Part art, part strategy, and mostly made of water. Design is Garrett’s thing and he knows how to use it. He has proven that design is much more than pretty pictures. It is your message, and it has to mean business. Aside from design responsibilities, Garrett is the blogger-in-chief at Todaymade and has written the core curriculum for Todaymade’s 20-part social media marketing training course.
Create beautiful Click To Tweet boxes in your blog posts.
Today we are proud to release a brand new Click To Tweet plugin for WordPress!
You may have seen this plugin before as a regular feature on our own blog posts. Now, we are pumped to be releasing it for all of the world to use. The concept is pretty simple – create beautiful Click To Tweet boxes anywhere in your blog post.
Have you ever heard of the The Furrow?
It is a customer magazine that has been published by the John Deere corporation since 1895. It is now available in more than 40 countries and in 12 different languages, and is widely considered one of the earliest examples of content marketing. The truth is, though, that that magazine was not alone when it came to content marketing.
One of the earliest examples of content marketing is The Furrow. Here is an issue from 1959.
For a blogger, defining the competition isn’t always an easy thing to do. At first glance, it would seem we’re competing against other bloggers. More often than not, that isn’t the case. That would be far too simple. Our real competition is all of the other things that our readers could be doing. Playing games on their iPhone, watching television, or heck, even sleeping.
How do we outshine such a massive field of competition? One of the most reliable methods is to develop a sprit of learning.
Yes, learning. A spirit of learning is one of the most important tools that a blogger needs for success, and it comes in two very different froms.
It’s spring. The weather is warming up, people are out and about, and that can only mean one thing for homeowners in a quiet neighborhood – door-to-door salesmen.
This weekend, I was approached by the second salesman making a quick pitch for a home security system. As an entrepreneur I can respect the hustle of door to door sales, but in reality, it feels like the worst version of the cold call. It appears to miss the boat on so many levels, so why is it that it can actually work?
I’ve probably watch the video of Steve Jobs unveiling the original Macintosh a dozen times. Every time, I am still in awe of what it says about products, and the people who sell them.
The best part is almost certainly the wide grin that Steve Jobs displays at the 4:18 mark. He was busting with pride. He loved the Mac, like a father loves a son.
Isn’t this how it should be for all of us? Shouldn’t we love the things that we are selling? Shouldn’t we love our content?
In business, the goal is has always been to outdo the competition. It may be through a better price, better customer service, or a better product. Every business has to find its secret weapon in order to succeed.
Is a blog really any different?
Nope. Every blog is in competition for readers, even your’s. So, how do you compare to your competition? Do you stand out?
Google+ has a huge user base. Wouldn’t it be perfect for blogging?
Lately, I have been hearing a lot of noise about using Google+ for blogging. I love Google+. It’s big, and it’s growing rapidly. It’s shaping up to be a serious online contender that moves beyond just another social network, but blogging? Is this really a good idea?
Probably not.
Claude C. Hopkins is not a household name, even though he helped popularize many household items like coupons, toothpaste, and even advertising.
Claude C. Hopkins, an original ad man.
Hopkins, an advertising pioneer of the early 1900s, is probably best known for his book Scientific Advertising (published in 1923). Through his book and his lifetime of work, he became a pioneer of the modern advertising industry. I suspect, though, that he would be appalled with what he saw now. In many ways, Claude wasn’t nearly as much of an advertiser as he was an expert on human psychology. He understood how we think, and that is what made a message from 1923 completely relevant today.
How we think hasn’t really changed, even though we might think we’re more “modern.”
There are dozens of useful nuggets on marketing and sales in his autobiography, a book that I would recommend for just about anyone. While the methods of advertising have changed, the principles of how we market and sell our products to consumers hasn’t changed at all. In fact, in this “new” era of content marketing, I believe that they resonate more than ever.
In our day, most advertising is just a new take on screaming ”buy me” to the customer. Sure, we use humor, celebrities, and loud music on occasion, but at the end of the day, isn’t most advertising just begging for a sale? Hopkins says that this method doesn’t work. “[We] have to consider the woman at the front door.”
In other words, we have to ditch the pitch, and put our customer first.
One must know what buyers are thinking about and what they are coming to want. One must know the trends to be a leader in a winning trend. - HopkinsClick To Tweet
Here are ten rules of advertising that I learned from Claude C. Hopkins.
Do you think about your content in blobs, or in chunks?
We’ve started a subtle series here on the this blog about something called adaptive content. Adaptive content has a relatively simple goal: put great content in as many places as possible. In part, this is a definition for the future of content creation tools. In reality, it is also a workflow mentality that all content creators must adopt.
TV Guide created chunks, and they are glad they did.
To start, we content creators need to start thinking about our content in ways that go beyond the typical article or blog post. We need to think about where it is going, and where it will be used in the future. The premise is simple. Ten years ago could you have imagined how content would be consumed today. On smartphones? From tablets? Through a 140 character tweet?
At this point, we have no idea where, when, or how our content will appear in another decade. The publishing tools, readers and devices will all change. The big question is, how should responsible content creators prepare? How do we keep it from taking us by surprise?
Continue reading…
The word is out. Google is killing Google Reader in July. RSS lovers everywhere are scrambling for a new way to gather their news. The world will survive though, because there are viable alternatives.
But this entire ordeal has me thinking about RSS in general. Does this mean that RSS is dead? How will this affect bloggers?
There is no doubt about it – RSS is slipping, especially at Google. Feedburner is on the back burner, and Google Reader is already on its way out the door. It sure looks like RSS is dying or dead.
