Category: Curated Content

It’s not often that a rock star gets looped into a marketing blog. But in this case, there is common ground. One number in particular. 

55.

Get it?* If not, keep reading.

55% of people have made a word-of-mouth recommendation to someone else in the last 30 days. In fact, when asked to select just one source of information to rely upon when making purchases, half of all Americans would select online or offline word of mouth. However, the vast majority of businesses have no defined word of mouth strategy in place. That’s just nuts.

Be honest with yourself. How is word of mouth currently playing out for your business?

My customers/clients usually don’t talk about us at all.
My customers/clients usually talk about us in a negative way.
My customers/clients usually talk about us in a neutral way.
My customers/clients usually talk about us in a positive way
My customers/clients are true advocates, refer new customers, provide great reviews and recommendations, and convey exactly what we want them to say about us.

So, where is your company on that scale of 1-5? I’m willing to bet 55 tacos that most readers of this article cannot honestly score themselves a 5. Send me an email, and tell me your score.

Have you ever put off launching a project because you don’t have all your I’s dotted and all your T’s crossed? Then watch the Journey, Social Media Examiner’s episodic video documentary that shows you what really happens inside a growing business. Watch the Journey In episode 3, Michael Stelzner challenges his marketing team to launch […]

The post Plan or Act? The Journey, Season 2, Episode 3 appeared first on Social Media Examiner.

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Wondering how to optimize your marketing images for different social media platforms? Looking for a guide to help you make sure your image dimensions are correct? In this article, you’ll discover a guide to the optimal image sizes for nine of the top social media networks. #1: Facebook Image Sizes Facebook is a starting place […]

The post Social Media Image Sizes for 2018: A Guide for Marketers appeared first on Social Media Examiner.

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Scared.

Afraid.

Anxious.

Excited.

Inspired…

Emotions are an integral part of our everyday life. So if you have chosen the work as a content marketer you need to know how to discover these emotions, and uncover their raw ingredients. Embrace them, dig deeper and offer a way out the other side.

We are always trying to understand why some content goes viral and rises to the top – and some flops. Up until now we have focused on the content itself – optimizing it for search and sharing, then desperately hoping it will get some attention.

But what about your readers’ emotional needs? The sense of belonging, ego, self-expression and obligation. There are ways to “tap” into these emotions and they should be a part of every content marketing strategy.

You have about 2 seconds to get people’s attention – that’s your first couple of sentences. My hope, for example, is that you were drawn in by my first sentence and lured down the page. Now, the rest of my job is to engage you, to continue to feed your emotions, and move you along in two ways:

If the goal is increased brand awareness, relationship building, and sharing of valuable and practical information, then I am looking to compel and engage the … Read More

Posted by John.Michael123

Link building is probably one of the most challenging pieces of your SEO efforts. Add multiple clients to the mix, and managing the link outreach process gets even tricker. When you’re in the thick of several outreach campaigns, it’s hard to know where to focus your efforts and which tactics will bring you the most return on your time and resources.

Three common questions are critical to understand at any point in your link campaign:

Do you need more link prospects?
Do you need to revise your email templates?
Do you need to follow up with prospects?

Without a proven way to analyze these questions, your link building efforts won’t be as efficient as they could be.

We put together a Google Sheets template to help you better manage your link building campaigns. The beauty of this template is that it allows for customization to better fit your workflow. You’ll want to make a copy to get started with your own version.

Our link building workflow

We’ve been able to improve our efficiency via this template by following a simple workflow around acquiring new guest posts on industry-relevant websites. The first step is to actually go out and find prospects that could be potentially interested in a guest blog post. We will then record those opportunities into our template so that we can track our efforts and identify any area that isn’t performing well.

The next step is to make sure to update the status o… Read More