Category: Digital Marketing

Marketers have been sold a dream: Collect more data, and you’ll get better insights to make smarter decisions. We all chased big data, embraced digital transformation, and invested in AI-powered

Content Marketing Institute Team The Content Marketing Institute team byline indicates this article reflects the collective work of the CMI team. CMI is a global marketing education and training organization dedicated

Want a good book to advance your content skills, inspire creativity, or grow your business acumen? Look no further. One of these 40 books recommended by the CMI community is

How many times have you rolled your eyes or screamed (silently) about an unnecessary or misguided request crossing your content marketing desk? You know what I’m talking about: Sales asks

It’s been a rough few months for marketers. For all the announcements on LinkedIn celebrating the landing of a new job, I see as many (or more) marketers increasingly asking

If your brand treats video like an extra in the background of your marketing strategy, it’s time to make it the star. Discover why, learn the trends for 2025, and

If you work in content marketing, you’ve experienced the “battle of the brains.” Your creative brain gets excited to develop your next innovative, engaging, and impactful content effort. But your

These days, brands championing a social cause or initiative must treat it as a serious commitment. Of course, it was never a good idea to take an ad hoc approach

I see one mistake derailing marketing strategy again and again: Setting up marketing teams as internal agencies that serve cross-functional “customers” in other departments. That’s a problem because it typically

Content Marketing Institute Team The Content Marketing Institute team byline indicates this article reflects the collective work of the CMI team. CMI is a global marketing education and training organization dedicated

Marketing goals often use soft, fuzzy language like “brand awareness,” “credibility,” and “education.” They’re nice things for the business, but they aren’t easy to measure, and worse, they don’t speak

Sound familiar? You stop writing after the intro to ponder what details to include. You need facts to support the solutions recommended in the content, but you don’t have them.

I meet regularly with a group of seasoned professionals to explore big ideas, emerging trends, and how we might anticipate what’s coming next in the business world. The insights and

Don’t launch a new agency or any brand before listening to advice from someone who’s done it and even written a book about building brands that break barriers.

Fashion shows function well as a marketing tool. Models walk down runways showcasing what the brand is selling. It’s a common-sense tactic. Yet, this marketing play doesn’t have to be

When someone lives with a health condition such as asthma, psoriasis, or bacterial infections, they’re not the only ones who are affected. Their family members — parents, spouses, siblings, children,

We’re living in an era obsessed with overachievement. Tech billionaires tout themselves as the sole architects of progress, preaching the virtues of moving fast and breaking things. Eager to emulate

Content Marketing Institute Team The Content Marketing Institute team byline indicates this article reflects the collective work of the CMI team. CMI is a global marketing education and training organization dedicated

Is it time to expand the definition of content marketing? In 2020, I posed that question. My argument was simple: Content marketing isn’t just about creating content for marketing —

Did you hear the canary chirping in the marketing coal mine? It got a little louder in the past month after Ahrefs released a report showing a 32% month-over-month drop

Remember 2019? We were all riding the Old Town Road with Lil Nas X while watching the slow-burn soap opera that was Brexit unfold across the pond. That was just

SEO isn’t dead. It just needs a fresher approach. In this video presentation, experts from TopRank Marketing reveal why traditional SEO still has a role and how marketers should embrace

“With great power comes great responsibility.” That’s what Uncle Ben told Peter Parker (aka Spiderman) in 1962. Let’s twist the phrase for our industry: “Great marketing comes from great responsibility.”

What was your favorite ad from the Super Bowl LIX? I couldn’t pick just one. As is true every year, I love how creative they all are. But OpenAI’s ad

Content Marketing Institute Team The Content Marketing Institute team byline indicates this article reflects the collective work of the CMI team. CMI is a global marketing education and training organization dedicated

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs are being cancelled by public institutions and private companies. But the end of formal DEI initiatives shouldn’t signal that your content and marketing should

Just when it seemed like the generative AI landscape was beginning to settle, DeepSeek stepped in and said, “Hold my beer.” Wall Street seems convinced that China’s generative AI entry

Take the lead on innovation and creation with your brand’s content and marketing. Learn how to get the buy-in and budget for innovative ideas with this advice from one marketing

Trendy content marketing formats and platforms can come and go. Today’s TikTok campaign is tomorrow’s “Remember when …?” But one format has stood the test of time — email newsletters.

Many brands line up with statements of “thoughts and prayers” after natural and human-made devastation, such as the recent California wildfires and hurricane flooding in western North Carolina. Interestingly, though,

One of the best motivational speeches I’ve heard came not from a business event or even a TED conference. It came from the Academy Awards stage. Matthew McConaughey’s three-minute acceptance

Content Marketing Institute Team The Content Marketing Institute team byline indicates this article reflects the collective work of the CMI team. CMI is a global marketing education and training organization dedicated

You have too many marketing tasks and responsibilities to do them the hard way. Your work is too critical to business success to let best practices slide and details fall

Confession time. Just before sitting down to write this article, I was working on a social calendar project for a new client. I turned to Google and asked: “What’s the

Visibility. Once upon a time, that word was the most common answer I heard when I asked marketing leaders what was wrong with their content operations. “We have limited visibility

Open a marketer’s treasure chest and you’ll see an abundance of data. How do you select the valuable gold among all the worthless pyrite? And how can AI help you

As the founder and CEO of The Joy Brigade, Shabnam Mogharabi counsels people to rebel with joy. She’s embraced the strategy herself, doing the research, getting brands to buy in,

I recently interviewed Marcus Collins, author of For the Culture: The Power Behind What We Buy, What We Do, and Who We Want To Be, for an episode of Live

To get everybody on the same page with your brand’s content marketing, you need an actual page. Your team — and everybody else involved in the process — needs to

People prefer the easiest route. When they search for information, that now means they turn to generative AI tools, like Gemini and ChatGPT, or even AI Overview in Google Search.

Have you seen that video of Mark Zuckerberg talking about the difference between Meta’s and Apple’s development approaches? For some reason, LinkedIn keeps serving me a clip from the September

Meta just learned the hard way that no one likes fake friends. Users quickly sniffed out the company’s AI-generated profiles with their awkward bios, wonky AI-generated photos, and deceptive backstories,

Brands generate original research to grow their recognition as thought leaders in their industries. But the buzz won’t materialize if the marketing team doesn’t promote the research. Whether you have

Content marketers have long had an identity crisis. In recent years, the crisis has grown with the ubiquity of content creators in the creator economy. In truth, you know who

Happy New Year! Here we are again. It’s the beginning of a new year — that magical time when your journaling app sends you a passive-aggressive reminder to “set your

I hope you are getting ready for a wonderful season of giving, and taking a pause from all things marketing and business. For the last — well, decade — I

When your content fires on all cylinders, the signs are obvious. Your audience searches for your content by name, eagerly engages with it, and spends time exploring your related assets.

Hashtag stuffing isn’t as tasty a dish as it once was. This month, Instagram ended its following hashtags feature. Users can no longer follow hashtags and have that content show

Earlier this year, everybody was all aflutter about the U.S. ban on TikTok. But when the ban moved into the courts, everybody moved on to something else. Well, the ban

Exciting destinations. Luxurious accommodations. Friction-free coordination. Memory-making experiences. For consumers, these are the things travel dreams are made of. For content marketers, empowering aspiring travelers to realize those dreams is

. As a marketer, you might ponder generative AI’s role in the industry and the outlook for marketing jobs. As a demand-gen marketer or a marketer to marketers, you may

“The future is already here — it’s just not evenly distributed yet.” That fantastic quote, usually attributed to author William Gibson, perfectly captures the state of generative AI and automation

This past couple of weeks, it wasn’t politics or U.S. Thanksgiving gatherings that dominated social media arguments. Instead, it was a car manufacturer. That’s right. Jaguar’s bold rebrand, including a

You’re underpaid for the marketing work you perform. That’s the sentiment of marketers surveyed for CMI’s 2025 Career Outlook: Content and Marketing Professionals (registration required). How much are marketers underpaid?

Sometimes, trends in content marketing last so long that they stop counting as trends and turn into truths. Here’s one: People need great content in their lives. Not OK content.

It hasn’t been an easy year, and I won’t be sad to say goodbye to 2024. I’m looking at 2025 as a complete reset and a time to focus on

You can access a wealth of marketing-related data — from web analytics and customer journey behavior to competitor analysis and product usage. However, if the data isn’t clean, you can’t

It’s Thanksgiving Day in the United States, when you try to leave work behind, put aside petty squabbles, and be present with the people you care about (at least until

At a conference last week, the CEO of a professional services firm asked me about some advice they’d received from a marketing consultant. The consultant urged the company to overhaul

On Nov. 6, the day after the U.S. elections, more than 115,000 users deactivated their accounts on X. That’s the most in a single day since the mercurial Elon Musk

Every year, the Content Marketing Institute asks the community to share their opinions on the best books in marketing (and for marketers). Often, the titles ring familiar. After all, many

New research suggests that manufacturing marketers — like a lot of other B2B marketers — only feel “average” about their content marketing. Sixty-seven percent of manufacturing marketers say their content

Predicting the death of anything is the easiest way to land in hot water. The second easiest is clinging to once-disruptive concepts after they, in turn, have been disrupted. For

What happens when search-related data shows your organization’s content isn’t delivering? You dig deeper into data. That’s what Brian Piper does as director of content strategy and assessment at the

Predictions for 2025 started fast and furious before the calendar flipped to November. But, as you’ve learned, marketing predictors are really bad at them. In 2023, virtual and augmented reality

Caspian Studios likes to shake things up. Take its Murder in HR podcast. Many agencies listen to client needs and then develop a program to match. But Caspian took the

You’ll never know what content works — and why — unless you regularly track and evaluate its metrics against your business goals. However, just as content performance doesn’t remain static,

How do you approach content optimization? It’s easy to get stuck working on one piece at a time — trying to make one thing rank higher, reach its conversion goal,

For the last 25 years, people have used internet search in a straightforward way. Input a keyword or phrase, and the search engine returns pages and pages of results that

This post was co-written by Monica Norton. We’ve all been there. Someone suggests a content marketing tactic or topic, and you instantly think, “That’s an awful idea. We can’t do

You likely associate influencer marketing with well-known B2C tactics. Engaging social media personalities to co-create content and promote products to their massive follower base is a proven way to drive

What’s your data strategy? Your first thought might be about first-party data collection, performance metrics, or metadata for targeted content. But that’s not what I’m getting at. Instead, I’m asking:

What are your brand’s “left ventricles” waiting for discovery? Seth Stephens-Davidowitz posed a variation of that question in his keynote presentation at the Marketing Analytics & Data Science Conference. Let

It looks like Semrush took notes on CMI’s advice that the best way to launch a content marketing platform is to acquire one. The search engine software provider acquired Third

A spark can ignite a creative fire. A spark can illuminate a moment. Last week, I witnessed glimmers of light building into full-on radiance on the faces of thousands of

Did Salesforce really need another content project? The company’s mega-successful Trailblazer program, launched way back in 2007 as IdeaExchange, had evolved into a global community (mainly Salesforce admins and developers)

In introducing our latest content marketing research, CMI’s Stephanie Stahl wrote: “While many [companies] find themselves simply treading water, a group of top performers has found a way to surge

This week, thousands of content marketers from all over the world invaded San Diego to celebrate the beloved practice, do lots of learning, and have a little fun, too. Yes,

Universally acknowledged truth: Good content serves as one of the most effective ways to attract and retain your target audience’s attention. Research-confirmed truth: Half of content produced goes unused in

The pandemic didn’t just change the B2B buying game; it flipped the whole table. That’s how Susan Gonzalez, director of marketing at the wholesale e-commerce platform RepSpark, describes the 2020s

As Content Marketing World 2024 kicks off today, I’m sharing my opening remarks on our beloved practice’s current state and future direction. Marketers are living in extraordinary times. Every day,

Does your marketing measurement and data have standards? What does that even mean? Well, it means you have a standard method for naming, storing, and tracking data across the organization,

“Let me tell you a story …” Those six simple words command attention. They create an expectation that an engagement-worthy experience is about to unfold. Thoughtfully produced podcasts and videos

When Mo Sherifdeen joined Travel Oregon 19 years ago, he was the first person hired to work on the website. His role as web manager involved uploading documents and images

Pretend it’s late 2024. Oh, wait, it is. How time flies. As you plan your marketing strategy for 2025, think about the team you’ll be part of or that you’ll

Fragmentation. It’s the best word to describe today’s landscape of entertainment and information consumption. Two years ago, user-generated content accounted for 39% of time spent on social media, according to

Building the ideal tech stack for content marketing remains a pie-in-the-sky dream for most marketers. So, we asked the experts presenting at Content Marketing World 2024 which tools should be

Tell me something, marketers. Are you satisfied with the state of B2B content marketing? According to 980 of you, the answer is likely “no,” given how much more you say

Like most people, I hate spending money on some things but love spending on others. For example, I’ve been known to overpay for hotels, restaurants, good wine, and good food

My neighbor was a math professor at a college in San Francisco. He once told me: “The longest distance between two points travels through a committee.” His quote applies well

Do you remember CliffsNotes? The iconic yellow-and-black books summarized all manner of literary works. They digested the plot and detailed the themes and symbolism. CliffsNotes referred to them as “study

Reasons abound when you don’t want to do something: “I haven’t the time.” “The team is just me.” “Our audience needs new content.” But are those the real reasons? Or

Almost three years ago, Micky Onvural made a surprising move. She left her role as CEO of a B2C fashion brand, Bonobos, to become CMO of TIAA, a century-old B2B

Is a career path in marketing even a thing anymore? As we approach Content Marketing World 2024, I’m struck by how much has changed in just 12 months. In my

An update to terms of service isn’t usually a headline-making event, even at the biggest brands. Yet, this past year tells a different story. In June, Adobe got into hot

In the 20th century, marketers relied on coupons, customers’ anecdotal feedback, and mainstream media subscriber numbers to understand their reach and impact. It was an educated guessing game at best

This story may sound familiar. A small team writes and publishes content for a corporate blog. The company doesn’t know what, if any, impact the content has on visitors. The

For any successful journey, you need to know where you are, where you want to be, and what paths you can take to get there. Much like traveling in a

“Isn’t it obvious?” How many times have you asked this question? How many times have you heard it asked? In a work setting, this phrase often comes out when you

“By 2025, data stories will be the most widespread way of consuming analytics.” That prediction from Gartner a few years ago was geared toward CFOs, but it applies perfectly to

The world seems chockablock with research and data about how AI is now — and in the future — having an impact on the careers of marketers and creators. Is

Should you still invest in paid social media promotion and advertising for your brand? When I posed the question to experts in marketing, the responses were almost unanimous: “Yes, but

What’s the outlook (and current reality) for marketing jobs involving content these days?   Our 2025 Career Outlook for Content and Marketing research found a mix of good and less-than-great

It’s been a challenging year for most groups within the marketing realm. But marketers who spend their efforts at the earliest parts of the customer journey have arguably had it

Artificial intelligence manifests dueling perspectives. Some marketers are uncertain how to feel about this new technology. Some see the opportunities for next-generation marketing. It’s a lot to think about, so

No marketer has ever said their content distribution budget is too big. That’s why brands of all sizes eagerly consider free and low-cost ideas. So, what are the best no-

Have you heard? Listener-friendly content formats like podcasts, audiobooks, and sound snippets enhance the emotional appeal of your stories and strengthen marketing performance. Think about it. How often do you

Does trust begin with the story or the storyteller? I’d argue they should be on equal footing at the start. For example, I can shout out loud in a quiet

Marketers know that data-driven personalization presents a huge opportunity and a meaningful way to deliver on customer expectations. Research backs up that common sense. In one recent study, 89% of

Are you ready for “advergaming”? Or is it ad gamification? Gamified advertising? Whatever the word or phrase, interactive advertising is here. Big brands like Disney, Amazon, and even tech company

Everybody loves videos. In the most recent CMI research, 84% of marketers say they use videos — that’s an 11% jump over the previous year. Yet executives, managers, and others

Your content isn’t polished until you make it accessible to all. Google regularly introduces new accessibility features and updates to enhance the accessibility of digital content. However, marketers shouldn’t just

Does gating content make sense in 2024? In B2B content marketing, tension typically arises between marketing and sales teams over how much (if any) content should be gated. How much

Are you ready for AI-assisted search paid advertising? Whew … a lot of buzzwords in that one question. That’s the concept pitched by Perplexity, a search-focused generative AI platform. Its

Email presents a marketing benefit unavailable on any social media channel: Your brand can show up directly in your audience’s inboxes whenever you want. But to gain email’s true advantage,

When you hire architects to design a house, they don’t just give the interior and exterior drawings to the construction crew and call the project complete. To ensure that the

We have an update on the Snoop Dogg viral ad from earlier this year. Fresh off his Olympic hosting duties, Snoop Dogg has reunited with Solo Brands for a new

Most brands understand what it takes to deliver a satisfying content experience — or think they do. But what your brand believes will compel engagement may not align with what works for

Strategy consultants and agencies often get a bad rap. Sometimes they deserve it. But sometimes they don’t. The cliché (and some stereotypes exist for a reason) is that consultants and

Online reviews are a gold mine for marketers, and fortunately for you, the gold keeps growing. Just four years ago, the volume of online reviews surged 87% year over year,

In a crowded marketplace, influencer marketing ranks as an effective strategy for brands to reach new audiences. Yet, many marketers, whether in B2B or B2C, still equate influencer marketing with

You don’t just create content for the sake of the audience. You’re a marketer. You create content to ultimately drive profitable customer action. (It’s right in the definition, after all.)

Does every “new” show, series, and film you watch these days seem like something you’ve seen before? You’re not experiencing déjà vu, and Hollywood (probably) isn’t out of ideas. You’re

“Success is never owned. Success is only rented, and the rent is due every day.” That quote from Rory Vaden’s book Take the Stairs always struck me as a little

Shocking news this week. A U.S. court found Google, that tiny little Northern California company that provides search, advertising, and other online services, to be a monopoly. Yes, a monopoly.

Branded content is among the most misunderstood of all content tactics. While it’s a distinct approach, it’s easy to confuse it with other paid campaign tactics like native advertising, influencer

Have you heard any of the countless remixes of New Order’s instant classic Blue Monday? Each one reimagines the synth-laden ’80s staple, a derivative of the original work, yet brings

I’ve seen several articles and social media posts recently about why modern content marketing needs a “beyond the website” strategy. Here’s the gist of these arguments: With the decade-long slide

The CEO asks the company’s data scientist if the marketing strategy should incorporate generative AI and large language models. The data scientist responds: “The epiphany of large language models, distinguished

Marketing plasters the Olympics. In the Parade of Athletes, at every event venue, and during every media opportunity, the competitors generally wear the branded apparel of their country’s sponsor. Unless,

You learn the 2025 budget has room to add a new role to your content and marketing team, and you get to decide what that will be. Would you add

Everybody expects content about refrigeration products to be boring. That’s why the marketing team at Heatcraft Refrigeration Products wanted to flip the script in B2B marketing. The division of Lennox

Thanks to AI, any marketer can quickly create a blog post, article, or other type of content in minutes. But whether that content will resonate with your audience is another

Do you remember when your whole family went to the same doctor? Believe it or not, that wasn’t uncommon not so long ago. That one doctor was the go-to resource

A huge leader dropped out of a major campaign this week. Oh, you thought we meant that national race in the United States? No, that’s news, but this is news

A dozen applications arrived shortly after the posting for a copywriter on the content marketing team at The TemPositions Group of Companies went live. Walter Prystowsky, director of marketing, says

Original research creates a unique differentiator in your content marketing program, but not everyone or any AI tool can do it successfully. Before you ever pose a question, you must

We’re headed down the wrong road with generative AI. Over the last few months, I’ve been struck by the messages from major gen AI solution providers. Unfortunately, those messages feed

Optimal day: Friday Optimal topics: Content marketing, SEO Start date: Upcoming Friday Frequency: Every other Friday Of course, you don’t need to follow ChatGPT’s suggestions exactly. However, I’m fascinated that

Do you have a share of model? We don’t mean like a super model or stock share. We’re talking about your brand’s share of answers in the large learning models

Generative AI prompts a lot of reactions from content marketers. Everybody seems to have an opinion — or more than one — on the effect of this widely accessible and

My wife had already fed our dog. Undeterred, the dog sat by her bowl with an innocent yet hungry look. I fell for it hook, line, and sinker and gave

Don’t you sometimes wish you could redo all that content created years ago?  I go back to things I wrote half a dozen years ago and think, “Sheesh, that didn’t

You have 173 days left to reach your marketing goals this year. Well, let’s be honest. Nobody really works or does anything after Dec. 20. And if we’re really honest,

Ali Orlando Wert has led multiple content teams at high-growth companies fueled by acquisition. Although these teams are often pieced together from multiple acquired companies, they must operate as one.

Consumers really like short-form content. Billions watch TikTok videos, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels every month. But it isn’t just consumers who like short content. Google, YouTube, social media platforms,

Let’s talk about SEO. More than a month after a source gave thousands of pages of internal Google documentation to SparkToro co-founder Rand Fishkin, the importance of this leak is

Marketers should stop using attribution models and return to a 1985–like measurement model if they want their brands to succeed in 2024 and beyond. “Attribution is fully broken these days,

Ask a question; get an answer. Ask the next question; get the next answer. Repeat until done. That’s the basic formula of any interview. But making an interview great requires

I had two interesting discussions with marketing leaders recently. Both revolved around the same question: “Where do we start?” One told me she’d road-mapped an entirely new content operation for

How are things for marketing agencies? Not as great as last year, according to Ad Age’s Agency Report 2024 (subscription required). In 2023, total revenue for the 30 biggest agency

Social media offers a volatile space for marketing. The rules of engagement vary across platforms, as do the audiences and opportunities for brands. The platforms’ popularity ebbs and flows while

Stuart Butler is a trained rocket scientist turned content marketing rock star. Though the career as a rocket scientist didn’t stick, he applied what he learned to a 20-plus-year career

A long time ago (so long ago that Nickelback still had hits), my marketing leader would ask me what value my brand-building programs added to the business. My answer to

We didn’t get to the south of France this week, but we’ve been talking about Cannes Lions. At the International Festival of Creativity, the most interesting thing happened. The early

Brands’ words and actions — including yours — matter. As politics, health care, and other cultural topics become more polarized, being authentic about your values and causes can build audience

A mentor of mine used to drill the following into my head: “You are not your target market.” He meant that it doesn’t matter if you think the headline is

When is your content, our content? In the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Jeff Spicoli (Sean Penn) has a pizza delivered to his history class taught by Mr. Hand

Two brains are better than one. Embracing the machine brain of technology as a partner with the human brains of content marketers lets you do things for your audience and

Time for a quiz. Do people trust: Non-governmental organizations (NGO)? Government? Media? If you answered no, no, and no, you would be right. According to the 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer

I’ve heard about more organizations kick-starting their content marketing strategy lately. That’s a welcome change from the past year when teams hunkered down to figure out generative AI and all

Does Pride Month seem quieter this year? No big controversies stand out like last year, but no creative campaigns — so far — stand out either. So, what’s going on

A perplexing irony exists in content marketing. Though most content is static, interactive content usually delivers better results. Interactive content saw 52.6% more engagement than static content, according to an

Audience building is one of the hottest topics in marketing today. That’s why you hear so many software vendors claim their product will help you build, engage, measure, and convert

Depending on your age, you’ve heard of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate. Younger people may recall the Edward Snowden revelation or Wikileaks and Julian Assange. More recently, the Panama Papers

Headlines are the workhorses of content. When they work well, they pull readers into your articles, e-books, podcasts, etc. When they don’t work, they keep audiences away from even the

A cacophony of brand voices hums in discord across your content spectrum. Getting them to sing together presents a challenge for even the most experienced content marketing professional. But a

You’d think that a new company with the resources of OpenAI would have a straightforward path to building trust. They had no legacy brand problems to unwind, no historical scandals

When is your audience NOT your end customer? If you’re a B2B marketer, you know the answer. Your job requires engaging and winning over distributors, resellers, retail outlets, brokers, and

More content marketers should act like museum curators. Museum curators pick an exhibit theme, carefully select the artifacts, and organize them into a story that visitors will want to consume.

You’ve heard the expression, “Work smarter, not harder.” Content marketing teams would do well to adopt that philosophy. Hard work alone can’t solve the struggle to meet the demands for

Did you follow the Apple iPad Pro content debacle? Here’s a quick recap. A recent online ad for the new iPad Pro showed a large hydraulic press slowly crushing various

OpenAI and Google made waves in the world of artificial intelligence this week. In a studio set seemingly from the 1970s Merv Griffin Show, OpenAI brought the “magic” to improve

Wouldn’t it be great if the content your brand invests so much time and resources in could earn attention from the media? More people would see your content, and your

  Quality content can get your web pages ranking higher in Google search results. But contextual links can help, too. Google says the inclusion of relevant, high-quality links signals the

What the heck should you do with social media in marketing these days? Content and marketing teams have been so wrapped around the AI axle for the last 18 months

An old saying goes that marketers only worry about two things — the logo and the Pantone color. Well, the entry of digital technology 25 years ago certainly changed all

Content marketing teams rarely talk about efficiency. You frequently discuss quality, conversions, and brand alignment. Your primary concerns center around the awesomeness of what you do and the results of

Your lack of social media guidelines could discourage employees from becoming brand advocates and even applicants from joining your company. I speak from personal experience. When I first joined LinkedIn,

We should rename generative AI. I suggest calling it “expressional AI.” The dictionary defines “generative” as “having the ability to produce, originate, or reproduce something.” That’s an inaccurate description of

In the immortal words of Britney Spears, “Oops, they did it again.” No, we’re not talking about the US government approving a TikTok divestiture.  It’s possible, but so remote that

If only you could write faster … The deadline pressure would lessen. The work volume wouldn’t overwhelm. The headache assignment would go away more quickly. And generative AI only amplifies

Every editor knows what it feels like to sit exasperated in front of the computer, screaming internally, “It would have been easier if I’d done it myself.” If your role

There’s something in the air. In the past week, I’ve been asked more questions about how to measure content marketing than I have in two years. So, let me welcome

Tell us you don’t know anything about marketing without telling us you don’t know anything about marketing. Last week, multibillionaire and marketing genius Elon Musk fired the newly formed content

With so many nuances to content, from distribution to format to the buyer’s journey, you must take a drill-down approach to your analytics. Assess performance from a bird’s eye view

Content creation acts as the heart of effective content marketing. And, as a skilled creative practitioner, you pour your heart into your work every day. It also takes a sharp

Change fatigue. It’s a thing. My good friend and amazing consultant Jenny Magic wrote a whole book on the topic. Undeniably, fewer businesses have worked on innovative or incremental marketing

To use AI or not to use AI, that is the question. Let’s hope things work out better for you than they did for Shakespeare’s mad Danish prince with daddy

I have a tough time putting aside my editor’s brain. Editors and good writers know what I’m talking about. It’s the hazard of the job. Sometimes, I marvel at an

Are you motivating your audience to take action? How do you know which creative assets compel your audience to act? Understanding how your audience interacts with your creative is crucial

Do you play golf? I don’t, but I’m intrigued by one thing: The goal of golf is to play the least amount of golf. Think about it. The winner is

Google + HubSpot. Is it a thing? This week, a flurry of news came down about Google’s consideration of purchasing HubSpot. The prospect dismayed some. It delighted others. But is

Creating content gets a lot of attention. But it can’t get an audience without a well-executed content publishing process. Content production requires systems and easily repeatable processes to get the

A massive change is coming to search. As Google experiments with AI in its standard search results and its Search Generative Experience (SGE), marketers must understand how to adapt their

Feeling stuck with generative AI? Here’s a way to get unstuck. I’d like to ask you to think about two questions. First, did you see the new movie Ghostbusters: Frozen

What’s really going on with generative AI and marketing? We wanted to know, so we went straight to the source and asked. No surprise, generative AI said a lot is

As a kid, you probably learned the phrase, knowledge is power. As a marketer, you prove its validity every day through your content that educates, informs, and inspires your audience.

Just as LeBron James has dominated NBA courts and conversation, Google has dominated search and content conversations since the turn of this century. But LeBron isn’t the only player in