I hate to admit this out loud, but I know only a fraction about content marketing for the web.

I learned this flaw last night, as I watched the webinar Andy Crestodina is doing for us on Thursday – Build the Perfect Web Marketing Storm.

He talks about five weather systems in building the perfect storm: Blogging, email marketing, search engine optimization, social promotion, and writing.

Before I watched it, I went through that list and thought, “Surely I have all of this down, right?”

WRONG!

I also learned I’ve just been lucky with Spin Sucks and SmartTalk, but that I really could be much more strategic and smart about all of it and, perhaps, drive even more traffic.

He begins with a content marketing template. As I watched him explain it, I thought, “Come on. You don’t really use this for every piece of content you write, do you?”

And then he showed why he does. And, I’m pretty sure it works the way he demonstrates. Continue Reading »

Today’s guest post is written by Kristine Simpson. 

It all started with Inside PR, a 15-minute discussion about PR, social media, and communications and how they intersect and on occasions diverge, hosted by Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman, and Joseph Thornley.

And now I have become an advocate of the podcast.

As the producer of Inside PR, I have seen what a podcast can do to build your brand and relationships with your audience.

Here are just a few reasons why I love podcasting, and why you should love it too. Continue Reading »

Today’s guest post is written by Andy Crestodina. 

I’m a capitalist, so I love the concept of competition.

I’m in a very “competitive” industry, but I’ve often said I don’t really have competitors.

What I mean is everyone is a potential partner. If you think you’re competing with someone, you just don’t know them well enough yet.

I recently realized many of the people who agree with this philosophy are also doing content marketing.

I began to wonder, do content marketers compete?  

My answer is no.

Why not just ignore the competition?

Or better yet, why not collaborate with them? Continue Reading »

Today’s guest post is written by Lindsay Bell.

“We want a story that starts out with an earthquake and works its way up to a climax.”  - Samuel Goldwyn

If you missed it a few weeks ago, the New York Times wrote a piece about redefining public relations.

You see, the last time PR was defined was in 1982. Yes, 30 years ago.

And, in the last five years, our industry has completely been turned on its head.

All of the journalists we spent our entire careers building relationships with were suddenly unemployed.

Companies began to rush to figure out how to make money with the newest and shiniest penny. Continue Reading »

Earlier this month, I conducted a workshop for a small group of business leaders.

It’s one of my most favorite things to do because the groups are typically 20-25 people so we can really dig into their business strategies, look at their web properties, and diagnose a few things that can be changed quickly for immediate success.

During this particular session, I put a slide up on the screen that had the following four content ideas (thanks to Marcus Sheridan for a couple of these ideas): Questions people ask, challenges/issues, versus, or pricing. Continue Reading »

Today’s guest post is written by Lisa Gerber. 

Last night, I asked my husband what I should blog about this morning.

He said, “Blog about what to do when you don’t have anything to blog about.”

Me: “Can’t, I’ve already done that.”

It’s the wild card. The “I can’t think of anything to write about, so I’ll write about the fact that I don’t have anything to write about.” It happens to the best of us. You get to use it once.

So what do you do the second time it happens?  Just start typing, baby! Go with the stream of thought, and return to the top and edit. Continue Reading »

This post is written by Lisa Gerber.

I’m fairly convinced men can’t multi-task, unless you are Jay Baer and you have a treadmill desk. But it’s important to think about your content strategy from a multi-use perspective.

Remember the Nautilus workouts at the gym? Each exercise worked one muscle or one muscle group. It was the latest and greatest, and you had to do three sets of 15 bicep curls until your bicep failed.

Big Yawn.

Now, we do bicep curls while balanced on one foot, maybe on something unstable, working the core, the balance, AND the bicep. That is my kind of exercise. It is more interesting, but it also makes the workout far more effective, in a shorter time.

Are you working your content as effectively? Does it accomplish more than one task for you? Continue Reading »

It’s Facebook question of the week time (clap, clap, clap)!

The question, this week, comes from Rachael Seda.

She asks, “Do you think selling through free content is the new way of the world or will it change in the future?”

It’s a pretty interesting question and I hope I answered it correctly. I did not answer if content will always be free, but whether or not it’s the way to generate leads and new business. Continue Reading »

A couple of weeks ago, Marcus Sheridan hosted his second webinar for Spin Sucks Pro. It was a follow-up to his first webinar on creating content for pull PR and marketing.

As is typical of anything Marcus does, the webinar was really good. He talked about how to force feed prospects your content so, by the time you meet with them, they’re ready to buy from you.

For instance, when a new business prospect calls us, we now send them three or four links to this blog or our website. The links include our pricing page (under development), boutique vs. large agency, and then content specific to their business needs (i.e. blogger relations, inbound marketing, planning, etc.). Continue Reading »