Ah, September is finally here! I can already feel the tinge of fall in the air. It’s been a red hot summer here in Florida to say the least. Compounding this problem is the fact our A/C unit broke not once, not twice, but three times over the summer!!

In any event, we’re all crossing our fingers for another quiet hurricane season. We’re right in the midst of it, but so far so good.

Anyway, aside from the following pieces I’ve caught over the course of August and September, I’ve started working on my book review for the Success Secrets of the Online Marketing Superstars. It’s fascinating to go back through something for a second time. Before it’s over, I will have probably re-read the entire book.

For now though, check out my top recommended reads (…or views) covering content marketing, email marketing, search optimization and more.

1. 27 Reasons People Aren’t Reading your Blog Posts – Ever wonder why you even bother writing a blog? I mean, you work tirelessly to produce informative and engaging posts but nobody sees them. Perhaps the reason is that you’re making one of the 27 gaffes outlined in this piece from Jeff Bullas. Do you have targeted personas? Or, are you simply talking too much about your products, services or promotions? Perhaps the problem is with your images, or lack thereof. Check out the post for a full list…

2. Are Your Current Buyer Personas All Wrong for B2B Inbound Marketing? – Establishing buyer personas to guide your content development efforts is a crucial first step, especially for business-to-business (B2B) firms. As this piece from Sprout Content explains, marketers should instead focus on creating content for Millenials rather than C-suite executives since they are the ones tasked with researching. Just remember that your content shouldn’t necessarily target the final decision-maker, but those people who are researching and compiling recommendations…...is the CEO or CFO the one hitting Google to search for solutions? Click To Tweet

3. Want More Blog Traffic? Focus on Growing Subscribers – Establishing your blog is only the beginning. For it to truly impact your business’ bottom line, you need to get traffic. Email subscription is perhaps the best and most lasting way to get more readers to your blog. It can not only give you a dedicated base of readers, it can also help give you an initial boost in traffic which can lead to an initial surge of social shares, inbound links and more. In short, the more “subscribers” you have, the more reach you have with both current and new readers…

4. How to Manage your Content Marketing in 30 Minutes a Day – You’d love to write and spend more time on your business’ content marketing, but you just don’t have the time. While it’s easy to just throw up your hands and quit, taking small bits of effort each day can yield great results over time. This outline from Hubspot provides a breakdown of how you can make good progress on ALL elements (i.e. writing, social media, research and outreach) in just 30 minutes a day…

5. The Secret to Writing Long-Form Content – Most people think blog posts should be short and to the point. However, data suggests that long-form posts (2000+ words) actually receive 7x the leads than shorter posts according to research from Curata. Longer posts give you more space to address more points and appeal to a broader scope of readers. To develop a good long-form post or article, you should keep paragraphs relatively short and include several images (i.e. pictures, charts, etc.) to break things up. Include engaging sub-headlines to help the reader navigate your post easily…

6. 7 Effective Ways to Repurpose your Blog Content for Social Media – Like most people, your life is really busy. Repurposing, or recycling old content into a different format, is one way to develop engaging content for your social media accounts quickly. For example, you can take a good quote from a prior blog post and make it into an image to share on Facebook. Or, take an informational article and turn it into an answer of Quora. Check out this article from Search Engine Journal for more…

7. Value Proposition Development: 5 Insights to Help You Discover your Value Prop – In a survey conducted by Marketing Experiments, nearly half of Chief Marketing Officers are not confident their marketing team understands the company’s value proposition. The first step to remedying this situation is to first identify why someone should buy from you rather than a competitor. Next, an ideal value proposition will not appeal to all people, but only to those you’ve identified as your most highly valuable prospects. A good value proposition should also include one aspect that separates you from your competitors…

8. Want Landing Pages that Convert? Don’t Stop at Design – The landing page is an important part of your inbound marketing efforts since it’s the point where a visitor either purchases a product or provides contact information. Effective landing pages have a simple layout and do not include the top navigation and links pointing to other pages. However, you can add additional steps to make your pages work even harder. A quick thank you page for example will encourage the visitor to stay on your site even longer. Automated follow-up emails are an easy way to communicate with the lead immediately and sets the tone for future messages. These steps and others can make your landing pages effective tools for grabbing qualified leads…

9. So Bad They’re Good: Use the 7 Deadly Sins for More Persuasive Copy – It’s no secret that emotions drive action in many cases. Rather than changing visual elements like the color of your call-to-action button, you should consider making your copy more emotional (fear or excitement). Instead of saying “Save money…,” you could put a specific dollar amount so your reader can visualize the benefit of your offer. When you’re trying to convey how your features benefit your customers, tie them to tangible objects or possessions. Other attributes you can appeal to include laziness, confidence and jealously…

10. How to Write Headlines that Convert: Key Discoveries from a meta-analysis of 15 years of behavioral research – This webinar from MECLABS reviews the five essential elements of an effective headline. Truly effective headlines will first focus on what the customer gets and align with the customer’s motivations. They will also make the strongest points first and are given “graphical weight.” Last, but certainly not least, an effective headline is clear rather than creative. Check out the slides below for more, including a few real-world examples.

 

11. How to Increase Your Email List by 200% – While many dismiss email in favor of social media, email is still by far the most widely used platform – is there seriously anyone you know who doesn’t have email? However, you need to be methodical in how you attract people to your email list. Back in the 90s, it didn’t take much effort, but today, you need to give people a really compelling reason to join your list. You can also develop a landing page specifically for the purpose of getting people to subscribe to your list and then test the conversion rate over time, make adjustments, and test again.

12. Email Marketing and Copywriting: Why you should send “spam” – Many email marketers struggle with “deliverability” issues. Will an email land in the prospect’s junk folder if the subject line contains “free” or other spam trigger words? To avoid the dreaded spam folder, many marketers simply avoid trigger words like “free.” However, research from MECLABS sets out to show how these spam trigger words really don’t matter by way of a split test. After evaluating two samples, they found that the message with the spam trigger word had a 32% higher clickthrough rate.

13. How Google defines ‘quality content’ – It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that Google places a lot of weight on a site’s content. What may not be so well known is how Google is determining what constitutes quality content. For example, research suggests that Google favors longer-form articles since the average text length of the top 30 pages increased 25% last year. Other metrics Google is now looking at include the user’s experience (…can they easily navigate and understand the page) and a much lower emphasis on keyword density.

14. What SEO Used to be Versus What SEO is Now – Suffice it to say, search engine optimization isn’t what it was 5 years ago. Many changes, including the famed Penguin and Panda updates, have completely changed how businesses go about accomplishing page 1 search rankings. This handy infographic from Neil Patel provides a great comparison of what SEO was in the past and what it means today.

15. 7 Things that Make your Website Appear Untrustworthy – We may have been told to “…not judge a book by its cover,” but we rarely follow that advice, especially when it comes to websites. Your company really may have the best product or service for the best value, but if your website or “cover” doesn’t look right, it won’t matter in the context of web marketing. In fact, 94% of a website’s first impression is related to design. Other ways a visitor can be turned off is if your copy is confusing, information is outdated or you’re not clear on what you do.

Although I’ve caught other pieces over the last month, I found these to be rather insightful. I hope you can find them useful too with helping build your online presence.

My main focus right now though is to at least get part I of my Online Superstars review online soon. I’m going back through the chapters as we speak and have three more to review in Part I. Stay tuned…