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Clear content comes from focus and clear thinking. Unfortunately, focusing on the task at hand is not always easy—nor is clear thinking when you're confronting a nasty set of opponents intent on undermining the creation of compelling content. Here's a quick look at six common saboteurs of your content—and ways to ... more
Although improved browser technology has rendered the popup window nearly obsolete, most of us remember its intrusive horrors. "As a result," writes Mark Brownlow at Email Marketing Reports, "email marketers have been reluctant to use 'in your face' website sign-up forms that in any way resemble those popups of the ... more
Tumblr has become a go-to spot for building social presence. Fashion brands and others are realizing it's a great medium for quickly and easily spreading content—particularly images. Might Tumblr be the engine to boost your social growth in 2012? Depends on how you answer the burning question: Is Tumblr right for ... more
Getting started on your content marketing is like planning a journey—deciding where to go and how to get there. "Have a roadmap of what you want to accomplish, but plan to take small steps," suggests Michele Linn in "A 7-Step Plan for Getting Started With Content Marketing," featured in the ... more
Even when elements of your email campaigns deliver strong results, there's always a chance you can do better. Consider the case of a tried-and-true call-to-action (CTA) button used by HubSpot. During a slight redesign, the inbound marketing firm decided to test a few alternatives. "We were pretty shocked to discover that ... more
"In a world of short attention spans, massive filtering, and the sheer volume of blog articles shooting out every available channel, it's a good idea to have a support system in place to make sure your content has a fighting chance," writes Jason Miller at MarketingProfs Daily Fix blog. And ... more
Raised on a diet of interactive and social media, Millennials are a consumer powerhouse who, when considering purchases, tend to value user-generated content (UGC) more than other sources of information, such as the opinions of friends and family, according to a survey from Bazaarvoice. more
In a post at the Renegade Search blog, Lindsay Atkinson ponders the clichéd adage that content is king. "I can't say that I'm a fan of using this relatively grating term, but I can definitely defend its power," she writes. "Having fresh and unique content is an increasingly important factor ... more
Fully seven in ten brands (70%) say they plan to increase their presence across social media platforms in 2012, while 59% plan to boost the frequency of social content publishing, according to survey from Awareness. Many brands plan to focus efforts beyond the big three platforms (Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn) ... more
Content isn't meant to stay grounded, it's meant to soar across the social Web, says Ann Handley in an Entrepreneur article titled "How to Increase Social Sharing to Generate More Leads." She offers these tips for getting folks to share your content online. Display Twitter buttons. Among the 10,000 largest websites, ... more
"Countless small businesses send out countless emails every day," writes Gary Levitt in an article at MarketingProfs. "If you were to sift through campaigns and results (as I do), the mountains of data would suggest two breeds of email campaign: the outstanding … and the invisible. Your emails need to ... more
"When consumers hear of a local business that is not well known, it's only natural that they conduct some research before making a purchase," writes Nathan Hanks in an article at MarketingProfs. And when they do, they're most likely to choose results that appear first. "Thus," Hanks continues, "'owning' the first page ... more
Not every potential buyer approaches your business with the same enthusiasm or interest. In a MarketingProfs article, Paul McKeon identifies the four stages of the B2B buying cycle—and how to produce content specific to each one. The unaware buyer. "Content for the unaware buyer must be interruptive. It has to cause ... more
It's hard to decide what's appropriate for posting on social networks without an etiquette road map—and harder still when you're doing it as a company, not just as yourself. Amalia Agathou of The Next Web understands. To help marketers get the art of social updating right, she has written an article on ... more
"Blogs, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and other online platforms are giving organization like yours an enormous opportunity to engage directly with your customers or would-be customers," write Ann Handley and CC Chapman in their book Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) that Engage Customers ... more
Any successful email campaign begins with a good offer. But you won't close the sale or earn the click-through if your copy doesn't do its job. For instance: Are you discussing features without explaining benefits? Or placing your call to action "below the fold" where subscribers won't see it unless ... more
"There are a lot of things that can go wrong with email marketing—broken links, typos, unoptimized images—the list goes on," writes Magdalena Georgieva at the HubSpot blog. But on the other hand, she notes, marketers shouldn't focus so intently on small technical details that they lose sight of the big ... more
Writing at the Daily SEO blog, Brian Patterson highlights a problem many companies are starting to encounter: "As you began to type our client's brand name into Google Search, Google Suggest displayed our client's brand name + the word 'scam' as the second option, directly below their brand name." Patterson's ... more
We all know purchase confirmations are a great place to suggest complementary products and generate additional sales. But how well does your system work? In a post at the Bronto blog, Fawn Young recounts the story of an online retailer that had the right idea—but the wrong content. After purchasing a ... more
"Not too many years ago, content was produced by analysts, researchers, writers and journalists who spent a great deal of time developing well-written, thoughtful and provocative material," writes Joellyn Sargent at the Fresh Sprouts blog. Sadly, that level of attention to the written word is often lacking these days. With the ... more
In a post at her eponymous blog, Elaine Fogel asks how frequently you receive email with content that has no relevance. "I'll bet it's a lot," she says with certainty. "Let's just look at the ones you receive from companies and organizations that have your permission to send communications. Count ... more
Some 9 in 10 B2B marketing organizations, regardless of company size or industry, say they've used content as a form of marketing in 2011, according to a study by the Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs. Moreover, those marketers also say they employ on average eight separate content marketing tactics to ... more
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