When you’re writing, proofreading and editing are essential. An unaltered style might be interesting when you are singing like the Godfather of Funk, but when you’re blogging, take the time to be clear. There are some similarities between good blogs and James Brown’s music.  For example, you’ll need great visuals and resources like he had from [...]

Last week, in How to Decide What to Blog About, you learned how to generate at least 25-50 new blog post ideas. This week, we’ll discuss the role of an editorial calendar and how it brings structure to your business blogging strategy. Every Marketer is a Publisher Creating an editorial calendar, with a publication schedule and [...]

Headlines can change your odds – sometimes by 500% or more. You can discover interesting headlines for ads, blogs and articles through testing and experimentation. Studies suggest close to 80% glance at any given headline and most don’t read further. If you want people to read your message, adjust your headlines through iterative creative tests [...]

The practical advice in this blog post should help you generate at least 25-50 new blog post ideas.  And you can revisit this post whenever you need more. Expect to arrive at a broad mix of topics that will appeal to your target readers. Just take out your pen and notebook, iPad or PC. You’re going [...]

I was recently invited to write this article for Boston.com’s Global Business Hub to explain why businesses should listen before they tweet. Businesses should listen and gain an understanding of their target market to communicate successfully on Twitter. It’s an easy mistake to just begin distributing sales messages. Instead, smart organizations either limit their self-promotion or resist [...]

Last week we began a content marketing series covering the topic of business blogging.  In the first blog post, we discussed how to set goals in a business blogging strategy.  Please read it in addition to this week’s investigation of the role of listening in a business blogging strategy. To attract more blog subscribers, listen [...]

Before you can create a sound business blogging strategy, you need to set goals and establish your blog’s purpose. From a business perspective, the purpose of a blog is often to drive more site traffic, increase leads and boost conversions. You can easily identify the motivation to create a business blog – it’s an offshoot of the motivation [...]

Love it or hate it, Klout is rapidly becoming an incredibly powerful social media force that’s serving to bridge the gap between the online and physical worlds. But don’t go getting the wrong idea – Klout isn’t the result of some mad scientist’s experiment to punch holes through reality barriers, and you don’t have to [...]

Can businesses improve their marketing with Instagram? Should businesses participate in mobile photo sharing? Facebook’s $1 billion purchase of Instagram is accelerating one of the fastest social media trends – mobile photo-sharing.  Founded in October 2010 and now part of Facebook, Instagram is already on 40 million mobile devices.  Instagram is free and easy to use: simply [...]

Do you want to improve your search results by improving your internal links? If so, continue reading as I reveal three tips for improving search rankings with internal links.  First I’ll explain what an internal link is.  Then I’ll discuss the importance of optimizing internal links within a site hierarchy.  I’ll wrap up with the [...]