Reading about writing: The marketer’s summer guide

Here at last. The summer break that we all need now more than ever. The chance to unwind and focus on new opportunities 2021 might bring. And what better way to kick start the New Year than with inspiring content, recommended by journalists and ADMA instructors Jane Nicholls and Natalie Filatoff.

Trends in writing are constantly evolving. The most important thing for business communicators to remember is that clear, interesting information – if possible in some kind of storytelling format – beats a hard sell, and lasts longer. In our Writing for Content Marketing Course, we talk a lot about the value of applying a journalistic approach to brand content. For a lot of people, this means breaking old habits but they quickly see the difference between lively writing and the everyday marketing speak, which in our view is the quickest route to customers tuning out.

People absorb information differently. Many will go away and delve into our list of recommended books, which we constantly update; others will subscribe to our list of podcasts, which is a really effective way of staying up with trends (and stealing good ideas!).

Steven Pinker’s The Sense of Style, a guide to writing in the 21st century, is terrific, and the wonderful Mary Norris’s Between You and Me, rams home the power of proper punctuation (we also quite like alliteration). But if you’d rather listen to these writers and thinkers, we recommend this great podcast with Pinker from Radio National and Mary Norris’s own video series on language conundrums, made with her former employer, The New Yorker. It’s pretty hilarious.

And we always point to a trusty old favourite. Strunk & White's The Elements of Style was originally published in 1918 but it is what it advocates — a concise and informative read — and a completely relevant wake-up call that can put everyone back on track to write clearly and with impact.

READ: SITES AND NEWSLETTERS WE LIKE

• Contently

• Content Standard

• Digiday

• ADMA (naturally!)

• Convince and Convert

• Copyblogger

• CoSchedule

LISTEN: PODCASTS WE LIKE

• Content Marketing Institute Podcast Network (a true network of podcasts around our favourite subject)

• The Brand Journalism Advantage (podcast and site)

• This ABC ‘Big Ideas’ interview with Steven Pinker