Too many content marketing strategies are missing a huge piece of the puzzle and it’s holding them back.

That piece? Guest-contributed content from your brand – content authored by experts within your company published by third-party media already consumed by your target audience.

In 2016, we found that guest posts were a major factor for our firm’s organic search and referral traffic, which generated 58% of qualified leads and 73% of our marketing-generated revenue.

We’re not talking about spam-like 300-word blog posts written by your SEO agency and submitted to 500 different “blogs.” Guest-contributed content includes educational, high-quality articles that showcase your company’s area of expertise and highlight the author as a thought leader within the industry. They should be nonpromotional, professionally edited, and submitted to a single outlet.

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The success or failure of your content marketing efforts rests on your ability to build a team of dedicated, talented people to power your strategy, and that’s no quick or easy responsibility.

Yet, there aren’t hacks for hiring people like there are for, say, creating content. You’re probably not going to find an article that promises to tell you “how to hire 10 people in 10 minutes” the same way you may find one that says you will learn “how to come up with 30 content ideas in 30 minutes” — and there’s a reason for that.Continue Reading

If your goal is to lose weight and you want to measure your progress, you use a scale to track pounds or a tape measure to track inches. You would never measure your weight loss by tracking your height.

If you did that, you’d never know how far you’ve come — how many pounds or inches you’ve lost — and you wouldn’t be able to objectively see whether something you’re doing to lose weight is working. It’d be nearly impossible to hold yourself accountable, and it would be a waste of your time, energy, and resources.Continue Reading