Photo by Kristina Flour on Unsplash Because I don’t have a background in marketing and I just learned to write on the go, I feel like I need to backfill my knowledge from time to time. I always thought marketing was pretty much PR and throwing in an annoying jingle to invade my brain. Over the last decade,…
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Hey, Clients, We Need Your Help to Create the Content People Will Give a Damn About
You can’t just hand us the keys to your marketing efforts and expect success. We need you. Of course, we need to talk about goals, sales hand offs, high-level strategy, and more; but I want to talk today about content. We need access to the industry expertise and customer knowledge you and your co-workers have…
Your Website Is Your Storefront – Are the Windows Broken?
Would you go into a store with busted windows and a doorknob that needed to be jiggled to open? When your website offers no clear path for visitors, THAT’S THE EXACT IMPRESSION YOU GIVE ABOUT YOUR BUSINESS! And with nearly every business transaction in the U.S. today starting out as an online search and visit…
Marketing Isn’t About Creating a Pretty Brochure
True confession – I used to think marketing was a load of BS. Yep, before I got into content and inbound marketing, I was an editor. Marketing to me was an endless barrage of crappy email pitches and product press releases. My job as an editor was to separate the wheat from the chaff to…
J Is for Journey – The Cheeky A-Z Guide for Content Marketing
The journey of what seems like 1,000 steps to acquiring a customer starts with your ability to help them solve a problem. You need to insert yourself into your customer’s story as the sidekick, not the hero. Your customer is the hero/heroine. They’re Frodo Baggins; you’re Samwise Gamgee.* Or, since it’s awards season, you want…
Pink Elephants, Roadhouse, and Stream of Consciousness Saturday #SoCS
I've always half-wanted to own a bar. As long as I can remember, the name of that bar would be (is going to be?) "The Pink Elephant." The first response from folks (and one of the first things that popped into my head) is that "it sounds like the name of a gay bar." Which,…
The Ghost in the Content Marketing Blog: A Few Tips for Writing Like Someone Else
Caffeine IS required to be a good ghost in the blog, though my preferred delivery vehicle is tea. Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash Real. Honest. Authentic. These are all words content marketing aspires to be. When you’re the ghost in the blog, it’s easy to feel like you’re faking it. I’ve been ghost blogging for five-ish years…
Blogging Plus 6 Other Cornerstone Content Marketing Tactics — That Work — for Anyone
Without the right foundation, it all comes tumbling down. Photo by Rodolfo Quirós from Pexels What works when it comes to content marketing? Like many things in life, leaning into the basics is a great first step. Just remember that you need to have a content marketing strategy in place first. Take this blog for example. I started…
You Can Lead a Horse to Water, but . . . You Have a Huge Content Marketing Problem When the Thinking Never Begins
When the Thinking Never Begins Permit me a mini rant. Come along if you’d like, I think you’ll recognize someone you work with. If you don’t, well, the person I’m talking about might just be you (but you’re one of my readers, so I’m thinking not). We’ve all had the misfortune of working with someone(s)…
Rasslin’ Memories Courtesy of Sumo and #SoCS
To BE the man you gotta BEAT the man. WOOOOOO! Ric Flair Don't let the bulk fool you, these guys are tremendous athletes. Photo by Bob Fisher on Unsplash The prompt for today’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday took a sideways path via samurai and bujitsu to be focused on, of all things, rasslin’ (or “wrestling” for you non-southerners…