Content Strategy

There’s nothing simple about creating a content strategy.

Maintaining and improving a content strategy over time? That’s even tougher. However, the odds are definitely in your favor. Only 44% of marketers have bothered to document their publishing strategy. Your efforts to refine and improve will give you a serious advantage! Here are 10 of the most common things marketers fail to include in their content strategy:

Continue reading
Social media content

Image source

Is quality content the backbone of your SEO strategy? If you are a serious small business or online marketer, it certainly should be. Shabby content doesn’t engage readers. It doesn’t build valuable links. It doesn’t attract search engines, generate leads, or convert sales.

While “gaming the system” might have worked in the past, consumers expect more now. So do search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo – Google in particular. To gain search visibility and traffic today, a company needs to be useful, solve problems, and develop a brand.

Continue reading
Company Newsletter

Social media and blogging may be popular, but email is still one of the most powerful ways to keep and retain a loyal audience and customer base.

The subscription-based nature of email gets you inside your customers’ inner circle without raising their guard, which increases the potential for success – and the backlash if you do it wrong.

Continue reading

There are moments in life when you have to write a personal statement. Even though this task is nothing more than an extended essay about yourself, it can be not that easy, as it seems. On one hand, you may think that you know the topic like nobody else. Indeed, who better than you knows everything about your experiences, talents and life views? On the other hand, it clears out that knowledge and clear understanding of the topic is not enough. Choosing the right tone can be much more difficult than recollecting the central episodes from your autobiography.

Continue reading

3-5 seconds. Generally, that’s all the time you have to convince a first-time website visitor to remain on your page, and begin a lasting relationship with your brand. Research by the NN Group has found that while the average website visit lasts less than 60 seconds, the first ten seconds are the most important in how a prospect will perceive your website, and ultimately your company.

That means that fancy flash designs, enormous images, or any other elements which can slow your load time to a crawl are definitely out of the question.

Continue reading
Best Time to Blog

It goes without saying that you need to be consistently and continually updating your blog with new, relevant, and interesting content. But when is the best time to update your blog? Is there a specific day or time that your readers and customers click on your blog, comment on it, or share it more so than any other time or day of the week?

Continue reading
SEO Tools

Content marketing is about creating, optimizing, and distributing valuable content to grow your web presence and steer the actions of consumers. It involves driving traffic, generating leads, and building authority. Not too hard if you have the right skills and strategy, but without an arsenal of SEO tools at your disposal, you are bound to waste time and money.

Continue reading
Top SEO Plugins

Want to maximize your blog traffic? Sure you do. In my last post, I touched on how using these 27 must use SEO tools can deliver incredible content marketing results, and they really can – I hope you found the post useful. Today, I list 27 of the best search engine optimization plugins available for those looking to get more traffic to their blogs. Most of these are for WordPress, but there are two browser plugins toward the end. Again, I hope you these helpful. Note that while I use many of these tools personally and have tested them all, some may not be compatible with your website, theme, version, or browser. The install instructions are straightforward, but get someone to help if you’re a newbie. The following tools are listed randomly. As usual, bookmark, share, and enjoy!

Continue reading
Social Media Metrics

When it comes to social media, there are so many numbers you could track – likes, followers, shares or retweets, and more.

How do you know which are the most important, or even worth tracking at all?

How do you get started with social media for small businesses?

Continue reading