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Four years ago, I set out on a journey to build a blog with well-researched and unbiased content related to social media tools and technology. At the time, every social media expert, influencer, and enthusiast had a blog. I needed to find a unique angle to help me stand out in this highly competitive area. I came from a technology background, so I found my "sweet spot" at the intersection of what I was passionate about: social media, marketing and technology. I am certain that deciding on a specific niche for my blog was one of the initial key factors that led to its quick success. Within just a few months of launching the blog, it became one of the top 10 social media blogs in a global competition run by Social Media Examiner. I managed to keep it in the top 10 for four years in a row, and it certainly wasn't by accident. Below, I share my tried and true recipe that you can use to grow your blog and become a top industry resource....
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....
You have greatness in you. Cultivating it often takes role models, mentors, and loads of hard work. This fun quiz will help you find out which famous world leader you most resemble in your writing and may help you find an inspiring role model.
Looking for some great social media blogs to add to your daily reading? Here are 10 that are worth your time! Our eighth-annual social media blog contest generated hundreds of nominations. A panel of experts carefully reviewed the 20 finalists based on their content quality. Here are the top 10 social media blogs you should add to your regular reading list in 2017....
The first cog is your website. It starts with you designing and building your website for the social web and surround it with tools and technology that search engines and social networks love. The second cog is content. The next piece of the puzzle is the content. Creating and publishing it is just the start. Marketing it to the world is the next step. Ensure your content is easy to share when they show up and is pushed out after the publishing button has been punched. The final cog? Focused digital marketing of your products and services. Making sure that the products that sit at the epicenter of your website are tempting people enough to hand over their name, email and maybe even their phone number. Then taking them on the buyer’s journey. Here is some of the tactics, technology and the tools to make this happen for your startup, blog or business....
You’re busy, so I’ll keep this quick. Following are the simplest tips I can give you to easily — and forever — improve the quality of your writing.
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....
Seth Godin said in an interview a couple of years ago that everyone should start a blog.The first thing I thought to myself was “Yeah right! As if I have anything useful to share with anyone”.Fast forward a couple of years down the road and I find myself writing a blog post that grew my e-mail list from 0 to 1000 within two months. And here is how I started....
What makes good content? A subject your target market is interested in, sure. But what about images? A story? The font? What about length? Line-width? There's enough content out there (and has been for a while) for academic researchers and businesses to study what works and what doesn't, what people love and what they immediately bounce from. This article will break down the perfect blog article, according to science, and boost your readership as well....
Are you ever worried about maintaining an engaged blog audience?
It all starts with detailed research and using the right blogging tools.
Here is the deal: Tools alone won’t solve your problems, but they will help you get things done more efficiently.
With that being said, I have compiled a list of 21 free blogging tools that you can start using today. These tools are a great way to improve your performance as a blogger, in terms of workflow, writing quality and visuals....
Online, your product is unbundled. You get 10 words. Or 8. Or maybe 13, like I used above, to market your work. Digital success is like selling a newspaper story by story rather than day by day or week by week. And in selling that day’s paper, by subscription or newsstand, there’s just less urgency to make the headline awesome on that 150-word story buried at the bottom of page 11. Sections and geographic centers all are comfortable assumptions you can’t make in digital headlines. You must have a certain sense of desperation in writing web headlines, like those eight words are the difference between that column’s or blog’s life or death. Mostly, because it is. You aren’t owed readership. Your headline helps earn it — along with a handful of other factors like author and brand.
So any strategy involving growing and sustaining digital audience must incorporate excellence in headline writing. Must.
A few points to clarify here as we begin. I’ll be discussing writing for readers here, not for search engine optimization. That will be a consideration at times, but mostly we’re talking about people creating headlines for people....
Blogging may be an elder statesman when it comes to the formats content marketers have at their disposal, but that doesn’t mean the technique is ready to go the way of the dinosaur. In fact, CMI’s 2016 B2B Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends report found that 81% of content marketers include blogging among their techniques. But, as with any tactic, blogging has been impacted by many shifts in marketing best practices, consumer behaviors, and technological advances. What are the latest trends in blog creation and usage, and how do these shifts impact blogging’s role in your content marketing strategy? Orbit Media’s second annual survey of 1,000 bloggers aimed to answer these questions. While Orbit Media co-founder Andy Crestodina’s own summary focuses on changes over the past year, the results also reveal some trends that gradually have been gaining momentum over a longer time. Below are some of the findings that we at CMI found to be particularly intriguing, along with some actions that we suggest to help you take full advantage of this powerful content marketing format....
People often assume that trade blogs are dry and uninteresting by their very nature. That isn’t—and shouldn’t be—the case.
After all, who will keep coming back to your blog if they’re bored to tears whenever they visit?
Luckily, there are plenty of easy ways to spice things up.
Here are 25 useful tips to turn your B2B blog into something that delivers the returns you deserve. It’s never too late to make your B2B blog an effective part of your online marketing strategy.
In fact, I’m bursting with ideas for making industry blogs more dynamic and engaging. Here are my 25 best tips....
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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....
Four days into 2017, Medium's employees came to work and were told that one-third of them, 50 people, were fired.
They were shocked. Their adored boss, billionaire CEO Ev Williams, best known as the cofounder of Twitter, seemed to care so deeply for each of them.
But he told the world about the layoff in a blog post even before all the people who lost their jobs were informed, a former employee tells Business Insider.
Some of them found out through industry buzz that they had lost their jobs, one person told us....
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....
Within hours of my child sexual abuse story being posted online, ripoffs started emerging – with the bylines of other journalists posted on them. Mamamia took 900 words of my 1,900-word story. The Daily Mail’s headline was not about the catastrophic impacts of child sexual abuse. It was about a 12-year-old boy having sex with his mother. I’d promised Hamish and Ian their stories were safe with me. But they weren’t. After all their suffering, what impact would this have on them?...
B2B blogging has been one of the most effective inbound marketing tactics for years, and it's the most popular method among marketers. Blogging is so important, that 76% of B2B marketers planned to produce more blog content in 2016. But not everybody is winning at blogging. Only 42% of B2B marketers say they’re effective at content marketing, including blogging. How come? With all the plethora of best-practices listicles out there, you’d think most businesses would find blogging to be a cinch. But the fact is, there are plenty of blogging myths that are still alive and well in 2017. Are you buying into any of these common blogging myths?...
If you’ve seen any of CMI’s 2017 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends research, you may have noticed that the content marketing industry is growing up. In fact, 28% of B2B marketers, and 30% of B2C marketers now say their program has reached the sophisticated or mature stage of progress – the point where their efforts are able to provide measurable value to the business. Increasing sophistication with content doesn’t mean practitioners have outgrown the tools and techniques that helped them reach greater success. And, despite all the channels, formats, and digital innovations emerging in our industry over the last few years, one tried-and-true tactic, in particular, continues to lead the pack when it comes to reliably driving returns on the content investment: blogging....
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....
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....
How to bookmark websites will depend on the browser you're using. But trust me, it's easy. Now, let's get bookmarking. What are some of the best websites that all bloggers should add to their bookmark bar? Check out 30 of the HubSpot blogging team's favorites below. (And be sure to share your own favorites in the comment section.)...
From my reading online, it didn’t look like anyone else had taken on this important subject area. Tens of thousands of new authors were kicking aside the gatekeepers and going straight into book production once they had finished their manuscripts. This is probably why many of the early self-published books in the print on demand era were poorly published, and embarrassing, when you look back at them from today’s perspective. This represented a great opportunity, because designing and producing books had been my life for many years. Although book typography and indie publishing was very much a niche field, I was excited to rejoin the industry....
Words are hard. Whether you're a published author or just getting started with blogging, it's not always easy to string words together in a way that makes sense, sounds good, and makes the reader feel something. But every marketer should be able to write -- and, more importantly, every marketer can write. It's just a matter of finding the writing environment that works best for you, expanding your vocabulary, asking for feedback (and listening to it), and practicing. Luckily, there are a slew of great tools you can use to help improve your writing. Check out the list below, and feel free to add the most helpful ones you use in the comment section....
If you've decided that you want to start an email newsletter, or you want to revamp one that's not performing well, keep on reading. We've compiled some of our absolute favorite email newsletters to inspire you to make the best email newsletter for your company possible.
Each newsletter on this list is fabulous for different reasons. Some have exceptional design, some have exceptional copy, some have exceptional calls-to-action ... but all are exceptional at solving for their subscribers' needs. Check 'em out....
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Ian Cleary on how to go from zero to destination blog site in just 6 months.