Archive for content marketing with blogs

Better Business Blogs:
Correct Those Broken Links

business-blogsAre you keeping your business blog fresh? If you’re like me, and you’ve been blogging for a number of years, chances are some of your links may no longer work. This guest post, from Susan Boggs, offers tips for successful bloggers and blogs on how to find and correct broken links.

In a perfect world, we would always know exactly what the Big Search Engines want from us and our business blogs, always and without a doubt. We would engrave them into stone and follow them judiciously. Our blogs would rank high for our keywords, and life would be wonderful.

Ah, yes, nirvana.

Unfortunately, in this world we call the Internet, blogging is not always quite that simple. The good news?

Life is still wonderful. Read More→

3 Reasons Why SEO and Content
Marketing Fit Together

SEO-and-Content-MarketingA Note from Patsi: This week’s guest post is about SEO and content marketing and it’s really important. Why? Because if you write your own blog, you may think that quality content is all you need to get found online and attract clients. It’s not.

I don’t care how good your writing is or how important you are as a thought leader in your field. Your blog needs good Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. But don’t let that scare you. Here’s what you need to know, from guest author Derek Iwasiuk.

For a long time, search engine optimization was all about tricks and tactics. People used to do anything as long as their sites rank at the top and they get the much needed traffic. Some of the techniques that website owners used to get to the top were totally unethical causing outcries from various quarters. This, however, has completely changed thanks to the updates made to the major search engines. If you inquire from any SEO company, they will tell you that nowadays, it is all about content marketing. Here are some of the reasons why you should invest in lots of content so as to rank high in search results.

  1. Content marketing fulfills SEO’s demands

On its part, SEO issues demands. There are lots of things that you need in order to succeed in search engine optimization. Be it links or any other, you need to make sure that you use the ones that will actually make your site to rank high. Content marketing on the other hand fulfills those demands. It is what you use to make sure that there is enough for professional SEO services. It therefore goes without saying that at the end of the day, the two are just one. Read More→

Great Blog Content:
2 Reasons for Writing Stories

Great-blog-stories

Are you writing stories with feeling on your business blog? If your blog post doesn’t resonate emotionally, you can’t do a good job of building relationships, inspiring trust, and moving people into taking action.

As I mentioned in my last post, great blog content appeals to people who are both thinkers and feelers.  To do this, blog writers need to get real with readers – they need to step away from their anonymous masks and get emotional. If you don’t, readers won’t respond to you.  Read More→

Build a Product Funnel on Your Blog:
Make Your Content Marketing Profitable

FunnelAre you building a product funnel on your blog?

In my recent blog posts, I’ve been talking about ways to earn money blogging using two different methods:

  1. Sell products directly through your blog (or website)
  2. Sell products or services because of your blog, or indirectly

These are two key elements of a product funnel – a key internet marketing strategy that will help ensure that you are not leaving money on the table or missing opportunities to solidify the relationships your hard-earned content marketing efforts are creating. Read More→

Business Blogging: 4 Tips
PLUS 1 Great Video on Creativity

Business-bloggingBusiness blogging can be frustrating for professionals. Does this happen to you? You sit down to (finally!) write on your business blog, you’ve done a bunch of research, you’ve created lists, outlines and even saved a few great blog post drafts, but you haven’t actually published any of your content… There always seems to be one more thing to check before you pull the ‘publish’ trigger.

I talk to professionals all the time who are ‘blog publishing shy’. Perhaps the most crucial stage of business blogging is implementation: PUBLISH THE POST! In this series of blog posts, I’ve been sharing my tips on the four stages of writing a great blog post. It follows the same steps of any creative process:

Preparation => Incubation => Illumination => Implementation

Business blogging is creative but it also follows steps. If you want to write quality content that reflects the quality of your services as a professional then follow these four steps all the way through to implementation.  Creative blog posts are written by a process. Read More→

Business Blogging Time-Saving Tips for You (and Your Cat)

When it comes to business blogging, how do you save time and still get results? How do you make blog tasks so easy your cat could do it?

It’s the dog days of summer but around our house that expression isn’t acceptable. Doodles and Buster would have a cat fit. Here in Mexico we’re in the rainy season, when the heat of the Summer is tempered by the cool nightly rains. Which brings our year-round average temp to a mild 73.  Not bad when you’re a tennis enthusiast and enjoy time outdoors.  Which is why it’s even more important to me to save time when blogging.

Over the years I’ve purr-fected my blogging system. And as a thank-you to all my content marketing blog clients (shout out to all my new and renewing content subscribers who took advantage of our sale last week), I want to share it with you all. Plus I figure it will be good Kitty Karma – maybe it will even help keep the cats off Facebook. They want their own pages now… Read More→

SEO and Content Marketing: A Love Story

Once upon a time, SEO met up with Content Marketing, fell in love, and vowed to never separate, to always work together in harmony.

Anyone who’s been around the ‘Net a while understands a little about optimizing content so that the search engines can index it according to topic and relevance to readers. About ten years ago, someone decided to give a name to the type of marketing that occurs that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire and retain customers: Content Marketing. How do the two differ and how are they alike?

This week, I invited Jack Dawson of webfia.com. to share his insights on working with SEO and CM together instead of separately.

Where and How They Met

There are many techniques that make up internet marketing, two of which include search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing. SEO has been around for quite some time, more than a decade at least, while content marketing has only gained popularity in the last few years. Read More→

5 Key Elements for Your “About” Page:
How to Tell Your Story

About-Page-My-StoryWhen’s the last time you updated your bio on your About page on your blog or website?

Smart bloggers know that this is one of the most visited pages: People want to know who’s behind a business. Personalities count. Yet many blogs and sites have a standard resume written in the third person, boring as all get-out.

Certainly client lists are important. But so are you. An About page is an important content marketing opportunity. Tell your story, your real story. If you are the sole author of your blog, write it in the first person. Read More→

Secrets of Busy Bloggers:
4 Social Media Time Savers

Social Media BloggingMany of my readers are busy professionals who don’t have a lot of time for blogging or social media. But marketing is vital, especially if you’re growing a business, want to get found, get known, and get clients.

For those of you who have the bare minimum of time, and still want to get results, here are a few social media tips and tricks I’ve used. I must be doing something right: these tips have resulted in new clients directly from Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

1. Use social media.

Read More→

5 Best Business Blog Goals for 2015-
And 5 Steps to Get You There

Achieve the BestWhat goals have you identified for your blog and website for 2015? Have you created a map to help you reach your goals?

It’s true, I don’t believe in making new year’s resolutions.  But after 15+ years working with executive coaches and consultants, I know that having clearly defined goals and expectations for a business blog or website is critical to help you get found, get known, and get clients; it will improve how you show up on the Web.

I’ve found that many professionals are vague when it comes to setting their business blog goals. They haven’t clearly identified their expectations, or what they want their blog to do for their business. If you fall into that category, and you haven’t identified your goals (or you want to refine the goals you’ve set), consider this checklist: Read More→