Off the Page with Gianna Fornesi
David McCarthy
In her Off the Page interview, Gianna Fornesi, the corporate marketing lead at Notable Health, argues why content should be communal and why the best content is actually built well before you write it.
Meet Gianna Fornesi
Gianna Fornesi is the corporate marketing lead at Notable Health, a digital health startup that provides an intelligent automation platform for the healthcare industry.
At Notable, Gianna runs corporate comms, which incorporates PR, social, customer marketing, and content marketing.
“The breadth of my responsibilities,” she says, “gives me an edge in terms of how I approach content marketing—holistically, with the customer at the center and an emphasis on how we want them to feel (as well as what we want them to do) when they read a piece of content.”
Gianna’s background in social media is an asset, too, especially as online communities and memberships gain momentum.
“I am passionate about creating community, and using content tactically to grow the number of followers and cultivate a sense of community.”
What content marketing skill or tool are you learning this year?
How to write for a more technical audience.
My experience is in advertising and ad tech, and now in healthcare, I'm writing for a more complex, technical buyer.
Consistency is definitely key, it's important to have a really clear, deliberate purpose for creating the content in the purpose.
While consistency is definitely key, it's important to have a really clear, deliberate purpose for creating the content in the purpose. This starts with understanding who you're writing for, what stage of the journey they're in (or where you want them to be), and what specific problems the piece will solve for them.
Which other brand’s content do you admire most?
The Toilet Paper brand has mastered the art of “surprise and delight,” which results in really high engagement on their posts. A visual-forward brand, their content is provocative and edgy, yet tasteful and simple. Their content strategy—while heavy on the visuals—is centered around artful curation to create micro-stories—that is, each post can stand totally on its own.
The enterprise sector can learn a lot from consumer brands like Toilet Paper. While provocative imagery may not be on-brand for a B2B software company, these marketing teams can reimagine how they use visuals to not just support, but drive the story they're trying to tell.
The more we can put visuals at the center of our content strategies, the higher quality engagement and overall attention we'll get from our readers, and the more we can cultivate a loyal following across the digital ecosystem.
If you could recommend one book to every content marketer, what would it be?
Everybody Writes by Ann Handley.
I am a big fan of the basics—fundamentals that you learn once and carry with you throughout your career. This book aided my entry into my career (my first role was in PR), but the learnings apply to any area of business, and never seem to go out of style—no matter the industry, customer persona, or product.
Which individual or organization would you love to collaborate with on a content project?
The Onion and the Overheard brands (e.g., Overheard in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, etc.)
The way these brands present their content is genius—social first, ripe for vitality, but relevant for a wide variety of readers. Raw, relatable and also ridiculous. What else is there to want?!
What don’t non-content marketers understand about content?
Volume and consistency are key to benchmarking and tracking the performance of a piece of content, but without clear intent, content can come off as being written haphazardly or without a clear purpose. Thus, the message gets lost, and the reader gets bored, deems your content (and brand) as noise, and ultimately, ignores everything else you put in front of them.
Lesson for non-content marketers: Putting in the time up front with your content marketer to align on the purpose of the content.
Lesson for non-content marketers: Putting in the time up front with your content marketer to align on the purpose or need for the content in the first place will result in a higher-quality output later on.
What part of the content-marketing workflow do you wish went faster?
The outline.
It takes me a full day to write a really good outline. Try as I might to use a template, I always have to tweak it to fit the unique needs of the topic, stakeholder, timeline, etc. And rightly so. A really solid piece of writing that is acutely tailored to its audience will have a map—especially as we get into where and how it’s distributed—and it’s a process to create and then translate it into the final piece.
What do you consider the most underrated type of content?
Top-of-funnel educational blog posts, like “Four steps to building a digital experience customers love.”
So simple, so straightforward, yet so valuable.
What type of content marketing do you secretly hope goes extinct soon?
The keynote speech.
Something about it just feels so antiquated. In the age of democratized content. I am less and less interested in what one person (that we've somehow deemed their point-of-view to be more '“right” than anyone else's) has to say, and more interested in what many people have to say.
In the age of democratized content. I am less and less interested in what one person (that we've somehow deemed their point-of-view to be more '“right” than anyone else's) has to say, and more interested in what many people have to say.
Bonus points if its a group of speakers with diverse or conflicting perspectives (cue The Newsroom, S1, E1.)
Which content marketing talent would you most like to have?
I'd like to be able to whip out a clever adage at any given moment. I so admire the quick-wittedness that copywriters typically have.
What is your most treasured content marketing tool?
Powerthesaurus.com. It’s the holy grail.
What do you most value in your teammates?
Humility. Being able to recognize failure in the workplace is vital to building a team that is in sync with each other and support each other.
We're typically taught to hold back on being our true selves in the workplace for fear of coming off "unprofessional."
Humility is a very human, honest trait that can shed light on who our teammates really are at their core. In the current virtual/remote environment, these shared moments can help foster connectedness.
When you hang up your content-marketing hat(s), what one word do you hope colleagues and clients will use to describe you?
"Gianna, the Wordjazzer" I coined this term in a previous role. It caught on and people started asking me to “wordjazz” their emails! Anything can need wordjazzing - websites, emails, birthday cards, event invites - its a (self-imposed) title I wear proudly!
About the Off the Page series
Legend had it that Marcel Proust, a French novelist, had a list of twenty questions that could reveal a person’s true nature. Vanity Fair later adopted and popularized the questions for a series of interviews with cultural figures and celebrities.
Off the Page (probably) won’t reveal any of these have-to-follow marketers’ true nature. But it hopefully uncovers attributes, points of view, and experiences worth learning from.
Who else should Off the Page Feature?
Recommend a content marketer for a future edition of Off the Page.