by Kathryn Brill, Social Media and Content Marketing Specialist Every blog manager has one perennial problem: how to continue generating high-quality content on a regular basis. This problem is intensified for small content teams. If you’re anything like me, you often find yourself staring at your computer screen, knowing the company blog needs an update but not sure what to write. Many companies can afford to hire outside freelancers to keep their blog running smoothly, or have a huge network of potential guest bloggers to turn to. But for the rest of us, we have to look internally for solutions. Our companies are full of smart people with great insights into many

Every B2B marketer worth their salt knows that blogs are a great way to generate leads, create fresh content for your audience, and improve your search engine optimization. On the other hand, blogs are a very big undertaking. Many B2B companies are scared away from blogging because they feel like they don’t have enough content, are pressed for time, or have a small content team. But with a little planning and some savvy, B2B blogging doesn’t have to be so scary. Here are some tips on how to make blogging doable no matter your schedule, budget or team size. Make a plan. Don’t just jump in with both feet—get a plan together

by Randy Mitchell, Creative Director Greetings from Geekland. This is Randy, the video geek. In my previous blog article, I confessed that B2B video marketing doesn’t have to be dry. In fact, it can actually rock, which is welcome news for marketers and viewers. Today, I have another heartfelt confession and another video that’s worth a look. CONFESSION #2: FREEDOM CAN BE DECEPTIVE I used to be a broadcast producer and it had an unusual effect on my thinking. During those days, I experienced life in 30-second intervals. That was the length of the TV commercials I worked on, and there was absolutely no wiggle room. Consequently, I began to think of every story in terms

B2B content marketers wear many hats, from “writer” to “social media guru” to “lead generator.” One of the more intimidating things that content marketers are called upon to do is editing. Depending on your experience, editing may feel like a daunting task. But with a little practice and the right mindset, you’ll be well on your way to being a confident, effective editor. Put On Your Editor Hat If you’re not used to thinking like an editor, you might need to adjust your thinking before putting red pen to paper. One major characteristic that good editors have in common: they’re bold. As an editor, your role is to protect the story and

What qualities make for great B2B video marketing? A compelling story and strong visuals top the list. But in order for your message to be seen by the right audience, you need to adapt to the way the audience views video. And increasingly, much of the audience is viewing the video with the sound turned off. Over the past couple years, Facebook has become a major platform for video, hosting upwards of 8 billion views per day. But new research shows that as much as 85% of all video watched on Facebook is watched with the sound off. This behavior is encouraged by Facebook’s platform design. As a Facebook user scrolls

In a perfect world, every content creator would have the time and space to craft insightful, audience-targeted blog posts every week. But the reality is that time for creating content is limited, and most of us have to come up with business blog ideas on tight deadlines. What can you do when your inspiration is low but you need to write a post quickly? Here are a few places to find business blog ideas: Check out what people are talking about on Twitter or Facebook. A surefire way to create content that will appeal to your audience is to write about something that’s currently on your audience’s minds. If you see

If you blog or post a lot of content on your B2B website, it can be easy to forget all the steps to good SEO in your haste to keep the content rolling. But without optimizing for SEO, the effectiveness of your content is degraded and the goals of great content become harder to accomplish. This SEO checklist is designed to help you make sure you’ve covered all your bases before your posts go live. Ask yourself these questions as you review your content: Did you choose a focus keyword? This is the foundation of good SEO. If you’ve written great content but haven’t built it around a focus keyword, its

What if there was a single tool that solved your content creation and maintenance problems? While there’s no such thing as a magic bullet, using an editorial calendar as part of your content marketing strategy does help with many common problems. An editorial calendar is an organizational system that lays out the dates, subjects, SEO keywords and other important information for your content throughout the year, such as social media posts, white papers, or blog posts. It’s created in advance, so it’s a plan for the future, not a list of what’s already been done. And it can make a content marketer’s life much, much easier. Here are a few issues

If you’ve searched for something on Google recently, your results might have included a widget at the top of the page that displayed some information related to your search. This widget is the Google Answer Box, and it appears on certain Google searches—usually, ones with definitional answers, such as “weather St. Louis” or “what is B2B marketing.” It contains a few lines of text about the topic, almost always pulled directly from a website, and a link to the website that it pulled the text from. Google hasn’t talked much about it, but the Answer Box seems designed to help searchers get the most out of results and find answers more

Boomm knows that business blogging can be challenging and time-consuming, and we’d like to help. So we’ve launched a new ebook, “Introduction to Business Blogging,” all about generating, optimizing and promoting blog content. This blog post, and the others in the series, are just a sample of what you’ll find in the ebook. Download it here! Blogs are all around us online, so when starting or growing a business blog, it might seem like a great idea to mimic the best practices of a successful or popular blog. But while blogging inspiration can be found anywhere, business blogs have different goals than blogs that provide entertainment or news. While sites like Gawker