When people talk to me about my content marketing work, I make one thing very clear: I don’t know how to make things go viral. Some people —like Jonah Peretti from Buzzfeed—are skilled at that, but I’m not. I’d rather focus on singles, doubles, and solid hits rather than striking out trying to get a…
My newsletter subscribers got this first! Sign up here for free. Okay, this post is inspired by John Bonini’s recent LinkedIn post. He talks about evaluating writers, which I’m not as interested in. I’m mostly interested in this: “The best writers are reporters, folks. Start screening for it.” That’s a good jumping off point, because the conversation…
Intro Keyword research? New topics to write about? The two blend together for me. One leads into the other and then back again. At least that’s how I work. Below are a few of the keyword research techniques I use. Sometimes these will match up perfectly with your familiar keyword tools. Other times (like my…
One thing I’ve been incorporating more into my briefs are questions. Turning to the People Also Ask (PAA) questions within Google can give you a great headstart on creating your briefs and more insights into what people are searching for. You are probably familiar with PAA questions even if they don’t show up on all…
Reset your expectations about what your content should do. You need: More leads from search. And social. And email. You’ll take any lead from anywhere. I know that desperation mode. How do you find the way out? Spray and Pray: Please Let This Be The One When you’re that scattered, you’re hoping that anything and…
If you’re in content marketing, you must be familiar with Hubspot. They basically defined “inbound marketing” in the 2010s. They relentlessly beat the drum about awareness, consideration, and decision content. The playbook was this: the “writer” on the marketing team would go through Hubspot Academy to learn how to write content to address different parts…
