The importance of creating customer focused content and how to
Better Marketing through Customer Focus We’re busy. We’re bombarded with marketing messages all day, every day. We’re very good at filtering them out. Until we let one through. Customers have different behaviors and preferences. They need to be motivated along their buying journey in a chain of steps for them to make a purchase. Think…
How to write the best blog posts possible with storytelling
What makes the best blog post, best? Best is a subjective term, yet the title of this post implies you can follow a “recipe” to create posts of high value that deserve to be called “the best”. To be fair, this post teaches ONE method (not THE method) of creating a high quality blog post.…
How to make your website your digital hub (under your URL)
Before I get to how, let me first explain why I have personally known business owners who built up an impressive following on their Facebook business page. Lots of followers, lots of engagements, indications it is leading to real business bringing in real money. Then about a year ago Facebook updates their algorithm and almost…
How to Ensure Your Small Business Wins with Content Marketing
Small Business Content Marketing Works We’ve seen time and time again the benefits of effective Content Marketing: Increased organic search web traffic More leads Better leads Engaging with prospects when they’re further down their buyers journey However many businesses (even large businesses) fail to understand the basic mechanisms of Content Marketing and feel challenged to…
Why Blog Posts With Lists Have More Impact and Are Shared More
It’s not so much that I love lists, but that we love lists. List posts simply work. At least we seem to. I do now wish to come clean that the title of this post is a bit misleading. It implies I know why blog posts with lists are shared more. I don’t. I do have…
How can I maintain my blog to get real traffic?
To rank your website, you need to become a publisher. This is the part some people don’t want to hear. Search Ranking Success is All About Publishing The four major success principals to attracting high levels of traffic via organic search are: Quantity In general (for every rule I state there are exceptions, but in…
Small Businesses Acknowledge that Customers Are Critical to Their Success
Really? Businesses Need Customers? The title of this post is the actual first part of the opening sentence of an article published on emarketer.com titled “How Can Small Businesses Get, and Keep, Clients?“. The sentence goes on to say “48% of small-business owners (SBOs) worldwide said their customers drove their success”. I wonder what the other…
Journalists Outrank Marketers in Search: Implications for Content Marketing
Journalists Consistently Outrank Marketers in Search What this means is news sites consistently outrank business sites in search results. This is not the same as saying individual journalists know things that individual marketers don’t (although this may be true). The implications of this do not lead to conclusions about individual skill sets, but more about…
Small Business Online Marketing: Best SEO Companies for Local SEO Success
The Title of This Post is Misleading It implies there is such a thing as The Best SEO companies for local (small) businesses. Not only isn’t there such a company (or even a short list of companies), small business SEO is almost always a losing game right from the start. The reason is SEO agencies and…
What do Newsrooms and Journalists do That Online Marketing Needs to Learn?
This is the 2nd article in a 2 part series. Part 1: What Can Online Marketing Learn From Newsrooms and Journalists? As you can probably guess from the title of this post, the answer is Online Marketing Has A Lot to Learn From Journalism Let’s first start with the observation that most online marketing deserves to…
Brand Journalism vs Inbound Marketing vs SEO: It’s All Blogging
Brand Journalism: The Newest Buzzword in Online Marketing I’ve learned a new phrase: Brand Journalism. Similar to Brand Publishing, Content Marketing, and my personal favorite, Inbound Marketing. However the people at Contently.com object to the term Brand Journalism, and from the perspective of pure semantics, they have a point. Marketing is about getting people interested…
What Content Marketers Should Learn from Mainstream Journalism
Journalism Has Disciplines Content Marketing Should Learn From I stumbled across a great article by Aaron Aguis of Louder Online, which he published on the website Content Marketing Institute. Please feel free to read the entire article by selecting the link below. I have merely summarized it, then at the end added an item of…
Inbound Marketing Momentum: Keeping Your Publishing Schedule Delivers Organic Traffic
The Importance of Regular Publishing Simple put, websites that contain fresh content rank higher. It really is that simple. You want to outrank your competition, update your website multiple times a day. Seriously. Inbound Marketing is Journalism If there is one single most important idea about Inbound Marketing it is that it looks like Journalism. More…
The Future of DIY SEO and Inbound Marketing for Small Business and Startups
The Future of SEO The gap between the Inbound Marketing haves and have nots is widening. This is because the Internet is getting more crowded and as a result almost every niche (if not actually every niche) is more competitive. SEO, by which I mean the technical aspects of making your website and your webpages…
Marketing Strategy Question: What About Your Business are you Passionate About?
What Ab0ut Your Business are You Passionate About? I mean real passion. What big picture idea keeps you going for which you get out of bed every morning? I’ve attended many business networking functions where small business owners and solopreneurs are required to state their passion and the statements being made are not convincing. Clearly…
Tactics for Strong Content Marketing Traction and Audience Growth
Effective Content Marketing You will receive conflicting advise on how to best do Content Marketing. Too many experts, too little empirical evidence. I help sort the wheat from the chaff by scanning the trade press every day and finding people who really seem to know their stuff. A recent article written by Jakob Marovt of…
Search Engine Optimization How To: The Intersection of Commerce and Journalism
The Intersection of Commerce and Journalism Commerce and journalism have been intertwined since the invention of the newspaper. For a paper to survive, it had to be a viable business. It had to bring in more than enough money to cover the bills. Legitimate news organizations have had to wrestle with (perhaps struggle with) a…
Content Marketing Must Learn From Journalism to Attract Organic Traffic
What Content Marketing is Learning from Journalism New technologies disrupt old ones. This has occurred in waves during the entire course of human history. What makes today different is the speed with which it occurs. The search engine is about 15 years old now, but it’s everywhere. We carry the Internet with us in our…
Search Engine Optimization Techniques | How to Grow Your Blog Traffic
How to Grow Your Blog Traffic For the title of this post to make sense to business to business or business to consumer lead generation, it’s first important to understand that the core activity of Inbound Marketing is blogging. The generating and publishing of content that is both interesting and useful to people who want…
Google is Forcing Marketing and PR to Journalistic Excellence in Content Generation
Marketing, PR, and Journalism Perhaps the headline of this post is a bit hyperbolic, but the idea is valid. As Google tightens up their search algorithm (and yes there are other search engines, but in most of the world Google sets the rules), we are collectively being required by Google to generating and publish articles,…
Content Saturation is Real and Can be Overcome | Inbound Marketing and Lead Generation
What is Content Saturation? Content saturation is when someone effectively “owns” Internet search for a specific term or set of terms and you have no hope of ever over taking them. You want to out perform Starbucks for the word “coffee”? Good luck with that. That content niche is saturated. So what’s a small business…
Content Marketing is Publishing Overlaid with Your Conversion Intention
Publishing is Publishing, Right? On one level, the economics of publishing is similar independent of what form your publishing takes. A newspaper? A magazine? A TV station? A radio station? A website! sometimes (actually often) when talking to people about Content Marketing I explain how modern marketing looks like Journalism and the reason large enterprise…
Modern Marketing (aka Inbound, Content, Digital) for Lead Generation is to be Embraced
Embrace Modern Marketing or be Left Behind Modern marketing goes by various names: Inbound marketing Content marketing Digital marketing Internet marketing Etc But in fact modern marketing more closely resembles Journalism (more on that below) is here to stay (and more on that below). You have two choices: 1) Embrace it, or 2) Be left…
Effective Content Marketing Requires Quantity AND Quality to Grow Your Traffic and Generate Leads
Content Quantity vs Quality? Which is Better? It’s a false choice. When you hear people talk about Content Marketing in terms of Quantity vs Quality, recognize it for the false choice that it is. The very question presupposes that maintaining a high level of publishing output somehow compromises the quality of what is being published.…
Increasing Local SEO with Hidden Content Opportunities to Attract Website Visitors
Hidden Content Opportunities This article is inspired by an article I read on SearchEngineLand.com which is titled… Finding Hidden Content Opportunities For Your Local Website They fortunately narrow in on the main point, but unfortunately never name it directly. What they call Hidden Content Opportunities is things that don’t seem obvious to you at first.…
Integrating Inbound Marketing and Public Relations to Benefit Both
Is Journalism the New Marketing and Public Relations? Marketing and public relations have traditionally been separate functions within most businesses. Marketing has been focused on brand awareness and lead generations, while Public Relations has been focused on putting forth a good face of the company to the public. The Premise More and more of us…
Increasing Web Traffic and Quality Leads by Integrating PR and Inbound Marketing
How PR and Inbound Marketing go Together PR and Inbound Marketing go together like peanut butter and jelly, raw fish and rice, rice and beans, potatoes and buttermilk, you get the idea. It should become a basic staple. The prime focus of Inbound Marketing is to attract your audience to your website and to convert…
Content Marketing Sustainability is in Question When You Fail to Understand it’s Journalism
Content Marketing is Sustainable A recent post for a digital advertising agency asks the question Is Content Marketing Sustainability In Question? The question presumes that it’s difficult to find things to write about and that people who generate and publish articles run out of ideas. When you understand that Content Marketing is Journalism wrapped in…
SEO is NOT the Cornerstone of Success Inbound Marketing, Content and Publishing Is
The Cornerstone of Inbound Marketing is….. A recent article in Business2Community.com make the statement that SEO is the cornerstone of Inbound Marketing. I understand this article is intended for people who are new to the concepts of lead generation through Inbound Marketing, but I could not let that comment rest without attempting to correct that…
Increase Website Traffic and Leads through Organic Search via Blogging
The Core Activity of Inbound Marketing is Blogging As described in a prior blog post titled Solid Inbound Marketing Campaign to Increase Web Traffic and Leads, every successful Inbound Marketing efforts includes the same activities into which you invest your time, money, and effort. However, the single most important activity, while almost always mentioned, is…
Content Creation and Publishing is Key to Attracting Visitors, Leads, and Customers
The Core Activity of Inbound Marketing Inbound marketing is set of activities, a set of processes, which when done well cause your website to show up in near the top of search engine result pages such that people who submit search queries to search engines become visitors to your website. Although there is more to…
Most Important Personality Traits of a Great Content Marketing Person
Personality Traits of Great Content Marketers This is a continuation of a prior post that identified four important traits of; good storytelling, curiosity, ability to focus on a meet deadlines, and being proactive. This post picks up where that one left off. A Great Content Marketer Thinks Strategically It’s important to both see the big…
Publishing a High Quantity of Quality Posts to Improve Your Website Ranking
Publishing for both Quantity AND Quality Although I did select this image for this post, the idea that we have a situation of Quality vs Quantity frustrates me. While it’s true that more and more of us offer opinions about everything under the sun over and over and over, that does not mean that you…
Local SEO Marketing is Blogging for Business to Generate Leads
I’m sure you’ve heard of the importance of local SEO marketing to generate leads for your business. Local SEO marketing is also sometimes called Inbound Marketing, or Content Marketing, or Internet Marketing, but whatever phrase is used, what effective local SEO marketing is….. is blogging for business. Let me be clear that blogging for business…
Inbound Marketing Tactics that Generate High Quality Leads
A recent article on a marketing website that has a large readership published a post titled: 5 Inbound Marketing Tactics to Generate Leads For Your Business As I pay attention to what is being said in the Inbound Marketing industry, I read this post. It irritated me. Why? Because it doesn’t say anything you don’t…
Great Content is the Best Sales Tool in the World | How so?
A well known author who writes about sales (Marcus Sheridan) has said: Great Content is the Best Sales Tool in the World Why great content is the best sales tool is described in a prior post. This post discusses how you use great content to sell your goods or services. The basic idea behind what…
Why is Generating Sales Leads through Web Marketing Hard?
Sometimes it feels a bit ironic that while know how to generate sales leads through web marketing is easy, doing it is hard. There is no black magic to successfully attracting customers via the web. Rank Fiskin, Founder SEOmoz While the above quote is absolutely true, and there is no black magic, what makes it…
What is SEO and How does it differ from Inbound Marketing?
You’ve certainly heard the terms Inbound Marketing and SEO, but as the terms are used in different ways by different people, you may be uncertain as to what precisely they mean and how they differ. The difference may be perceived a subtle, but it’s important. Inbound Marketing is the process of turning your website into…
Content is King with Lead Generation via Local SEO Marketing
Twenty first century marketing looks and feels a lot like journalism. You determine what you want to say, how you want to say it, and who you want to say it to. You then create a publishing schedule you subsequently meet. Dan Lyons, a Marketing Fellow at HubSpot says: My theory is that in the…
Generating Leads via Local SEO Marketing Requires Consistency
A prior post discussed the importance of Quality posts relative to your local SEO marketing efforts for your travel business. Quality both from the perspective of a human being (for whom you are doing your writing) and from the perspective of a search engine robot (whose attention you MUST get for it to bring humans…
Content and Publishing: #1 Local SEO Marketing Success Factor
This post is part of a series about attracting leads to your travel business via Local SEO Marketing. For access to every post in the series, select the link in the previous sentence. When your travel business needs more leads, you can seek them out in various ways. I wish to express my personal bias,…