Brand & Capture

Blogging is now considered by most content marketers as the essential skill for attracting new visitors, turning them into subscribers and ultimately converting them into leads and customers. In other words, blogging is the spigot at the top of the sales funnel. Not all blogs are created equal, however. Notwithstanding the funny video post that goes viral, the most effective posts are those that answer questions, address problems and pose serious solutions. The blogs you remember and subscribe to are persuasive.

It's game time at Kuno, so join in the Mad Lib fun! First, list one of each of the following: Noun, Adjective, Name of a Room (i.e. library), Adjective and Name of Kuno Employee. Now plug them in and see what type of story you can tell with just a little creativity!

Ever been trolled online? You know, that angry or nasty person that leaves aggressive or inappropriate comments and/or posts on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc. They seem to be looking for an argument, a fight or simply to be annoying. Not the automated spam troll, but that real person you may know well, vaguely or not at all. What’s funny is that sometimes the people doing the trolling are completely oblivious that they’re acting like trolls. Below are 11 ways to tell if you've been a social media troll.

Rather than writing a post highlighting the usual suspect blogs you see in everyone’s Twitter feeds (you know the ones), this post will focus on the blogs that may or may not be in your peripheral vision. The below blogs are highly recommended because they’re produced by passionate practitioners of one or many Internet marketing disciplines. The authors live and work in the online trenches and their advice is always timely, prudent, sound and full of passion. If online success is your goal then emulating and absorbing the below blogs will definitely help.    

For you inbound marketing veterans the below is nothing new, but more times than not it’s common for people and brands to deploy inbound tactics when their website is not inbound optimized or ready. Even Fortune 50 companies find themselves in this situation. This problem can weigh heavy on a campaign’s metrics and often lead to frustration, minimal success or outright failure. If you are not happy with your website’s performance, consider tackling the below seven items first and in the order they’re presented.

Very few folks are good prolific online writers. However, for those who are, most have one thing in common – they all have more website traffic and leads then they know what to do with and are generally considered industry thought leaders nationally or globally. Writing blog posts isn’t a requirement to be successful in Internet marketing, but over the last five years it’s clear that it is the most efficient way compared to other forms of online marketing like social media, PPC, webinars and presentations.

Have you blogged lately? It's quite possible that you've been blogging for years. Whether for business or pleasure, blogging is a great way to share information, connect with others and convey important thoughts and ideas. With budgets under ever-increasing scrutiny, however, corporations are looking to identify blogging best practices, rather than continue their free-form blogging approach of the past. Businesses can't afford to undertake projects that don't deliver and blogs are no exception.

This post will probably make editors everywhere cringe with abhorrence, but it’s true, the occasional inconsequential blog post can be good for blogs, writers and their personal brand. On the other hand, trivial blog posts may not be good for large brands. Many large brands have consciously erased any personality from their content. Below are 10 reasons to write the occasional trivial blog post. Big brands – prepare to bookmark this post.

A common hurdle to effective inbound marketing is time. Whether it's creating an enticing call-to-action, email blast, or lead nurturing campaign - the common denominator for all of these is time. Blogging regularly, as an example, is an effective yet time consuming way to increase your website traffic. To that end, here are some tips that have worked for me in creating valuable yet efficient blogs:

Sometimes you just have to dive off the cliff to see what's at the bottom. We know that our inbound marketing traffic and leads increased substantially when we started posting on our blog every day. And we know that HubSpot and other rapidly growing companies are blogging multiple times every day, and their data shows that the "sweet spot" for publishing is around three times a day. Fine, that's compelling enough reason to jump in and ramp up the blogging schedule. Let's see what happens. Here are some of the possibilities: