It's our very first podcast! Wooo!

Recently, Kristina (our fearless leader) and Joe Pulizzi (author, content marketing evangelist, and self-described “poster boy for content marketing”) met up to discuss some similarities and differences between content marketing and content strategy.

Not only will you be captivated by their insights and insults (ok, no insults), you'll learn how to identify the One Thing that really sets your company apart from the competition. Bonus: find out how content strategists and content marketers can join arm-in-arm to sing "Hands Across America." 

Download the mp3

About Joe Pulizzi
Joe co-authored "Get Content, Get Customers" with Newt Barrett. He is the CEO of Junta 42, where he maintains his blog of the same name. Joe evangelizes content marketing worldwide and maintains the popular content marketing blog Junta42. Follow Joe on Twitter: @juntajoe

• Hello—greets the user, whether a member or not.
• Sign in—invites members to log on.
• Start here—gives non-members the opportunity to create an account.

May I present as an example a recent plotline from one of my favorite TV shows, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia:

• What the characters like to do is drink wine.

• How they drink it is out of a Diet Coke can.

• Useful

• Usable

• Purposeful

• Profitable

• Teamwork and a values-driven culture

• Incredibly high standards for good work

• A clear purpose and laser-focus on content, just the content

True story: We ate walking tacos, we drank margaritas and Mexican beer with lime. We swung at piñatas.

And, oh, we broke a window.

Kristina took it well:

What We Did on Our Summer Vacation, Part II

It was the day after a tornado tore up part of our fair city. The sky was dark. The rain was falling. We would not be deterred. We would not.

For to see our name in lights at Midway Stadium, to get down with Mudonna and Super Fan, to leave the Nerd speechless was our mission. Watch out, St. Paul Saints. Here comes Brain Traffic.

The highlights:

Before the rain. And beer.

Bear says "What? What?"

Eye Love Baseball. And beer.

Slumhog Millionaire. That’s her real name.

The Nerd with Angie 2.0 before Elizabeth stole his funny.

So, what are we going to do now that Kristina published a book? The same thing we do every day, of course: Try to take over the world! Congratulations, Kristina!

Web writers have to adopt appropriate voice and tone while remaining pithy. Fake celebrity Tweeters have to adopt appropriate voice and tone while remaining super pithy—and telling pudding jokes. It’s a hard job.

Here are some of our favorites:  

• “Economy?… TRASH!” @OscarTheeGrouch

• “Even though he looked like a wax figure, Mr. Jackson could do a strange backward jig, the likes of which I’ve never seen. He will be missed!” @HalfPintIngalls

•  “Hulk smash!” @incredible_rawr
•  “zippity hippity dop! zooba shawow! with the people, and the places, and the ohhh try some jello pudding. it’s such a good snack SHEBOP!” @JelloPudding
• “Hey twitter.” @HeyBrotherBluth

Would YOU like to be a fake celebrity Tweeter? Last we checked, these celebrities weren’t taken:

•  William Howard Taft

•  Jessica Tandy

•  Zach Morris (for real!)

•  Kevin Costner

• Rudy Huxtable

Here’s the thing, though …

We have a ton of old cards. And I simply cannot stomach the idea of throwing them into the recycling bin. So I’m trying to think of creative ways to use them.

I tried making a decorative fan for my desk:

I tried making a collage for my cabinet:

And I tried using one for scratch paper:

As you can see, my ideas are totally lame. Help.

Office politics and a couple naysayers couldn’t stop the Brain Traffic team from representin’ – so what if we lost in the first round. So what, we say!

We got it all on video thanks to our good friend Nate Kadlac.

 Prepare to laugh. Also cry. And perhaps appear dumbfounded and confused:

Foosfire Fame from Nate Kadlac on Vimeo.

Wheeeee!

In honor of this auspicious occasion, here are a few of our staff’s limerick attempts.

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Limericks About Brain Traffic

At Brain Traffic we care about content
When it’s bad, we so often lament
If you let us write
Like a thief in the night
We’ll rock it and you’ll say we’re god-sent. – Meghan Casey

Oh crap. Our content is a mess!
It’s causing us pain, strife, and stress
If our content is shabby
Our boss will be crabby
It’s time to call BT, oh yes.  – Melissa Rach

We bought ourselves just one more whiteboard
For our schemas and plans to record
I left a quick note
My ideas to promote
But as usual, I was ignored. -Kristina Halvorson

There once was a lass called Kristin-er
At conferences, you might have seen her
Now she’s on the hook
To write a big book
And, after that she should take a breather. – Melissa Rach

Here’s what a good schedule can do
It should stick to your project like glue
So when things might fall apart
Don’t take it to heart
Just point and say, “Hey, buddy: It’s Due!" - Angie (1.0) Halama

A Brain Traffic web writer
Is a trained word and grammar fighter
Who defends user needs
Until her pencil bleeds
On a quest to make the internets brighter. - Angie (2.0) King

Control + Alt + Delete
Boy, you sure are neat
You lock my machine
So my Microsoft screen goes aquamarine
Which prohibits my crafty co-workers from hijacking my machine to send a prank email or tweet. - Julie Vollenweider

Limerick-Off

Elizabeth is a girl I know
She has black hair like a crow
She’s fun to tease
And when I please
I respond to her stories with, “So.” - Meghan Casey

Meghan is a white devil lady
Her stories are always very shady
She swears like a man
And smells like fake tan
And one day I’m going to put hot pizza in her shoes so it burns her feet off. - Elizabeth Saloka

Bonus Limerick!

I dated a girl in high school
Sometimes I thought she was cruel.
She’d put up a fight
At the end of the night
She wasn’t from Nantucket, I’ll tell you that. – Josh Foldy