Seach, Social & Content Marketing Blog

As content marketing continues to become a larger part of the world of internet marketing, companies are trying harder to come up with effective strategies to boost their business and increase rankings. Content marketing in its entirety can make or break your business.  Although it may seem like an easy feat, producing content that is engaging and attracts your target audience is easier said than done. A successful content marketing plan requires more than just writing a blog post and sticking it on your website. There needs to be a consistent strategy established, a research and development process, as well as a process for optimizing content before it hits the web.

Companies with the mindset of “getting a lot of views to our webpage will do the trick” must understand that times are changing and there is a strong need to focus on drawing attention to their brand and generating conversation instead of just traffic. As Google continues to update their algorithm, old strategies no longer work. To keep current with competitors, businesses must join the bandwagon, acquire the resources necessary to successfully execute their strategies, and start creating great content.

Unfortunately, there are many mistakes companies make in their efforts to execute effective content marketing. To help your organization avoid these common blunders, take a few extra minutes to look through this list before publishing content in order to make sure the piece is set up for success.

Watch this video to learn more about the importance of customer service via social media and how to uphold a good reputation for your brand. Learn how to respond to unhappy followers and customers all the while being cautious about what and how you share online.

This is a special guest post from Barry Feldman, freelance copywriter and content marketing consultant. Vertical Measures is pleased to showcase Barry’s words here on how to develop content that is UNboring.

“Our content isn’t producing the results we want.” As a content marketing consultant, I hear this one often.

As a content consumer, I see why—all day, every day. Most content is flat out dull.

And as a content creator, I hope to help you understand why your content is boring and how to avoid spraying more snooze-inducers into the atmosphere.

Content marketing strategy is only part of the battle.

Many of us in the internet marketing industry started off with limited information about how to please the Google Gods. Whether we were influential in the early days of changing meta data to get clients to rank higher, or placing guest blog posts before guest blogging was “en vogue,” several started in SEO as trial and error marketers. Having started at Vertical Measures without much internet marketing experience, I certainly credit my abilities to my colleagues here whom I’ve learned a great deal from.

Several others over the course of the last five years have been instrumental in helping me understand the concepts of SEO and thinking outside-the-box for developing effective campaigns. Conversations with Michael Lee Johnson helped in my early years, reading Eric Ward and attending his webinars, Aaron Wall’s blog, posts on SEOMoz, Kaiser The Sage blog, reading Julie Joyce’s posts, conversations with Kristi Hines (a previous colleague), Ann Smarty, instant messaging with Gerald Weber, discussions with Alan Bleiweiss, Outspoken Media’s blog, Neil Patel, and so many others!

I posed the question “who are your internet marketing mentors” to a few industry professionals and here’s what they said…. 

You thought the human brain was complex? With its ability to retrieve stored memories from years past and forge connections from seemingly disparate topics, it truly seems like the brain is a miraculous organ that rules our everyday lives. But what about the Google brain? Just as intricate and just as ever-changing as a human’s brain, the Google search engine works to make associations, recommendations, and analysis based upon your search phrases.

However, the question remains: how does Google understand what we want from it? When we ask it a question, how do those millions of results show up for us effortlessly, ranked in terms of relevancy and authority? Every one of us takes this process for granted so in this infographic, we’ll look at the inner mechanics of the Google search engine that produces the results you see on your screen.