Month: December 2016

Wistia: Cost, Competitors, Community, & More [VIDEO & PODCAST] One Last Tool

Thanks for having me on the show. So I am on the customer happiness team at Wistia. One of the things I am focusing on right now is building our voice of the customer program. That’s aggregating all the customer feedback …
The post Wistia: Cost, Competitors, Community, & More [VIDEO & PODCAST] One Last Tool appeared first on The Sales Lion by Marcus Sheridan.

Read more...

The Difference Between Cheap and Good

You’ve probably noticed how much cheap marketing and writing advice is out there. So many hypey “hacks” … so few results.
We’re much more into the long game. It takes time and energy to produce good content, which is why we like solid, proven strategies that are actually worth your time.
This week, we have some deep dives for you.
On Monday, Beth Hayden shared some thoughts on promoting your content to improve your SEO. (Like all good SEO recommendations, content promotion isn’t just for search engines — its most important function is to find more humans who would love to read, watch, or listen to your content.)
On Tuesday, Aaron Orendorff wrote about one of our favorite things — evergreen content. Instead of trying to chase news (along with thousands of other sites in your topic), with evergreen content, you develop a thoughtful, compelling angle on a subject and put in the extra work that lifts it above the usual noise. Aaron gives 20 ideas you can use to shape content that will work for the long haul.
I have a suggestion for you: Take Aaron’s list of 20, pick the ones that resonate with you, and get one onto your calendar for each month of 2017. They won’t be 12 easy posts to write … but if you put real effort into them, they’ll bring genuine, long-lasting authority to your site.
On Wednesday, I pulled together some of my favorite Copyblogger posts from 2016, with a few words

Original Source

The Best of Copyblogger: 2016 Edition

The year of the rollercoaster is nearly finished, and, as we usually do around this time, I wanted to pull together some of my favorite posts for you.
This collection of posts (and a single podcast) is a celebration of the writers who worked hard every week to teach, inspire, and entertain us — and it’s also a bit of a manifesto for what we want 2017 to be.
Our vision for 2017 is:

The year of the individual voice
The year of community
The year of the real, human writer

Here are some of my favorite Copyblogger posts from 2016, starting with just one podcast episode …
The Return of the Blog
Brian Clark wrapped up the Unemployable podcast for 2016 joined by Darren Rowse, our old, dear friend and someone who epitomizes ethical, human-focused authority.
Darren and Brian talk about how “business blogging” became “content marketing,” about what we might have lost along the way, and about how to get that back again:
Blogging is Back, with Darren Rowse
Paying the bills, bills, bills
Copyblogger has always been a site for writers, and we hold a special place in our hearts for the freelancer — the early pioneers of the “gig economy,” who live on that fascinating edge where stress turns into freedom.
Here’s just a small sampling of posts we ran this year on how to make a better living creating words.
If you want to generate some business with your content, first you have to generate some traffic:
5 Ways to Get More Traffic with

Original Source

20 Types of Evergreen Content that Produce Lasting Results for Your Business

I’m sure you’ve heard this stat: more than two million blog posts go live every single day.
And that’s just talking about blogs. You don’t even want to start contemplating total online content including emails, landing pages, product pages, podcasts, and social media.
Standing out in the deluge is harder than ever. Even for established publishers it’s tough. For beginners … it’s a nightmare.
So, what’s the solution?
While there is no magic bullet for content marketers, there is one type of content that can cut through the noise and deliver long-term results.
It’s called evergreen content.
What is evergreen content?
Evergreen content — like the name implies — is timeless.
These special resources are in-depth examinations of a problem, solution, trend, or topic. They can help your audience find tons of information on a subject that interests them, which adds value to your blog.
For example, Copyblogger used their original evergreen content to create a content library that produced historic results for the site. Visitors can register for a free My Copyblogger membership to get easy access to all of these materials.
Creating evergreen content does require additional time and money, but it’s worth those investments … if you want to rank higher in search engines, drive traffic for years, and help your audience find exactly what they need.
So, do you want to discover what types of evergreen content you could create — with more examples detailing exactly what success looks like?
Well, that’s what this post contains: 20

Original Source

Professional Podcasting Tips for Pristine Production (and Hosting Hacks)

What are Jonny’s “4 Ds of Pristine Production?” You’ll find out in this week’s episode of The Showrunner.
We begin this episode by discussing the how and the what of podcasting — and more importantly, which one we place a greater emphasis on. (You probably won’t be surprised by our answers.)
Then we dive into Jonny’s 4 Ds, which cover:

The type of mic you should choose
How to hack your room to get better sound
Why preparation is king
And thoughts on delegation … which is a good thing, just not too soon

And then Jerod adds a few Ds of his own.
Listen, learn, enjoy …
Listen to this Episode Now
The post Professional Podcasting Tips for Pristine Production (and Hosting Hacks) appeared first on Copyblogger.

Original Source

4 Creative (and Aboveboard) Ways to Improve Your Search Engine Rankings

Promoting your content has clear short-term benefits — like attracting new readers, social shares, and comments.
But did you know it’s also a critical part of your search engine optimization strategy?
Even the best on-page SEO efforts don’t work as well if no one links to your site, so one of your biggest jobs is spreading the word out about your content.
Think of it this way:
You’ve got to attract incoming links to rank well in search engines, and no one is going to link to you if they don’t know you exist.
In this post, we’ll talk about why content promotion is important for SEO and how to create your own content promotion system.
Why is content promotion important for SEO?
After you publish a piece of content, your next goal is to get people to engage with that content.
When people like your content, they’ll share it on social media and link to it from their sites, which sends search engines a “thumbs-up” signal.
That signal says, “This is high-quality content,” and you want as many of those votes as possible.
People share content from sites they know and trust, and they often visit those sites from their favorite social media platforms and their inboxes — so that’s exactly where you want to show up.
Not sure how to get started? Try these four techniques:
1. Reach out to your network
While I wouldn’t recommend emailing bloggers and editors you don’t already have relationships with, don’t forget about

Original Source

Copyblogger’s Holiday Buffet Edition

You know how holiday buffets are … you take a little bit of cheese, and then another kind of cheese, and then four more kinds of cheese, then squeeze six desserts onto the plate, and finally you take a tiny square of Jell-O because it’s basically a vegetable?
No? Just me?
ANYWAY. This week we have a little buffet assortment for you … without the Jell-O vegetables.
On Monday, Sean Jackson and Jessica Frick were nice enough to host me on the Members Only podcast, where we talked about the days when I launched my first membership community. We laughed a lot and had a great conversation about the value of just plain moving forward, even if you’re not 100 percent sure where the path will take you.
Over on The Showrunner, Jerod Morris and Jonny Nastor dug deep into creating systems for your podcast (or any other aspect of your content or business, actually). Even if you’re not a podcaster, I think you’ll find this one useful.
Monday, I also had fun sharing some of my favorite bits of bad writing advice, sourced from the community (hey, that’s you!) and our editorial team — with some suggestions for what you might try instead.
On Tuesday, we saw a classic Brian Clark post about why education works so well when we’re trying to persuade … and how to structure your content to make it easy for your reader to say “Yes.”
And don’t miss Brian’s new conversation with Darren

Original Source

Blogging is Back, with Darren Rowse

In the beginning, there was blogging. And for businesses looking to build an audience that helped grow the bottom line, it was good.
In fact, many of the leaders in the digital marketing space started as blogs and evolved into multi-million dollar businesses. I personally have immense gratitude for what Rainmaker Digital has been able to achieve, and it all traces back to the early Copyblogger audience.
Then, around 2008, “business blogging” gave way to the term “content marketing.” Eight years later, as we wind up 2016, we’re drowning in content, and there’s no mistaking that much of it is just poorly disguised traditional marketing.
Something seems to have gotten lost along the way. The original business blogs provided valuable content, sure … but that content was delivered with perhaps the more important ingredient — a relatable and reliable human voice.
To be clear, blogging never went away. But perhaps it’s time to go back to the roots of business blogging to rediscover the foundational aspect of content that actually works as marketing, even though it doesn’t “feel” like marketing.
Tune in to listen to my conversation with the great Darren Rowse of ProBlogger. You’ll hear how the entire content marketing movement truly began, where blogging is going, and why we all need to first return to the foundational element of human connection before we focus on fancy automation, strategic funnels, and conversion optimization.
Listen to this Episode Now
The post Blogging is Back, with Darren Rowse appeared first on Copyblogger.

Original Source