margot bloomstein

• [1:00] Meet Margot Boomstein
• [3:00] Margot's story kicks off with a new project
• [5:00] She's falling in love
• [8:00] Things start getting Gilligan's Island bad
• [9:00] More red flags
• [12:00] She's falling out of love
• [13:00] How do you try to turn a situation around?
• [20:00] Keeping your heart in it
   

About our guest
Margot Bloomstein, Brand and content strategist, author, speaker, and facilitator
Margot is one of the most prominent voices in the content strategy industry. She is the author of the critically acclaimed Trustworthy: How the Smartest Brands Beat Cynicism and Bridge the Trust Gap and the industry mainstay Content Strategy at Work: Real-World Stories to Strengthen Every Interactive Project. She is also the principal of Appropriate, Inc., a brand and content strategy consultancy based in Boston.

For more than 20 years, Margot has taught workshops, keynoted conferences, and advised marketing teams around the world, earning a reputation for asking thoughtful questions and bringing teams together in productive, creative work. She developed the popular message architecture-driven approach to content strategy and created BrandSort, a tool embraced by consultancies to help organizations clarify their communication goals. Her clients include the American Montessori Society, Harvard University, Fidelity, Lovehoney, Mailchimp, Scholastic, Sallie Mae, Timberland, and the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority. A participant in the inaugural Content Strategy Consortium and featured speaker at SXSW, Margot advises Women Talk Design, a platform for speakers in design. She also teaches in the content strategy graduate program at FH Joanneum University in Graz, Austria. Margot lives outside Boston and lectures around the world about brand-driven content strategy and designing for trust.  

How can brands build trust with an increasingly cynical audience? 

Margot Bloomstein believes you can win over any audience by creating consistent, high-quality content. But in order to cut through the noise, you need to build a clear content strategy and be vulnerable. 

As the principal of Appropriate, Inc., a Boston-based brand and content strategy consultancy, a speaker, and an author, Margot has experience partnering with a range of organizations to deliver quality messaging, including Sallie Mae, Lovehoney, Scholastic, Fidelity, Harvard University, and the American Montessori Society.

She talked to us about the nuances of building trust with increasingly distrustful audiences, prototyping in public, and focusing on consistency.

Show Topics

• Make good on content strategy through content marketing
• Create message architecture from a content hierarchy
• Use the same wording as your clients
• Nurture confidence in your audience
• Advocate for solving problems through content
• Respond to cynicism by building trust
• Cut through the noise
• Guide better decision-making
• Prototype in public
• Focus on consistency

Check out Trustworthy: How the Smartest Brands Beat Cynicism and Bridge the Trust Gap
Follow Margot Bloomstein on LinkedIn or Twitter

Past guests on The Long Game podcast include: Morgan Brown (Shopify), Ryan Law (Animalz), Dan Shure (Evolving SEO), Kaleigh Moore (freelancer), Eric Siu (Clickflow), Peep Laja (CXL), Chelsea Castle (Chili Piper), Tracey Wallace (Klaviyo), Tim Soulo (Ahrefs), Sean Blanda (Crossbeam), Ilona Abramova (AppSumo), and many more.

Some interviews you might enjoy and learn from:

020: Spark Creativity and Generate Memorable Content with Ryan Law (Animalz)

041: Actionable Tips and Secrets to SEO Strategy with Dan Shure (Evolving SEO)

045: Building Competitive Marketing Content with Sam Chapman (Aprimo)

009: The Long Game Podcast: Building Communities, Teams and Companies through Marketing with Sabel Harris

019: Peak Performing, High-Earning Freelance Writing with Michael Keenan (Co-Founder at Peak Freelance)

028: Purpose-Driven Leadership & Building a Content Team with Ty Magnin (UiPath)

Also, check out our Kitchen Side series where we take you behind the scenes to see how the sausage is made at our agency:

015: Should You Hire Writers or Subject Matter Experts?

017: How Do Growth and Content Overlap?

027: Is Organic Traffic the Best Traffic?

Connect with Omniscient Digital on social:

Twitter: @beomniscient

Linkedin: Be Omniscient

Listen to more episodes of The Long Game podcast here: https://beomniscient.com/podcast/

Chicago Camps interviews Margot Bloomstein, Principal at Appropriate, Inc. and author of Content Strategy at Work: Real-World Stories to Strengthen Every Interactive Engagement. Margot is also a Speaker Mentor at Speaker Camp Boston on October 11th, 2014.

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About Margot Bloomstein

Margot is the author of Content Strategy at Work: Real-World Stories to Strengthen Every Interactive Engagement (Morgan Kaufmann, 2012) and principal of Appropriate, Inc., an independent brand and content strategy consultancy based in Boston. She crafts brand-appropriate user experiences to help retailers, universities, and other organizations engage their target audiences and project key messages with consistency and clarity through both traditional and social media.

Advertising and interactive agencies as well as large corporations turn to Margot to help grow their content strategy practices. Over the past decade, she's had a hand in shaping corporate social responsibility efforts at Timberland, content for alumni relations at Tufts University, and strategy for cultural tourism in the state of Nevada. The rogues' gallery also includes BT, ECCO Shoes, Fidelity, Liberty Mutual, Philips, Lindt and Sprüngli, Harvard University, and the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority.

A participant in the inaugural Content Strategy Consortium and featured speaker at SXSW, Margot speaks internationally about enriching interactive engagements with content strategy. Recent engagements include UX London, CS Forum Helsinki, Content Marketing World, Content Strategy Applied, Confab, and Web 2.0. She also helps organise the Content Strategy New England meetup. Find her blogging infrequently at Appropriate, Inc. and tweeting prolifically at @mbloomstein.

About Chicago Camps

Chicago Camps, LLC (chicagocamps.org) was founded in 2012. They plan multiple low cost, high-value events primarily in Chicago.

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"In the Basteal" music written and produced and performed by Christian Lane | https://soundcloud.com/clane01 | @christianlane01

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About Tent Talks

Chicago Camps hosts irregularly scheduled Tent Talks with people from all across the User Experience Design community, and beyond. Who really likes limits, anyway--If it's a cool idea, we'd love to hear about it and share it!

What is a Tent Talk? That's a great question, we'd love to tell you.

Tent Talks are short-form in nature, generally lasting from 10-20 minutes (ish) in a recorded format--we like to think of them as "S'mores-sized content" because that's pretty on-brand. Tent Talks can be a presentation on a topic, a live Q&A session about the work we do, or the work around the work we do, or really just about anything--we don't want to limit ourselves, or you.

You should send along an idea or topic of your own so we can learn from you, as well! You don't have to be a published author or a professional speaker on a circuit to be good at your job, so please, put yourself forward, and let's have some fun, talk, and share your experience with others!