The better question is: “What makes your website successful?” See, you could define “a great website” a variety of ways. Simply stated, a great website inspires the visitor to take action. That’s success, right? It follows then that you can only deem your website successful when you know what you want its visitors to do….
David Ogilvy famously wrote, “On the average, five times as many people read the headlines as read the body copy.” He wrote that in 1983 and was referring to print advertising. Ogilvy loosely attributed the statement to various research entities, tests and his own observation. I’m not saying he was wrong, but I continue to…
SEO is an intoxicating topic for us for digital marketers. The rewards of mastering organic search are immense. But trying to keep up with the relentless beast called Google, well, that’s bound to make your head spin. Sobering reminders of how trying it can be to stay current on how search works are often presented…
Building your personal brand? You need a website. Here’s your guide to making it great. Your personal brand website is your home on the web, the hub of the content you create and a destination for every member of the network you’re building to power your career. “But wait,” you might say, “I have a…
The benefits of content marketing can be enormous. However, all too often, new entrants make the mistake of considering content marketing some form of free advertising. Then they discover the error of their ways. (1) It’s not advertising and (2) it’s not free. Let’s put these myths to bed. You see, publishing a blog, creating…
Mastering one type of marketing content is a bitch. Mastering 20? Hmm. Words escape me (and I don’t believe that’s ever happened). Okay, I suppose I’m not proposing your marketing content must include 20, or 10, or even 5 different types—certainly not from the get-go. But I am proposing you select a few and get…
In this episode, Barry and Andy sift through the many results from Orbit Media’s 4th Annual Business Blogging Survey and emphasize the practices that produce the strongest results. By the way, stay tuned: results from the 2018 survey are coming soon.
In recent years I’ve discovered a fair amount of pushback from brands regarding how they value social sharing, an obvious form of word of mouth. Inexplicably, the idea of content sharing gets a ho-hum reaction. I gather responses such as: Social media takes too much time. My response: Yes, social media takes time. Everything takes…
In this (longer than usual) episode, Barry and Andy conduct a crash course on the common SEO mistakes that are probably robbing you of opportunities to earn high search rankings for your content and web pages.
We talk a lot about artificial intelligence in marketing. The term “artificial stupidity” hasn’t yet caught on and therefore has no definition. Allow me to be the first to offer one. ar·ti·fi·cial stu·pid·i·ty noun trusting artificial intelligence to perform tasks it’s incapable of Artificial stupidity is real. There’s even demand for it. Let me tell…