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In a world where everyone seems to be constantly churning out content, you may be feel like you’re not doing enough. However, there’s an upside and a downside to what I’m about to tell you. The upside is: There is no universal “right amount” of content to publish. There’s no magic publishing cadence for achieving content marketing success. Rather, the key is to figure out how much high-quality content you can produce on a regular basis – and then maximize it through your distribution channels to reach your goals. And that’s the downside: You have to find your own best publishing cadence – based upon your goals – through testing, trial, error, and optimization....
When it comes to content strategy, a lot has been said about the importance of keeping a steady stream of fresh content flowing through your distribution channels. Marketers have listened. According to the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), 76 percent of content marketers produced more content in 2016 than they did in 2015. That content stream will only increase in 2017. This trend has been with us for years. According to an October 2016 TrackMaven blogging report: Over the last five years, the average number of blog posts published per brand per month increased by 800 percent. However, over the same time the average number of social shares per post (from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest) decreased by 89 percent....
Despite the emergence of new content formats and features, your blog remains central to effective content marketing. It is typically the interactive hub of your website and delivers numerous benefits you can’t achieve through other tools. Blogging is the most important aspect of content marketing when it comes to generating organic traffic. Yes, there is a lot of work involved. However, your blog gives you a voice with your customers and offers you the opportunity to be seen as an expert in your particular industry. The following is a look at several primary reasons a blog is still critical to lead generation through content marketing....
The Furrow, John Deere’s magazine for farmers, has been in print since 1895. A few years ago, we published an article about the esteemed magazine, looking at how it’s managed to stay relevant in print even as digital outlets started to dominate. In marketing circles, The Furrow is a legendary entity, the Adam of brand publishing. In 1912, it had a peak circulation of more than 4 million readers. To take this origin metaphor to an absurd extreme, we’re excited to give you a glance at Eden. Recently, as I searched through old emails, I realized there were a lot of insanely cool editions that we never published in the original piece. It’s the first week of January, and I don’t really feel like doing real work yet, so I thought I’d share them....
Creating high-quality content is critical to content marketing success. With more than 2 millions blog posts published every day, you need a way to make your content stand out. But you’re probably wondering, “How do I create high-quality content that drives traffic and engagement?” Today, I will make things easy for you. I am going to show you 17 techniques you can use to improve the quality of your content in no time....
Gone are the days of blathering on ad nauseam about anything your heart desires. Content marketing via blogging is one of the best ways to increase the online visibility of a brand. These days, though, the posts you create must be engaging, informative, interesting, and generally high in quality to get you anywhere. Contrary to what you may have heard, quantity does not exceed quality here. Even so, coming up with fascinating topics for a blog is often difficult for business owners. Here are 20 topics and ideas to get you off to a great start....
Success at blog marketing depends on a myriad of content, design, technical, and promotional factors. Though it would be prohibitively exhausting to excel at all of them simultaneously, the good news is that there are many small changes you can make that can significantly improve the success of your blog content over the long term. Whether you’re just starting to explore the world of blog marketing, looking to spruce up the look and feel of your existing blog, or are ready to take your efforts and expertise to the next level, the 65 tips (8 more than when I wrote the original post two years ago) on this handy checklist will support your journey to blogging success....
Bryan Kramer once wrote, “Communication shouldn’t be complicated. It should just be genuine and simple, with the humility and understanding that we’re all multi-dimensional humans, everyone of which has spent time in both the dark and delightful parts of life.”
Content is the key to this kind of communication and your company’s fuel for building connections with these multi-dimensional humans in your network — and that stems far from a marketing-only initiative.
One of the biggest mistakes I see companies continue to make is believing that quality content should be created, distributed, and used only by the marketing team. This belief is not only false, but it’s also a dangerous mentality that dramatically limits your long-term growth.
Content Marketing Institute reported this year that almost three in four B2B marketers still don’t believe their organizations are effective at content marketing. As I’ve discussed in a previous piece on content marketing trends, we’re starting to see new strategies emerge for utilizing content and improving its effectiveness. A trending strategy that brands need to take advantage of now is the use of content by teams outside the marketing department to accomplish more goals....
Employ someone and you have to consider salary, workspace, and equipment; not to mention benefits like medical care and paid vacation time.
Conversely, freelancers are only paid for the work they do.
This is generally (though not always) more cost-effective than taking on someone in-house, and allows you to increase or decrease their workload as needed.
This makes outsourcing extremely flexible, which is a huge win for small businesses.
But don’t get too excited just yet… there’s a hard part: actually finding great freelancers and managing them effectively.
Thankfully there’s plenty of tools designed to help you do just that (and many more being released all the time).
Let’s take a look at some of the more recent additions to the market that can help you to outsource and manage your content creation in 2016...
If your topic seems boring to you, take heart. One of the reasons why B2B content marketers struggle to produce a variety of engaging content is because they see the topic as boring. But there’s good news: Since most people in your industry aren’t creating useful content solely because they don’t know how to, boring topics can be a great opportunity for you to dominate your niche. Let’s discuss the 4-point approach to writing an interest blog post in a boring industry. Are you ready?...
Below is a collection of some very good web tools you can use with your students to create educational posters,flyers, brochures, and newspapers.
The tools are simple and easy to use and do not require any advanced technology knowledge. They provide a variety of pre-made templates that you can appropriate according to your teaching purposes. Check them out below and as always share with us your feedback....
Some people give me a hard time about how long my blog posts are (you know who you are). They tell me I should break my posts into smaller posts, or suggest I consider a 500-word post for a change. I deserve the razzing, particularly when I publish a couple of 3,000-word posts back-to-back.
In the absence of column inch or word limit restrictions, I’ll use as many words as I need to get my point across. It’s not that I don’t know how to write short posts, it’s just not my preferred style. If I’m limited to 140 characters (for now at least), I’ll use 140 characters. If I decide to write a 500-word post about how to write shorter blog posts, I can do it.
To prove my point, you’re actually reading that 500-word post I mentioned. Here are six of the most-helpful tips I’ve come across for writing shorter blog posts...
It’s natural to think that wider adoption brings increasing competition. While that’s technically true, the outlook isn’t as bleak as you may think.
After all, even though adoption is increasing, the number of B2B and B2C organizations who consider themselves effective at content marketing is dismal — 30 percent and 38 percent respectively. What this should tell you is that there is a gap, and you can fill it.
Make 2016 your best content marketing year ever by making one-percent improvements in these areas...
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Since our first reader in August of 2014, we’ve steadily increased our traffic, and we're now consistently drawing 5,000 plus readers per month to our blog. Our traffic is increasing at a growing rate, and we're optimistic about doubling or tripling our traffic in the upcoming year. If you're a small company like ours — under 20 employees — you're probably wondering how we can consistently publish over 100 quality blog posts annually in addition to getting our “day jobs” done. The answer is in our process. There are five important steps that make up our process, and each is critical in helping us accomplish our goal of publishing 100 high quality new blog posts annually. These steps use the HubSpot blogging and social tools....
Today, I want to share those important blog actions with you. I’m not promising you’ll become a blogging sensation if you do these things, but I am promising that your blog will become better, and you’ll feel better about blogging. Without further ado, here are 5 things that will help you never quit blogging and more importantly blog consistently like me....
Although there are more than 100 types of content that one can actually create, we dilute most of our energy and resources in producing what most others do, news and light article content, without ever considering that there exist a ton of other content alternatives that could be utilized.
This is why I have decided to create this catalogue of content types. To remind writers and editors, that there are a tens of alternative opportunities for creating valuable content and that it is only up to me and you to pick them up and use them.
While there have been other attempts at listing and cataloging formats and types of content that can be published online (which I have listed and referenced at the end of this article), I have tried to improve upon them, not just by extending the number of formats covered (over 100), but also by identifying relevant examples, and where possible, appropriate tools, that can be useful to create that specific type of content....
Throughout my career, long-form content has always been an important part of my marketing strategy. And most of the radically successful entrepreneurs I know also use long-form content. Coincidence? I don’t think so. I know what you’re thinking: “But how can I write these humongous articles? I don’t even know where to start.” If you have an idea for an article in mind, that’s enough to get started. All you need is an idea, some time, and good Googling skills. Over the years, I’ve honed the process of writing long-form content that works for any topic. It’s so easy to learn, I bet you’ll finish your first 3,000+ word article within a few days....
What’s the first thing a company should do before getting into content marketing? While opinions may vary, I’d say that analyzing other successful content marketers and their approach is a good start. Before Twitter shut off the API that allowed people to easily display tweet counts, I went on a data gathering spree… During the month of October 2015, I downloaded social share counts from top blogs. Here are a few things I learned when analyzing their most shared posts....
Some content pieces had what it took to become viral way before the internet era. We called that phenomenon “word of mouth” and it helped products and ideas to spread around with the speed of light. In today’s world, with so many communication means available, it should be easy enough for anyone to create a viral piece and unleash it into the world. Unfortunately, not everything online goes viral. Some pieces attract millions of eyeballs while others get their fair number of shares without entering the VIP club. Why?...
Via massimo facchinetti
There are definite advantages of using your name and definite advantages of blogging anonymously. I am going to talk about some of the different options that are open to you that may be in between each choice.
This is one of the decisions that bloggers face when starting a blog. Most at least ponder the question. Many use their real names straight away, but others really grapple with this decision.
Note: this episode can be listened to in the player above or on iTunes or Stitcher....
The number gets even more complicated if you consider that there are many offline marketing channels as well.
However, for most of us, the number of channels doesn’t matter.
What does matter is that there is a handful of core channels that are by far the most effective digital marketing channels.
That’s what this post is all about.
We’ll go over the six main digital marketing channels you should at least be familiar with. On top of that, I’m going to show you how to evaluate each channel to determine whether it’s worth your time....
According to a Vcloudnews infographic, the numbers are dramatic:
- 2,500,000,000,000,000,000 (2.5 quintillion) bytes of data are created daily
- 90% of all the data in the world was created in the last two years
- 4.6 billion pieces of content are produced daily
We’ve reached the point where people won’t even consider accepting meaningful, specific information unless we are careful with how it is delivered. There’s an exception when it comes to mindless entertainment online, but since you’re reading this article, I suppose you’re not interested in the mysterious success of cat videos—so we’ll be talking about documented content....
The way that we create and promote content is constantly evolving. Certain marketing activities catch on and become popular, while others fade away. I’m sure you’ve seen some posts that generated thousands of social shares and thought, “but I can write better content.” Well, maybe. But does it really matter? The truth is that you need to learn what makes some posts more successful than others – why some pieces of content survive the test of time, while others quickly fade away. Let’s look at the 4 ingredients that you need to infuse into your next blog post so that it can generate massive social shares
Imagine the possibilities of a world in which we are able to make trusted connections between a near-infinite number of people. A world in which transaction costs, time and distance are reduced to almost nil. A world that is instantly available from a smartphone, anywhere, anytime.
This global revolution, enabled by databases, search engines and connectivity, has begun. It’s allowing mankind to break free from the limits of the past. We start doing what we do best: collaborating and sharing, at an unprecedented scale — a significant untapped potential for sharing is unlocked on a whole new level, creating value for all.
Thanks to platforms that connect peers and enable the creation of interpersonal online trust, individuals are suddenly empowered to share goods, knowledge, money, skills, network, content, etc. They regain their ability to contribute more directly to society and the economy, but on a global scale, redefining relationships between economic and social actors along the way.
We are at the dawn of a new era, the sharing age, which impacts all dimensions of our relationships with others....
In 2005, we were reportedly exposed to over 3,500 brand messages per day. Nowadays, that figure is closer to 10,000 (if not already higher).
5.3 trillion display ads are shown online each year, 400 million Tweets sent daily, and 4.75 billion pieces of content shared on Facebook every day.
This relentless stream of content makes it harder than ever for your message to cut through the noise and get attention.
And while there’s no secret formula to creating content that gets shared, often, the content that people share isn’t random. By understanding some of the science behind successful content, you can increase your chances of success.
Here’s our guide to breaking through the noise.
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"How much content should I publish?" That's one of the most common questions customers ask us, and something every content marketer wonders, at some point. Here's Newscred's answer.