7 Free Blogging Tools to Analyze and Improve Your Performance

Content performance can be a difficult thing to gauge because there is a pretty wide collection of factors you could measure it by.

Is it in leads for actual product sales? Organic traffic? Google ranking? Featured snippets? Social media shares? Increasing brand visibility? A mix of all of them?

But however you measure success, there is no denying the importance of establishing a solid content marketing plan and following through. As you go along, knowing how you are doing is a good way to find out what changes may be necessary to get even better results.

I like to keep a collection of tools at my disposal that help me to both monitor how I am doing and come up with ways to improve. These are my seven favorites and ones I think everyone should be using.

Before I start sharing the tools, let me tell you the most important criteria behind the list: All 10 tools are 100% FREE! I think free tools deserve all the publicity they can get and if, after reading this article, you’ll be able to save some money on buying expensive software, my mission will be accomplished!

That being said, I’ll share a paid (but cheap) alternative here and there (when there’s some feature I couldn’t find for free) but the main 10 tools on the list are not paid, not even freemium: They are FREE!

1. UberSuggest: Research and brainstorm

UberSuggest is a great tool for both finding content ideas and doing comprehensive keyword research. Want to know how popular a term is, how much the cost per click will be or how your competitors might be using it? All it takes is a quick search here and you will have all of that information. Not only that, but you can check out somewhat similar phrases that give you a list of future content to put on your editorial calendar.

Ubersuggest also gives you an exact number of searches versus a range given by the Keyword Planner tool, and there’s also no need to login. Nothing wrong with doubling up on that purpose and getting more done, faster.

Action item:

Go to Ubersuggest and search for your main term. Wait for a second while the tool runs and then filter by competition to see the least competitive terms on top. I bet you have just found a cool content idea!

2. Trello: Layout your plan

Trello is not a content analytics platform, per se, rather it’s a multi-purpose business management software that can be used in content planning too.

It may not work for some people but its overlay appeals me most: Breaking down each activity into columns and then boards visualizes and organizes your content planning.

You can add collaborators to each board to help you manage your content more efficiently and delegate tasks between (remote) employees.

More free options:

• Here’s a good list of free and open-source plugins to manage calendars inside WordPress
• Google Spreadsheets are free, they can be used to organize anything, including content ideas (here are a few templates for that)

Cheap premium alternative: The only thing Trello is missing is the ability to monitor your stats right from the same place you are planning things out. Therefore I am stuck with Cyfe. It’s just around $5 a month (so almost free) but it gives you unlimited options for everything they have including monitoring your brand mentions, site performance, email messages, and more.

3. Google Analytics: Analyze and improve

Still the granddaddy of analytics, you can get a lot of information from this free tool. Google Analytics makes it a must-have for any content creator who wants to watch the effectiveness of their web pages as a whole, even if interpreting that information and relating it back to content beyond single pages can be a bit more work.

From the most successful content to where your readers land and how they tend to interact with you, Google Analytics offers a wide range of options to play with.

Action item:

In your Google Analytics, go to Site Content -> Landing Pages there set “Secondary dimension” to “Source” and sort by “Bounce rate”. This will bring up pages that have 100% bounce rate based on the source. This way you’ll see:

• Which web sources generate the most dis-engaged traffic.
• Which pages of your site should be fixed (e.g. to match the traffic source better).

A self-hosted independent but FREE alternative: Matomo (formerly Piwik) is an open-source alternative to Google Analytics. By using it, you make sure you “own” your data (it’s self-hosted and there’s no risk it will be used to help your competitors beat you in ads or elsewhere).

While it lacks the features of other, more thorough analytics programs such as SEMrush or Moz, it is the direct source that we are all trying to cater to.

4. Google Search Console: Monitor your keyword positions

Google has another great content tool and that is their Search Console. Think of it as a search tuneup kit. Learn how to make your site more search friendly and get seen more on Google.

Boost your SEO so you rank higher. Learn how to improve your website for an overall better user experience, which believe it or not will influence the success of your content that is hosted there. Honestly, if you are aiming for any kind of monetization you should already be using this particular set of tools.

Action item:

In the new search console, go to Performance -> View Full Report. Keep the boxes “Impressions”, “CTR” and “Position” checked. Now click + to add a filter, select “Query” and type “how”.

This will filter all search queries that bring you clicks from search results to all containing “how”. These are your easiest opportunities to get featured in Google. Try playing with more question words to discover more opportunities.

5. AllTop: Monitor popular content and trends

A completely free, open and (from what it looks like) ad-free way to keep updated on the industry news, AllTop is also a great way to monitor your content marketing competition.

I think AllTop’s interface is actually genius in its simplicity. You won’t be able to grasp the hottest news of the day so easily as with AllTop. It sorts news in boxes based on the source and shows only the headlines. Hover over any headline to see the details and discover whether it’s something you want to click to read about.

AllTop saves time and keeps you in the loop, for free!

Action item:

Got to alltop.com, choose your category and look over the headlines. How quickly did you manage to get the overall trend of the day and read the major news?

Freemium alternative: Buzzsumo. Let me just say right now, I think if you are running a major content campaign it is totally worth forking over the cash for a pro account at Buzzsumo. But if your budget doesn’t allow it, or if you want to try it out, their free version is pretty awesome.

You can view competitors, see what kind of content is performing the best, monitor your reputation, analyze your own content, find influencers, see lists of backlinks, analyze Facebook pages or posts and a boatload more. Best of all, because of how the different tabs are sorted you will get more relevant results that are more easily applied to a real campaign. Not a bunch of filler content you have never used.

6. Facebook Page Insights: Understand your audience better

Social media has really split across demographic lines and you can see a major change in usage depending on factors like age. But Facebook is still the king of social platforms, even if it isn’t the primary one being used by most younger people. So having a Facebook page is just as crucial now as before and a great way to connect as a brand.

If you have a Facebook page, you are likely to be using it to promote your content. Hence you can use it to analyze how your audience engages with your content. There’s no set-up required for using analytics for a page. When you visit Facebook Analytics and view a Page that you’re an admin for, you will need to opt-in to view analytics for your Page.

Facebook Page Insights will show you how you are performing there and what content is being viewed versus ignored. That gives you what you need to increase your marketability.

Action item:

To start collecting data, go to Facebook Page Insights and wait about a day. Now, re-load the tab and click through to the “People” tab. From there you can get a clear-cut view of your audience, including age, gender, cities and countries they reside in, etc. This is a great tool to create your audience personas to target your content better.

7. YouTube Media Analytics: Create more successful video content

Deal with video content? You need to be monitoring the analytics of your channel and each individual video you post. Many newer YouTubers don’t bother doing that and it is a detriment to the success of their content. Be sure you are also monitoring competing channels within the same genre. Otherwise you may be missing out on some opportunities you don’t realize.

YouTube Media Analytics gives a lot of insight into how your videos perform and what you may want to do to emphasize on your success. For each video you can see:

• Audience demographics (countries and gender)
• Average view duration
• Overall views (daily break-through)

Action item:

Go to your channel analytics, choose the video you want to see stats for, click through to “Traffic Sources” and then to “Suggested videos”. This is one of the most useful sections inside your Youtube Analytics showing you exactly which videos of yours were suggested and which ones you want to interact with to get more out of that connection:

Do you have a free content analytics and planning tool that belongs on this list? Let us know in the comments!

Guest author: Jessy Troy is co-owner of Hire Bloggers, a blog dedicated to helping bloggers find paid gigs or even full-time jobs. You can catch up with me on Twitter as @JessyTroy

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5 Psychological Insights to Improve Your Content Marketing

Marketers have used psychology to influence the behavior of customers for years – often with great success.

Being aware of psychological principles is helpful whether you’re building a website, composing a tweet, or writing a blog post. Psychology indicates what colors are most likely to draw the attention of prospects or how long someone is likely to maintain interest in your message. The more you know about how the mind works, the more you can make informed decisions.

Using psychology to inform your content marketing isn’t sneaky trickery. Instead, these psychological insights can improve the user experience and help keep prospects long enough to convert.

The challenge lies in translating often complex psychological concepts into actionable steps that can drive real-world decisions. Here are five psychological principles that can help you create more effective marketing material.

It’s unlikely that you’ll need to apply each insight to every project but having these models in mind is likely to be useful when you want to create content that converts.

1. Cognitive fluency

The number of micro decisions made throughout our day is staggering. A 2012 study showed that visitors judge a website in 0.05 seconds – faster than the blink of an eye. While a 2013 study by Microsoft noted people’s attention span has narrowed to eight seconds at the max.

As a result, humans prefer to consume simplistic content and unconsciously avoid information that appears complicated. This is cognitive fluency.

That’s why people love emojis – they communicate emotion in a simple, extremely fast way. This goes for everything from tweets to blog posts – the easier your content is to understand, the more likely it is to hook your audience and keep them engaged. At the first sign of complexity, they’ll run.

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Cognitive fluency explains why people like emojis – simple, fast way to communicate, says @LouisaMcGrath.
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What does this mean for content marketers?

• If your product is complex, explain it in basic terms.
• Make your social posts as short as possible.
• Create clear and concise calls to action.
• Focus on one topic per blog post, video, or web page.
• Use eye-catching graphics that quickly communicate your message.
• Use keywords in branded links so people know at a glance what the link will address.
• Use infographics and videos to communicate complex ideas quickly and simply.
• Use emojis if they suit your brand voice.
• Use hashtags on social media to highlight the topic of your content.

2. Social proof

Think about your personal online shopping patterns. Do you rely strictly on a retailer’s website for information? Or do you ask friends and family for recommendations? Or read a bunch of reviews before making a purchase? Do you check social media for opinions or ratings?

If you go beyond the retailer’s site, then you’re like 69% of the American population, according to Mintel’s American Lifestyles research. More than two-thirds of consumers trust the word of friends, family, and even strangers over any marketing content from a brand. This is because of the psychological principle of social proof, which essentially means people are more likely to act when they see others have done so. Whether it’s reading a post or making a purchase, people prefer to follow in the footsteps of others like them.

That is why Facebook ads can be effective.

Social proof is becoming more important as consumers’ access to online-based data and information about companies grows. Think about how you can show the thoughts of people through your content marketing.

What does this mean for content marketers?  

• Establish trust so customers are comfortable talking about your brand.
• Use real-life case studies in your content.
• Gather and promote testimonials.
• Encourage your customers to leave reviews.
• Display view and share numbers – if your content marketing is successful.
• Collaborate with authentic influencers.
• Encourage user-generated content and expert social proof.
• Promote earned media in your content.

3. Perceptual set theory

Humans are creatures of habit, and the perceptual set theory can help leverage that fact for your content marketing.

If you’ve subconsciously looked for a button to click on a landing page, you’ve experienced the perceptual set theory. You expect to see something, so you’re on the lookout for it. Your curiosity often drives you to continue down a path until you achieve resolution and satisfy your curiosity.

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If you subconsciously look for a button to click, you’ve experienced perpetual set theory. @LouisaMcGrath
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People’s expectations are shaped by past experiences. We select what we pay attention to, infer how it works based on experience, and combine current circumstances with past knowledge to interpret what to do.

This theory is why those clever drawings attract interest – we interpret an image based on our experience.

For marketers, keep in mind when creating content how the mind perceives situations. While it can be tempting to try something new and be off the wall, going too far beyond a prospect’s expectations may be off-putting.

Don’t worry about coming across as promotional, people have come to expect some sort of CTA in company content. If they reach the end of your content and want to continue engaging but aren’t guided to the next step, they’ll be confused.

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If readers want to continue engaging but aren’t guided to the next step, they’ll be confused. @LouisaMcGrath
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What does this mean for content marketers?

• Create a logical flow through your landing page to drive curiosity and fulfill expectations.
• Include an obvious call to action every time.
• Don’t overexplain. People intuitively know what a CTA is.

4. Models of persuasion

While there are many different psychological models of persuasion, Fogg Behavior Model is particularly useful when planning content.

Dr. BJ Fogg of the Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford University was a specialist on behavior design. His model of persuasion provides a system for driving desired behavior – he believed motivation, ability, and a trigger should coincide for users to carry out an action.

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To persuade people to convert, you need motivation, understanding, & a trigger, says @LouisaMcGrath.
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Motivation and ability are two major influences for buyers and are key to creating effective content. To motivate people, your content needs to contain strong, relevant messages. The messages also need to be easily understood – this links to the principles of cognitive fluency and perceptual set theory.

But in the Fogg Behavior Model, you also need a trigger if you want prospects to carry out an action.

What does this mean for content marketers?

• Increase motivation by providing messages relevant to your audience.
• Make messages simple.
• Include a compelling trigger or CTA to encourage an action.
• Make sure each piece of content includes motivation, ability, and a trigger.

Robert Cialdini’s principle of persuasion says that in a world of information overload, people take shortcuts when making buying decisions. Fear of missing out, social proof, and simply continuing to buy what they always have are purchasing influence factors.

The Yale model of persuasion demonstrates to marketers the importance of building a trusted brand as trust, sincerity, and authenticity affect behavior.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

• How to Create Persuasive Content: Lessons from Aristotle
• Road Map to Success: Creating the Content of Your Audience’s Dreams

5. Psychology of color

If you ask five people what their favorite color is, what is the likelihood they’ll say the same one? Miniscule. But that doesn’t mean that leveraging color in consistent ways isn’t useful in marketing.

Recent studies suggest that people judge a new product within 90 seconds of seeing it – up to 90% of that assessment is based on color. Color is an important consideration for content marketers when designing web pages, choosing banner images, and planning videos.

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People judge a new product within 90 seconds of seeing it – up to 90% is based on color via @ReelColor.
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Shades of blue can help build trust and loyalty with your audience. This interpretation transcends geography. Red communicates energy and passion, while yellow can communicate both warnings and cheery optimism.

If you want your brand to evoke respect for nature, stick with shades of green, while orange gives an impression of fun, excitement, and urgency.

What does this mean for content marketers?

• Consider what color can help you evoke the desired emotion from your content.
• Consistently present your brand colors in your content.
• Consider red, orange, and yellow for CTA buttons to foster a sense of urgency.
• Ensure that CTA buttons are contrasting colors so they stand out. (Here’s a color calculator to help.)

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: 3 Graphic Design Tips for Non-Designers

Conclusion

Applying these concepts to your projects will take time and consideration in the beginning. But before you know it, these principles will become a natural part of your content planning. Chances are you already engage in at least one of these principles in your content marketing even if it’s not a conscious choice.

Going forward, consider how you can make use of these principles to give prospects a smooth experience and move them more quickly through the sales funnel.

How many of these five psychological principles can you spot in the hundreds of presentations at Content Marketing World? You won’t know unless you’re there. Register today using code BLOG100 to save $100 on the Sept. 4-7 event. 

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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9 Steps to Creating A Powerful LinkedIn Profile

Two every second: That’s how many people join LinkedIn as new members, many of whom hope to exploit the platform’s rich resource for industry contacts, new clients and partnership opportunities.

That means that by the time you finish reading this article, you’ll have on average 350 people and counting to compete with for the professional world’s attention. What you do with your LinkedIn profile can mean the difference between garnering views as compared to converting those views in taking the next step of building a relationship with you.

With over 1 billion searches per day for names and companies, LinkedIn is your opportunity to build your business reputation, expand your professional network and help companies and connections know who you are and what you do.

And with so many people fighting for attention, your first impression can most often be your best or last. Here is an excerpt from an infographic by linkhumans.com on Slideshare that shows the facts behind optimizing your profile on LinkedIn.

To help you get noticed and stand out from the crowd, I’ve provided you my top 9 tips on how to create a more compelling profile.

1. Header

Having a “Profile Header” is a powerful way to showcase your personal brand, get your company exposure in front of hundreds of potential clients and make a great first impression.  Remember a picture is worth more than a 1000 words.

When designing the banner, make sure it’s a JPEG, PNG or GIF file that’s under 4MB in size with the correct dimension for the header being: 1400 x 425. Be sure to leave some space at the bottom as the top section of your profile tends to cut into the image.

Oh! And be sure not to hit delete because you wont be able to get the header back. I learnt that lesson the hard way when I was playing around with the feature a few weeks back.

2. Photo

Your LinkedIn profile is your digital introduction with those who view your profile. People like to do business with a face. Your photo should be up-to-date, clear, professional, and an expression of you, preferably the smiling you. If you are a casual guy, no one expects or wants to see you in a suit. In a virtual world we may do business with someone we have never met.The connection provided by a photo, especially when you can see the eyes and a warm reception can go a long way.

3. Headline

Your headline is very much like a headline of a news story in the newspaper. If it’s not eye catching, does not draw your attention or raise enough curiosity then chances are your not going to read any further.  When writing your headline make sure it’s a reflection of what you do, who you are and make it relevant to your target market.

Your goal is to get your viewers attention in order for them to get curious enough to read more about you. Try and stay away from tacky sales pitches, remember people don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.

4. Website Links

Instead of using the default “Personal Website”- type anchor text links in your profile, change the text to make the links more appealing to people who view your profile. By changing the text to something more attention-grabbing than the standard options LinkedIn provides, you increase the number of clicks to your website or blog.

For example, if you want to include a link to your website, rather than choosing LinkedIn’s standard “Company Website” anchor text, customize it to include keywords that indicate what your website is about, like “Learn To Master LinkedIn”

Each profile can display up to three website links like this, and they can be customized by editing your profile, clicking the pencil icon next to your website links, and selecting ‘Other’ in the drop-down menu.

5. Summary

In my opinion this is the most important section within your profile given it’s the first place people read once you’ve caught their attention with your header and headline.

There are many different theories but in my opinion and from a personal branding perspective, I believe that on social media, people buy into people they trust and like. Unless you establish this right from the start then no one is going to care about your business, let alone your product or service.

And the best way to establish this trust is to share your business journey to date. Let’s face it; everyone likes a good story. Now there are 3 main stages to this:

Past: Start off by sharing how you got into business
Present: What has led you to where you are now
Future: And finally what you are working on going forward

Within each of these sections be sure to weave in any key achievements, awards, career milestones, endorsements and even your failures as it adds a human element to your profile.

5. Skills & Endorsements

Back in 2012, Linkedin launched a feature called Endorsements, which enables users to endorse their connections for skills they’ve listed in the Skill & Expertise section of their profile — or recommend one they haven’t yet listed. These endorsements then show up on your profile within that same Skills & Expertise section, as you can see in the screenshot below.

Whilst you can have up to 50 skills displayed, 3-5 is generally a good number to list. In today’s business world consumers only want to deal with specialist, so when you list too many skills it shows you’re a generalist rather then a specialist.

And most importantly make sure that the skills you do list are consistent with your personal brand and is solving your clients challenges, objections and creating you a unique difference in the market.

6. Optimize

Just as you would optimize the foundations of your website before you start an aggressive inbound marketing campaign, do the same for your LinkedIn presence, starting with your profile, to get ranked high on LinkedIn.

There are 5 key areas within your profile where you will need to insert key words in order to get ranked high within search results when your target market is searching for your product or service.

a)   Title, Current & Previous Experiences
b)   Website URL
c)   Summary
d)   Work Experiences
e)   Skills & Endorsements

By including keywords that people are using to find someone like you, you are ensuring that your LinkedIn profile performs well in search and that you will be found.

7. Layout

LinkedIn also enables you to reorder the sections of your profile in any way you prefer. Over the past few years we’ve tested many different ways to structure a LinkedIn profile in order to reach optimum flow and consistency. In my opinion the structure you see below is by far the most engaging and compelling:

a) Summary
b) Skills & Endorsements
c) Experiences
d) Volunteer
e) Honors and awards
f)  Publications
g) Additional Info
h) Recommendations
i)  Groups

When in edit mode, simply hover your mouse over the double-sided arrow next to the Edit link for each section. Your mouse will turn into a four-arrowed icon, at which point you can click, then drag and drop to another position on your profile.

8. Groups

Joining groups that relate to your industry or the industry you wish to enter is another step in building a compelling profile. This not only helps you keep up with industry news and advances, but group members may be the very people you want to do business with. Your participation in groups helps build your visibility, credibility and involvement within your industry.

Whilst you can join up to 50 groups, in my opinion it’s best to only show 6-8 groups within your public and LinkedIn profile. You can choose which groups to display by changing the visibility settings in your system and notification settings.

9. Blog

After opening up their publishing arm back in February last year, LinkedIn have just reached over 1 millions posts. As a result they’ve now opened up their publishing arm to all English speaking countries

Becoming a publisher on LinkedIn can be a powerful way to reach your target market and generate new leads. The new platform promises to match the blog’s topic with users who share an interest in that particular vertical.

Writing short articles and posts helps set you up as an authority on your particular topic and puts you in the newsfeeds of your connections. This in turn keeps you and your business top of mind within your target market.

My blog posts results so far:

• Appeared on the homepage of LinkedIn 4 times now
• Over 128,000 blog views and 1000 comments
• Shared more than 18,193 times
• Generated us over 430 leads – and
• Increased my following by an extra 2,300

Here’s a screenshot of a few articles I have written:

It also gives you greater exposure to your current network given every blog you post is distributed to their news feed and displayed within their notification settings located at the very top of their LinkedIn profile.

If your contacts like the article and decide to share that on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter, this will not only create greater exposure but those who aren’t connected with you; may like your work that much that they end up “FOLLOWING” you to receive future posts helping you create a following of raving fans for years to come!!

Having a compelling LinkedIn profile is paramount to your success on LinkedIn. It’s your face to the online networking world and your first point of contact when promoting yourself to potential clients, joint venture partners, journalist and the business world. The steps provided in this article are the fundamental steps in creating a compelling LinkedIn profile. Be sure to update your profile as you progress throughout your career.

Author: Alex is an entrepreneur and founder of Linkfluencer, the world’s leading online community for LinkedIn training. He loves playing basketball, travelling and covering the latest stories on entrepreneurship. Connect with him on LinkedIn and Facebook

 

“FREE” Webinar – Discover the 3 Steps To LinkedIn Mastery

Over the past couple of months I’ve received a ton of emails from readers asking me to share more insight in and around LinkedIn so I’ve decided to hold another webinar with Alex Pirouz, founder of Linkfluencer.

The first one I held a few months back was well received with over 3000 people registering for the session. Click here to register

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5 Examples of Neuromarketing That Marketers Can Use to Sell Their Products

Neuromarketing is a scientific study that uses the fundamentals of neuroscience phenomenon. The goal of neuromarketing is to capitalize on the cognitive biases of a target audience in order to persuade them to buy your products. Neuromarketing empowers marketers to hook potential buyers using human psychology and tempt them to make a purchase.

Neuromarketing has been around for over a decade and brands are spending a sizeable budget on this scientific method. For its efficacy in marketing and branding, neuromarketing has become an integral part of the market research process. Today, businesses align neuromarketing as a primary source of information to develop a product and position it to a specific market.

Application of Neuromarketing: A case study

fMRI is one of the popular methods of neuromarketing that helps marketers benefit from cognitive biases of the viewers in print ad. According to a study, neuromarketing uses fMRI in a print ad to attract the attention of viewers. fMRI activates 125 million visual neural receptors in the eyes. The visual neural receptors transmit information to the midbrain of the viewer which directs the motion of the eyes.

The signals are then received in the lateral geniculate nuclei, an area of the brain, where they are intercepted in terms of color, shape, and spatial location. This information is then reprocessed through hippocampus, a part of the brain which connects short-term memory to long-term memory. This cycle runs every time the viewer sees the advertisement. This is just one example of using neuromarketing to attract viewers.

So if you are inquisitive to know more about neuromarketing and how it helps businesses attract more customers, here are some good examples:

1. Color psychology can influence a consumer’s choice

The above infographic by KissMetrics reveals the role of colors in consumer behavior and how it influences their choices. According to the infographic, the visual stimuli (93%) tops in terms of its influence on consumer behavior. There are other stimuli in the list that include texture (15%), and sound/smell.

The infographic further reveals that consumers place colors as the primary factor (85%) in their purchasing decision, while the other factors share 15% of the overall value.

On the other hand, the color can increase brand recognition by 80% which means more people trust a brand that adds the right blend of colors. This infographic clearly proves that colors greatly affect consumer behavior and the choices of buyers.

2. The direction of a face in a photo can help point eyes to the intended section

The aforementioned image is taken from a study that reveals the heat maps where the viewers were looking. The study is conducted by Neuroscience Marketing where it explains how the face of a person should be looking in ad copy. With the help of eye-tracking technology, the study located the areas that attracted the maximum attention of viewers.

They put the first photo of the baby with the face looking at the viewers. The result shows that the viewers were only gazing at the photo of the baby. When they put the second photo with the face looking towards the ad copy, the viewers were also looking at the ad copy.

3. Audio branding can help develop the brand image

Whether it is the upbeat jingle of Mentos from its 1991 ad or the cacophony of the orchestra in the famous ‘I’m Lovin’ It’ ad, big brands have always been using audio sensory to build their brand image. Audio plays an instrumental (pun intended) role in activating the right mood in the audience and creating a sense of connection with a brand.

However, you need to be very particular about the tunes you would like to touch while doing the audio branding of your business. This will greatly depend on the personality of your brand as well as the emotions you want to invoke in your target audience. Both the theme and sound of your audio branding should be consistent with the brand image.

4. The right fonts can help convey your message

Humans tend to choose an option that offers more comfort and ease. That’s a basic human psyche. Going by the same psychological fact, people tend to like simple fonts that they can easily read and understand.

A study by Norbert Schwarz and Hyunjin Song reveals that people prefer easy-to-read fonts than complex fonts. They conducted a survey of 20 students by giving them printed instructions about the exercise routine. The instructions were written in two different types of fonts: Arial, 12pt, and Brush, 12pt. The result of the survey concluded that the participants were able to read more easily the instructions written in Arial font than the Brush font.

However, there is also a role for complex fonts that you can use in tactical sections of your ad copy to catch the attention of visitors. The aim of the complex fonts is to catch more eyeballs on your website, so you can also use them sparsely in your ad copy.

5. Anchoring can help rope in your customers

Anchoring is a marketing technique that uses the philosophy of neuroscience. It serves as a marketing bait to lure a potential customer into buying something at the intended price even though the actual price is much lower. What it does is convince the buyer into believing that something is worth investing money in. It uses a particular facet of the product as a value proposition to the potential buyer.

For example, if you want to sell a property at your intended rate that includes the profit you want to earn from the buyer. Let’s say the actual price of your property is $10,000 and you demand $20,000 dollars for the property.

So even if you settle the price at $15,000, the buyer would like to buy the property considering that they get a reduction of $5000. In this particular example, the buyer would be interested to buy the property based on its hyped worth, while the intrinsic value of the property is much lower.

Wrap up

These neuromarketing techniques seek to create a brand identity that can influence the actions of your visitors and make them buy your products. Right from the color selection and font style to audio branding and anchoring, you can put into practice all these techniques to tap into the cognitive biases of your target audience and invoke them to make a purchase.

Guest author: Jasmine Demeester is a Digital Marketing Strategist, Educator, and a Blogging Geek at Dissertation Writing Services. She is a reputed name digital marketing profession. In addition, she is also an educator who dedicates a portion of her life for students.

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You Must Win Every Moment of Trust to Win the Moment of Truth

May I have your attention?

Do I have your trust?

The answers often are not the same. And yet marketers often conflate them.

Grabbing a consumer’s attention for any length of time is seen as a proxy for “engagement.” And “time spent” is equated to the depth trust of the brand by a consumer. Of course, this is just not true.

In fact, researchers have found, as “trust increases, attention decreases (in proportion).”

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Research shows as trust increases, attention decreases, says @Robert_Rose.
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Think about it. As people feel more safe and secure in a situation, they need to pay less attention. The guard goes down and openness to anything new or unknown goes up. When your best friend suggests something new, you immediately say, “Yes, I trust you implicitly.” That’s the concept at work, which author Stephen Covey calls The Speed Of Trust in his book of the same name. As he says:

(N)othing is as fast as the speed of trust … In a high-trust relationship, you can say the wrong thing and people will still get your meaning. In a low-trust relationship, you can be very measured, even precise, and they’ll still misinterpret you.

Trust in moments of truth

You’ve probably heard of the moments of truth in the buying process. Made famous by P&G in the early 2000s, they are the key times when customers make an important determination:

• First moment of truth – when the customer is confronted with the choice of which product to purchase
• Second moment of truth – when the customer uses the product and has a good or bad experience
• Third moment of truth – when the customer makes the choice to provide feedback/reaction about the experience

And then there is the zero moment of truth made famous by Google – when a person grabs a laptop, mobile phone, or other wired device to start learning about a product or service they’re thinking about trying or buying.

But, the truth is no single “moment of truth” exists for any of those human decisions. Depending upon the context of the question the consumer is asking and the product or service desired, hundreds or thousands of cumulative moments of trust influence how (or if) there is a moment of truth at all.

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There is no single moment of truth. There are hundreds or thousands of moments of trust, says @Robert_Rose
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To satisfy any moment of truth, marketers attempt to target messaging in earned, owned, and paid media to raise awareness of a provocative question (e.g., how do you get your shirts so clean?) or provide the answer to the consumer’s known question (e.g., I get my clothes clean by washing them in XYZ soap).

But the consumer’s level of acceptance – or skepticism – to the question and the answer depends on their level of trust of the brand. And trust is cumulative, not based in any one moment.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: The Democratization of Distrust Is Our Biggest Opportunity

Bankable trust through content marketing

Trust is our goal as content marketers. Wherever the moment of truth falls on the customer journey, we want the fastest and deepest acceptance of our proposition as possible. Put simply, our job is to have to spend less on attention and receive more intuitive action.

Think about it. Why have we marketers historically advertised in one publication over another? The simple but incomplete answer is that’s where the target audience is. But the more important reason a marketer chooses one media brand over another is because of the trust their audience has in that media brand. We want that same halo around our brand.

We live in a world where we now can create that trust and where the bar of trust in media brands is low. Put simply – in varying degree – we no longer need the media to create that familiarity and trust for us.

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We no longer need the media to create familiarity and trust for us, says @Robert_Rose.
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Every digital experience we create should not only reflect our focus on winning a moment of truth – where the customer is paying attention – but in deepening the trust gained (or regained) in every step that precedes or follows it.

How do we do that?

4 elements of trust in delivered content

We can look to the four elements in an approach to build this trust and familiarity with our audiences.

1. Risk appropriate

Trust is proportional to the risk taken. As marketers we should gauge what we ask in relation to the perceived risk the audience could have.

A classic example of this is the decision to gate white papers in a resource center. Attention is high (the visitor wants the asset), but trust is low (the visitor is unsure of what the source will do with his or her information). Because of the perceived risk the visitor provides bad data.

We worked with a software company that assessed the perceived risk and changed its white paper program. Abstracts of the white papers were made accessible to all. Then, the company implemented a progressive-profiling model to ask only for information when it was needed. And at each stage, the company explained why the information was needed and what would happen with it. Here’s the kicker. Conversions went down by 25%, but the quality and quantity of data within registrations went up by 50% – and the level of trust among its resource center subscribers was high.

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Ungating #content led to 25% drop in conversions but increased data quality & quantity by 50%. @Robert_Rose
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HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Setting Content Free: How Health Catalyst Gets Results With Ungated Content

2. Recurrence

One of the biggest attributes of building trust is creating consistently valuable experiences. In other words, it’s not only about developing extraordinary things that are valuable, but about the little things that frequently deliver reliably over time. We must be familiar to our targeted audience if we want its trust.

In psychology, this is known as the exposure effect. In experiments, the subjects were found to have more trust in people they saw walking down the street than those who they didn’t see.

Content marketing is a huge tool in the exposure effect. In one example, consumers read a piece of educational content provided by a brand. They were asked about their level of trust in the brand immediately after reading it and again one week later. Interestingly, the number of customers who identified the brand as “trustworthy” one week later jumped 14% (9 percentage points).

3. Personal

Being trustworthy is more than being appropriate or relevant. Trust is deepened as hidden, personal value is uncovered without having to ask for it. Our audiences feel like they are truly understood.

Personal is different than “personalized.” The value of being personal isn’t customizing a mailing label or email field to address a prospective customer by name. In fact, delivering personal value may not be personalized at all.

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The value of being personal isn’t customizing an email field to address a prospect by name, says @Robert_Rose.
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A wonderful example of this is a large financial services company that we worked with. Like most institutional firms, they target high-level financial advisors. Also, like most firms, they have a quarterly and yearly outlook report to illustrate their thought leadership and point of view on the market. Many of their competitors distribute their reports to advisors through a personalized emailing featuring the recipient’s company name.

Our client did something different. It customized the front piece in each report. It created personal letters to each advisor, based on what it knew about the advisor, and (when appropriate) sent only the sections of the report most pertinent to the advisor’s business.

The key, of course, to delivering personal value is to know what it is. This means that the usual scraping of data or inferring conclusions based on interaction with digital content is going to be ripe with distrusted data. The best way to get data that can be trusted by your brand is to deliver that personal experience that encourages the audience to willingly and trustingly give its information to the marketer.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: 4 Ways to Shift Your Thinking to Truly Focus on Your Audience

4. Cumulative

Understanding the ability to dazzle gradually means that we must look at trust as a cumulative investment of experiences that can be wiped out at a moment’s notice.

We must move from a touchpoint mindset to a journey mindset.

In a customer-touchpoint mindset the marketer seeks to ensure that an audience will be satisfied with each interaction with the brand’s content. While this may hold the customer’s attention, each touchpoint does little to deepen trust. To elicit a deeper trust, each experience must be able to adapt in the present to what happened before and what will happen after the interaction.

A classic B2B example of this is the handoff of leads from a thought leadership platform to the sales team. In many companies we’ve worked with, a salesperson has no idea which content a new inbound lead interacted with. Subsequently, the salesperson treats the prospect as new to the ideas the company puts forward. And, in fact, this can ruin both the relationship between the customer and the content, and between the prospective customer and the salesperson.

It’s like the Emily Dickinson poem Tell All the Truth but Tell It Slant:

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —

If this New England mystic had been a marketer in our day, she might have said, “Don’t hit customers with your content and your brand in one big, forced flash, or you’ll blind them.

“Make it easy for them. Be kind in your framing – in creating the context in which you deliver your content – to help your audience quickly appreciate your valuable content for what it is.”

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Content Marketing and Sales Alignment: Bridging the Gap [New Research]

Don’t miss Robert’s unique insight and fresh perspective at Content Marketing World Sept. 4-7 in Cleveland, Ohio. Register today and use code BLOG100 to save $100. 

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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4 Web Design Mistakes to Avoid When Launching Your First Blog

Web design mistakes might ruin your blog before it even gets a chance to shine. And it’s not only a matter of style and visual attractiveness of your website. Poor design can slow down its work and complicate navigation, which will both lose you readers. If you are creating the blog yourself, be aware of the most common pitfalls you have to avoid.

4 Beginner Web Design Mistakes to Avoid When Building Your Blog

1.Overloading the website with plugins and visuals
No matter what kind of online business you run, page loading speed is one of the most important factors that will determine your success. Surveys indicate that over 50% of all web users expect a website to load in 2 seconds max. And Google ranking bots take this factor into account when deciding how high to place your link on the Search Results page.

Overloading the website with plugins and visuals (especially if they aren’t well-optimized) are some of the most common problems that can increase the page loading speed. These issues also often lead to website crashes. Bloggers who start using WordPress are particularly prone to this mistake as this platform gives you an opportunity to use a huge number of great plugins.

Google itself offers a tool to help with this problem. Try TestMySite to see not only how much traffic you are losing but also get suggestions of improvements to reduce that number.
You also should remember that your hosting package matters greatly in determining how fast your website will load. If you plan to have a blog heavy on the visuals, take your time studying a hosting guide for beginners. You need to find out what kind of hosting service package will be sufficient for your requirements.

2.Posting too much text too close
The readers of today prefer to skim content instead of reading it thoroughly. Even if they do return for a more detailed read later, they first assess the content with a quick look to see if it’ll provide the information they need.

This means that you should never post textual content in a single huge body of letters. Short paragraphs (about 100 words) are the best and make sure they’re interspersed with subtitles that stand out clearly.

Consider adding images as well. It’s believed that inserting a relevant image every 150-300 words enhances memorization.

3.Badly placed social media sharing buttons
One of the main web design mistakes to avoid for a blogger is not placing social media sharing buttons in clear view. Having people share your posts on social media is one of the main sources of traffic generation for a blogger. That’s why you should motivate them to do this.

Place the buttons at the top and end of the post or use a plugin that will ensure the buttons are unobtrusive, yet move when the reader scrolls down the text. Consider making some small parts of the text shareable as well, for example, use a quote from the post between images with a ‘Tweet It!’ button attached.

When choosing the design of your social media sharing buttons, pick an option that matches the overall style, but not too much. Remember that these buttons have to stand out.

4.Filling all the whitespace
Whitespace is so important for a blogger that using a minimalist web design (one with maximum whitespace) might be the best choice. Filling all the whitespace on your pages means packing them with text and imagery to a point that it becomes difficult to actually read the text.

The purpose of this ‘negative’ space is increasing readability. As texts are the livelihood of a blogger, making your site unreadable is one of the main web design mistakes to avoid. In fact, you should do your best to increase whitespace on the page to give it a cleaner look.

Original post: 4 Web Design Mistakes to Avoid When Launching Your First Blog

This post is courtesy of: https://www.dailyblogtips.com

60 Surprising Tips for Getting Attention in Mass Media

How To Use Chatbots To Boost Your Prospects Engagement and Collect More Leads

Chatbots and automated virtual assistants are the new tools that are taking social media by storm, changing how people worldwide interact online.

Conversational marketing is the way big brands and smart small to medium businesses are reaching wider audiences, engaging more and better with their prospects, closing more deals, and offering better support to their customers.

Without forgetting that messaging apps have surpassed “traditional” social networks with the number of monthly active users, so this is definitely a world that cannot be ignored anymore.

In this post, you will learn what chatbots are, how they are created and managed, and above all, how they can be a powerful tool in your hands to boost prospects engagement and collect more leads.

A quick note before starting: while there are many platforms on which chatbots can live (Slack, Telegram, Skype, even Amazon Echo and Siri) we will focus mainly on Facebook bots. For two reasons; they are the easiest to build, and the Messenger platform had over 1.3 Billion (with a “B”) monthly users at the end of 2017 – which means, basically, that the whole world is using it.

What is a chatbot

A Messenger bot is essentially a piece of software that is linked to a Facebook page and intercepts messages that are sent to that page on Messenger.

The most interesting aspect of this tool is its automation. As messages are typed by users in Messenger and “captured”, the software can interpret them – using complex Natural Language Processing algorithms or simpler methods for recognizing specific keywords and sentences – and reply autonomously, providing answers in a timely and usually very complete manner, 24/7, without interruptions or pauses.

Getting started with chatbots is quite easy. If you know how to write code, Facebook has created a set of very ample Messenger API that you can use to build bots from scratch with your favorite programming language, from PHP to Java, Go or node.js. A faster way to create these automated assistants on any of the Facebook pages you control is with one of the many chatbot builder platforms available, web-based systems that marketers and business owners can use to create replies, link them to specific keywords or sentences and build a “tree” of answers that users on Messenger can query to get information, engage with a business and close transactions.

What are chatbots useful for?

Well, just think about this – for the first time in the history of digital marketing, we have a tool that can automatically interact with people in a conversational way, using a chat interface that feels more natural and “human” than websites or emails. Given this revolutionary aspect of chatbots, they are first of all used to engage prospects and provide information in a very timely and personal way.

Just imagine a local restaurant that has a Facebook page where prospective customers go to get information about business hours, the menu and specials. With a bot, those same prospects could start chatting with the restaurant, asking questions, and receiving answers directly on Messenger and therefore engaging personally and investing more energy and time than they would have done just looking at a Facebook page or a website, becoming more involved in the process and, inevitably, converting more often.

As if this was not enough, chatbots enable marketers and entrepreneurs to use an even more powerful tool for engaging prospects and converting them – marketing automation.

As soon as a user starts chatting with a bot their details are shared from Facebook and can be collected and stored, just like you would do with a newsletter subscriber (the data Facebook provides is more limited than you would hope – for example, you very rarely receive the email address – but it’s still useful for reaching out to the user on Messenger in the future). From that moment on you can use these contact details to send messages to the user – always following the Facebook guidelines and policy, obviously – creating “drip” sequences of communications and guiding the prospect on a path to conversion.

Since you can also keep track of the conversations that a user has with your bot, these contacts can be extremely targeted and laser-focused. You can create a series of messages for people who activated specific replies and asked certain questions, or you could “tag” users and then create marketing automations linked to tags and engagement types, depending on what they asked, what information they were exposed to, how much they actually talked with the bot and so on.

As you can see, when used with moderation and without spamming, marketing automation on chatbots can be extremely powerful in re-activating users or in helping them discover new services or products they might be interested in – directly in their Messenger chat app, where open rates are close to 80%

How to use chatbots to collect more leads

The ultimate goal of any marketing campaign is very often collecting a lead. So, while as you have seen above the Messenger system gives you some information about users who chat with your bots, these automated systems can be used in an even more complete way for acquiring information about potential customers.

Going back to the restaurant example we mentioned before, a chatbot can be easily programmed to let users schedule a reservation, giving them an easy way to interact with the system and allowing the business owner to collect more leads with all the information they need.

As you can see in this sample conversation, the bot will ask questions to the prospect, presenting choices (like the day they want to reserve a table for, the hours and so on) or leaving the answer open, collecting all this data just like it would do with a web form or a phone reservation. The advantages of this approach are that, first of all, the process feels a lot more natural for the user (they are literally “talking” with somebody, just like they would do on a phone conversation – but automatically) and, secondly, it all takes place on a platform – the Messenger system – that they already use frequently every day and that is constantly in their pocket, ready to be checked as soon as a confirmation or any other alert is received.

Wrap

So, in conclusion, chatbots are one of the few “new shiny objects” that have come out in the past years that honestly deserve a lot of attention and interest. Getting started is very easy and a social media strategy that doesn’t involve them is inevitably bound to fail. Don’t you agree?

Guest author: Silvio Porcellana is an entrepreneur, marketer, and coder working on the Interweb since 1999, creating products and helping clients grow successful businesses online. His most recent creation is Chatbots Builder, a platform for easily building Facebook Messenger chatbots

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Symantec Wins at Content by Responding to Its Audience

Editor’s note: Randi Bartelmie is a finalist for 2018 Content Marketer of the Year. We’re sharing insights from all CMY finalists in this blog before the winner is announced at Content Marketing World this September.

Know your audience. That mantra is repeated in nearly every content and marketing discipline.

What’s easy to overlook, though, is that the process of getting to know your audience can lead you to the unexpected. And that can take your strategies in new directions.

Of course, recognizing the discoveries is one thing. Capitalizing on them is a longer process.

2018 Content Marketer of the Year finalist Randi Bartelmie, now Symantec Corp.’s director of content marketing, has spent the last five years building a content operation and, ultimately, a content platform, around a key insight about the company’s customers.

Through trial and error, Randi and her team hit on a content formula that works for the audience. They also doubled unique visitors to a key property compared to the previous year and attracted support – and even budget – from other departments at the security software company.

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Through trial & error, @rpometta & @Symantec #content team hit on a formula that works. @CarlaJohnson
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These lessons from her journey stand as reminders of what it takes to succeed with content.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Road Map to Success: Content Marketing Strategy Essentials

Think beyond campaigns

Randi didn’t start out in the content world. She joined Symantec’s consumer business in a sales role in 2007. Once she moved into marketing, she found herself engrossed in campaigns.

There, she quickly saw the limits of a campaign model that lacked supporting content.

“We got to the point that our marketing campaigns were always about giving people 50 or 70% off our products,” she says.

During the 2013 holiday season, Randi had the idea to focus a campaign on the need for better device security when shopping online. She and her team introduced content, but it was a secondary thought in the campaign.

Content wouldn’t take a back seat for long. During focus groups for a new product, Randi noticed how the family-oriented features piqued participants’ interest. They wanted to know how to track their kids, see what they were looking at, at what time, and for how long.

That gave her the spark of an idea: Instead of focusing on product features and discounts, her team would create a family safety e-book to get consumers’ attention.

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Instead of marketing features & discounts, @rpometta created a family safety e-book. @CarlaJohnson
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Using some undesignated money in her budget, she hired an outside agency to create the piece. The response to the gated e-book was, in her word, awful. “No one wanted to give up their email for it,” she says. Even so, its performance exceeded expectations in one crucial measure: revenue.

Although the piece didn’t generate downloads, all revenue attribution pointed to the e-book offer. And that was all the convincing the company needed.

“Not only did it spark people to say that we needed to create more content, they saw it needed to be a top priority,” Randi says.

The insight from the e-book project proved that offering content, not discounts, could help Symantec (and its consumer brand Norton) get people to engage and, ultimately, buy from them. And it would ultimately lead Randi to help develop the Internet Security Center in 2016, a major traffic driver for Norton.com.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: How to Explain Content Marketing ROI to Win (or Keep) Buy-In

Consolidate talent and resources

First, though, Randi needed to assemble a team.

In those days, a small content group produced a Norton blog as a standalone (and relatively unknown) site. Randi presented her boss with a brief explaining why she needed content talent on her team and got the go-ahead to adopt the blog’s writers, forming a new team in April 2016.

She also decided to migrate the off-property Norton blog to Norton.com. The original blog lacked SEO recognition and clear links to the Norton site. With the help of Norton’s SEO staff, Randi and the team organized content around top search terms in the new location, and the Internet Security Center took shape. The move helped content load faster, enabled better use of videos and infographics, and improved conversions by giving visitors easy paths to product pages.

Today, Randi focuses solely on content – she no longer manages campaigns. Her team includes:

• Editor-in-chief
• Four writers
• Strategist/optimizer, who makes sure links aren’t broken and runs tests on banners, images, and headlines

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Building Your Content Marketing Team? 14 Skills for New, Growing, and Mature Programs

A simple strategy: Answer questions, especially when answers are needed most

Randi and team approach the Internet Security Center with a simple mission: to help people understand digital security and how they can better protect themselves and their families. Regardless of whether the readers are Norton customers, the primary goal is to help them make smart decisions about internet security.

They also aim to use content to guide people down the purchase funnel. Articles with short embedded explainer videos help people get answers to questions such as what malware or ransomware is, and, perhaps inspire them to learn more about Norton products.

The team takes a three-pronged approach to content development:

1. Create an editorial calendar based on topics relevant to what people are searching for based on input from the SEO team
2. Mobilize to help during rapid-response situations such as the Equifax data breach
3. Respond to seasonal needs, such as tax time or holiday shopping, both of which prompt increased digital security threats

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.@Symantec creates editorial calendar on relevant topics people search for w/ help from #SEO team. @rpometta
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How to help protect against #phishing scams during tax season https://t.co/wr76pgvbei #taxtip

— Norton (@NortonOnline) February 22, 2018

Shortly after the Internet Security Center was launched, the Equifiax data breach, which exposed the personal data of millions of consumers, hit the news.

Seeing an opportunity to help people learn about how to make sure their personal information was safe and protect it from future exposure, the team created banner ads and social posts that clicked through to information about the breach and a soft product sell.

Randi and the team also created two emails. One notified customers their information was protected. The second went to non-customers in the database explaining what had happened and how Norton products protect personal information.

Though she can’t share numbers, this combination of content generated enough response to catch the attention of other internal teams. During subsequent data breaches, other Norton teams began putting their departments’ budget behind promoting the content.

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.@Symantec content team’s response to Equifax breach attracted attention from internal teams, says @rpometta.
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Recently, the team has begun to blend content into product pages. For example, at the bottom of the privacy product page, content gives people the option to learn about ways to stay safe on public Wi-Fi.

This one addition led to an 8% lift on conversions. It also helps improve SEO rank because VPN is a highly searchable term, and most of the articles on the page include the acronym.

Build internal partnerships

Randi’s team isn’t flying under the radar. Not only are they attracting other teams’ financial support, they’re also fielding requests for new content.

Some requests consist of pieces that can be planned and slotted into their quarterly work. For example, they contribute multiple articles for Norton’s partner magazine, Digital Safety, every quarter.

Some requests involve co-creation. A writer from Randi’s team will meet with an internal client to brainstorm, develop, and execute the idea for the Internet Security Center. Randi’s team then tracks data and KPIs, and handles optimization of the resulting content over time.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: 6 Steps to Get Your Whole Company Involved in Content Marketing

Generate meaningful results

Though Randi hasn’t had a sales number attached to the content work, that doesn’t mean she isn’t producing results.

Content marketing for Symantec’s Norton brand turned in these year-over-year advances:

• 40% increase in time on site
• 100% increase in unique visitors
• 300% increase in article views

A more formal revenue attribution model is underway, which will help the team prove how these metrics contribute to the bottom line.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT: Road Map to Success: Monitoring and Measuring Your Content’s Performance

To find out live who is named the 2018 Content Marketer of the Year (and lots of things to help your content marketing program), register today for Content Marketing World Sept. 4-7 in Cleveland, Ohio. Use code BLOG100 to save $100.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

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