Content & Message

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  Content Marketing and Farming are NOT Alike

  If you’re a fan of the old sit-com Green Acres, you know the attraction (to some) of the bucolic rural life – honest work, fresh air, and all that. And farmhouses, barns and silos. Tough to beat a silo as an iconic image of the farming life, but they are to be avoided when it…MORE >

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  The Future of Content Marketing

  Not to mention the future of media publishing and advertising. My recent article on the Target Marketing website dives into what content marketing, media, and advertising may look like in the not too distant future. I don’t want to give anything away, but I do not quite manage to predict the future in the article….MORE >

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  How to Engage Your Marketing Audience

  Death by Powerpoint. We’ve all experienced it. Often it’s a matter of execution: The presenter reads every word of every bullet point on every slide, for example. (Death, execution, bullets … rough first paragraph.) But the problem can also be content. Think about the last presentation you attended. It probably was constructed to build up…MORE >

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  Content Marketing The Easy Way: Tools, Timing, and a Plan

  Last week, I talked about the value of fresh content and that even though “b___” is an ugly word, it’s worth embracing the pain. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t find ways to make creating fresh content less painful – and as efficient as possible. Here’s a plan you can put into place to maximize your…MORE >

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  Fresh Content is Great Marketing – Just Don’t Call it a B___

  Far be it from me to curse in public! The B word the title refers to isn’t the one that rhymes with “witch.” It’s the one that rhymes with “frog.” “Blog” can induce a shudder from even the most seasoned content marketer, and not just because it’s an ugly-sounding word. Fear of having to feed…MORE >

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  Is SEO Really The Answer?

  You may already know that SEO isn’t the answer to every website marketing problem, and you may already have figured out that SEO isn’t the right tool for you. But did you know there are some foundational SEO techniques you can use that are relatively simple and inexpensive – meaning they’re worth doing even if you…MORE >

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  Let Your Ideal Client Design Your Website

  You think your website is the be-all and end-all. You and your team sweated blood creating it. You think your prospects and clients will love it. You’re wrong. To quote Jakob Nielsen, the usability expert, your clients and prospects think that “Your website is like a speck of dust in the universe.” Which isn’t to…MORE >

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  Defining Success for Your Content Marketing Website

  What do you expect your website to do in order to drive business and profitability? Clearly, it has to appeal to visitors, encourage enagagement, and move them along the path from site visitor to email subscriber (perhaps) to prospect to lead to client. Oh, and at the outset, your website will be operating blind –…MORE >

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  Keeping Your Email Subscribers Means Keeping Them Interested

  To keep your email marketing productive, you have to keep your email subscribers engaged. Here are a number of ways to keep their interest high. Make Your Lead Magnet is Relevant Sure, you can build up a list pretty quickly if you give away, say, a brand new Tesla, but a good number of your new…MORE >

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  How to Write Great Content Marketing Copy

  Whether you’re hiring a copywriter or writing copy in-house, your approach to the copywriting process will have nearly as big an impact on your success as the words you ultimately put on the page or screen. For starters, your approach to copywriting has to be broader than writing engaging prose. As obvious as it sounds,…MORE >