Content Marketing

Going for Seconds on Homepage Design: Q&A with Amanda Hesser of Food52

Rituals remind us why we live and love. Rituals are also addictions. If noon rolls around and I haven’t hit my bookmarks, I start to get shaky and pale. The core four in my morning digital dose are: the New York Times, Mediabistro, Daily Beast, Food52. (OK, I lied, People.com is a fifth. Hey, I [...]

Keep Your Audience on Its Tweet: 4 Keys to Building a Strong Social Following

If the presidential election—coming to a polling place near you in November—is the nation’s foremost popularity contest (more than 65 million Americans voted for President Barack Obama in 2008) the ongoing battle for followers on Twitter, from a purely competitive standpoint, isn’t far behind. It has been reported that Twitter has more than 175 million [...]

Why Literature Matters (Despite What Those Last 50 Million Tweets Told You)

If you’ve ever been inside an elementary school library from the year 1966 onward, you’ve probably laid eyes on the phrase “Reading is FUNdamental” at one point in your life. And it is. Especially if you want to create good content. In order to do that—to engage, entertain, and inform—one has to know how it’s [...]

Linking: It Does a Website Good

When it comes to digital media, competition can sometimes make writers turn into digital grinches. While it’s healthy to stoke friendly competition and take pride in your work, stonewalling and shoulder checking isn’t really necessary. The web was built on the notion of sharing ideas and exchanging news. Links, the glue that holds the Internet [...]

The Rise Of The Profersonal In Social Media

In the past year, social media was the vehicle that drove several high-profile careers off a cliff. Pro athlete Larry Johnson tweeted a homophobic slur that resulted in a fan petition calling for his removal from the Kansas City Chiefs. He was later suspended. Gilbert Gottfried lost his gig as the voice of the Aflac [...]

10 Better Ideas Than Looking at a Top 10 List For Advice

Top 10 lists are like new year’s resolutions. They seem great at first, but they quickly make you feel bored, hopeless, and like you’ve wasted your time. And that’s usually because they are filled with things you know you should do but can’t commit to doing. They’re too aspirational. Too shoot-for-the-moon-y. Which is why I’ve [...]

How Betty Crocker is Baking Content Marketing Success

Betty Crocker found a great recipe for content marketing success. (I know, that pun was hard to swallow.) When food brand giant and cultural icon Betty Crocker, a brand owned by General Mills, wasn’t having success online they developed a digital video series centered around solving common problems for at-home chefs. Since launching in 2008, [...]

We Have Ways of Making You Talk. Namely, Interviews.

interview tips, we have ways of making you talk

To the presidential candidate seated across the table, I must have seemed like tender meat ready to be shredded by wit sharpened on the pundit circuit. The year was 2000, and Pat Buchanan was running a half-hearted campaign. Interest was low enough that I, student reporter that I was, managed to get an interview at [...]

7 Tips for Content Marketing Webinar Success

According to CMI’s newly released 2012 B2B content marketing study, marketers give webinars the second highest effectiveness rating as a content marketing tactic. Why, then, do only 46 percent of marketers use them? They are, after all, another great way to showcase your quality content and position yourself as a thought leader in your marketplace. [...]

How Crowdsourcing Can Revolutionize Your Approach to Content

A few months ago an international team of gamers solved a complex problem that had scientists baffled for years. For a decade industry experts from around the globe had been unable to figure out how a protein-cutting enzyme from an AIDS-like virus found in rhesus monkeys folds. In a final attempt to solve the riddle, [...]

5 Content Marketing Resolutions (That You Might Actually Keep)

The resolution bandwagon is full of false hope and empty promises at the beginning of every year. You’ve got the classic “I will lose X number of pounds before bathing suit season” and “I will save more money this year (and stop buying so many video games.)” Sure, those resolutions are good hearted but many [...]

5 Lessons From my Biggest Blog Fails of 2011

I failed a lot this year. My gut reaction was to quietly sweep my failures under the rug, whistle, and walk away. But instead, I figured I’d scrape the bottom of the barrel to see if there was any gold. Sue me. I’m an optimist. Instead of a collection of successful case studies, this post [...]

A Farewell to Content Overload

When writing about simplicity, it’s almost impossible to not sound like a bumbling idiot. Therefore, I’ll get right to the point: Creating a simple interface for your content is the greatest thing you can do for your audience. Here are 5 reasons why:

5 Things I Learned at the FOLIO Show

Earlier this month a group of us traveled from TMG in D.C. to the Marriot Marquis in New York to “join the media revolution” at the FOLIO: Show. The event had tracks on monetization, content, management, and marketing—and great key notes from the likes of Mashable’s Pete Cashmore and Time Inc.’s Fran Hauser. Here are [...]

7 Tips for Developing Your Webinar Strategy

As a content marketing strategy, webinars can be highly effective – positioning your organization as a thought leader or the go-to resource of valuable information. According to a recent B2B content marketing survey, nine out of ten B2B marketers are using content marketing, and of the ten content marketing tactics rated for effectiveness, webinars rated [...]

Look Before You Leap When Creating a Marketing Plan

Is your company brand image a Mercedes or a Ford Fiesta? Before you try to answer, the key question you must answer to figure out how your company stands out from the crowd is, “what is your value discipline?” The answer is not as straight-forward as it may sound.

7 Ways for Your Company to Break the Ice with the Blogosphere

Does your organization have a blog? Though it seems the evidence that blogging pays off is everywhere, some companies are still struggling to get a blog up and running. (Consider this 2011 HubSpot study where 69% of businesses surveyed attributed their success with lead generation directly to blogging. Business is built on consumer interest, and [...]

5 Future-proof Ideas For Your Website

Predicting the future of the web is nearly impossible. Ever-changing technology provides fodder for our imagination to run wild. And it typically does. Imagination outpaces invention. And invention outpaces convention. Which is why we should focus less on technology, and more on human nature when we’re future-proofing our websites. If we bet on technology, we [...]

4 Reasons Your Facebook Fan Stopped Liking You

“You like me, you really like me!” It’s hard not to get excited when someone likes our organizations page on Facebook, especially early on. It could be the beginning of a beautiful romance of brand and consumer. But then things go wrong. Brand statuses are ignored. Questions are left to wither alone in silence. The flame is [...]

Why Distractions Mean Failure in Football and Marketing

Once, after a loss, former Tennessee Titans’ coach Jeff Fisher made this statement to the media about his team’s effort: “I think you have to be able to deal with distractions, put them in perspective and move on. Distractions are the primary reason for losing football games. ” He didn’t chalk up the loss to [...]

Just Another SEO Manifesto

If I had only one thing to say about search engine optimization, it’d be this: don’t chase the search engines, instead chase what the search engines are chasing. Search engines are in the business of getting people what they want. In an ideal world, people ask search engines an honest question and receive an honest [...]

Give Me One Reason to Share It and I’ll Spread Your Post Around

There are a lot of blips on our daily radars. We check our Twitter stream. We drop in on Google+. We comb through our RSS feeds. And for the most part, we ignore most of the content we see. Why? Because we’ve read it before. Because it sounds too familiar. Because it’s obvious. Because it’s [...]

3 Questions to Ask Before Jumping on a Marketing Bandwagon

It’s tough not to fall victim to me-tooism in our competitive media landscape. There are oohs and ahhs to reap, awards to win, client and board expectations to exceed and egos to stroke. So we see something shiny and we chase it. We see a toy and call it a tool, and make it part of our marketing [...]

3 Things the Top 10 Viral Videos of All Time Have in Common

Want to watch a baby do flips on rollerblades? How about people playing the piano with their feet? Maybe you’d rather see a biker riding on the tops of stores and jumping off bridges? Well I’m sure I have your attention now…or maybe you’ve already seen the videos I’m talking about on YouTube or some [...]

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