How to Think Up a Year's Worth of Blog Post Topics in an Hour Last November, I got my team in a room and asked them to do something that sounded nearly impossible: brainstorm a year's worth of blog topics in under an hour. That's an aggressive target -- I know -- but we needed enough titles to support the Blog Topic Generator's algorithm. So we all sat around the conference room table, writing blog ideas in a Google spreadsheet. Sounds like a fairytale, right? Well, it's certainly not a myth. You've already got the first part covered, so keep on reading to get the process we used to come up with those few hundred titles in under an hour. 1) Come up with your first topic. This step is probably the hardest of the bunch: coming up with your very first topic. First are your customers. There are lots of ways you can get blog ideas, but these are two of the most efficient and effective ways to get them. 2) Change the topic scope. Okay, so now you have one idea. The first way you iterate is by changing the topic from something broad to something narrow.
Mind Mapping Software - Create Mind Maps online How Often Should Companies Blog? [New Benchmark Data] "Blog early, blog often." In the inbound world, these are words to live by. After all, blogs help businesses attract new website visitors and convert them into leads. The question is, how often does a company need to blog? To help answer this question, we pulled some blogging data from HubSpot's 13,500+ customers. How Many Blog Posts Should You Publish Every Month? As you lay out your editorial calendar, you're thinking hard about your monthly traffic and leads goals -- and how many blog posts you'll need to publish to hit them. The Effect of Monthly Blog Posts on Traffic The charts below show the impact that the number of published blog posts per month has on inbound traffic -- overall, split up by company size, and then divided up by B2B and B2C companies. Overall As expected, we found that the more blog posts companies published per month, the more traffic they saw on their website. Company Size When you segment the above results by company size, the results get even more interesting.
Ecommerce blogging: five proven reasons why it should be part of your SEO strategy Should ecommerce businesses blog? That’s a question many ecommerce business owners find confusing; it’s easy to visualize the benefit a small business with a few products can get by blogging, but when you run an ecommerce store with hundreds or thousands of products, is there still any benefit to blogging? Apparently, there is. According to research by Seewhy, 99% of people won’t buy on their first visit to your site. There’s also a popular marketing axiom called ‘the rule of 7’. To top it all, there’s the issue with SEO. If you run an ecommerce store, blogging can still serve as a good way to give yourself a dramatic boost in search traffic and sales. Here are five proven ways to use blogging as a core part of your ecommerce SEO strategy: 1) Publish longer, more comprehensive content When you want to compete with major competitors who are often willing to spend millions of dollars on SEO to promote individual product and category pages, blogging just might be your saving grace. Conclusion
How Important is Content Length? Why Data-Driven SEO Trumps Guru Opinions - The serpIQ Blog serpIQ is back with more data that we’re excited to share with the SEO community. If you haven’t read our first post on domain age and rankings, make sure you check that out. We got some great feedback on that post and we’ve taken that into consideration for this post, which is number 2 of 5 in our “Why Data Driven SEO Trumps Guru Opinions” series. As we’re sure you know, SEO is an extremely fast-paced industry. We’re here to provide some hard data as a starting point for you. How Much Content do Ranking Pages Have? When it comes to content length, there are a lot of opinions as to what’s considered “good.” For all of these graphs, our content length data does not include any html, css, or javascript, but it does contain the text found in sidebars, which could inflate the data slightly compared to just looking at the main content area. As you can see, there is a drop in content length as we move from first to tenth position. Content Length by Domain Age CI of 25-50CI of 50-75CI of 75+
How to Find Out Your Content Marketing Goal and Mission In business, there is never a one size fits all solution. You always need to consider the specific needs of your business and identify key objectives to develop a solid plan. Bear in mind that, in content marketing, the bulk of your time will be spent in planning and developing a content strategy. In fact, you may spend more time planning than writing and distributing finished content. To learn more about the lengthy content development process, you can refer to the infographic below on the key steps in content development: It is true that most marketers and experienced bloggers are already aware of the key steps in content creation. Ask yourself; what does your brand stand for? If you, and everyone else in your organization, know the definite answers to both questions, then you probably already have an editorial statement. What is an Editorial Statement? Remember that marketing, online or offline, is essentially about communication; which can only exist between people. Things to Remember
How To Prove Content Marketing ROI For Your Business Content marketing has exploded in the last couple of years. The platforms to create new content, curate existing content, and publish all of it to the right channels have grown and matured. However, in spite of the exponentially higher volume of content that is being churned out by businesses today, the fact remains that the majority of these activities still cannot be directly tied to company bottom lines. Accountability and revenue attribution are the twin gaping holes in this mega-bucket of content that most businesses are racing to build. A report by Marketing Score showed that 6 out of the 10 lowest ranked marketing tools from an accountability perspective happened to be key elements of content marketing. Source So what gives? Attribute revenue to content marketing Revenue attribution is the final mile in the process of making content more accountable.2 With revenue attribution in place, you can clearly see and judge how each content asset performs. Create content that people enjoy.
What Can We Learn from 7 Awesome Corporate Blogs? A winning corporate blog can bring new traffic to your website and added attention to your company. According to one study, businesses that blog get an average of 55% more traffic on their websites than those who don’t. It adds value to new and existing customers, and can make you stand out from your competitors. But how, exactly, does a business go about creating a blog that their customers will actually read? Zappos.com CEO and COO Blog Zappos.com, the giant online shoe and apparel retailer, has a number of blogs. What sets this blog apart is the transparency it offers to Zappos.com customers. If the public sees you as honest and straightforward, then they’re more likely to do business with you. Zappos.com also has another blog that’s noteworthy: Zappos Insights. The Takeaway Transparency builds trust. The Facebook Blog The Facebook Blog is clearly targeted at existing users. The Facebook Blog can teach us two things. Lulu Lulu takes a different approach to their blog. Notion Ink Set Goals
20 Ways to Reward Repeat Visitors on Your Ecommerce Site Many ecommerce businesses neglect the importance of rewarding their repeat visitors while they strive to drive revenue, increase social mentions, and build a loyal following. That is a mistake. Great ecommerce sites reward their recurrent visitors. Visitors who repeatedly visit your site signal a level of connection with your brand, so a reward endears the brand to those visitors. Fortunately, there are no obstacles stopping you from taking the leap. Here are 20 actionable ways to reward frequent visitors so they feel appreciated: 1. A point-based loyalty program where frequent visitors earn points is a great way to reward visitor loyalty. Best Buy Canada keeps the process simple in its “Reward Zone” program. Tips Make it easy for visitors to determine the value of their points. 2. A live Q&A session will demonstrate your brand’s ability to actively collect input from frequent visitors and respond to their requests in real time. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.