The Only 4 Reasons Agencies Should Care About Their Own Content Marketing

agency content marketing

Mimicry is not a strategy. Compulsion is not a strategy. Yet, far too many agencies are devoting resources to content marketing and social media solely because they feel they have to do so. Other agencies have a blog, and Webinars, and an active Twitter feed, so we need some of that too! To what end?

Don’t Tell Me I’m Wasting My Time

Dont tell me im wasting my time

Guest post by Marjorie Clayman, resident blogger at www.margieclayman.com. She works at Clayman Advertising, Inc., her family-owned full-service marketing firm. I know that it is impossible to please everyone in any scenario, but most especially in the online world. Because of that, I most of the time let snide remarks roll off me like water off a

To Build Blog Subscribers, Get Narrow-Minded

Narrow Street

I had an interesting conversation about blog visitors and blog subscribers with my friend Doug Karr a few weeks ago at the Blog Indiana conference. Doug’s blog covers a wide swath of digital marketing topics, whereas Convince & Convert is of course mostly in the social media lane with occasional dalliances in email, conversion optimization,

Calculate Your Blogging ROI in 9 Steps

How to Create a Following for Your Brand | Formstack Blog

Blogging isn’t free. Creating and sustaining a good blog for yourself or your company is a highly labor-intensive proposition. The people (maybe you) working on the blog could be doing something else that helps the company make money, save money, or both. Thus, blogging presents a serious opportunity cost to the company. Smart organizations methodically

Lifting the Fog of the Blog: 8 Strategic Questions Before You Write 1 Word

There are more than 150 million blogs, according to Technorati’s “State of the Blogosphere” report. Given competition of that magnitude, why should people spend time reading yours? As a frequent blog consultant, I find the success impediment isn’t really the effort required, but rather a planning deficit. Most blogs fail not due to quality, but

Bloggers Get Two Free Copies of The NOW Revolution

Social Media Book

We can’t believe The NOW Revolution is almost here. Less than a month until it debuts, and we couldn’t be more excited. The hardest part is wondering whether all of you will like it as much as we liked it when we wrote it. So, let’s find out. If you have a blog (and not

The 10 Social Media Thoughts You Liked Best

The 10 social media thoughts you liked best

Looking back on an exhilarating 2010, I wanted to take a second to just say thank you. No frills, no flourishes. Just thanks. There’s a LOT of places you could go to get you social media and digital marketing fix, and I’m incredibly honored that you choose to spend time here. As part of my

Blogging Success Summit – 23 Tips From Blogging Top Dogs

If you want to take your personal or corporate blogging to new heights in 2011, here’s an opportunity to get a leg up. The Blogging Success Summit kicks off in February, with 23 presentations from a murderer’s row of blogging luminaries (+ me). And for a short time, you can save 50% on registration at

The Dirty Secrets of Time, Priorities, and Honesty

time and priorities

I hate excuses. And the one I despise most of all is “I don’t have time.” Bullshit. You can find the time. It exists. You choose not to devote the time, and there’s a big difference. I don’t work out. (people that have met me in person are LOLing about the understated nature of that

Content Lessons Learned From 25 Popular Blog Posts

Content Lessons Learned From 25 Blog Posts

I’ve been writing Convince & Convert for more than two years, and have produced more than 300 posts. Mostly from me, with some terrific assistance from talented guest authors. Last week, I was on a content marketing discussion panel (moderated by Jeff Rohrs) at the ExactTarget Connections conference. I was joined by Joe Pulizzi from