Here at HubSpot, we’ve told fellow marketers about the importance of creating compelling video content to engage your busy audience. And for the most part, video content lives on social media channels — like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. But we wondered if video content had a place on our blogContinue Reading
I’ve written a lot of blog posts over the past few years. (Read: I’ve stared at a lot of blinking cursors on blank screens over the past few years.) And if there’s one thing I’ve learned about business blogging, it’s that getting started is often the hardest part. When you’reContinue Reading
When it comes to writing text for your blog and social media posts, many marketers wonder, “But what’s the character limit?” It’s never a simple question — sometimes, it’s answered by parameters established by certain channels. And on other occasions, it’s more a question of what’s ideal. For example, youContinue Reading
If contributing guest posts is part of your content distribution and promotion strategy, you’re probably familiar with the following scenario: You write a great article for a guest publication, and at the end, you’re compensated with a teeny, tiny paragraph about yourself. Unless you wrote the article for purely altruisticContinue Reading
Blink. Blink. Blink. It’s the dreaded cursor-on-a-blank-screen experience that all writers — amateur or professional, aspiring or experienced — know and dread. And of all times for it to occur, it seems to plague us the most when trying to write an introduction.
I mean, you already have a blog post you want to write. Can’t you just dive in and write it? Why all the pomp and circumstance with this dag-blasted introduction?
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.
Even after years of education, there are some things that some people still mess up. For me, it’s algebra. For others, it’s the laws of physics. And for many, it’s grammar.
It’s not easy. Words and phrases that sound fine in your head can look like gibberish when written down — that is, if you even realize you made a mistake in the first place. It’s easy for little grammar mistakes to slip by, especially when you’re self-editing.
When I was eight, I became stuck on a particularly tough Where’s Waldo scene. It was so difficult that I became convinced that Waldo — the character I needed to find — wasn’t in it at all. I began thinking the whole thing was a joke, full of red herrings.
And then I found him. And after that, I could never un-see him. And, strangely, whenever I saw a classmate struggling with that same difficult scene, I’d become frustrated, even angry.
As a marketer, you’re used to leveraging a variety of channels to promote your business, up to and including content marketing.
According to HubSpot’s annual State of Inbound report, 60% of marketers reported “blog content creation” as one of their top priorities — with interactive content creation (41%), long-form content creation (33%), and visual content creation (33%) not far behind.
If you are currently running a content marketing campaign, I’m sure that you have written and published a good amount of blogs. But are they bringing in traffic? You can publish a great piece of content, but if no one ever reads it your time and energy will have been for nothing. So what can you do about it? Get that post to rank well organically!
Greetings, readers. Welcome to the HubSpot Marketing Blog.
We’re very happy to have you here. You might not realize it, but getting here was no easy task. Today, in 2016, I blog for a living, which is pretty great. But were it not for the long, twisty journey that got blogging to its current state, I might not be here. You might not be reading this.
So, apparently, there’s a show on Disney Channel called Dog With a Blog.
Yes, you read right.
When I discovered this, two thoughts quickly entered my mind — one, “what the heck ever happened to good old shows like The Mickey Mouse Club?,” and two, “literally everyone has a blog now, don’t they?”
The simple dream of most writers is being able to write more. And it’s not only writing more, it’s writing effortlessly.
But it’s not just authors or professional writers who dream of this. These days, a lot of marketing roles will require you to dust of your writing skills at one point or another. And there’s nothing worse than simply not being able to write — especially when the pressure of a deadline is looming over your head.
Search engine optimization is incredibly important for marketers. When you optimize your web pages — including your blog posts — you’re making your website more visible to people who are looking for keywords associated with your brand, product, or service via search engines like Google.
But it can be a pretty tricky tactic to master with Google’s copious algorithm updates.
