John Lincoln says, “Content marketing, like any other business initiative, is a learned skill. It’s not as simple as sitting down at your keyboard and typing out a few bits of advice relevant to your niche. (It actually used to be a lot like this, but now it is much more competitive.) In fact, corporate blogging is a learned discipline, just like accounting, marketing and good management.However, some business leaders see it differently. They think that they can hire a good writer to produce content, publish it on a website and watch the visitors come rolling in.There’s much more to... [...]

Barry Feldman says, “Blogging is no hobby—at least not for serious business bloggers. After all, 59% of B2B marketers consider blogs the most valuable channel.Andy Crestodina of Orbit Media Studios offers the proof. In 2014, his company asked 1,000-plus business bloggers to provide answers about how they tackle their tasks and summarized the results in this data-intensive post.The company did it again this year. Here are the results of the 2015 survey.After gathering the data, Andy concludes, “We see more bloggers taking a more professional approach. Evidence for this appeared... [...]

Andy Beohar says, “Leads are the lifeblood of your business.Without leads, you have no one to guide down your marketing funnel and convert into a paying customer.When leveraged correctly, your business’s blog is an excellent venue through which to provide visitors withconversion opportunities.If your business is struggling to generate leads, you’re optimizing your blog is a great first step. Below, we share six tips you can use to turn your blog into a lead generation machine.1. Integrate Your Blog With Your WebsiteWhen you’re using a blog to generate inbound traffic, many... [...]

Matt Cooper says, “There was a time, not so long ago, when a blog or news site’s comments section was considered a boon to Internet dialogue – a way for the “people formerly known as the audience” to break past the media gatekeepers and create meaningful discussion on an issue or topic. Comments were a new evolution of the traditional letters to the editor appearing in newspapers for more than a century. No single arbiter of taste would decide which letters appeared in the paper and which were thrown to the waste bin.But if you’ve been following the goings-on in the media and... [...]

Rainmaker team says, “If you’re actively creating content, you’ve probably noticed that “waiting for inspiration” doesn’t tend to work all that well.In this episode of Confessions of a Pink-Haired Marketer, host Sonia Simone goes through her workflow for content creation.This works for blog posts, podcast or video scripts, infographics, SlideShares, or really any piece of strategic content you’ll want to create“.7 Straightforward Steps to Superior Blog Posts and Podcasts‘Copyblogger’ Blog [...]

Richard Marriott says, “Nobody could have predicted the incredible impact that YouTube would have on the world ten years ago.Former PayPal employees Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim discovered the niche platform in which people could access video clips of the most random events, and no one has come close to matching the huge popularity of it since.Currently, YouTube is the third most-visited site on the internet, and the second biggest search engine on the web, with over 40m brand-related videos uploaded daily.With this in mind, there has been a rise in the new influencer on the... [...]

Barry Feldman says, “Blogging remains the cornerstone of most content marketing efforts.According to HubSpot, marketers who have prioritized blogging are 13 times more likely to enjoy positive ROI.The data presented by HubSpot also claims B2B companies that blog produce 67 percent more leads than those that don’t.According to Demand Metric, 59 percent of B2B marketers consider blogs the most valuable channel.So, Orbit Media Studios co-founder Andy Crestodina thinks the mega-population of the content creation nation stands to gain interesting insights by examining how their blogging... [...]

ReadWrite team says, “Though the concept of blogging has been around for years, blogging continues to grow in popularity. Personal bloggers, businesses, and marketers launch new blogs every day to express their ideas and build their audience. But not everyone who wants to start a blog knows how.That’s where StartBloggingOnline comes in.Owner Mike Wallagher has helped launch more than 9,500 blogs with his free blogging guide since introducing the site in March 2013. He’d already been blogging since 2009. The StartBloggingOnline beginner’s guide will teach you the same tips and tricks... [...]

Alex Bashinsky says, “Let’s face it. Your primary purpose in writing blog posts is not to capture Facebook “likes” or get ranked. You’re writing a blog for strategic business purposes. You want the content to achieve something. You want to increase your conversions – to put a direct value on the time invested in blogging.Writing blog posts for conversions requires an approach subtly different than writing to provide fun or to educate. Consider the following path to boost your blog ROI:Planning phaseStructuring your business blog posts for conversions begins before you put pen... [...]

Walter Chen says, “”Free” is the most awesome price of all. “Free” gets you started when you have nothing. “Free” took me from 0 to the first 1,000,000 visitors to my blog.“Free” is also the price that most people gravitate to when they are first starting out. But, the trouble is, most of those people also think that you have sign up for some big, expensive service once your audience numbers get serious.Nope.You don’t have any excuses, because free web services and products available today are so good that you can easily use them... [...]