I was checking out one of the educational marketing courses offered at the HubSpot Academy the other day when I was struck dumb. Dumbstruck, even.
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The New Year is a time for change. It’s a time to kick bad habits and pick up constructive ones. It’s also a time to try new things. It just so happens that there are a number of products and services that can help people open a new page in their lives – a substantial number. What that translates into is a steep curve for competition on your New Year’s promotional offers. Luckily, there are some basic tips to help you stand out from the competitors.
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Remember back in the old days when a Yellow Pages listing and a well-placed advertisement in the newspaper were all it took to market yourself? If so, you’re definitely showing your age right now. But more importantly, if you haven’t already, forget the marketing tactics that you used in the 90s and 2000s. Marketing has changed, and if you want to adapt with it, you’re probably going to need to hop on that inbound train sooner than later. This means two things: Content marketing and SEO.
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Q: I’ve been trying to produce content that bolsters my online profile and optimizes my search engine rankings. I’ve studied nearly all of the online tips and incorporated the strategies of various thought-leaders into my own web content, but I haven’t seen any improvement. What gives?
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08 08 2017
The Key to Marketing Magic
There’s a tendency to view marketing campaigns through a lens of cynicism. A lot of it has to do with the unwelcomed ubiquity of ads in every aspect of modern life. People see advertisements as daily hassles from people they assume are trying to sell them something they don’t need. The truth is that this assessment isn’t always too far off the mark.
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We’ve all had those insightful moments where a brilliant thought or idea rushes through our mind. It’s this time that we run to grab our pencil and paper and quickly jot down our fleeting thought. Did you ever feel like your brilliant idea became a complete flop once you put it into words? Sometimes it’s not our actual ideas that need tweaking, but rather the language we use to describe them.
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24 05 2016
Angels and Brats: Which One Are You?
To put broad strokes on the canvas of writing and editing merely for over-simplification, there are two overarching types of writers and editors: the brats and the angels. How they behave is distinctly different due to their different roles. The good news is, once a writer or an editor recognizes he or she behaves in one of these ways, it’s easy to change—though one way is obviously (at least to us) a better way to go about things.
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Back in 2013, in response to a convention question, Wil Wheaton (yes, that Wil Wheaton) explained how he has grown to embrace and define the word “nerd.”
“When I was a little boy, people really teased me about [being a nerd] and made me feel like there was something wrong with me for loving those things. Now that I’m an adult, I’m a professional nerd, and the world has changed. I think we have realized that being a nerd is not about what you love but about how you love.
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Copywriting is a peculiar thing.
Online copy and business-directed content don’t follow the same rules as other literary and journalistic works. Copywriting is looser in many ways, and it offers more flexibility in tone and style.
However, this doesn’t mean that you can cram your writing with whatever you want and expect it to work for your clients. The goal of most online copy is to educate and engage a readership about a topic, and just slapping words on a screen won’t do the trick.
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It’s fairly safe to say that no one knows how to write humor. The great modern humor essayists – Dave Barry, P. J. O’Rourke, and the late Lewis Grizzard and Erma Bombeck, among many others –do it naturally, instinctively knowing just what turn of phrase and clever irony readers will find funny, but they probably couldn’t even begin to explain how they do it. People who are not great humor writers, obviously, don’t know either.
