The Jack Kerouac School of Content Marketing

This was everybody’s favorite joke at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics:

What did one Kerouac grad say to the other?
Do you want fries with that?

Everybody knew the punch line: They learned it their first week of grad school. The words were just part of a staged narrative, and someone would invariably follow with:

You’ve got to have some career. Some plan for retirement.
The response: Your novel is your retirement plan.

It’s been 20 years since my tour of duty at the Beat poet writing program started by Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman in the early 1970s. While I haven’t yet discovered how to make a living from my creative writing, I have found ways to apply the creativity of my writing to my vocation as a content marketer.

What I learned from the Beats—how to write a story to create visceral feeling in your reader—is the same craft I practice today when I build content marketing programs. The Beats’ mindful approach to writing—to represent things at their core, as they truly are—provides a novel opportunity for how to create authentic content marketing success.

Read the full column at contentplus.paceco.com.