Author: Ann Smarty

Ann Smarty is the brand and community manager at Internet Marketing Ninjas, founder of MyBlogU.com and co-founder of Viral Content Buzz . Ann is the regular contributor at Entrepreneur, Small Biz Trends, and other huge publications. Ann blogs about search and social media industry trends and content marketing tools. Please follow Ann on Twitter @seosmarty.

By ann-smarty published October 6, 2022

3 Ways Artificial Intelligence Can Help Your Content Marketing Processes

Artificial intelligence comes to fruition by teaching a machine to think and react like a human being.

Google refers to content created with the help of artificial intelligence as automatically generated content, better known as spam. Maybe creative thinking will be something machines can eventually master, but we are not there yet. Machines can’t grasp things like style, voice, and perspective, no matter how intelligent they might be.Continue Reading

By ann-smarty published January 10, 2022

Is There Such a Thing as the Best Word Count for SEO?

Word count has usually been a contributing metric helping content marketers judge the quality of text-based content. Historically, some assume Google has been doing the same.

Together with keyword density, word count has been assumed to be an SEO factor as part of educated theories: Google is a machine, and how else would a machine understand content quality? Word count seemed to be the only straightforward signal a machine would be able to understand.Continue Reading

By ann-smarty published November 22, 2021

How To Make Content a More Effective Part of Your Sales Funnel

Unless you go an extra mile integrating your content ideation and creation processes into your sales funnel, your content may never bring in sales despite high search rankings and lots of traffic.

In this case, completing that extra mile requires only five steps, from ideation to CTAs and format.Continue Reading

By ann-smarty published November 1, 2021

3 Pre-Launch Steps To Make Your Content Project Stronger

Are you about to write your new e-book or start a research project? Are you planning to launch your white paper?

Starting a new content project may be overwhelming given all the research, writing, and designing involved.

But apart from creating your product, you have other tasks to complete – competition and promotional research. This guide covers three key steps to take prior to announcing your content-based project.Continue Reading

By ann-smarty published October 5, 2021

Use Internal Links to Get a Better Reception From Search Engines and Readers

Would you like your blog to generate more traffic from search engines? And would you like those new visitors to continue reading other content on your site instead of leaving?

A low-hanging fruit solution exists: Link more to your older content.Continue Reading

By ann-smarty published July 29, 2021

How to Create Winning Sales-Enablement Content

Would you like more sales?

Who wouldn’t?

To increase sales, many businesses invest more in marketing or hire more salespeople. But there’s a more affordable – and fundamental way: Create more effective sales-enablement content.Continue Reading

By ann-smarty published June 14, 2021

How to Make Sure Your Email Pops Up in Your Subscribers’ Inboxes

Email is still the most effective tool at any digital marketer’s disposal:

  • Emails have the highest return on investment (Constant Contact).
  • Almost 80% of B2B marketers say email proves to be the most successful channel for content distribution (Optin Monster).
  • 60% of consumers admit to making a purchase as the result of a marketing email, while only about 12% admit to buying from social media (Optin Monster).

I could go on, but we all know what the data shows: Using emails in your marketing is almost always a good idea when done right.Continue Reading

By ann-smarty published April 19, 2021

How to Drive Organic Clicks and Leads From Your Instagram Channel

Instagram is a great platform for influencer marketing and advertising, but it’s not easy to build organic clicks or conversions. That’s because it doesn’t allow clickable links in captions, which limits traffic-building capabilities.

Yet, hard doesn’t mean impossible.

It’s not easy to build organic clicks and conversions on #Instagram, but it’s not impossible, says @SEOSmarty via @CMIContent. #SocialMedia Click To Tweet

Here are a few definitive steps to start seeing higher converting traffic from your Instagram channel:Continue Reading

By ann-smarty published March 15, 2021

How to Create an Effective SEO Strategy for Your Local Business

To survive the pandemic, research reveals, most small businesses were forced to change their operations or find new sources of revenue.

Lots of businesses that historically relied on local foot traffic were forced to completely or partially digitize their operations to allow online booking, buying, and even services.

That digital transformation brought a new challenge – how to get found online. The first fundamental step is verifying the business with Google Local as well as other local discovery platforms like Yelp and Tripadvisor. But then what?

This is when localized content marketing comes into play. Similar to what foot traffic was doing for your business, content marketing can attract people who never knew they were looking for you.Continue Reading

By ann-smarty published December 2, 2020

How to Create a Performance Dashboard for Your Content Team [Tools]

I see this time and again: Freelancers and in-house content creators never get to see how their efforts affect the company’s bottom line.

While it can work fine for those companies, they miss lots of opportunities:

Continue Reading

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