team to accomplish these goals.

​Content Marketing Manager, Fiddler.
​Fiddler’s mission is to build trust in artificial intelligence (AI) by providing solutions that help organizations monitor their machine learning performance, explain black-box AI, solve AI challenges, and build responsible AI. The team needs a content marketing manager to develop blog posts, explainer, product, and advertising videos, reports, guides, and other content for MLOps and data science audiences.

If you’re looking for full-time or freelance content marketing or similar creative professionals, reply to this email and send us a link to the job posting to be included in the next newsletter edition.

ICYMI

​How Personalized Video Messages Can Strengthen Your Content Marketing.
​Have you considered creating video messages to accompany your written content? Ethan Beute (@EthanBeute), WSJ bestselling author and host of The Customer Experience podcast, explains the benefits of personalized video messages and shares his framework to evaluate if a video message is a valuable addition to your content in this #ContentChat recap.

​15 Content Creation Tools You (Probably) Haven’t Tried Yet.
​When’s the last time you updated your marketing toolbox? Of course, we all have our favorite tools, but it’s wise to regularly assess what else is out there and if it could complement or replace your existing tools. This blog post from the Content Marketing Institute highlights a handful of options we haven’t seen before (but are now eager to try).

​Translating CX Value into the C-Suite’s Language.
​Historically, customer experience professionals fail to communicate their results to C-suite leaders in a way that resonates. In this webinar archive of the conversation I had with InMoment’s Eric Smuda, you’ll learn about the “Solve for X” approach to customer experience, the areas where you can make an impact that will matter to executives, and how to explain the customer perspective beyond numbers.

​How to Design A Blog: The 13 Best Practices of the Top 100+ Marketing Blogs.
​Marketers obsess over their blog content and how it is presented, but have you thought through how your blog itself is set up? This post from Andy Crestodina shares 13 best practices for blog setup, advising whether you should include a search tool, comments, share buttons, and more.

​Content Marketing Priorities for B2B & B2C in 2022.
​Content analytics company Parse.ly surveyed 800+ content marketers to understand their 2022 strategies. What did they find? For starters, 52% of teams plan to increase their number of content creators, and 66% plan to create more content. In the B2B space, content is most often used to drive brand awareness (91%), generate demand and leads (85%), and build credibility (81%). Read through the article for more highlights or download the report for the full breakdown.

​March 15 Deadline (Next Week!): ANA In-House Excellence Awards CFP.
​Act fast to get your submission in for the Association of National Advertisers’ 2022 In-House Excellence Awards program. The early bird deadline is next Tuesday, March 15. Check out all the categories here and remember that you don’t have to be a member to apply. Good luck!

Until next time, stay safe and be well!

Cheers,

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Erika Heald, Founder & Marketing Consultant
Twitter: @sferika​
Blog: www.erikaheald.com​
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/erikaheald​