Author: Ariel
Interview with Danielle Bregoli
I first met Boynton Beaches Danielle Bregoli outside of CJ’s Island Grill in Lake Worth during their annual Street Painting Festival. This was before she was involved in some fisticuffs at the adjacent location. A friend of mine that was bartending, Nicole Abelove, had just denied her request for service. I spoke to Danielle and her handler briefly about my project of interviewing. The former wasn’t interested, but the latter took down my contact info.
Fast forward seven months later and I get an unknown number calling me. I pick up and it’s someone (named John, or James, Jared, or something else that was short and began with a J) introduced themselves as part of Danielle’s team.
I was rather surprised to be contacted by Danielle’s handlers. After all, I’m no major media outlet. I said as such to them, secretly wondering if this was a joke. But then he explained that he felt the interviews that she’d done with Maxim and Vice were purposefully shortened and edited to make her look bad and after reading the interviews I’d done with other South Florida musicians and artists (such as Kimmy Drake, Adam Sheetz, Niina Pollari) they felt that I would be a good person to sit down with Danielle and help “bring out a more thoughtful side” and give some context to music she was soon going to be releasing. Hearing about this “thoughtful side” of Bregoli was intriguing, as I’d honestly not seen anything that would make me think she had that, so I agreed to meet her to talk about her deal with Atlantic records and the controversy surrounding her being made into a star.
We met at one of my favorite coffee shops, SubCulture Delray Beach, and spoke there. The following interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
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Ariel Sheen
Hello there.
Danielle Bregoli
Sup?
Ariel Sheen
So should I call you Danielle or Bhad Bhabie?
Danielle Bregoli
You can call me Danielle. Bhad Bhabie’s who I be when I’m behind a microphone.
Ariel Sheen
Got it, Danielle. So would you say that Bhad Bhabie is more of a stage persona then?
Danielle Bregoli
It’s more like me being me but put to a beat. Ya know? It adds layers to me, like lasagna.
Ariel Sheen
Gotcha. So, you just dropped some music yesterday. This is your first time appearing as a rapper – you want to tell me a little bit about it?
Danielle Bregoli
Well, after my appearance on Dr. Phil I had so many people trying to get a piece of me just because of who I am and how I am it was crazy. I’m more than just a meme, and this is my chance to show that.
Ariel Sheen
I bet you had a lot of people trying to get a piece of your shine! I saw quite a lot of memes related to you online after that show. People I knew that are nowhere near your normal demographic were quoting you and talking about you.
Danielle Bregoli
Not surprised, I got a lot of haters.
Ariel Sheen
Why do you think that you have so many haters?
Danielle
Culture wars, man. Old people think I should be acting some way and are pissed that I’m not. Young people know that most of the old people telling them what to do and how to act are full of shit. They either relate or hate because I’m doing better than them without following the high school, college, career path that they think will get them what they want.
Ariel Sheen
I agree with you to an extent, but as someone who’s worked for several years a teacher I know how detrimental such an attitude can be to oneself and others when at your age when your primary responsibility is schooling. I think of the beginning of XXXtentacion’s song Look At Me as a prime example of such irresponsible thinking and behavior. I’ve seen enough kids that went through my classroom to know that those that idolize such anti-social behavior don’t make it to where they think they will in life.
Danielle Bregoli
You honestly going to sit here and tell me that learning about the technological developments around the Fertile Crescent are going to be useful to any part of my life?
Ariel Sheen
Like I said, I agree with you to an extent. That’s a good example you gave and a point I am sympathetic to. Can you give me a little more detail about what you mean? This sounds like something you’ve thought a lot about.
Danielle Bregoli
Yeah, sure. Well, I’m home-schooled. Since I’ve been doing that I’ve been able to learn a lot more. The way I see it the one-size fits all approach to education is bullshit. I know that’s not how things are supposed to be, and yet I’ve seen how this imperative to differentiate curriculum for students wears out teachers. Look at Florida’s retention rates, it’s ridiculous!
Ariel Sheen
I’m still with you.
Danielle Bregoli
Well you’re told that if you do good in school you’ll go to a good college, but that’s not always true either. Legacies have a much better chance of getting into the colleges that will give you the connections you need to really succeed. Plus those who come from wealthier families can help their kids out by supporting them through an unpaid internship and can help them buy houses – a foundational requirement for growing personal wealth.
Ariel Sheen
I think you’re making a fair point there – but I’m not sure that alone merits the kind of wholescale rejection of the system that you seem to now be proposing.
Danielle Bregoli
Well the same goes for a lot of other things. Journalists are supposed to tell the truth about things, but you can’t trust them because they’re either owned by big corporations or are dependent upon them for advertising or need to follow the government line lest they lose the ability to get information and quotes. Look at the contrasting coverage on what’s going on in Catalonia now compared to Venezuela?! Or compare how media covers black compared to white crime and how that affects sentencing.
Ariel Sheen
It sounds like you have a lot to say about things that upset you about America, why aren’t you using the following you’ve created on social media to bring awareness to these things?
Danielle Bregoli
Cause I don’t want to deal with the FBI or CIA watching over me like they have so many other rappers. We know cause of Edward Snowden that they already have operations designed to surveil kids going on and thanks to some good reporting we know that local police departments would like to do the same.
Ariel Sheen
I mean, I get that, but do you really think they’d target you specifically?
Danielle Bregoli
The FBI and the CIA? Yeah, of course! They’re like the sheep dogs of American culture. They work to ensure that no author, artist or musician develops values outside the narrative that they’ve established – a narrative that perpetuates elite cultural values that helps engender antipathy towards lower class people in general and African Americans in particular – and if they do that they’re not commercially successful. If some artist does step outside those lines, well, they either allow the wolves to get them, put them down themselves or get involved in their life to somehow harm them from continuing to produce such music.
Ariel Sheen
That’s a perspective that has been voiced by other rappers in the past. Do you have any evidence to back that up, or have you been approached by people?
Danielle Bregoli
That’s a small question with a big answer. I think it best to approach it not necessarily by looking at history.
It’s well documented that the CIA was formed by anti-communists who held white supremacist views. Their bloody, sordid history in other countries is well known but people often forget they’ve operated domestically, contrary to legality, in a variety of ways.
During the Cold War, for instance, they sought to enlist American students in the crusade against communism. This, however, was just one of many intellectual and cultural fronts for the CIA. They actively engaged in the world of arts and letters, as well collaborating, funding and even help distributing television series and films that aligned with the world view that they wanted to be hegemonic.
Given their history of significant assistance to artists, intellectuals, and musicians in the past and the lack of government transparency in domestic affairs and its history I don’t think it’s that far-fetched. Now is it just them? No, I don’t think so.-There’s lots of political and economic affinities that draw people together to the message the government seeks to amplify about parts of the populace and profit off it.
I think this in part explains why myself, Kodak Black, XXXTentaction and Stitches and a number of others have been able to achieve a modicum of success despite having negligible talent and personal lives that leads people with positive social values to be repulsed by us. They ain’t the sole supporters, but they help behind the scenes.
Ariel Sheen
Wait, are you admitting that you, Kodak Black, XXXTentaction and Stitches are all supported, in part, by the FBI and CIA?!
Danielle Bregoli
I mean, I don’t have any definitive proof to provide, but I’d wager that in the future after certain documents are made public we’ll see that was the case. It is unusual, don’t you think, that my dad’s a police officer and so is Stitches step-father?
Ariel Sheen
It is, but I don’t know… It still seems a bit far-fetched.
Danielle Bregoli
Fair enough, let me give you an example. Have you seen Cardi B’s video for Bodak Yellow?
Ariel Sheen
Can’t say that I have.
Danielle Bregoli
Well first of all let me just say this. Cardi B looks like trash and raps like trash. Trust me, you know how people say real recognizes real? Well trash recognizes trash when they see it. I can’t imagine all the dicks she had to take in order to make it to where she at right now.
Anyway, putting aside that her lyrics are either banal or senseless, in the video Cardi B is, like, wearing this anarchist symbol along with all these punk rock symbols in one part of the video. Yet at the same time singing in the song: “I’m a boss, you a worker, bitch, I make bloody moves.” Like, think about that. Despite the fact that a lot of people were involved in her becoming famous she disregards their contribution and claims all fame for herself.
Then there’s Rihanna’s song Work, Brittney Spears song Work Bitch, Iggy Azelea’s song Work, Fifth Harmony’s song Work from Home… Compare all these songs that normalize work, praise the power of the lone individual over the collective and help perpetuate the American Dream myth with Nina Simone’s Work Song, and it’s world apart. Work there isn’t just some means to obtaining status symbols but a dreary enterprise force by economic necessity that has a social dimension, which if realized by the workers can be changed.
Ariel Sheen
Well I’ll be damned! So there’s a purposeful encouragement of an individualistic mindset whose hegemony benefits the ownership class because people see their struggles as personal rather than collective and their deprivation as a cause of insufficient energy exertion in the right manner rather than a symptom of American capitalism’s formation of economic and social institutions.
Danielle Bregoli
Precisely.
Ariel Sheen
I can understand now why your team wanted to have this interview with me – you have a much greater grasp of the relationships between music and society than I thought.
Danielle Bregoli
YUP! I might not be the best spokesperson for the undirected resentment for the establishment that most of the today’s youth feels – but that’s the point. Like Killer Mike says, you have to look at the man behind the man behind the man behind the throne… Once you’ve recognized that then you can see how everything else falls in to place. So long as what I say in one way or another helps prop up that order, I know I’m going to bank.
Ariel Sheen
Knowing all this, why do you still want to contribute through your behavior to the alienation of people that follow you?
Danielle Bregoli
Yo, the whole point is I’m getting fucking paid! I don’t give a fuck about anybody unless they giving me money – and even then I only care about them cause they giving me money. I don’t care how I gets it so long as how I gets it. My possibilities for upward mobility in this country outside of what I’m doing now are incredibly limited, so I want to sell out and make as much as possible.
Ariel Sheen
Is that why you are looking to get a reality T.V. show?
Danielle Bregoli
Yup! It’s something that people without talent, like me, can do to make money. It’s cultural schadenfreude.
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If you enjoyed this entirely fictional interview, check out my equally insightful 2015 interview with Stitches.
Facebook Groups for Ex-Pats Living in Medellín
Prior to moving to Colombia I spent many hours reading through various online Facebook groups to get a better understanding of what sort of issues people had trouble coping with, a sense of the various communities (locals and ex-pats) perspective on issues, prices of goods and services, places and situations to be wary of, etc. Below are the links to the groups that have been the most useful in orienting myself to life in Medellín
Doing Business And Living In Medellin, Colombia
Women Entrepreneurs of Medellin
GringoPaisa (Americans In Medellin)
Food in Medellin | Comida en Medellín
Medellin Living Events & Activities
Medellin Entrepreneurs Society
Medellin ENGLISH – SPANISH Events
Medellin Rooms, Apartments and Expat Info
Medellin Short Term Apartments
Medellin apart/rooms 4 Rent/Sale
Alquiler de habitaciones en Medellin
Clasificados Medellin Antioquia
Groups For All of Colombia
How To Best Use Data for Storytelling and Content Marketing
In this article I explain how creative strategists like myself can help companies utilize their own data for use in content marketing campaigns or evergreen website content. I review some of the formulas which underlie most of the viral content shared on social media and outline with an examples how it is that data can also be used for evergreen content.
I don’t, however, go into detail why data based content is so important for today’s companies.
Turning Data into Narrative and The Most Viral Content Marketing Structures
Content marketing is both an art and a science.
Its designation as a science stems from being able to obtain and determine the significance of information from a single or multiple sets of data in a methodologically sound manner as well as being able to then track its effects online to determine ROI. This is why the best content marketers often work in conjunction with growth hackers.
Its designation as an art comes from that fact that once a number of these particular findings are uncovered in data, they must then be placed in a narrative structure with aesthetically pleasing components (infographics, gifs, videos, etc.) that is compelling enough to hook and hold the attention of a reader. This is why the best content marketers often work in conjunction with a team able to properly promote campaigns.
Examples of Successful Content Marketing Narrative Structures
Surveys and internal data that use demographic information to tell engaging stories is that which is most likely to be picked up by media outlets and shared on social media.
There are, however, a finite number of ways that such data can be presented and not all of them are equal in the value they bring. Those that exhibit certain traits have a higher tendency to become viral.
Here is a non-comprehensive list of some of the narrative constructions most likely to be shared:
- People who do X are more likely to to be Y.
- Having X attribute (big butt) means you are more Y (smart/stupid).
- X% of children in Y birth order are more Z% than their siblings.
- Doing X (glass of red wine) easy thing = Y (one hour of exercise)
- X study confirms Y thing (that everyone already agreed about — such as dogs are better company than people)
- Being X “good thing” (religious) means you are more Y (bad thing) (mean)
- People who do X on social media (post selfies) are more likely to be Y (narcissistic)
- People with X “bad” personality trait (Loner) are Y “good attribute” (more intelligent)
- Doing X regularly (meditating) correlates with Y (happier life)
- X type of person (Women) need more Y (sleep) than opposite type of person (men)
- People who do X (brag) thing to get Y (praise) reaction, actually are the Z (opposite – insecure)
- X% (high percentage) of Y (common demographic) group admit to Z (taboo thing)
The Psychology Behind People’s Curiosity
It’s possible to go into great depth on the variety of emotional responses and how they are likely to affect various reader personas, so for now an analogy will do. Chances are at some time you’ve been out somewhere in public and heard someone call out your name. If so, you probably can recall the feeling of sudden alertness you get. Where did that sound come from? Who said that? What message do they have for me now that they’ve captured my attention?
The social media equivalent to this is seeing a headline with one or more demographic qualities featured in it that relates to you or someone you care about. You want to know this new bit of information about people like you or something that interests you.
Using Survey and Internal Data For Content Marketing
Depending on the business, oftentimes the data required to tell a good story is already stored in a Customer Relations Management (CR) database or something similar. Depending on their willingness to publish this information, this can be a great means for producing content marketing with original research. Here’s an example:
A company like BeachBody could potentially use their clients data to illustrate possible differences in likelihood of starting and completing a particular workout program by age, weight or current level of physical fitness. This would be a great piece of evergreen, potentially live updating, marketing content as it would show subscribers the attrition rate for all the programs based on those demographics.
By informing those that might be new to their services that certain exercise programs are more appropriate for people at higher level of fitness, it could help them to lower the monthly cancelation rate as people can now visualize how others have handled their programs and realize that they might need to choose an easier one.
For survey based content marketing campaigns, wherein new data is created through services such as Survey Monkey, including demographic questions is the key for turning raw data into narrative. As you can include a variety of questions that have previously been peer-reviewed and tested to show a number of psychological qualities, surveys typically allow for much more complex data to be parsed that that normally collected by companies.
Why You Should Hire Ariel Sheen to Develop a Content Marketing Plan Using Your Company’s Internal Data; Existent Data or New Data
As presenting misunderstood or misinterpreted data can damage a company’s reputation, it is imperative that at each stage of research and production all findings are fact checked for quality assurance. Thanks to my academic training and content marketing experience, I am uniquely qualified to produce SEO-optimized, original, viral or evergreen marketing content that follows best production processes.
If your business is ready to incorporate content marketing projects that uses internal data, existent data or newly created data as part of your digital media fingerprint, then contact me and together we can craft a statement of work that helps you to achieve your marketing goals.
Review of “The Brethren”
I haven’t read a trade paperback book in a very long time, however only two of the five books that I’d purchased with the intent to read while in Colombia came to me in sufficient time before my trip. Because of this, when I finished my last book on Colombia I picked up a copy of The Brethren by John Grisham for no other reason than it was there. The last time that I read a trade paperback that wasn’t a reissued classic was, I think, when I was early in my teenage years. Back then I read a lot of Grisham as well as James Patterson, Steven King and Clive Barker. I’m glad I read this, however, as it was nice to re-encounter the specific style and voice that based on sales has one of the widest audiences.
The novel develops around two separate plots that at converge to create the purportedly dynamic but unpredictable third act tension. I say unpredictable not as Grisham gives anything away, he plays the scenes close to the cuff, but because I’m sure if it’d been any other way then there would have been thought pieces published in some of the literary journals listing examples and posturing about the verisimilitude of the world we now find ourselves in.
The book opens on three imprisoned ex-judges that have been given the collective name of “the Brethren” by the security guards in the minimum-security prison. In this prison they attempt to re-create their former power by acting as Justices of the Court by hearing complaints amongst the inmates. Their judgements are considered final and are always a 2-1 verdict, so that if an inmate corners one of them they can claim they were the one that voted in their favor for security purposes. The Brethren also engage in an elaborate blackmail scheme that preys on wealthy, closeted homosexual men with the help of a drunkard lawyer. Since their job in the minimum security prison only pays cents an hour, this is a good way to save time and put money aside to prepare for their relase.
The second narrative traces the rise of presidential candidate Aaron Lake. Lake is, essentially, a puppet created by CIA director Teddy Maynard to fulfill his desire for increased U.S. military spending to counter a General in Russia that he foresees as rising in power and leading to an existential threat to America. Grisham does not quickly weave these two threads together immediately, thereby leaving the reader to wonder in the opening chapters how and when these two worlds will collide.
This plotting was tight, but the stakes for the characters involved was so low that I had trouble getting too invested in their struggles. Towards the middle and end, when there’s much more intrigue going on, I still never felt that anyone was in “real danger” or that the cause for actions was all that significant. Part of this is because I think Grisham want’s to cynically highlight the false personalities we expect of politicians and the political process – there are certainly a few passages and asides that accomplish this. However this intrusion of social commentary in sparse and comes off in all but a few passages less as insightful critique and more as scathing but essentially fatalistic pessimism.
I found Grisham’s portrayal of characters to be interesting but not altogether impressive. There are some complex figures, such as Justice Hatlee Beech, but even then this former millionaire judge rendered divorced, bankrupt, and friendless after his conviction for vehicular homicide while drunk (two students outside the car and a naked female stranger in his car) doesn’t strike me as well developed. His trauma is less from the acts that took him there and more from his loss of a job that was a well-paying appointment for life, prestige, his wife’s money. Even his children’s lack of contact with him, so as to stay in the good graces of their rich mother, seems to only be an afterthought. Presidential candidate Lake seems and even the CIA director Teddy Maynard also read to me as nearly one-dimensional. Maynard is not evil, but a puppet-master who uses his knowledge and connections to help mold the public will via ad campaigns, illicit contributions, and international intrigue. There is, however, little description on any of this and instead we read of CIA ops going on in the office of a small town lawyer that’s also a drunkard.
I didn’t particularly find the book’s resolution to be all that engaging. Spoiler alert! Even after The Brethren hustle their way out of prison they return to the scam that helped get them out. It’s sensible, as they were able to make a lot of money the first time around, however I find given their recognition of the precariousness of their safety (they’re being constantly watched) that they would be willing to risk this.
Review of The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual
I’ve been meaning to review The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual by Harold Cruse for quite some time. With it’s depth and breath of evidence and a forceful analysis it’s no surprise that following it’s publication it was a cultural touchstone amongst the cultural and political elites of the early 1970s. Truth is, whenever I’ve sat in front of an open Word document with the intent to respond to it’s arguments and evidence, I start to feel a bit overwhelmed. This despite the fact that I’ve had some pretty extended conversations on this book.
Thankfully, one of the Facebook groups whose posts I follow, the Society for United States Intellectual History, recently curated a Roundtable on the Crisis of the Negro Intellectual. Rather than provide you with my thoughts on the matter, I decided I’d share these instead:
- The Many Crises of Harold Cruse: An Introduction to The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual Roundtable by Robert Greene
- Not a Classic by Daniel Geary
- Harold Cruse’s Ruthless Criticism by Andrew Hartman
- James Baldwin and The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual by Holly Genovese
- The Still Rejected Strain; or How Black Thought is Enough by John Meyers
- The Enduring Crisis of Black Intellectuals In America by Robert Greene
Along with two other insightful PDFs:
and some random other links:
Beyond the Color Line: Jews, Black and the American Racial Imagination
Music That’s Playing in Medellin
This is by no means any sort of scientific attempt to curate the music scene in Medellin. This is just a short playlist of some of the songs that I’ve listened too in various places I’ve voyaged to in Medellin over the past two weeks.
Tu Me Enamoraste by Lary Over, Anuel AA, Bryant Myers, Brytiago, Almighty
Ahora Dice by Chris Jeday featuring J. Balvin, Ozuna, and Arcángel
Un Polvo by Maluma featuring Bad Bunny, Arcángel, Ñengo Flow,and De La Ghetto
Si Tu Novio Te Deja Sola by J. Balvin featuring Bad Bunny
Ella y Yo by Pepe Quintana featuring Farruko , Anuel AA, Tempo, Almighty, and Bryant Myers
Cuatro Babys by Maluma featuring Noriel, Bryant Myers, and Juhn
Ornette – “Crazy” (Nôze remix)
Esclava Remix by Bryant Myers featuring Anonimus, Almighty Y Anuel AA
Tu No Vive Asi by Arcangel x Bad Bunny
Escápate Conmigo by Wisin featuring Ozuna
Si Me Muero by Pepe Quintana featuring Farruko, Ñengo Flow, Lary Over, Darell
Si Tu Lo Dejas by Rvssian featuring Bad Bunny, Farruko, Nicky Jam, King Kosa
The Importance of Long Form Content for Marketing
This article will first explain what long form content marketing is, then why it is important in today’s digital marketing age. It will also examine how to develop ideas for long form content marketing as an in-bound strategy and how someone like me can help develop a strategy that provides your company’s digital space with evergreen, high Google Domain Authority ranking marketing content.
For Whom is Long Form Content Marketing Important?
Why should companies today give serious consideration to paying someone to produce long form content marketing as part of their total content marketing strategy? Well, to appease four very important audiences. Most importantly is the AI that Google uses to determine Domain Authority and Page Rank. The other three are those consumers that are (1) already enthusiastic customers that would like to signal their rationale for consuming your brand (2) customers that are not yet enthusiastic enough to become a vector for sharing marketing messaging but could be, (3) those that know about your product but have yet to purchase it and (4) those that didn’t know about your company’s products or services at all.
Why Does Google Care About Long Form Content Marketing?
Understanding how Google’s AI approaches long form content marketing and why it is so important for determining Domain Authority and Page Rank can be explained by asking a single question:
On a scale of one to five, with one being the least amount of trust and five being the most amount of trust, how would you rank the trust-worthiness of the below people to provide meaningful insight on a particular field of human knowledge?
- Someone that graduated only with a high school diploma
- Someone with a bachelor’s degree in a different field of knowledge
- Someone with a bachelor’s degree in that particular field of knowledge
- Someone with a master’s degree in that particular field of knowledge
- Someone with a doctoral degree in that particular field of knowledge
Most likely your answers were in ascending order: someone graduating only with a high school degree getting the lowest trust ranking and an in-field PhD getting the highest ranking.
The simple reason is that you, like Google, know that subject area mastery is best accomplished through publication of research and academic writing and not a number of small memorandum on the matter. Long form content raises a website’s domain authority, which also causes it to rank higher for certain search terms and lower the costs of Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns.
Why Do People Care About Long Form Content Marketing?
There’s other reasons why long form content marketing is important besides being an oversized textual canvas with which to include many of the SEO specific terms. Long format content marketing earns more backlinks than short form and also receives the most amount of organic traffic.
Ask yourself, would you be more likely to share a 250-word post that explains something you care about in three small talking points or a compellingly written 2000-word article that contains a number of examples; quotes and original or secondary research?
Short-form content is a necessary strategy to drive engagement and build domain authority. But at a time when competition for the attention of potential customers is so high that they are seeing literally thousands of ads a day, it’s important to have a diverse approach to one’s online presence.
Because there is simply so much short form content out there, unless combined with a pay-per-click boosting or a placement/sharing of the content through another media outlet, paid or earned, short-form content’s virtual freshness is brief.
Additionally, long form content done right keep the visitor on the website longer than short form content, which Google monitors and also uses to factor Domain Authority and Page Ranking.
Long form content done correctly is also more engaging and is more likely to help make customers not just purchasers of the product, but proselytizing enthusiasts of it.
What is Long-Form Marketing Content?
Long-form content marketing can be defined as any kind of in-depth content that has been produced with the intent of giving the reader or viewer a large amount of detailed information.
Long-form content marketing can include things like investigation or exposition that uses original research, company data, an analysis of existent research or some combination thereof; a single, long format blog; a blog series; e-books; white papers; and keystone articles – articles that combine and synthesize information found in a number of already published on-site short form blogs.
It should also be noted that the difference between short and long term content is not just about length. Done incorrectly, long form content is similar to the writing of high school students on a test when they’ve not done the reading or paid attention in class – they use a large number of filler words in order to boost their word count. This not true long form content, but short form content writ large.
True long form content is able to provide more examples of style, voice and authority – some of the key components of corporate branding.
How Does Long Form Content Marketing Different from Short Form Content Marketing?
Besides just the length of the writing and the number of audio-visual assets that can be incorporated with it in an aesthetically pleasing manner, long form content marketing is qualitatively different from short form marketing content. Some of the many ways in which it is different are as follows:
- Long form content marketing availability means that an email subscription pop up could be added to grow a company’s contact list.
- Long form content marketing can be held behind a survey, the shorter the better, in order to assisting in greater understanding of purchasing profiles.
- Long form content marketing can contain an active feedback section can make it a page where potential customers and current service/product enthusiasts can engage in conversion conversations.
- Long form content marketing can contain an active discussion component that can make it a page where questions are answered that would normally go to support staff.
This list isn’t meant to be comprehensive but instead just a few examples of the benefits that can be gained from having long form content marketing.
How To Develop Long Form Content Marketing As An In-bound Strategy
In order to develop a strategy for long form content marketing you need to know how to produce so it meets Google’s preferred formatting to achieve the most effective SEO ranking possible, but you also need to know how to present the subject matter to your human audience in a manner that is pleasing. Your human audience will break down into four subcategories:
- Your existent customers.
- Those that are at some part of your sales funnel.
- Those that could be in your sales funnel.
- Those that won’t be in your sales funnel but may share the material.
Prior to looking at internal marketing data, an ideation session would occur wherein from potential topics those are chosen that best meet the SUCCESS criteria.
Based upon the different buyer personalities that exist, the ideas are adapted to fit the proper audience. Content is then ordered into a production calendar that matches cyclical or topical events and is then produced from according to any pre- or co- determined branding guidelines.
The Development Process for Long Form Content Marketing
Long form content marketing is a complex process and requires either a team or a person that is able to complete all of the following:
- Co-ordinate with the existent marketing team to determine the metrics for success, targeted audiences and how prior content marketing campaigns have fare.
- Ideate share-worthy ideas for long form content marketing that are informed by statistical insights gleaned from your existent customer profiles.
- Create a content production calendar.
- Determine which promotional route is best to follow for each and to execute according to that judgement.
- Produce engaging textual and visual content the follows Google’s formatting guidelines to maximize SEO as well as existent or newly created branding guidelines.
- Co-ordinate with the webmaster to place content on the client’s website.
- Track mentions, shares, backlinks, changes in domain authority, etc. for marketing reports.
Why You Should Hire Ariel Sheen To Plan and Execute Your Long Form Content Marketing Project
If your business is ready for increased sales via new in-bound sales funnels, decreased costs for PPC marketing, and greater brand exposure then you are likely considering the benefits of beginning a long-format content marketing project. If so, know that the full ideation and development process is part of my basic and premium level long form content marketing packages.
Contact me with what your goals and hopes for a long form content marketing campaign and together we can craft a statement of work that helps you to achieve your marketing goals.
Review of “The Para-State: An Ethnography of Colombia’s Death Squads”
The Para-State: An Ethnography of Colombia’s Death Squads by Alvo Civico is an engaging and at times haunting account of the armed conflict between various groups that has shaped Colombia’s political economy over the past forty years. The books anthropologically oriented methodology combines first person interviews with cocaine kingpins, leaders of para-military forces as well as the regulars, victims of paramilitary violence, as well as supporters of the paramilitary along with a historical account that contextualizes the events described in the interviewees stories. Through these accounts, Colombia’s rural interior comes to be seen as a space where actors project their desires for wealth and personally engage or organize horrific behavior in order to obtain it.
While it appears late in Para-State’s chapters, despo-capitalism is the term that Civio uses to describes the socio-economic dynamics of Colombia. It is a “threshold where the repressive forces of the despot combine with the liberating forces of capitalism” (140). His theoretical model for understanding the dynamics of despo-capitalism is decidedly Marxian with deference to Deleuze and a dash of Zizek. He states repeatedly, in fact, that the role of the AUC is what is described as a War Machine in the book A Thousand Plateaus. To bolster this positions, he includes a brief comparative political account based on interviews with an Italian prosecutor that illustrates the similarity of development of the Sicilian Mafia to the Colombian para-militaries.
Paisas Son Un Gente Muy Amable y Acogedoras
If you consume enough of the marketing content that encourages travel and investment in Colombia or various polls, you’ll soon notice that one of the recurring themes is of how wonderful and welcoming the people are here. While as of writing this I’ve only spent time in Antioquia, this combined with the many others I met from this region while living in South Florida makes me feel that this is a general truism. The irony, of course, is the happiness that they feel despite there being a longest standing civil war throughout any Latin American country.
The reason for the Civil War is long, and stems in part to the violence between Liberal and Conservative Parties before that. Each operated with tenuous. After a number of periods of sectarian killings, including La Violencia, the political elite united around the Frente Nacional (1959), which is incredibly similar to Venezuela’s Pact of Punto Fijo (1958). This specifically lead to the establishment of the FARC and would later open up the conditions for the death squads the books describes. Unable to get enough civilian support in regions rich with fecund land and extractable primary goods, the para-militaries became a means for the elite to establish control.
Limpiezas were right wing paramilitary that went throughout the rural and urban areas and liquidated those that they considered FARC sympathizers (real and imagined) as well as desechables, gamines, and those in combos. There were a large number of such groups, such as the Peasant Self-Defense Forces of Cordoba and Uraba (ACCU), that came to be united in name but not always in orientation under the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC). Regional groups were funded by either the upper classes with financial interests in a region or workers being under their total control or cocaine producers and distributors.
Death By Bananas
Despite what the above meme suggests, getting murdered because you don’t want to pick bananas for the wages offered is not something relegated to the not so distant past. In the period when the bi-lateral trade agreement between Colombia and the United States was being debated by the Legislative branches of government, the American trade unions pointed to the wave of over 450 assassinations of civil rights leaders, trade unionists and community leaders that was then going on. Chiquita Banana, may still face trial for its support of the AUC after the State Department deemed it a terrorist group.
The informant network created by the AUC deemed all such people as “collaborators to the FARC’s cause,” even if there was no such material support evidence. The mere belief that workers had a right to collectively bargain was considered cause for getting kidnapped, shot, dismembered by chainsaw and the remains left somewhere in the forest for animals to consume.
In regions with fecund soil that inhabitants had adopted a subsistence model of reproduction, market relations were either forced on them by paracos or they were dispossessed. In regions where wage-labor for agricultural production was pre-existent but drives for higher wages occurred, paracos enforced at gunpoint the continuation of work. In a word, the feudalistic model for enforcing labor participation for capitalist production was the norm.
The information network of the AUC would later identify and assassinate over 450 unionists, community rights leaders, and other “sympathizers” or collaborators to the FARC’s cause. If this seems high, well, the number of civilians the AUC killed is drastically higher. When a valley needed to be cleared of occupiers so that a foreign national company could grow bananas, for instance, or a gold lode was discovered that initial seismic wave readings indicated could be worth billions – paracos would declare that town a pueblo guerillero for resisting such displacement. After they’d encircle it with hundreds of heavily armed people, they’d raid a number of people specifically identified as trouble and then publicly execute them and put their bodies on display in an area with high pedestrian and automobile traffic.
The Direction of Colombia’s Economic Development is the Heart of its Civil Conflict
These capital and labor intensive industries along with cocaine production and trafficking are at the heart of the Colombian political economy. The latter more so as cocaine itself is a totem that organizes the distribution of bodies, practices, objects, symbols and words. The class divide determine by one’s placement in the such a system of capital circulation is both implicit by social norms but also by the legal system which designates people according to a legal class (estrata). Those that are lower class are not given much, if any, assistance by the state – hence the antagonism to it, as those on the lower end see the benefits given to those at the top – and thus can best earn through trafficking or muscle. An additional element driving the conflict has to do with US investment in the region.
Cocaine and the Development of Medellin
The Para-State’s account of cocaine’s role in the geographical and demographic development of Medellin describes evolving dangers from sundry violent actors working in unison and against each other. With vast amounts of capital coming into the country through sales via Miami and other points, the traffickers soon became the largest land holders in the country. Not all wanting to live in highly guarded fincas outside of the city center, they invested in different neighborhoods in Medellin.
As a result of the the aforementioned dispossessions and high level of unemployment, combos formed in these area. The effects that these two converging factors in one region is described on page 158 by Civico as follows:
“Medellin has long been crossed by these invisible but powerful boundaries, and transgression could trigger a death sentence from a rival armed group. These lives have shifted constantly, and residents have learned which streets to travel on, which ones to avoid, and which boundaries to cross. Walking on the wrong side of a street can get you killed. In several of the city’s barrios, survival has been a matter of such cartographic knowledge.
Having spent a few weeks now in Medellin, it’s worth noting that even now, 20-30 years after the period described the dynamic remain the same – with the higher areas along the mountains being more “dangerous” while the center is safer. That this is a dynamic caused by wealth inequality from the hegemonic economic capitalist enterprises is clearly shown to be the case.
De-armament, Reintegration and Politicization of the Struggle
Even before the recent FARC demobilization, those once in the AUC were in the process of demobilizing. As Civico describes it, however, this is not an easy process. The job prospects for those once involved pay significantly lower, making them ripe for recruitment by narcos, their history of violence makes them apt to end up in jail or dead over minor disputes and others that aware of their crimes – be they family members of those they killed or rival groups – sometimes take justice in their own hands. One of the interviewees that Civico writes about, in fact, is taken by a group that he was on bad terms with and is never seen again.
The politicization of the armed struggle is certainly a step in the right direction for a united Colombia, however as this book shows there is a lot of bloody history that will continue to make such a transition difficult. While it’s not clear if this will work, Civico is clear that if the massive modernization projects which dislocates thousands continue, if the assassination of leftists continues, if the state continues to fail in its ability to speak for all but the elite, that this project will fail.
Vocabulary
Desechables – Literally means “disposable people”. This meant people that were drug addicts, petty thieves, homosexuals, domestic abusers and could sometime include people that had long hair.
Intreccio –the inter-twinement of the state and the parastate. First used to describe the relationship between the Italian Mafia and state
Traquetos – the people engaged in cocaine trafficking who make a show of their wealth with thick gold chains around their necks, expansive cars and stunning young women
Pajeria – literally means “squad”. People who enacted organized political violence
Vacuna – protection money
Farras – parties to get drunk
Urbano – a paramilitary working in an urban area
Bonification – a bonus according to the number of people you killed
Paracos – paramilitaries
Bara – The dynamic wherein a commander likes your performance and gives you frequent opportunities and recommends you
Limpieza – social cleansing accomplished through spectacular violence
Raspachin – coca gatherer
Pueblo guerillero – a town associated with guerillas
Gamine – street kids
Vallenato – romantic Colombian music from the coastal region with lyrical content similar to African griots
Pillos – a Medellin specific term for gang-members and junkies
Culebras – literally poisonous snakes. A term for one’s enemies.
Combos – street corner gangs
Review of “Finding Your Voice: How to Put Personality in Your Writing”
Reading Finding Your Voice: How to Put Personality in Your Writing by Les Edgerton reminded me how to be attentive to the variety of creative decisions that determine the voice of a work. How they can be interpreted, improved and evolved from different experiential exercises. The book contains focus on various voices – pulpy, sardonic, confessional, etc. – along with “before and after” changes. Theres illustrate how a few different decisions can radically alter the ease and enjoyment level of the reading. Some of the various traps to watch out for that Edgerton cites are the “beige voice” as well as talking up or down to the reader. As all of the fictive dream – the neurological firings in your brain that are activated during the process of readings words on page or screen- occur as the results of words, best get them right. Right?!
There are, additionally, exercises contained within for identifying the ways in which honing in on voice in specific passages can radically improve the experience of the reader and how some choices can lead to it “going wrong” in one’s writing. For instance, say one wanted to get the reader to slow down. Not to scan the text; as so many are apt now to do. Well, the solution is simple. Place a number of shorter sentences back to back. This is a particularly effective practice following longer expository passages. Explaining difficult things, after all, requires the combination of lots of pieces. Much as in the same way that sentence variation forces the reader out of the simplistic subject verb object constructions.
The book is for both writers of fiction and non-fiction and addresses something that is very important as it relates to today’s media landscape – talking up, down and beigley to the reader. Explaining every and all thing can cause passages to drag on and o n. If they are known by the reader, it’s a bore, and leads to mental lagging. A good writer, Hemingway and others have stated, leaves something for the reader to want to discover. Writing in too high of a voice is the struggle that I’ve had, having an advanced academic background I can sometimes lapse into uncommon terms that are, nevertheless, quite useful for understanding today’s world. But this isn’t all about me. This is not purple prose, either, which I’ve only found in contemporary Latin American literature, is not gone in to but that’s just because it’s so rare in American fictional and non-fictional works that get published.
Edgerton’s colloquialisms, and the linguistic playfulness of the text was, I thought, a little corny at first. However it did grow on me. Plus, I recognized what he was doing with it. Not only was he describing insights into what makes a well crafted writers voice; but he was also demonstrating it! By sharing this, as well as the hat of instructor, he’s helping to show one of the Walt Whitman quotes about – I’m stacatato-cattically summarizing her : “there being multitudes that exist within each of us”. It’s true. There are!
Les’ lessons are follower by exercises to either read, write or re-write. The book is an attempt at a comprehensive attempt to teach the craft of good writing, plot, etc. but just focus on narrative voice and the voice of characters. He lists a large number of books that go into these other areas, and it’s clear with his familiar with them that a lot of experience and time went into the formation of this book.
I finished the book not only informed but also interested in seeing the dynamic that exists in his writing workshops. Having attended several writing workshops as an undergraduate at Florida Atlantic University and in Prauge, Czech republic as part of a University of Michigan program – not to mention other informal gatherings – I’ve always found workshops a productive place where people provide new eyes to help you see things you may not be aware of because you’re too close to the work, or wasn’t aware of some insight or whatever other reason that shows up when people gather with strategic and creative intentions.
I like how following this book one can apply like dissection tools onto the writings of your favorite writers in order to better place their style in history rather than a burden. Stealing can always be great art, but only if it’s great art does it get called great art – not just because it’s just an iteration of the same efforts. That last quote, ya, that’s me. Put that on a goddamn site so i can get me da stats higher.