I started my content journey the same way many other marketers do: Trying to “go viral.” Some of the posts I created were “72 Content Ideas for Fill Your Pipeline” and “50% of Searches Have Never Been Made Before.” Posts like these filled me with false hope — they got thousands of hitsContinue Reading
What do overalls, Mariah Carey’s Christmas album, and hashtags all have in common?
Believe it or not, they are all products of the 90s.
While hashtags didn’t rise to popularity (with the help of Twitter) until after 2007, they were actually first used during the late 90s to categorize items into groups on IRC (Internet Relay Chat.)
ESPN recently redesigned their website. Nothing out of the ordinary there. Companies redesign their websites roughly every 18-24 months. (You’re probably sick of yours right now, am I right?)
But this particular redesign garnered a ton of attention, earning coverage and analysis in Fast Company, TechCrunch, and VentureBeat, among other publications.
When do you do your best work?
For me, it’s realllllly early in the morning. I used to get up at 4 a.m., grab a steaming cup of coffee, and just start writing. At that time of day, words flowed so easily that I could finish a 1,500-word post in an hour. Later in the day, that same post would’ve taken me twice as long.
But that’s not the case for everyone.
I don’t know about you, but there are a number of really awful things I’d rather endure than sitting through a boring Powerpoint presentation.
Seriously, I’d rather eat burnt popcorn, go get my oil changed, or dare I say it, get a paper cut in between my fingers than suffer through a bad deck.
Great storytelling is a great differentiator.
Imagine you’re walking down the snack aisle at a grocery store. How do you make sense of the hundreds of choices on either side of you? What’s going to be on your mind when you decide what to buy? Perhaps you choose one product over another because that company donates a percentage of their proceeds to a great cause.
Basic accounting rules require marketing costs to be listed as expenses on a company’s P&L. However, today’s marketers and smart executives consider marketing an investment in driving revenue rather than a cost. This is where an overall mind shift is needed. Marketing needs to be considered an investment, and your content an asset.
From Serial to StartUp and Bill Simmons, it’s no secret that podcasts are gaining immense popularity. According to Edison Research, 17% of Americans (46 million and counting) listen to podcasts on a regular basis. That’s up from just 9% in 2008.
As more consumers become comfortable with on-demand audio, podcasting is becoming an attractive content format for businesses looking to grow their reach. Podcasts allow your content to reach people when they aren’t just sitting at their computers — instead, it can reach them on their drive to work, at the gym, or while they’re doing work around the house.
For most of you, customers can come to you from any country in the world. That means all of your potential customers — the people visiting your website, reading your blog posts, and clicking on your calls-to-action — might speak a myriad of different languages or live in totally different time zones. Once they reach your content, how well will it resonate with them?
As your international traffic grows, you’ll want to be sure that you can convert that traffic into leads — and that means keeping your international visitors in mind every time you write about a holiday or publish data with certain units of measurement.
From her own witty introduction in her AMA on Inbound.org, Joanna Wiebe makes it clear that she has a lock on copywriting. And she’s not just any copywriter. Joanna’s a “conversion copywriter” (a phrase my copywriter friends may want to adopt for their LinkedIn profiles), meaning she writes content that drives conversions and sells products. And she has a lot to say about how to make your words count — in dollars and sense.
“We’re getting to common version, which is a superset of the functionality being built in Rainbow 5, which uses version 2 of the Asian code,” said our new client in a kick off meeting.
Yes, people really speak this way. Especially, when they work in complicated or regulated industries. While it’s one thing to banter about codes and supersets, or BI, ERPs and CRMs, when you’re behind the scenes developing amazing new tools for people to use, the conversation loses its flare when industry jargon becomes part of your customer facing content.
Wouldn’t it be great if creating infographics was as simple as writing regular ol’ text-based blog posts? Unfortunately, the reality is that making visual content like this usually takes a lot more time, effort, and let’s face it — skill — than the written word. Usually.
But considering the popularity and effectiveness of visual content in marketing today, you can’t just afford to throw in the towel.
Want more views, clickthroughs, shares, and overall engagement on your social media posts? You’re not alone. According to the 2014 State of Inbound Marketing, 84% of marketers cited organic, top-of-the-funnel sources like social media, blogs, and search engines as rising in importance in 2014.
Posting visual content is one of the most important things you can do to improve your social media strategy.
There are lots of ways to generate and publish content for your inbound marketing efforts. From the tried and true written word that powers your corporate blog to infographics, webinars, video and ebooks, the number of channels available to you seem almost endless.
It can be frustrating at times to try to cut through the noise with this much content being published. While publishing relevant information can help you create a loyal community of constituents, do you ever wonder if you could reach more people by adapting your content to a different style?
If you’re struggling to figure out “what’s next,” you might want to explore the idea of hosting your own live internet radio show.
