William Exchange

Content marketing is competitive. In most industries, every piece of content you publish is competing with hundreds or even thousands of other pieces on similar topics already out on the web. Creating content is hard enough, but trying to figure out how to make your stuff stand out is even harder. Why You Should Publish Original Research You shouldn’t give up on content marketing because of how competitive it is. Stopping or pausing only causes you to fall further behind. What you should do instead is look for opportunities to create content that’s truly original and highly valuable. Easier said than done, right? That’s what everyone’s trying to do. But one type of content that consistently gets outstanding results isn’t something everyone’s doing: original research. A number of studies have confirmed that creating content around original research brings a number of compelling benefits. It’s good for links. Earning backlinks is arguably the hardest part o

You’ve invested a significant amount of time into your inbound marketing strategy. You publish high-quality blog posts and promote them on social media. Maybe you’ve even spent time writing guest posts or doing link-building outreach. But you're still struggling to reach the people in your audience. That doesn’t mean you should scrap your inbound marketing efforts. Inbound marketing is crucial for raising awareness of your brand, generating new leads and building relationships with your target audience. But it can take a long time to see big results, especially in a competitive space. If you want an effective way to reach your audience faster, Google PPC (pay-per-click) may be a good option for your business. Why Google PPC Matters Paid advertising always comes with budgetary considerations. You only have so much money to spend on your digital marketing efforts and want to be confident any method you choose will pay off. Google PPC offers significant benefits

Want to use video marketing more effectively? Looking for a proven video strategy? To explore how to develop an effective video marketing strategy, I interview Ben Amos on the Social Media Marketing Podcast. Ben is a video marketing expert and host of the Engage Video Marketing Podcast. He coaches video marketers and video producers and his course is called the Online Video Strategy Blueprint. Ben shares why marketers should focus on developing a video strategy, the key elements of the customer journey when it comes to video, and more. Getting Started With Video Marketing Developing a Love for Video Production Ben’s interest in video production began when he was a kid. His dad had a big, old VHS camcorder, the kind that sat on one shoulder and needed a battery pack that sat on the other shoulder. From an early age, Ben began tinkering with the camcorder and got hooked on creating videos of his own. He edited the videos from VHS to VHS and was fascinated with

It doesn’t matter how good you are—some customers will be unhappy. If you’re lucky, they’ll complain. That may sound odd, but remember that 95 percent of dissatisfied customers never complain in a way you can find it. So the five percent that do complain are doing you a favor, for two reasons: They tell you where you can improve They give you a chance to do something about their unhappiness The second one is what we’ll cover today. When customers complain, I see too many businesses fretting about whose fault it is that the customer is unhappy. That internal deconstruction is valid, eventually, but not at first. Because what’s done is DONE. The customer perceives that you failed to meet or exceed their expectations in one or more ways, period. How do YOU handle complaints? The FIRST and ONLY thing to worry about immediately is to figure out what you’re going to do about it. And here, you have three (and only three) options. Option 1: Ignore or Dismiss the C

Facebook kingpin Mark Zuckerberg recently confirmed via blog post that the company is merging Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger to create a new, interoperable, “privacy-focused” social network. Reaction from the mainstream and technology media has primarily been, “Facebook has been rocked by privacy scandals, and now sees the error of their ways, and is shoring up privacy before regulators do it for them.” This is a colossal mischaracterization of the situation. This isn’t a time-specific move forced upon Facebook by market conditions and a skeptical public. This was ALWAYS THE PLAN. If you want to be the conduit for global communications (which Zuckerberg has admitted is their aim), what are the only two communications modalities that are bigger than Facebook is today? 1. SMS and 2. EMAIL Taking over the role of SMS and email has been Facebook’s true master plan since the WhatsApp acquisition in 2014, and now that the news feed is waning, they ar

An experienced fisherman will tell you that some fish will bite a baited hook when they are hungry, some bite it because they are curious, and some bite it because they are angry. The fish’s motivation can literally change with the wind, water temperature, cloud cover, air temperature, and a myriad of other reasons that most of us will never care to understand.  But, the fisherman just keeps trying different areas of the lake, and different baits and lures until they find the right combination. Even the smallest tug on the tip of a fishing rod is enough to develop a strategy for landing that world record clunker. They patiently work all areas of the lake with all different types of baits and lures. As digital platforms continue to change the marketing landscape in real time, all marketers can take a cue from the fisherman. Recognizing that purchasing power has shifted to a new, more digitally savvy generation, and is no longer the brand’s path to define, it’s time t

Whenever you start talking about content-based marketing strategies, static content, dynamic content and interactive content always seems to come up. Digital marketing relies on quality content that is personalized and keeps your audience coming back for more. It’s challenging. But understanding the differences between these three types of content, and knowing the pros and cons of using them can help. Let's take a look at some examples: Static Content Examples: social media profiles (not feeds), eBooks, whitepapers, emails, landing pages, PPC and social media ads, banner ads, one-way webinars. Static content never changes. Standard HTML pages are static webpages. Once a static resource is uploaded to a web server, it won’t change until you replace it with another static file. The other criterion that defines static content is authorship. If a piece of content is created and promoted by a brand or single author, it has no way to evolve or grow over time thr