Blog - Page 7 of 22 - Michael Dillon

March 15, 2017March 15, 2017

The Chief Content Officer Is Dead; Long Live Content Marketing

Although some firms consider hiring a chief content officer (CCO) a best-practice, it turns out that bringing an executive on board at that level hasn’t been realistic at most companies.

Most B2B organizations (other than publishing, communications, and media companies or agencies) don’t have a person with chief content officer title who has a seat at the CEO’s table.

Not to worry, though: similar to the results of a Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs study, a 2016 study conducted by Curata found that 75% of companies are increasing their investment in content marketing, and 43% are increasing staff levels.

Chief marketing officers have recognized the need for a core content marketing team, led not by a CCO but by a content executive (typically with a marketing operations manager or writer/editor title), who develops and orchestrates a content strategy across the company.

The Best Way to Get More Results From Your Content

Content marketing has a problem: the content itself. Creating good content is expensive and time-consuming. It requires skill and subject expertise. It’s generally a pain in the … budget. And bad content? It might be less expensive. And easier to create. But it’ll get you almost no results. Fortunately, there are several ways around this: You can outsource your content creation, either to freelancers or influencers. You can hire an Editor to take your in-house rough drafts and make them better. You can create far less content, and just promote, SEO, and advertise the heck out of it. You can curate some of your content. You can just ignore content marketing entirely, and stick with advertising … at least for as long as that lasts. I don’t recommend that last one. And while the other tactics are good, they aren’t actually the best option. But before I get to […]

3 Types of Content That Gets More Traffic, Links and Shares Than All the Others

Why waste time creating content that doesn’t get you traffic, links, and shares? The problem for many content creators is they aren’t sure what type of content to focus on, so they try creating everything and anything they feel like creating in the moment. That works for some, but not for all (especially not for me). Let’s focus on 3 types of content that are proven to get you more traffic, links, and shares. If you focus on creating these types of content pieces you will start seeing better results. Good? Read on. 1. A Sure-Fire Way To Get Attention and Traffic Fast (Especially For Beginners) With A Recognition List Post Anyone doing something online whether that’s blogging, selling, writing, video publishing or email marketing love it when their work is recognized by others. Think back to when you were a teenager. Think of times when you put in […]

5 Content Optimization Mistakes You’ll Wish You Fixed Sooner

By now you know that — technical details aside — SEO is not separate from content marketing; it’s an integrated aspect of content marketing . Optimizing your content for search engines is part of your craft and a skill you can strengthen with practice. But even when you rank well for search terms your audience uses, the real test is what happens when someone clicks through to your website. As Brian wrote on Monday: “There’s nothing worse than a quick bounce.” To avoid a quick bounce, you need to focus on content optimization. Since you don’t want to miss any opportunities to connect with your site visitors, study this list of five common mistakes — and how to fix them. Mistake #1: Your visitors can’t tell if your content’s right for them A row of four new houses that all look basically the same were just built on the […]

It’s time to get rid of FAQ?

The FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page started out, like most information on the Internet, with the very best intentions. Its purpose was to provide a list of questions and answers the site authors would anticipate the user would ask often (albeit, the “frequent” part) thus negating the time the users spent either searching the site for an answer, sending a question through the contact form or *gasp* calling the contact number for an answer. But also like other vanguards of the Internet, it has long outlived it’s usefulness and is time to be retired. The FAQ has gone from a convenience tool for customers looking for quick information, and has turned into a dumping ground of information that: Does not fit within the information architecture of the web site, yet is deemed important enough to stay Is cleverly disguised as helpful information to the user but is in reality […]

The Amazon basin is home to over 2,500 species of fish, more species than are recorded for the entire Atlantic Ocean.

The Amazon basin is home to over 2,500 species of fish, more species than are recorded for the entire Atlantic Ocean, and some experts estimate that there may be as many as 6,000 species! These range from giant 3-meter air-breathing fish (Arapaima gigas) and river catfish weighing up to 600-700 lbs, to tiny tetras, electric eels, sting-rays, needlefish, fresh-water flying-fish, and knife-fish. The fish fauna of many river systems is poorly known, and new species are discovered yearly, even in the “better-known” areas!

Read the full article.

March 9, 2017

The CMS as You Know It Is Already Dead

For the first time since the millennia, both web and enterprise content management systems are setting the same course Over the past year, we’ve witnessed a push to using headless CMSs. While the concept is far from new, the interest reflects a growing recognition that managing content for multiple channels is hard to do well while also managing those disparate channels. Meanwhile, in the enterprise space, there’s growing recognition that the old ECM deployment models have failed and leveraging content services is a better approach for managing enterprise content. For the first time since the turn of the millennia, web and enterprise content systems are setting the same course. The Underlying Problem with CMS What’s driving this two-pronged change is the realization that now more than ever — content matters. Enterprise content management (ECM) emerged as a way of combining the different content applications, including web content management (WCM), […]

Six Surefire Marketing Strategies for eCommerce Websites

Look. Marketing is way more difficult than most people realize. But, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. You’ve got the products. You’ve got the website. You’ve got the payments all set up, and you’ve got everything ready to be packaged and sent out. Now, all you’ve got to do is bring in some website traffic and convert your visitors into paying customers. It won’t happen overnight, and it will be a challenge. But, with some strategies in place, you’ve got a good starting point for successfully marketing your ecommerce website. The following ecommerce marketing techniques are some that really give you the most bang for your buck, and are a great starting point for those who have already spent time building an ecommerce website , have sold some products, and are ready to start bringing in new customers. Strategy One: Guest Post on Quality Sites You may be wondering what […]

Here’s What 2016 Taught Us About Content Marketing and SEO

Good, bad or indifferent – 2016 is over. And while 2017 is well underway, I recommend content marketers take one good look back before they go. The past is the past, after all. And there’s plenty of lessons from 2016 that we can apply going forward. 1. We’re getting better at this. Good news first: The big story of content marketing in 2016 is that content marketers were considerably more effective than they were even one year earlier, with 62 percent of B2B content marketers and 63 percent of B2C content marketers report that they were “somewhat more successful” or “much more successful” than they were one year ago. Most content marketers report that they were more successful with their content marketing in 2016 than in prior years. This is clearly great news. It means we can canvas for larger budgets. It also means we can better balance between […]

5 content strategy considerations for website projects

Planning and producing content for websites is challenging. It has to be useful for the organisation and their customers, written in an authentic voice and tone, and there are often lots of people involved with individual agendas and priorities. Add to this the considerations needed around accessibility, structured content, localisation,personalisation, migration, governance (and many more), and you can easily find yourself spiralling down a rabbit hole of missed deadlines, delayed content and out of control budgets. I’ve painted a bleak picture here but there is hope. Having a content strategy for website projects can ensure a better way of getting content planned, produced and published. We need to put content at the top of the agenda from the get-go and ask questions early on in the project to make sure you don’t get to the stage of building the website and realising there is no content. When content isn’t […]