Content Marketing

15 Must-Have Tools For Better Blogging

What if you could increase the engagement of your blog readers ten-fold in 2 minutes? How about adding relevant photography to your posts without having to go out and find them? You can do both of those things and much more with free tools that most bloggers don’t even know about. We use the following… 

August 5, 2011 · Shane Snow

7 Things You’re Probably Doing Wrong On Your Company Blog

A company blog can accomplish several goals at once: Establishing your corporate identity or brand, marketing your products, or providing customer service for common problems and solutions. But too many company blogs fail to get read or to attract regular readers, because they make a few mistakes that can be corrected with a small effort… 

July 21, 2011 · Paul Lentz

What Every Freelancer and Blogger Should Know About Their Business Structure

If you’re like most freelancers, you started your business as a sole proprietorship. Actually, if you’re like most freelancers, you just started finding gigs and didn’t consider your business structure at the beginning. Now and then you might wonder if you should incorporate, but it’s an easy issue to procrastinate ⎯ after all, meeting that… 

July 20, 2011 · Nellie Alkop

How Google+ Fits Into a Content Strategy

Google+, the search supergiant’s blatant Facebook competitor, has already racked up an estimated 10 million users in its first week as a limited-membership service. Content providers should definitely work Google+ into their content strategy, but be aware that Google+ is both like Facebook, and different from it, in important ways. Keep the Same Format as Facebook… 

July 14, 2011 · Paul Lentz

Why SEO stories aren’t great for readers

Search engine optimization. SEO. Optimizing stories for search. That’s how they do it at the farm — the content farm. That’s where writers are paid a pittance to write to a formula based on a specific set of words and phrases that some program says people are searching for. It’s like the directions on a… 

July 8, 2011 · Mitch Lipka

How Blekko Underscores Search’s Shift To Human-Quality Content

When it comes to search engines, everyone but Google is the underdog. New search engine on the block Blekko.com is an underdog among underdogs, though it has been climbing steadily in popularity (a million users as of June, according to TechCrunch). Its mission, to “slash” spam, content farms, and malware has been resonating among the… 

July 1, 2011 · Shane Snow

7 Tips To Writing Shareable Content

The blogosphere is a huge garbage dump. There’s trash everywhere. Pieces of broken furniture, shards of sharp glass and rotting food dominate the landscape. But every once in a while, under a pile of waste, there’s a gem. And chances are, if it’s a good gem, it will be shared widely. Because everybody loves a… 

June 28, 2011 · Etan Berkowitz

Q&A: What do you wish you would have known when you started blogging?

I recently received an email from a student studying communication. She was assigned to ask an independent blogger his or her secrets to blogging success. She asked, “What does it take to be a successful blogger,” and, “What do you wish you would have known [when you started blogging]?” I thought I’d share my reply… 

June 20, 2011 · Shane Snow

The Most Awesome Content About Content This Week (June 17, 2011)

Why do companies start blogs, and then, as quickly as they started, stop updating them? In almost all cases, it has to do with a lack of planning. Developing a content strategy, setting clear goals, and creating an editorial calendar are all things that need to be done in order to get the most value… 

June 17, 2011 · Joe Coleman