Posts by Simon Griffiths
How to engage your reader; use the power of why
If I could only ever give one piece of communications advice, it would be, “think how best to engage your reader”. That sounds ridiculously simple but it’s amazing how many organisations forget to do this. Rather than engage their audience, they bombard them with corporate messages that are only important to them. While thinking about…
Read MoreGenerating different types of content (Part I)
There’s very little I do nowadays that doesn’t relate to generating content. As a result, I’m always talking to clients about the different types of content that they could deploy within their marketing and communications efforts. When you really set your mind to it, it’s surprising quite how many different content ‘asset’ ideas you can…
Read MoreGenerating different types of content (Part II)
When it comes to creating great content, so many businesses restrict themselves to little more than brochure-ware and press releases. Clearly, that can be pretty limiting! In the opening part of this series, I began to look at the different types of content that any business can generate. I started with some of the obvious…
Read MoreGenerating different types of content (Part III)
It’s an exercise that I really enjoy undertaking with clients; getting them to list all the different types of content that they could produce if they really wanted to. The reason they don’t go down these routes, limiting themselves to standard corporate content, is sometimes down to a lack of ambition but – more often than…
Read MoreGenerating different types of content (Part IV)
Time for the final instalment in my rundown of the different asset types available to any content generator. Well, for now at least. In drawing up this list, I’m reminded that content generation should be fun. Why limit yourself to one form of writing when so many are available? It’s important to maintain some sort…
Read MoreContent without commerciality
For nine months during 2017, I provided communications support to English volleyball’s national governing body, Volleyball England (VE). Looking back , it’s interesting to reflect on the unique challenges of working with an NGB, especially with regard to one of my hobbyhorse topics; commercial content. VE is dependent on public funding for over half of…
Read MoreThe content generator’s biggest barriers (Part I)
I’ve spent a few years now trying to convince people of the merits of a content-led marketing and communications programme. I’ve had plenty of opportunity to see, first hand, how these things can work. By extension, I’ve also seen how they can grind to a halt and why they typically fail. With that in mind,…
Read MoreMy most painful content lessons (Part I)
Over the course of a 20 year career, I’ve produced a lot of content. To begin with, my outputs were almost exclusively press releases. Thankfully, the world moved on and, since then, I’ve produced everything from op-ed pieces and research reports through to live debates and documentaries. That represents a body of work that I’m…
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