Sophia Bernazzani says, “If you thought your research days were over when you graduated from high school or college, think again. If you create any kind of content as part of your role, your arguments should be well-supported with data. Why is research so important? It makes your claims credible, your content authoritative, and helps you earn more social shares and backlinks. In fact, an analysis of over one million articles from Moz and BuzzSumo revealed that research-backed content generates more shares and more backlinks than other content types. The thing is, finding the research to cite... [...]

Bill Widmer says, “Have you ever seen a blog post and thought, “Wow, this looks really nice”? On the flip side, have you seen a post with a wall of text and no images, and thought, “Wow, this looks really ugly”? Did you even read the second one? Your posts’ text needs to engage your readers to keep them coming back, but first your posts need to be visually appealing to attract those readers. An attractive blog post will: – Increase reader engagement (e.g., time on page, comments, shares, CTA clicks) – Drive backlinks from top-ranking blogs”. Beauty Matters: 3 Tips... [...]

Will Caldwell says, “In today’s world of online marketing, having a company blog is key. Blogs may sound old-school, but without one, you’ll be leaving a lot of traffic out of the picture. The fact of the matter is that a blog can help your company can engage with its customers in an interesting way by providing valuable insight into your product or market. The most traditional reason companies have their own blog is to express their opinion. Now, with the rise in content marketing, companies use their blogs to compete for traffic. Marketers take a long-tail keyword approach, meaning... [...]

Jay Baer says, “As an author, it breaks my heart, but we are entering the “no-read” era.1 Every year, I think there is no possible way online video consumption can climb again, but it does. And finally, content marketers are catching up to the consumption trend. Video for content marketing used to be a sometimes thing. An occasional deviation from tried-and-true blog posts. But now, for many companies, video IS the new blogging. New research from Vidyard (a great partner of ours at Convince & Convert) called the 2017 Video in Business Benchmark Report to put math around this shift. According... [...]

Arash Asli says, “When it comes to trying to get your message out to your audience, there is no better way than blogging. Having a blog on your business website can increase the amount of authority you have in your industry, while at the same time helping you capture longer tail keywords and generating more traffic from organic search. What if I told you that you can not only massively increase the number of people that see your content, but also be in more places than you ever thought possible? 1. Create a powerpoint presentation and put it on Slideshare Slideshare is an important and popular... [...]

Aaron Agius says, “Maybe you have two separate blogs that deal with two elements of your overall business. Maybe you’re rebranding your business and need to rebrand your blog. Perhaps you recently acquired another company and want to incorporate its blog into your own. Or maybe you purchased a relevant domain for the SEO juice and need to transfer your existing blog to it. How do you combine two blogs into one? Here’s how. Before we do anything, though, back up each existing blog. For the sake of simplicity, let’s assume you’re merging two WordPress blogs. It doesn’t really matter... [...]

Jodi Harris says, “If you’ve seen any of CMI’s 2017 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends research, you may have noticed that the content marketing industry is growing up. In fact, 28% of B2B marketers, and 30% of B2C marketers now say their program has reached the sophisticated or mature stage of progress – the point where their efforts are able to provide measurable value to the business. Increasing sophistication with content doesn’t mean practitioners have outgrown the tools and techniques that helped them reach greater success. And, despite all the channels, formats, and digital innovations... [...]

Barry Feldman says, “When it comes to business blogging, how much time do people put into creating posts? How long are their articles? What goes into them? How often do they publish new content? How do they promote their posts? Do they measure the results? The answers to any and all of the questions deliver interesting insights on the state of digital marketing. And thanks to the work of Orbit Media Studios, this data has been collected, made available and fun to consume. For three years running, Andy Crestodina — the web design and development company’s co-founder —... [...]

Stefanie Flaxman says, “I watch a lot of YouTube videos about the best ways to clean your bathroom. In fact, I realized that I spend way more time watching “hacks, tricks, and tips” about how to efficiently clean a bathroom than I do actually cleaning my bathroom. Given the hundreds of thousands of views on these types of videos, perhaps it’s not just me. And I started thinking … this might be similar to bloggers who read about editing tips. Editing, like cleaning a bathroom, isn’t always the most fun, so bloggers might spend more time reading about editing tips than actually implementing... [...]

Kate Taylor Mighty says, “There’s no denying it: Blogging for your business works. According to our 2016 State of Inbound report, B2B marketers who blog receive 67% more leads than those who don’t, and marketers who have prioritized blogging are 13X more likely to enjoy positive ROI. Blogging is a crucial part of inbound marketing because it allows you to quickly disseminate helpful information to your followers and new site visitors, which, in turn, helps build credibility, SEO juice, and helps you become more of a thought leader in your industry. Best of all, blogging is super cost-effective,... [...]