#“ and ”smart home technology“ to help attract readers interested in these topics.

[nashwancostruzioni]

Ristrutturazione di Piscine di Lusso: Consigli Professionali per un Aggiornamento Scintillante

Una ristrutturazione di una piscina di lusso è un investimento gratificante che può trasformare il vostro spazio esterno in un rifugio splendente. Considerando tutti gli aspetti, dalle riparazioni strutturali ai miglioramenti estetici, e coinvolgendo i professionisti giusti, potete ottenere un aggiornamento scintillante che migliora sia la bellezza che la funzionalità della vostra piscina. Che desideriate modernizzare la vostra piscina con le ultime tecnologie o creare un'oasi naturale serena, una ristrutturazione ben eseguita eleverà senza dubbio la vostra esperienza di vita all'aperto.

[tirupathitiru]

Write for Us + Home A Comprehensive Guide

Are you passionate about writing on topics related to home improvement, decor, maintenance, or DIY projects? If so, we invite you to write for us Contributing to our blog can provide you with exposure, help build your portfolio, and allow you to share your expertise with a large audience. Here’s a complete guide on how you can get started, including answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs), an explanation of what writing for us entails, and meta tags tailored for SEO.

Why Write for Us?

By writing for our home improvement blog, you get the chance to:

Share your knowledge: If you're passionate about homes, renovations, or design trends, this is the platform for you.

Build your portfolio: For aspiring writers or freelancers, contributing here offers you a professional portfolio piece that can enhance your credibility.

Reach a large audience: Our website attracts readers interested in home-related topics, giving your content the attention it deserves.

SEO benefits: If you have your own blog or website, we allow relevant backlinks, giving you the chance to improve your own SEO rankings.

Write for Us + Home: What We’re Looking For

We are always on the lookout for well-researched and informative articles that provide practical value. Our ideal content includes topics like:

Home improvement tips: Guides to renovations, repairs, and upgrades.

Interior design trends: Share insights on the latest design ideas and decor.

DIY projects: Step-by-step instructions for do-it-yourself enthusiasts.

Home maintenance: Seasonal tips, cleaning guides, and preventive maintenance.

Sustainable living: Eco-friendly solutions for modern homes.

Smart homes: Innovative technologies and how they can enhance living spaces.

Guidelines for Submission

When submitting your article, please ensure that it:

Is 1000-1500 words long.

Includes original, well-researched content.

Follows SEO best practices, using keywords naturally.

Incorporates images (if applicable) for better reader engagement.

Avoids promotional tone; articles should be informative and unbiased.

How to Submit Your Article

Send your draft to email@example.com.

Our editorial team will review your submission and provide feedback within 7-10 business days.

Upon acceptance, your article will be published, and you'll be notified via email with a link to your live post.

FAQs About Writing for Us

1. Do I get paid for contributing? No, we do not offer monetary compensation. However, you can include a backlink to your own website or portfolio.

2. Can I submit more than one article? Absolutely! We encourage regular contributors. Once your first article is published, feel free to submit more content.

3. Do I need to be a professional writer? No, as long as you have a passion for home-related topics and can write well-researched, engaging content, you're welcome to contribute.

4. Can I include links to my own blog? Yes, as long as the links are relevant to the topic and provide value to the readers. Excessive self-promotion will not be accepted.

5. Will my article be edited? Our editorial team may make minor edits to ensure the article aligns with our tone and SEO requirements. However, major changes will be communicated to you before publication.

What is "Write for Us + Home"?

"Write for Us + Home" refers to an invitation extended by websites in the home improvement and decor niche to writers who are interested in contributing guest articles. Writing for such platforms allows content creators to share their knowledge on home-related topics, gain exposure, and build their online presence. This practice is mutually beneficial as it provides the website with fresh content while allowing the writer to showcase their expertise.

Why it Matters:

For websites: It brings in new, high-quality content and diverse perspectives.

For writers: It helps in building a portfolio, improving SEO through backlinks, and reaching a broader audience.

Keywords: write for us home improvement, write for us home decor, guest post home improvement, contribute to home blog, submit home improvement article, home improvement write for us

Conclusion

If you're enthusiastic about sharing your insights on home improvement, interior design, or DIY projects, then take advantage of our write for us invitation. Submit your guest post today and start engaging with our vibrant community of home enthusiasts. Whether you’re an experienced writer or just starting out, we welcome your contributions!

[petertingle-yipyip]

Saturday Nights - Peter Parker

//Requested by @mixed-fandoms-girl: Peter Parker x reader Peter Parker x Smart! girlfriend! reader she’s the smartest kid but doesn’t go to midtown and when flash is making fun of Peter at Liz’s party and talks about his imaginary girlfriend, she shows up and proves flash wrong //

//Warnings: Language. Pairings: Peter x reader//

You laid in Peter’s bed and read over your math assignment, waiting for him to get home from school. Dating someone who was as smart if not smarter than yourself was great. The only thing that made it a struggle was going to different schools. Your parents wanted to send you to Midtown School of Science and Technology, but you were adamantly against it. You had nothing against Midtown or the kids that went there. It would’ve been a great fit for you academically. You just liked being at a normal, public school that had a little bit of everything, not just the typical “smart” subjects. Your current school was a more social environment, more lax and fun.

Often, you went to Peter’s after you got out of school. You ended school about an hour before he did, but after picking up snacks for you two to study with and the walk to his apartment, your arrivals were only about twenty minutes apart. Aunt May always welcomed you in, joking that you might as well get a key. She absolutely loved you being with Peter, saying it made him so happy.

“Hey!” He said happily as he entered his room and tossed his backpack by his bed. You rolled over, pushing yourself to sit up and tossed your assignment aside. “Working on homework?”

“Nah, just looking at it.” You shrugged. “You know Calculus kills me and I avoid it for as long as humanly possible.”

“I can always help you, you know.” He offered, dropping to lay in his bed with his head in your lap. “I’m actually really smart.” He said proudly.

“I never would’ve guessed.” You teased, tugging on the Midtown sweatshirt he was wearing. “Besides, I’m pretty smart myself in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“What’s the topic?” He laughed.

“Derivatives.” You said, handing him your assignment. “Literally the worst part of Calc.”

“I always thought logarithms were worse.” He countered.

“Don’t even get me started on logs!” You said with a laugh. “Those are literally the devil of mathematics. Honestly, why do they even exist? But derivatives are torture. Who say around and thought that derivatives needed to be a necessary concept? What do they prove? They prove how useless they are, that’s about it. And then there’s anti-derivatives and those really make me wanna hit myself in the face with my textbook.”

“But your face is too cute to hit with a book.” He said with a stupid grin and he reached up with his other hand and patted your cheek affectionately.

“You are so cheesy.” You laughed.

“Maybe.” He shrugged, letting his hand drop to his chest. “But you like it. You find it endearing.”

“Your vocabulary is astounding, my dear.” You nodded. “But have you ever stopped to contemplate the philosophy that I, as a female, was just so infatuated with your virtue, your true innocence, that I could not help but swoon and give my heart to the lovable virtuoso that is, Peter Parker?” You said, using your best scholastic voice.

“Yes, Ms. Y/L/N. I have gone over the possibility oh so many times.” He said with an exaggerated sigh. “Alas, there is not enough evidence to prove such a theory. Being that this virtuoso you speak of can only attract someone with a similar talent and aptitude, what else would be so outstanding about one, Peter Parker?”

“An interesting question, indeed.” You stifled a laugh. “Maybe it’s the suit.” You winked.

Of course you knew Peter was Spiderman. He didn’t mean for you to find out. He did everything in his power to hide it from you. You found out by accident. You had been staying the night at his place and restlessness had taken over. You couldn’t sleep and had rolled over to find an empty bed. You figured Peter had gotten up for water or needed to use the bathroom so you paid it no mind. But once his window opened and he crept through it carefully, your mind tried to convince you it was a dream. The next morning, you asked Peter flat out if he was Spiderman, and his stammering and lack of excuses proved you right.

“Oh, is that right?” He raised an eyebrow as his cheeks turned a slight pink.

“Yeah.. I mean, have you seen yourself in the suit?” You laughed.

“Have you seen yourself in that denim skirt?” He replied with a cocky smirk.

“Touche, Parker.” You nodded with a smile still.

“Hey, are you busy this weekend?” He asked suddenly, dropping your work on the floor.

“Actually, yes.” You nodded, gently running your fingers through his hair. “But I can easily cancel my plans for you. What did you have in mind?”

“No, if you’re busy it’s okay.” He shook his head. “I just thought you could use something to ease your stress..”

“Peter, what did you have in mind?” You repeated your question with a soft smile. “I’d cancel plans with anyone to spend time with you. Plus, I only made these plans cause you and I didn’t have anything planned. Besides, there’s a few different ways you can help with my stress. ” You winked. His cheeks flushed pink again.

“It’s just.. Liz is having a party this weekend and I was hoping that you would want to come with me..” He said with a small shrug, as if it was out of the ordinary for you two to do things together. It reminded you of when he asked you out for the first time and it brought a soft smile to your face and a warmth to your heart.

“Liz, isn’t she the girl you liked before me?” You questioned.

You had no issues with Liz. She never made you feel insecure in your relationship or with yourself. In fact, you were rather curious in regards to her. You never met her, but had heard all about her. You knew Ned and met Michelle on a few occasions. But never Liz.

Peter jumped up quickly, causing you to jump slightly. He turned to face you, taking your hands in his tightly. “Not like that! Not like that at all!” He explained quickly. You were still surprised by his quick actions and you couldn’t stop your laughter.

“Pete, I’m not worried about Liz. I never have been.” You explained with a smile. “Of course, I’ll go with you. I finally get to meet her.”

“Wait, you want to meet her?” He asked in shock.

“Yeah, I mean why not?” You shrugged, letting go of one of his hands to lean down and pick up your math work. “I can finally see who you liked before you met me... Now, help me get through these derivatives and we’ll talk more about it. Or we can start a different stress reliever.”

“You don’t need my help and you know it, Y/N. Except maybe for the stress relief.” He laughed, taking his own backpack off the floor. “You’re the smartest girl I know.”

“Maybe...” You hinted. “But it’s cute when you explain things for me. I mean, you are pretty smart after all..”

The night of Liz’s party, Aunt May offered to pick you up. You told her it was fine and your mom could take you since you needed a bit more time to get ready. You texted Peter, telling him you’d be there soon as you hopped into your mom’s car.

At the party, Peter and Ned wandered the crowd.

“She’s gonna be here soon.” Peter assured his friend as he checked his phone and saw your message.

Leaving right now. mom’s dropping me off but i’ll probably go home with you if you dont mind. be there soon xx

“What are you gonna do till she gets here?” Ned asked. “Everyone doesn’t believe she’s real. Everyone even thinks the pictures you have are photoshopped!”

“I’m just gonna be myself.” Peter shrugged slightly.

“Peter, no one wants that.” Ned said in return.

“Hey!” Flash announced on the microphone. “It’s Penis Parker! Hey dumbass, where’s your girlfriend? Is she studying for this ‘other school’ she goes to?” He tormented.

“Told you.” Ned sighed and Peter rolled his eyes.

“She’ll be here.” Peter assured. “She’s on the way, I swear.”

You stepped out of the car in front of Liz’s house, the bass hitting so hard you could hear it on the street. Your mom asked when you needed to be picked up, but you waved her off, saying you would go home with Peter. You pulled your phone out to call him as you entered the house.

“Did your imaginary girlfriend bail on you? When I say Penis, you say Parker. Penis!” A boy said, the crowd following his instructions.

“That must be Flash.” You muttered as you pushed through the people. You saw Ned’s hat over the top of the crowd and made your way over there.

“Hello, Lover Boy.” You smiled widely as you finally found your boyfriend. You kissed him quickly before greeting his friend. “Hey, Ned. Nice hat.” You wrapped an arm around Peter’s waist and his arm came around your shoulder. You leaned into him slightly and used your other hand to reach up and lace your fingers together.

“Thanks Y/N!” Ned smiled.

“So, I’m guessing the asshat on the mic is that kid Flash?” You asked the boys, glancing to the DJ booth.

“Yeah, that’s him.” Ned confirmed.

“He’s a bitter little boy, isn’t he?” You joked. “Oh! Sorry I’m late, by the way. I couldn’t decide between the blue and red stripes or the black and green stripes to match the denim skirt.”

“The blue and red is nice.” Peter said kindly.

“Like Spiderman!” Ned exclaimed.

“Uh, yeah... I guess.” You replied with a smile.

“You have a crush on Spiderman!” Ned said in amusement. “So does she..” He nodded to something behind you. Before you could question, you were greeted by a friendly voice.

“Peter, Ned!” A girl said as she came up and joined the group. “I’m glad you could make it.”

“I told you we’d be here.” Ned said happily. “Oh, Peter. Introduce her!” He said quietly.

“Right! Sorry.” Peter laughed slightly. “Y/N, this is Liz. Liz, this is my girlfriend, Y/N.”

“Girlfriend? Wow. Hi. Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that or anything I just didn’t know Peter had a girlfriend.” Liz said with a smile. It was a sad smile, as if she was upset Peter had a girlfriend. Maybe she was harboring some feelings for him.

“From what I can tell,  no one believes he does.” You laughed and nodded towards Flash. “Apparently, I’m imaginary.”

“You look pretty real to me.” She laughed. “I’ve never seen you around before. Are you new or-”

“No, I actually don’t go to Midtown.” You shook your head. “I had the option before this year started but I didn’t want to. It’s too... focused for me, I guess is the best way to put it. I just like the range of classes a regular high school offers.”

“But she’s a genius!” Ned interjected.

“I wouldn’t say that but I’m alright.” You said modestly.

“Alright? Y/N, you’re the smartest girl I’ve ever met!” Peter countered.

“Really?” Liz questioned with a bit of bitterness in her voice. “That smart, huh?”

“So they say.” You shrugged. “Sorry if this is weird but you are really pretty.” You complemented honestly.

“You think so? Thank you! I love that top. Red and blue look so good together!” She replied. “Well, I have to make my rounds so have fun. Drinks are in the kitchen, if you need anything.” She nodded with a perfect hostess smile before leaving.

“I don’t think she likes me very much..” You commented as she walked away.

“I thought I was the only one picking up on that.” Ned agreed.

“What are you guys talking about?” Peter questioned. “I think that went okay.”

“Okay, but Peter, there’s an unspoken rule between girls that when a girl compliments you, you compliment her back.” You explained. “It’s a whole thing focused on women supporting women.”

“But if it’s unspoken, how is every girl supposed to know?” Peter questioned.

“They just do. It’s practically in our DNA. I’ll show you.” You said, turning to see Michelle not to far away.

“Hey, Michelle!” You called for her attention. “That dress is cute!” You smiled.

“Huh? Oh, thanks.” She said casually. “Your skirt looks good.” She nodded.

“See what I mean?” You said to Peter.

“I can’t believe you guys are at this lame party.” She told the boys.

“But... you’re here?” Ned replied, just as confused as the rest of us.

“Am I?” She said before disappearing into the crowd.

“She’s interesting...” You thought out loud. “I like her.”

“So wait, is there an issue between you and Liz or...” Peter asked.

You giggled slightly. “No, not an issue. I just don’t think she likes me.”

“Well, Liz has a crush on Spiderman.” Ned explained. “But it kinda seems like she has a crush on Peter, too.”

“Alright, how much is he paying you?” Flash asked as he suddenly stood in front of you.

“Excuse me?” You said in offense. “Fuck out of here with that.”

“How much did Parker pay you to show up and pretend to be his date?” Flash clarified.

“He didn’t pay me, you ass. He asked cause I’m his girlfriend.” You laughed in annoyance. “Which I’m assuming is more than you have based on your immaculate personality..” You added sarcastically. “You’ll catch more flies with honey... I’m just saying.”

“So you’re Y/N Y/L/N?” He asked.

“Yes.”

“The genius that doesn’t go to Midtown?”

“Yeah.”

“Prove it.” He challenged. “Or are you just some above average public school kid that actually has more than three functioning brain cells?”

“What do you wanna know, dickwad?” You said confidently.

“What is the most abundant protein in the human body?”

“Duh, collagen. 25-35 percent of the human body is collagen, which forms connective tissue like the ligaments, tendons, and skin. Next.”

“What’s the anti-derivative of a cosecant squared?”

“I hate calculus. Negative cotangent of x plus the constant, k. Don’t insult me by asking kindergarten questions.”

“Definition of antiestablishmentarianism.”

“Not much of a challenge. EVen though I doubt you can even spell antiestablishmentarianism.” You laughed. “It’s a political philosophy that views a nation's or society's power structure as corrupt, repressive, exploitative, or unjust. It’s basically opposition to the conventional principles of society.”

“Who introduced the theory of punctuated equilibrium?”

“Obviously, Gould and Eldredge. And that’s all the time we have for today on How Can This Random Asshole Ruin This Date With My Boyfriend featuring This Random Asshole.” You said in a gameshow host type voice.

“And you’re seriously dating him?” He pointed to Peter.

“Obviously.” You sighed in annoyance. “And you go to Midtown? Maybe I should transfer that way someone can actually challenge Peter on an intellectual level and not compensate by being a physical challenge. I mean, who does that anymore?”

“Are you blind or something?”

“No, cause I can see exactly how ugly your personality is, but then again I’m not a genius, remember? Above average public school kid that actually has more than three functioning brain cells, I believe is what you called me.”

“How did you even meet? He’s a total loser.”

“What’s it to you?” You laughed. “Your dumbass didn’t believe I was real five minutes ago. Plus, you’ve been getting on my last nerve so if we’re done here, you can leave.”

“Why would you even consider dating him? You’re hot enough that you could date like, young Leonardo DiCaprio or something.”

“Who wouldn’t wanna date Peter?” You said as if it was obvious. “He’s peak boyfriend material.”

And to you it was. Peter was beautiful. He was sweet, kind, smart. He held the door open for you and stayed up late on the phone with you until you fell asleep. He offered help with your homework and asked you to stay with him almost every other night. He made cheesy jokes that you couldn’t help but laugh at. He was shy and awkward. But that’s what made him so perfect to you.

“Are you convinced yet, cause I’m growing rather uninterested with you.” You said plainly.

“You’re lying.” He crossed his arms, refusing to believe you. “There’s no way Penis Parker scores a total babe like you.”

“Tell me then, Flash, since you seem to know my life. If I was lying, would I do this?” You said slowly, turning to face Peter.

“What are you doing?” Peter whispered, slightly nervous.

“Just trust me.” You said in the same hushed tone with a small chuckle.

You took his face in your hands and pulled him to you. Your lips met softly at first, you pulling away a few times to tease him. He smiled against your lips as his hands fell to your hips and gently pulled you closer. You two kissed each other deeply, enjoying the intimacy of the moment. When you were out of breath, you pulled away and smiled. Peter’s cheeks flushed a bright red, a shy smile graced his face.

“See? I told you to trust me.” You winked before you turned to face the bully who stared at you two in shock.

“So not only are you Peter’s alternate for the academic decathlon, but he has a girlfriend before you do.” You laughed. “You talk a big game for someone in second place.”

“I.. But you’re- And he’s-” Flash stammered.

“Bye, now.” You wiggled your fingers and Flash slowly walked away, still muttering an incoherent response.

“That.. was.. hilarious!” Ned said loudly. “I’ve never seen Flash look so flustered!”

“It’s what he deserves.” You shrugged with a proud smile. “Now, why are we standing around still? This is a party after all! Let’s dance!” You said happily as you dragged Peter to the dancefloor.

“No, Y/N I- I don’t- I don’t really dance.” He said nervously.

“No one really dances at parties!” You said over the music. “Everyone just jumps around or find the closest person to grind on. No big deal. Just go with it, Pete.”

You spent the rest of the night on the dancefloor with Peter. Ned came and went but you were focused on Peter. His hands on your waist. Your hands on his arms.

“This is cute.” You tugged the top of his flannel that he left unbuttoned. “You always look cute in a flannel.”

“Thanks.” He smiled, a red tint finding his cheeks again. “Hey, thanks for coming.”

“Anything for you, Peter. Anything for you.” You said softly as you leaned in to kiss him gently.

[minahilsheikh18-blog]

Creative Critical Reflection

Q.1 How does your product use or challenge conventions and how does it represent social groups or issues? 

Before I began creating my magazine I researched into a range of different magazines in order to identify the type of genre I was interested in basing my own magazine on. Due to my wide taste in music I decided to base my magazine on ones which I thought had covered more than one specific genre.

I started by analyzing the example magazines and so I focused on the main images first and I took this into account when styling and setting up the photo shoot for my magazine. The poses and clothing used in my images were specifically chosen in order to create a certain type of look for my artist.  Another thing I noticed about the front cover images of example music magazines was that the background color is mostly neutral. The reason for this is to draw your eye directly onto the image rather than having a busy background to distract readers. So all I did was added little doodles with low opacity with one neutral color black according to my theme. For the Masthead I chose to use a Font that is different from most of music magazine just so it stands out from the existing magazines.The colors used in the issue I was annotating were black, white and red. The use of the color red was minimal as it only highlighted the more significant articles and features in the magazine i.e. the main article. I used these conventions in my own magazine as I believe that trying to cram in as many different colors and fonts into a magazine will end up making it look messy and unprofessional. These colors were also used for the Content Page and Double Spread as to go according to the theme of the Front Page.

The main concept of my magazine was to never give up on something you dreamt of as this is also the topic of my article. My target market, Young Adults play a huge rule in my magazine as every teenager these days wants to be different and unique, as music magazine related to Rap it will attract them to find their music taste and as Rap Music is a niche in Pakistan so more people will get to know about this genre. As  music can be seen a very common hobby that a lot of people may pursue by buying music magazines or collecting music memorabilia such as vinyl’s. My media product does not specifically represent an ethnicity, however I believe that it would mostly appeal to geographical area. 

Q.2 How does your product engage with audiences and how would it be distributed as a real media text?  

The most important part of the magazine is the cover page and it is extremely essential for it to be able to attract audiences in order to have a good market. The Front Cover image is of Artist looking upwards with a dark background to represent the darkness and the hope he has inside which probably everyone needs during hard times, the colors are of three colored theme that I used but they give away a very appealing  appearance and stands out from on the music magazines. Since the picture is only focusing on one product it allows it to stand out to a great extent. Also, high quality, tempting pictures tend to engage with audiences and allow them to be fascinated by what are the details related to the product and what does this particular issue include. Having a lot of text and items made it look very packed so less texts and huge font of the feature will be easier for the audience to notice everything in less periods of time. The masthead color was chosen keeping in mind the theme color of my magazine

Distribution of the magazine has been kept in mind while developing the final product. The magazine will be published online because users are digital natives and want their product available online and on every platform, this will even reach a mass audience. The online magazine can be more engaging and interactive as two way communication is possible between the reader and the author by giving feedback or questions related to the magazine. Another form of distribution can be done by offering users mobile applications where they can download Wrap-Up magazine and read through it on their mobiles conveniently. Hard copies of the magazine can be sold at local stores where the target audience can easily purchase it. In conclusion distribution of the magazine as a real media text can be done online or by distributing at the local stores. As long as it targets the right audience.

Q.3 How did your production skills develop throughout this project?

Although this was a short preliminary task it allowed me to develop sufficient photoshop and photography skills to be able to develop a magazine for my AS level final task. In the post production stage, my photoshop skills such as image cropping, resizing and adjusting the image were one of the first steps to the development of my magazine. Later, when I was working on my final task I experimented with gradient tool, shapes, margin adjusting, enhancing the picture etc which allowed me to polish my skills throughout the project. The photoshop skills I have developed as I have used a variety of fonts on the front cover and I have also used a number of different font sizes. These skills have effectively helped me to produce the product that I wanted to create as the main cover line is clearly displayed in larger text than the remaining cover lines, and is therefore more noticeable. For the images used, my photography skills developed to a great extent as I was able to capture exactly what I had in mind eventually- even though I know there were a few flaws when it came to getting the perfect picture but I tried my best to cover up by using photoshop which is always of a great help.

Q.4 What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

As for media technologies, I have learnt a lot of new skills from constructing my media product. I used a blogging site called tumblr which I am already familiar with as I have used to before but this time it I setting one up for my media coursework. tumblr is very efficient as it can be easily accessed and updated from smart phones as it has its own app, this came into use as If I wanted to work on blog at home or somewhere I don't have access to my laptop. 

I used Adobe Photoshop CC to construct my media product. I am also familiar with this but never got the opportunity to learn it. Using different tools in this made me realize that this is no hard as I have used editing app on my mobile phone and this was just supposed to worked on more efficiently because of tons tools it has.

 I used a DSLR camera to do my photoshoot though I’m already familiar with DSLR cameras as I’m interested in photography. I used different type of platforms to make my presentations like Canva to make it colorful and interesting. I also used a survey site for my Final Task surveymonkey.com which allows me to ask few questions from the target audience that I opted.

[thangngo]

Five lessons learnt from 17 years of blogging

Thought about starting a blog? The longer you wait, the further you’ll fall behind, personally and professionally.

I started writing online content in 2000 out of necessity. As a newly elected local government councillor, I felt having a blog/website was the most effective way to connect with constituents in the Fairfield Council area. It was a pragmatic decision, and one that has had a profound effect on my personal and professional development.

Back in those days, I used MS Frontpage, a clumsy program to create and maintain a website. Through trial and error, I learnt the basics of building a blog — home page, html, hyperlink were foreign terms that eventually became familiar concepts.

After I retired from council in 2009, I took up food blogging — 1,128 posts later, I started to learn more about the world of publishing online content. Along the way I picked up photography and video skills including digital photo and video editing. I slowly developed a better understanding of writing for online and why it’s important to learn.

I launched into the world of blogging for functional reasons, not realising the endless benefits I’d reap. I’ve been asked to contribute opinion pieces, gained paid writing and speaking gigs, been invited on overseas trips, been engaged as a brand ambassador and become a generally more sought after employee.

The regular blogging routine stimulates and educates. Each week the benefits accumulate like time moving on, even though you don’t notice the hands moving on an analogue clock. My partner is a published author, and he says publishers always encourage authors and aspiring authors to blog.

More and more people are blogging for professional and personal development. If you’re not, you’re falling behind.

Looking back almost two decades of blogging, it’s easy to identify at least five really important lessons I’ve learnt from blogging:

The art of writing online content: online readers are promiscuous. If your copy doesn’t grab them from the first paragraph, if the lead visual isn’t engaging (or if you have no visuals), they’ll click to another blog. I’ve learnt so much about key elements of online publishing; writing an intriguing headline, concise copy, creating evocative visuals and developing an editorial calendar — that’s just the beginning, I’m still learning. And then there’s the technology side, learning blogging software such as blogger, WordPress, Medium etc, setting up domain names like noodlies.com or thangngo.com.

Social media: how do you use social to connect with existing readers and attract new ones? What are the key social media channels, twitter, facebook, instagram, tumblr etc. What are their strengths? Which one is right for you? Should I be on one or all? How to use social media to research content? What are the emerging social media channels?

Blogging can help you build influence: say “social media influencer” and most people screw up their face, they think of shallow, camera hogging, attention seeking guys and gals. The influence I’m talking about is slightly different. Over the years, my blog has played a role in bringing the issues I’m passionate about to the forefront. When I started, ethnic ma-and-pa restaurants in the west were ignored by other bloggers and food critics. As my blog grew in popularity, it helped to showcase delicious and affordable diverse food and culture. It’s allowed me to go on national TV and write for food magazines about pork rolls and write about pho for leading print publications. Building your blog will also build your influence on your expert topic.

Blogging builds your brand: smart business people often “google” you before meeting you for the first time, HR people google prospective employees. Your blog and social media posts help you to control your image and project a positive impression of you before they even meet you. Or putting it another way, a blog is your business card. People’s first impression of you could very well be via your blog content. When an employer is choosing between two highly qualified candidates, the one with a blog, and is smart and active on social media is usually the one hired.

Blogging makes you a better employee: “Do not abdicate your social media to “experts” who have a hundred followers, tweet once a month, and charge you more than the GNP of a small nation for their services. A good rule of thumb is never to take the advice of someone who has fewer followers than you” says Guy Kawasaki. The lessons I’ve learnt about online content and social media over the years have been amazingly useful in my ‘day time’ work at a marketing agency. And yes, it’s helped me to spot bullsh*t when it comes to social media or digital strategy.

Almost two decades of blogging have been invaluable in my personal and professional development. I think of it as doing a Masters degree by course work in my spare time. I reckon it’s given me an unfair professional advantage.

If you’re not blogging, you’re falling behind.

Want to learn blogging?

Save yourself months of trial and error and learn the basics of blogging. My Blogging your Interest: Share your Passion with the World course at WEA Sydney will cover everything you need to know to start your own blog on any topic:

Find your niche: A framework to help you to: select your blogging topic if you are agonising over a few potential areas, or hone in on an untapped specialty in your area of interest. Learn how to build your point of difference

Understand your style: Establish your writing style and tone. Understand the basics of developing and projecting your writing ‘voice’

Words and pictures: Visual tools to complement your words, the pros and cons of using photos and videos

Blog platforms: Select the right blogging platform for your style and blog topic

Setting up a blog: Basic structure of a blog, selecting blog sections and categories, pros and cons of hosted vs self-hosting, selecting your blog name

Content: Learn the basics of developing a content strategy, tips to stay motivated and where to find inspiration

Promotion: How to use free tools including social media to promote your blog

Analytics: How to track the growth in your readers. Understand basic analytics terms such as UBs, page views and bounce rate

Tools: An inventory of equipment and tools you’ll need for your blogging style. You’ll need a PC or laptop for a blog, but do you need a smartphone, camera, photo or video editing software?

If you have any questions at all, get in touch, I’d love to help if I can.

[ladystylestores]

How will we build the city of the future? – TechCrunch

Editor’s note: Get this weekly recap of TechCrunch news that any startup can use by email every Saturday morning (7am PT), just subscribe here.

Commercial real estate, the traditional heart of most cities, may have lost its reason to exist in the last few months. The world is about to find out what the situation is as more locations start to reopen.

First up in our ongoing coverage of the topic, Connie Loizos caught up with a couple proptech investors this week for TechCrunch, who saw existing trends accelerating — with many medically focused additions.

Brendan Wallace of Fifth Wall is looking for more aggressive pickup of smart tech in general, along the lines of what you already see in some other countries. “He notes sensors that can determine how many people are in a room or pass through a turnstile. He points to facial recognition tech that can help keep points of physical contact to a minimum. He imagines that more companies might embrace robots to patrol buildings and, possibly, to clean them, too.”

Darren Bechtel of Brick and Mortar saw tech remaking the construction site, with growing practices like using large-scale pre-fabricated components: “If you’re limited by how many people can work in the field, and you have to put in controls for people not working on top of each other, the question becomes: how can you do the work in a more controlled environment, with a next-gen HVAC system [to purify the air] and markings on the floor?…. People are now saying, ‘How much can we prepare off-site?’”

Buildings are also going to be focused on health features, Connie wrote. “[B]oth Wallace and Bechtel mentioned advanced air purifiers and air handling units used to recondition and circulate air as part of a heating, ventilating and air-conditioning plan. Both say it will likely become a growing area of interest for building owners and developers.”

What about beyond the buildings? A few writers here put together some thoughts in a post for Extra Crunch. Here’s Danny Crichton’s view from Brooklyn:

Few of us can live in the dreary confines of a suburban enclave our entire workweek. And so I expect to see a revitalization of the classic Main Street clusters that once dotted towns across America as people appreciate the close proximity of amenities that they need throughout their day and remote work makes it possible to skip the commute to the central business district.

It’s not going to be a simple transition, of course. The built environment alone will probably take decades to fully transition. But the spirit of Jane Jacobs lives on and will move beyond the downtown core neighborhoods she observed to spread to medium and perhaps even small towns across the country and throughout the world.

If you want more on the topic, check out our recent investor survey with six other top proptech investors from late March (for subscribers).

Just want to settle down at home and get to work? Check out Darrell Etherington’s TechCrunch guide to setting up a pro-grade videoconference studio.

The $100M ARR club continues to grow, despite everything

When Alex Wilhelm rejoined TechCrunch late last year, he kicked things off with a list of companies that he called “the $100M ARR club” to signify unicorns that were also generating a lot of revenue. It was a clever way of organizing which of the hundreds of highly valued companies heading towards IPOs were most set up for success, and our readers agreed.

But, with entire market categories whipsawed by the pandemic, it has been hard to find companies willing to share numbers lately. He still found a few, as he wrote up for Extra Crunch this week: ActiveCampaign, Recorded Future and ON24. Here’s a vignette from the CEO of ActiveCampaign:

While we had the CEO’s attention, TechCrunch wanted to know if ActiveCampaign was taking incoming fire from COVID-19 and its related economic and labor disruptions. As some other SMB-focused software companies have told us, the answer is no. Here’s [Jason] VandeBoom:

We anticipate continued growth in 2020 and are already seeing further acceleration to support this. The past four months have been the best in company history and we’ve seen monthly trials double in that timeframe and new customer acquisition numbers at 4500, 5500, 6000 and 7000 respectively from January to April.

He did hedge those results a little, adding that while his firm has “seen some acceleration from COVID-19 and the digital transformation that it is inspiring,” the CEO is more convinced that “the need for customer experience is what is fueling the majority of this growth.”

This week in China trade news….

The already basic trade agreement between the Trump administration and the Chinese government from last year looks ready to blow up; the administration banned selling more tech to Huawei; TSMC plans to open a factory in Arizona following urging from the US government; Foxconn profits crashed… Danny Crichton has a clear takeaway on TechCrunch for startups about the latest headlines:

[T]he world of semiconductors, of internet infrastructure, of the tech ties that have bound the U.S. and China together for decades — they are frayed and are almost gone. It’s a new era in supply chains and trade, and an open world for new approaches to these huge existing industries.

If your company is not already planning for a more chaotic, multi-polar world than what most of us can remember living through, it may already be too late.

(Photo by CHRISTOPHE ARCHAMBAULT/AFP via Getty Images)

Investor survey: hospitals to increase tech focus after pandemic

Sarah Buhr talked to top investors in the healthcare B2B and infrastructure businesses for one of our investor surveys this week on Extra Crunch. They generally seemed to agree that the pandemic was going to push the system wholesale towards better technology. Here’s Bilal Zuberi of Lux Capital:

While a lot of our healthcare infrastructure will take a little bit of time recovering from the stress COVID placed on it, we anticipate this to provide a push to the system to adopt new technologies that enable distributed health, build resiliency in our delivery networks and deploy data-enabled healthcare. Hospital balance sheets might struggle in the short term to buy new technologies, but payers as well as large businesses might participate in infrastructure development and deployment in a bigger way. We anticipate selling to hospitals to be difficult in the short term, as they try to recover from the revenue shortfall they experienced during COVID-19, but will generally emerge more interested in adopting new technologies, digital and remote health solutions and automation in various functions. Needless to say, a wide-scale digital transformation of our healthcare industry is underway, and there is no looking back.

Don’t miss our other survey this week, on how the mobility investors are viewing the pandemic.

Protecting your equity as a startup employee

Wouter Witvoet of fintech startup SecFi wrote a guest post for TechCrunch going over some key points for anyone working at a startup right now (or recently). As an occasional startup founder and/or employee myself, I’d like to recommend this one for special consideration: “Negotiate for equity during a pay cut or furlough.”

Startups typically offer equity as a means of deferred compensation and as a way to incentivize employees to own a piece of the company they are building. The compensation is deferred as most startups are cash-strapped and cannot afford to pay you what a larger company may be able to.

If your company is now asking you to take a pay cut, or even take no pay during this time, you should consider asking for additional equity to make up for the lost compensation. While not all companies may be amenable to offering more equity, there is no cash outlay from the company’s standpoint, so it’s an efficient way for your company to compensate you for your sacrifice while preserving their cash.

In addition, offering more equity shows a commitment from management to their employees during this difficult time. It may be the win-win scenario for your company and yourself in the long-run so it’s worth having the conversation with management to discuss if this is available for you.

At first it seems weird when you consider typical venture dynamics. The founders have probably already lost leverage against the company’s investors. These investors have probably already lost leverage against their LPs. So nobody is naturally included to give up even more. And the employees were already last in line on the cap table and first to go, so why should founders do anything different?

Tactically, the best employees will be attracted go work at bigger more stable companies as the pandemic recession stretches on — and you might not have the cash to afford the effort to rehire. Strategically, now is the time to build the esprit de corp that will carry your company forward into better times… a few extra basis points for the team now could help deliver a priceless return.  

Across the week

TechCrunch

COVID-19 shows we need Universal Basic Internet now

AngelList wants to improve comparing VC fund performance with new metrics and calculator

Seven viral futures

Where to shop online that isn’t Amazon, Target or Walmart

Extra Crunch

4 edtech CEOs peer into the industry’s future

Sequoia’s Roelof Botha is more optimistic about startups today than he was a year ago

These best practices maximize the value of your online events

Fintech startups amass war chests for the economic downturn

Around TechCrunch

Give the gift of Extra Crunch membership to anyone

Extra Crunch Live: Join Alexia and Niko Bonatsos for a Q&A May 19th at 2 pm EDT/11 am PDT

Extra Crunch Live: Join Revolution’s Steve Case and Clara Sieg on May 21 at 3pm ET/12pm PT

#EquityPod

From Alex:

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

Are you a regular Equity listener? Take our survey here! We talk about it on the show.

From home once again this week, Danny, Natasha, Alex and Chris got together to pull the show together. But unlike last week’s episode (catch up here if you are behind), this week’s show features a game that actually worked. It’s at the end, as you’ll see.

But before that piece of the puzzle, there was a bunch of news to go over. We had to leave SaaS valuations, the Liftoff List, Brex and FalconX on the floor, but there was still so much good stuff to cover:

Then we played our game. Please hold us to account. And if you have listened to the show for a while, take our survey! It’s right after this next sentence.

Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.

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Content Marketing WordPress Themes | Templified

New Post has been published on https://templified.com/content-marketing-wordpress-themes/

Content Marketing WordPress Themes

Welcome to the best WordPress content marketing themes around.  Searching for a great looking, powerful, modern and feature filled WordPress theme to help you reach a wider audience than ever before?  Well, we’ve got a great collection for you to peruse.  These themes are the best of the best, each one perfectly optimized to help you maximize your profits from blogging and creating content.  This collection of content marketing themes is going to be the biggest and best on the internet, so stay tuned as we keep adding more and more great themes.

DizzyMag

DizzyMag is a beautiful, well designed Adsense optimised theme that helps you turn your blog or magazine into a full fledged business, since Adsense is the leading way for bloggers to make money from click-through ads.  This well crafted, modern and powerful  Adsense ready WordPress template offers the very best in customization options, with a stunning design that’s easy to navigate and simple to change to fit your style. If you’ve been searching high and low for a brand spanking new Adsense WordPress template, made specifically for presenting your content, images, or design work in the best possible light, the large array of high quality designs makes WordPress a great and popular option. DizzyMag is no exception.  Although you will find quite a few high-quality, premium portfolio or gallery themes readily available for WordPress, this one is simply one of the best.  Recently there has been a big surge in the amount of responsive portfolio themes that have the Adsense ready features you require and it’s easy to understand why. Adsense is a great way to monetize your content.  If you would like visitors to have the ability to conveniently see your portfolio site on a cell phone or even tablet.

Demo More Information Get Hosting

Simple Life

This awesome AdSense WordPress magazine and blog theme may be used for almost any type of blog site you need and it’s an Adsense powerhouse, built to last and ready to please. With a sophisticated design and a large array of functions, it would work amazingly well as a clothing blog site, a magazine blog or perhaps your personal blog page. With a first class, efficient arrangement and a wide range of features to help make blogging painless. In case you’re not a WordPress professional, you can still adjust this design to provide the functions you are looking for your website to have. Your viewers will like the way your amazing blog looks, the convenient navigation, the modern and specialized design, the fresh scripts, the general configuration and a great deal more.

Demo More Information Get Hosting

San Francisco

This beautiful Adsense theme provides the ultimate basic customization choices in an amazing design. When you’re seeking a brand new AdSense optimized theme to market your posts, images, or design work, the wide variety of quality designs makes WordPress an effective option. While there have been many first-class portfolio themes available for WordPress for many years, recently there has been a significant rise in the amount of responsive portfolio themes and it’s easy to see why. If you want your website visitors to have the capacity to conveniently see your portfolio web-site on a phone or maybe tablet, along with a computer, a responsive WordPress portfolio theme is an excellent choice.

Demo More Information Get Hosting

CrazyBlog

This stunning AdSense WordPress theme can be used for virtually any variety of web-site you want and the fact that it’s SEO optimized and ready for Adsense ads makes it a snap to help you build an audience and monetize your traffic. With a really great design and a large variety of functions, it will work great as a stylish fashion blog site, a news magazine blog or perhaps a personal blog page. With a wonderful, useful design and plentiful features to help make blogging and site-building simple. In case you’re not a code specialist, it’s possible to revise this amazing theme to provide it with the options you are looking for your web blog to have. Your blog readers will cherish the the style and features offered by your blog, the straight forward navigation, the contemporary and well built layout, the clear code, the simple arrangement and a whole lot more.

Demo More Information Get Hosting

WordX

Online blogs and internet magazines can really utilize the bold, professional style and the well-constructed layout and code that they get with WordX WordPress theme. WordX does a marvelous job of arranging content and high quality HD images to present a professional and polished appearance which will convince website visitors to stay and appreciate the content. For businesses that are using Adsense to make money, it’s a key factor.  Keeping the audience around on a ‘sticky’ site is far more valuable than having the audience’s attention for a fleeting moment.  This WordPress theme offers 100% responsiveness so that folks can appreciate pictures, the text and other info from any mobile device like smartphones and tablet computers.

If it cannot be located by potential customers, a web site won’t ever prosper. This WP theme is completely incorporated with the most recent search engine optimization choices, which means that you’re going to be seen by the spiders and you’ll be ranking in no time.  Some of the characteristics you may appreciate in your site: complete integration with AdSense, multiple flexible ad-blocks and a carousel attribute that is exceptional.  If you always want to put your best posts and images out there, this is a wonderful way to do just that. These key features will enable you to assemble a content-rich web site with the WordX WordPress theme that brings in sales and brings traffic.

DemoMore Information Get Hosting

MoneyFlow

Want to make money from your home, in your spare time? Then you may need a great AdSense ready theme like Money Flow. The Money Flow WordPress theme offers an ideal system to investigate various online opportunities and make greater gains in traffic, and income, than ever before. It’s chock full of great attributes, it’s highly customizable and MoneyFlow is fully incorporated with the most popular monetization strategies. That’s what Adsense is all about.

Although the design may seem complicated, there’s no need to learn any development or programming technology in order to create and focus-grabbing website with MoneyFlow. User guides and a comprehensive and detailed instruction manual are also included in your download package.  If you should run into problems, MyThemeShop does a great job of supporting all of their themes. The Money Flow WP theme offers responsiveness that is complete, so the website looks great even on mobile devices. International business is eased with translation abilities, which permit you to expand and enlarge your world of influence and increase traffic around the globe in any language. Money Flow supplies everything needed to create and establish a contemporary WordPress site that has the possibility to make you a significant amount of income as time passes.

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Collecto

Collecto is a classic newspaper inspired WordPress theme with a very attractive grid layout that presents your posts in a professional, polished and beautiful way.  It’s easy to navigate, because Collecto is so visual, your readers will simply click on the gorgeous images they see, the alluring headlines and they’ll be on to the next topic that interests them.  It really does look a bit like a newspaper and I really love the typography that’s included in the vanilla demo.  Single pages are just as attractive, with a bold, minimal style that accentuates your content, not the site’s design.  The result is a site that’s very easily navigated and that looks great on all devices, thanks to pure responsive design.  Collecto should absolutely be considered for any site that wants a wonderful looking, dynamic grid based layout.

Demo More Information Get Hosting

HyperX

Here’s an excellent theme that’s the whole bundle of tasteful design excellence, called HyperX, and it’s sweetly coded with a purely responsive layout.  This is an incredibly appealing, feature packed multi-page web design that can really be a perfect solution for an AdSense based business. This theme is right on the money, whether you need to create a web site for corporate use, private sites or curriculum vitae pages to highlight your specific set of skills, freelance creative portfolios or average internet users who desire to emphasize their work, be it writing, photography or something different. HyperX is a fantastic AdSense ready theme too and it’ll permit you to set up quickly, and run successfully, a brilliant looking business with a site design that’s either full-width or a design that is boxed. That flexibility enables you to make the design fit your business’ brand, not the other way around. Building an on-line fine art gallery? Definitely doable. Making a product centered website site? Readily done, just add a little patience and an excellent theme like HyperX.

Control layout, colors, graphics, symbols, icons, light and dark variants, background pictures and more in this genre defining theme. Making money from AdSense is a challenge, since the competition is high.  With a theme like this one, you’ve got a huge head start, thanks to the smart ad placement, the well crafted design, the ease of navigation and the customization options.  That helps you to make the best first impression you can to every visitor you see with this nicely crafted theme.  The theme remains intuitive and straightforward to set up, because the Visual Composer plugin makes it so easy to make a unique design with a unique layout. It’s design made simple and you won’t even have to learn how to code.

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Grimag

This stylish AdSense WordPress magazine and blog theme can be used for just about any style of web-site you want. With a really great design along with a wide variety of features, it would work perfectly as a fashion blog site, a magazine as well as your personal blog page and with Adsense, you can monetize it too!  Grimag offers you a superb, useful layout and plenty of features to help make blogging trouble-free. If you are not a WordPress expert, it is possible to modify this great looking theme to provide the options you are looking for your website to possess. Your readers will love the style and features of your site, the convenient navigation, the trendy and well coded design, the fresh code, the general layout and a great deal more.

This gorgeous Adsense theme offers the ultimate personalization choices in a beautiful design. If you are you’re seeking a fresh Adsense ready theme to promote your content, pictures, or design work, the large array of high quality designs makes WordPress an incredible option. Though you can find a number of top quality portfolio themes sold for WordPress for quite some time, recently there has been a significant rise in the variety of responsive portfolio themes and it’s no wonder why. If you would like your traffic to have the ability to clearly see your portfolio web-site on a mobile phone or maybe tablet, in addition to a computer, a responsive WordPress portfolio theme is a fantastic solution.  For more great adsense WordPress themes, check this out.

Demo More Information Get Hosting

Gridlove

Check out Gridlove. It’s clean, glossy, modern and nicely featured, a perfect solution in case you’re buying a contemporary masonry design which helps focus your readers attention on all of your content. Using an array of pre-built layouts and templates, you are able to be up and running with Gridlove in just a couple clicks. There’s a demo website you could choose for a test drive also, to help you feel sure that Gridlove will do that which you need before you buy it it to do. That is helpful. There are numerous layouts included and you’ll manage to craft a flexible homepage to match your needs, regardless of what they are. Emphasize your posts and widgets to accentuate your hottest content, or the content that your readers engage with the most.  The choice is yours.

Gridlove is professional and varied with multiple header styles, you can control nearly every design setting in this theme, each category can even have it’s own layout as well as color scheme.  That lets you really call attention to the content you want to have featured.  You’ll be able to customize single post layouts to give your articles their particular flavor. Boundless fonts, color combos and committed sections to upload a logo and icons. Trendy! This SEO optimized theme is excellent for assisting you to monetize your articles with Adsense sections also. The 100% responsive design actually helps with monetization and Search Engine Optimization, since it loads incredibly quickly and it’s properly coded to rank well in the search engines. There is an unrivaled, advanced theme options panel also for customizing the finer details of your website. Post formats, widgets, post pageviews, a bunch of lovely and talented shortcodes and a good deal more make Gridlove a wonderful theme for your subsequent internet project.  Here are some more smashing magazine WordPress themes.

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TrueMag

Want a new theme that will really allow you to increase your conversion rate?  A truly powerful, well designed adsense theme that is ideal for any sort of magazine or blog, no matter what sort of business you’re into?  Well look no further than TrueMag, a fantastically well designed WordPress theme that makes blogging fun and profitable.  TrueMag is advertising and AdSense optimized, making it simple to manage all of your content and advertising space in one simple package, without the need to source plugins and other addons that may bog your site down.  After all, with a website that relies on AdSense marketing, loading time and user engagement is every bit as important as your content.  That’s why TrueMag is such a fantastic option for an online marketer.  Strict Themes has created the ultimate monetization theme for WordPress.

You can add sticky posts, highlight recent posts in a variety of areas and there are advertising spaces built right in, making your ads blend into the content, which is a key feature for any site that is making money from selling ad space.  TrueMag highlights advertising without making it intrustive, which helps drive traffic and convert your traffic into clicks, maximizing profit on every post or page.  The responsive and Retina ready layout is key, allowing your visitors to see your amazing content no matter what screen size or device and the images will practically jump off the page.  Use a boxed layout or full width, the choice is yours.  There are dark and light variations of this powerful theme and it’s even WooCommerc ready, so you can make some money selling products too, whether they’re digitally downloadable or tangible goods.  Pretty cool, right?  There are plenty of post formats pre-made and of course, this theme is SEO optimized for maximum conversion rates and a fantastic user experience all around.

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SteadyIncome

This is SteadyIncome, and for anyone who wishes to find an Adsene-optimized theme to help monetize a website, or put the focus on professional business or marketing, you should try the SteadyIncome WordPress theme. The vast selection of features and different elements mean that it supports many different industries and niches with its flexible structure. Install the WP theme with a single click to get started. Customization options are accessible from the user-friendly interface. Add third-party plugins, such as search engine optimization helpers, contact forms, social media integrators, and switch around page elements to suit your needs.

The SteadyIncome WP theme creators offer ongoing support for the people who use their theme. Help is always available through email and can even be extended to the owners of websites you may build for them. This theme package comes with unlimited domain usage, regularly scheduled updates, tutorial videos to help with each feature, and the right to install it on any site you wish.

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[presta-hero]

Essay for Love: Ancient Approach

I provides my grandma and grandpa that I would adhere to them for a few years in the summer months, after a finish my school term. When providing love description, we find the item appropriate to turn to an explanatory dictionary. For modern absolutely love essays, they give us distressing warnings.

The philosophical and anthropological problem of love emerged previously, in olden days. So , here I am, moving along an old time graveled roads, breathing in fresh new rural atmosphere and looking forward to meeting my favorite dear relatives. A concept that every other love is because love on the way to yourself will start gaining popularity. In this property, a hundred stretches from the location I live life, I ultimately feel at home.

The philosophy of love has been seen diversely in every amount of human progress, depending on important and national environment. Many works about appreciate point out that an individuality appeared to be considered as a part of society back then, that is why man or women interests were definitely strongly bound to public products.

The final objective of love would gain growing old either by simply worshipping Aphrodite Pandemos in addition to giving birth to help children as well as by worshipping Aphrodite Urania and learning intellectual function. Nonetheless , classical longevity brings precisely this know-how about love.

We advise one more plan of distinction, which is while using specifics of any relationship concerning two subjects: My grandpa and grandma break into joy, and I come closer to these to embrace my favorite nearest men and women. What is more necessary, love adjusted its route from a specific person to the whole humanity. I can find out their house on the distance.

Renaissance leaves together each of the previous experiences and gives beginning to numerous treatises, in which humanism occupies the most important place, even while love is actually a simple people feeling. Most likely this is the most fascinating and common subjects while in the history with philosophy. PurEssay offers exclusively quality authoring from professionals in this field.

I will really need to remind the grandparents again to change the place where they keep the key. I am unable to tell you precisely how proud my grandparents are generally of their family home. Now it is time to go into and to interact with my grandmother and grandfather. There exist a lot of parts of view towards the moment as soon as love very first appeared.

To be a human developed psychologically, absolutely love acquired completely new complicated options and got innovative forms and the theoretic examination. This can be a two-storied, regal building cloaked in a distinctive atmosphere within the previous one hundred year. I just enter a significant living room, urgentessay.net just where my horrific lies on a sofa, browsing his classifieds, and the grandmother rich waters her property plants.

Through earliest period, human feelings were mainly connected with intuition, and like was not a definite phenomenon. At the same time, they find a way to take care of your garden: a beautiful spot, full of fragrant flowers in addition to branchy forest that forged their dark areas on wood made benches. I like this how the place stays neat in summers, resembling an authentic heaven on the planet in the world of hellish heat.

My great-grandfather built this for her family a lot of decades before, and he would you think his employment conscientiously. Selfish relative person won’t acknowledge the value of the other and is eager to accomplish only his or her own needs. Take a look at first of all try to classify all of our understanding of like and find out what kinds it you can easily name.

Web site approach deeper, I can previously make out smart windows, coloured in white. While our grandparents loaf on the job for a while inside or maybe work not in the patio, the dog whenever manages to greet my family before them. Then he acknowledges me, my dear Oscar, and gets going wagging its tail, going towards all of us. Ancient Greeks’ first consideration was studying the world, in support of after that installed childbirth.

Oscar is actually the first one to fulfill me in this article. Really, no matter what hot here this time in the year. Really like originated due to socialization about instincts: intuition of self-preservation, which in such a way united people, and reproductive : instinct, combined with maternal sensations, which established certain sentimental closeness.

Any middle ages essay regarding love declares that enjoy towards The almighty is the exclusively true love, although chastity could be the only advantage. Almost every thinker one or more times tried to define or discuss love. Essay for Love: Ancient Approach

In that essay at love, PurEssay team will tell you how the perception of this thought evolved after a while. Unpretentious love the motivation to give up your own interests for the sake of your loved one. I fiddle together with heavy hair, soft and even pleasant to the touch; however , I find myself pity with the creature that must be suffering from tremendous heat less than this membrane of fashion.

Seeing that women were not fit meant for philosophy, relationship only preoccupied their partners from believing. In addition to Desire, there were a tad bit more gods of love in Artistic mythology exactly who played essential roles additionally. The origin of love presents a very disputable subject. This type of enjoy is ideal since it leads to balance and a normal state connected with human internal.

The house seems fabulous and unreal, as though it steered clear of from a fairy story and tried to get misplaced among different houses on the village yet failed. Of course, she has a great deal of them, the two inside and out of doors. The love in between, which usually presents often the golden imply, implying in which both people today present same value in a very relationship and tend to be eager to survive for each additional.

This matter is still topical even in the modern world, and now you will get to it. Foundation of love has got several ways to classifying idea. Our creating company finds it necessary to seek out some info in the tradition of early Greece. This process is usually indefinite for the reason that human trend still keeps going.

Your backyard is clean, only a floral population raise most of their buds into the sun, and also to the stones, as if looking for life-giving elements. I can odour freshly manufactured pastry someplace in the kitchen, along with a warm feeling of coziness covers my coronary heart. Physical violence and by simply seem to suppress love in the modern tradition.

But 2 men could achieve far more together, purpose Aristotle assumed that enjoy was comparable to friendship. Whenever i enter the front side gate, your pet dog looks at all of us suspiciously as well as barks once or twice. It truly is one often the presents of which my grandfather prepared personally when I had been little. Each epoch had their philosophers, research psychologists, sociologists together with other scientific brains who anxious themselves using love.

When i deeply inhale local atmosphere, and I stench a hint with flowers, quite possibly, my grandmother’s asters, nevertheless they may as well be any other think about because Me not very good during them. Love is put into the low, impolite Aphrodite Pandemos and the incredible Aphrodite Urania. Neo-Platonism develops, very, with its fans relying on Plato’s theories.

After I invest some time with the canine, I look into it for this grandparents, still I cannot find them any where outside. Industrial population is focused at consumerism; large production and even new technological know-how lead to a far more rationalized way of life. But only attitude could predetermine what kind of enjoy it was. Modern day lexicographers clarify love being a feeling of passion, but also because attraction this provokes sexual desire.

These kinds of prognoses will be dangerous to our society given that mechanized romances between people speak of inhumanity. This destination gets cozier every year. I wide open a heavy oak door along with a little crucial hidden below the welcome f?da. Some analysts believe that innovations in love would be rational together with deprived with emotions.

That is why many countries assist organizations and even movements of which promote standard family valuations. Our services make your school life simple and easy productive. The item depended on readers’ values, sociable patterns, perception of themselves and various other human beings.

This type of concepts like sympathy, benevolence and likely-hood became topical oils and element of that period. As I the actual building, the atmosphere around myself becomes awesome, and I like feeling precisely how my body relax down, as well. The v?ldigt bra Eros appears on phase; he is a strong unpredictable and even demanding the almighty, who evokes fear on other people perhaps even other gods.

Some people for their essays regarding love recommend dividing that into increased and decreased. In our short go about appreciate, we will keep to the opinion which love sprang out together with people because a people always expected communication plus close romances with very much the same beings. In the event ancient Greeks followed the principle of beauty, medieval modern society switched to principle for morality.

So , here, PurEssay provided the definition of love, enumerated it has the main models and explained to you what sort of notion of affection has evolved eventually. Later this attitude fades away, and the great start having interested in their very own feelings together with psychological factors. What I can tell for certain is that the stench is simply terrific, even though hardly ever perceptible.

These cases give agricultural soil towards the so-called purchaser love, as their characteristic characteristics are limited by low erectile culture and also lack of meekness. When it comes to Christianity, it gravely condemns human relationships outside photographer and care for corporal pastimes as low in addition to sinful. Our writers can create a identical essay in your academic demands or to create a work on a certain topic.

In Old love totally conformed that will religion. I am excited as always because immediately I am heading to my grandparents’ country bachelor’s pad. Other researchers single out unique variations of love, subject to its recipient: sexual like, paternal really enjoy, patriotic enjoy, love regarding God etc . The house is dealt with with a thick layer of light blue coloration that was clearly more saturated a year ago, still has disappeared due to the very hot sun with this territory.

My spouse and i still really like swinging there with a reserve in my present, pretending which drift off and then rise in remote countries. A single tree possibly even has a hand-made swing hanging from it. People start expressing out this emotion among ordre and even will fear it all.

It results emergence of lyric finery, which results in being the leading branch of poetry. The grandparents are generally constantly perfecting changing the interior of the house.

The post Essay for Love: Ancient Approach appeared first on Presta Hero.

[theokbrowne]

Need ideas? 49 Facebook Posts for Real Estate Professionals

There are about 49 weeks left in 2019. If you post to Facebook only once a week, this means you have 49 chances to generate Facebook real estate leads.

Coming up with topics is a toughie, but we’ve done a lot of the heavy lifting for you by compiling a list of 49 post ideas to assist you in your Facebook marketing for real estate agents.

Ready for a real estate website that makes digital marketing easier? Learn about LeadSites and get started today.

Does it go without saying that most of these topics should be in blog form first and then shared to get Facebook real estate leads? 

We hope so, because, if done right, your Facebook posts will drive traffic back to your real estate website, where folks will want to engage with more of your content and hopefully become a lead.

Below are a mix of topics (which is exactly what you should be posting to social media), from general to local and many don’t have anything at all to do with real estate.

We even point out some brilliant sites on which to start your research or find inspiration for many of the topics.

Facebook marketing for real estate agents is a lot easier when you know what to post. So, let’s go!

     Local topics to generate Facebook real estate leads

Kitchen trends for 2019 – Elle Décor and HGTV can help you out here (by the way, it’s also one of the most shared topics on Inman.com right now).

Housing market news (rates on the rise? New home starts picking up?) Check out HousingWire.com,

Local housing market statistics (homeowners LOVE this stuff). Dig into your MLS for info. Remember to make it readable for the average consumer.

List of restaurants in your market where kids eat free. Get inspiration here.

Create a perfect date night scenario, like this one at Lake & City Homes.

Monthly or weekly event calendars. Also check out this one at RealEstateSpokane.com.

Where to dine out for Easter brunch, Thanksgiving dinner, Valentine’s Day, etc.

Create a day trip from your town. Here’s one from Kris Lindahl’s blog for inspiration.

Holiday movie binge list. Lindahl did one for Thanksgiving and Easy Agent Pro gave you one to post for your clients about Halloween (with a real estate theme).

[Number] things to do with your kids in [our town]

[Number] things to do with the dog in [our town]

Free things to do with your kids this weekend

A list of local eateries that offer patio dining

A list of dog-friendly restaurants in your town

Where to find yoga classes in your town, or The Best Yoga Studios in [name of town] (yeah, yoga is still wildly popular)

Best camping spots, fishing holes, hiking/biking trails in and around your town

Summer camps for kids (this could be a series – tech camps, horse camps, golf camps, etc.)

Where to ice skate for free

Posts to attract homeowner Facebook real estate leads

Home staging tips

List of down payment assistance programs in your city, county, state.

Credit score tips (how to raise it, how to dispute mistakes, the score you need to buy a home)

Gardening tips – homeowners love these and the topics are endless. Houseplants are predicted to be a huge topic in 2019, so articles such as which grow best in low light, which are pet and kid friendly will do well. Seasonal garden tips are popular, such as how to protect plants from frost in winter, how to get your lawn ready for spring, etc.

Home maintenance tips – again, you might want to do a seasonal tip list, such as how to prepare your sprinkler system for winter and check out Kyle Hiscock’s brilliant advice in his 16 Spring Home Maintenance Tips For Your Home post.

Home repair and improvement tips – Brainstorm a list of home improvement projects that are popular with homeowners. Ideas include flooring, windows, fresh paint and landscaping. Forbes has a list of popular projects and you’ll find more ideas at familyhandyman.com.

Preparing to sell – which improvements/repairs should be made? We wrote one for your clients that you can check out at leightonrealty.com. Do you counsel your listing clients to get a pre-sale home inspection? Check for clouds on the title? Stage? Posting to Facebook is a breeze with a LeadSite – Automate your social media so you can get back to running your business. Learn more

What makes your neighborhood special?

Highlight a different local non-profit once a month.

Neighborhood descriptions. You’ll find examples online, such as this one at PropertiesinSiliconValley.com.

Every year, Pantone releases its Color of the Year. Post a swatch and ask your followers what they think of it and ask for feedback on their favorite paint colors for the both the interior and exterior of a home.

Share the latest smart-home technology (why should they have a smart lock, what a smart thermostat can do, etc.)

Visual posts to get Facebook real estate leads

Switch it up occasionally by posting infographics.

Hold charitable or client appreciation events? Take lots of photos, post them and don’t forget to tag who is in them.

Motivational quotes, all gussied up Pinterest-style, are immensely shareable. Make your own at Canva.com.

Keep an eye out for new real estate-related studies, such as those from NAR. Share some of the statistics (might make a great infographic).

Interview or invite your vendors to guest post. An explanation of the lending process from your preferred lender, for instance or what happens during a home inspection from your home inspector.

What interests your current clients?

Pay attention to the questions you get from your clients and answer them.

Take photos of different landmarks in your town but crop them so they are barely recognizable. Hold a Facebook contest where readers guess which landmark it is. You can run this one monthly and title it something like “How well do you think you know [name of your city]?”

The 3 least expensive homes on the local market.

The 3 most expensive homes on the local market – Check out this post on MiamiRiches.com.

What you love most about your town.

What are the most popular brunch spots in town?

Post a piece about FSBOs and ask your Facebook followers, “Would you ever buy a for-sale-by-owner home? If so, why?” We know they think they’ll get a bargain, so you can have fun debunking the answers.

Plan the perfect Mother’s/Father’s Day in your town. Here’s one to get you going.

The Insider’s Guide to [City name’s] Best [pizza, places to buy kids’ clothes, nightclubs, places to work out, etc.]

Congratulate your clients’ successes selling or buying a home, or overcoming a real estate obstacle, with a photo of them posted to your Facebook feed. The Twin City’s Kerby and Cristina love sharing their clients’ photos.

If you use informational client handouts (What to do with the Dog During Showings, explanations about septic systems vs. sewers) in your practice, link to them and share.

Take some of the weird “holidays” and localize them. The Unity Home Group in Anchorage has inspiration for you to get started with this one and you can find a list of these holidays, here.

Nothing like a good laugh to get the Facebook real estate leads

Post funny real estate photos and ask for a caption. Check out this one from “Salt Lake’s Favorite REALTOR,” Dustin Brohm.

Americans are crazy about celebrities. Post about some of the latest celebrity purchases and sales. “What the Rich & Famous Look for in a Home,” should spark some ideas for you and check out therealdeal.com for celeb real estate news.

Those weird holidays we mentioned? Post about “National Pet Day” and ask your followers to share photos of their pets, or on “National Day the Music Died Day” (February 3), ask folks to post which ear-worm song they wish would die.

If you’re still filling your Facebook feed with listings, knock it off! Engagement is the name of the game when generating Facebook real estate leads.

Get a harder working real estate website. Learn more about LeadSites.

Generate real estate leads with these tips – 53 ways to get leads.

Need some help making the perfect Facebook post? Check out the video below:

[simonhopes]

What to Blog About: The Ultimate List Of 144 Blog Topic Ideas

So, you’ve decided you want to start a blog, but you’re not sure what to blog about.

The good news is, deciding what you want to blog about doesn’t have to be hard or take a lot of time. However, choosing the right topic to blog about is important, so you will want to make sure you put enough thought in.

But what should you be thinking about, and how do you decide what the best topic for your blog will be? There are a number of things that you should take into consideration including your potential audience and your own goals.

This guide will help you decide what to blog about by looking at some important factors. For a list of 144 actionable blog post ideas to help you get started.

The topic you choose can mean success or failure for your blog, so take the time to thoroughly understand these points and do some research.

Without further delay, let’s look at how to choose a good blog topic.

Part 1: Finding A Topic To Blog About

To find a suitable topic for you, there are a number of things that should be taken into consideration.

First, you should look at your own interest and experience to help you choose a topic. A blog topic that you are knowledgeable and passionate about will help you not only create better content but enjoy what you are doing.

You should also look at the popularity, audience, and competition for your topic. You want to choose a topic that will allow you to attract and grow a readership.

Another important factor that you should consider is whether you will be able to produce content for your specific topic. If your topic is too specific you may have trouble coming up with things to write about.

Let’s take a look.

1. Self-Analysis

The first thing you should be looking at when looking for a blog topic is your own interests.

Blogging about something that you are knowledgeable about will be easier than starting a topic you know nothing about. That being said, blogging is also about learning. If you have an interest in a particular topic you can always learn about it and become an expert.

Here are some things you can ask yourself:

What am I passionate about?

What are my hobbies?

What interests or intrigues me?

What am I knowledgeable about?

Do I know more than the average person about a particular     topic?

These are all things you can ask yourself to help you come up with blog topics.

Brainstorm a list of ideas that come to mind and write them down. If some ideas are similar, group them together or try to find a general topic they fit under. Once you find a broader category, use it to come up with even more ideas.

Ask yourself, can you be an authority on do you have the experience or can you gain it? Readers will be looking for answers and information. Do you have the knowledge to be able to answer their questions? Are you or can you become an expert on your subject?

Having a general idea of your skills and knowledge is a good place to start when trying to find what to blog about.

The next important thing you should look at is your potential audience.

2. Your Potential Audience

You want to make sure your topic has a big enough audience so you can get enough traffic.

There are a number of things you can do to determine if your topic has enough people interested in it. You can look at searches, social media statistics, and around the web to judge traffic and get ideas.

What exactly are people looking for?

Looking at what other people are looking for can help you find out if your topic will be popular or not.

A useful way to do this is to look at what people are searching for on search engines. You can use Google’s keyword planner tool to look at what is being searched for and get other ideas.

Sign in and then enter some keywords related to your topic.

You will now be able to look at the number of searched that keyword received and suggestions for other topics.

You will also see the competition level for that topic. This will tell you how hard it will be to compete for those keywords. You should try to find a topic that ins’t over saturated, this will be covered further on in this post.

What Is Popular?

Another way to get a feel for what is popular is to look at the social media reception for a topic.

If you are seeing posts from other blogs getting a high number of shares, there is a better chance there is a good audience.

A useful tool for researching social shares is BuzzSumo.

To get social statistics, type your topic into the search bar.

You will now see the top posts arranges by the number of total shares. You can also see the number of shares for each individual social platform.

Looking at the number of social shares will give you a good indication on how large your target audience is. If it looks like there isn’t much social share activity, either your topic hasn’t been covered or it isn’t popular.

What Questions Need Answering?

You can also what topics are in demand by looking at what people are asking.

Use sites like Quora to find these questions.

Do a search for your topic and find questions people are answering.

Also, you can find questions that people are asking in forums.

To find forums for your topic, you can do a search on Google. Here are two searches you can use. One uses a search operator to look for the word “forum” in the site URL.

“Your Topic” forum

“Your Topic” inurl:forum

Notice that the word forum appears in the link.

Once you find a good forum to look at, you can start looking for questions or topics that people might be asking.

3. Topic Competition

Looking at existing blogs and websites will not only help inspire ideas for topics, but also give you an idea of the competition for that topic.

Do a search for your topic to see how many blogs are on that topic. If your topic is over saturated, it may not be the best choice.

However, if you have found that there is a good enough audience and there are only a few blogs on your topic, you may have something.

To be surer, you can look again at Google’s keyword planner tool. Do another search for your topic and this time look at both the number of searches and the competition. Look for keywords with a relatively high amount of traffic, and a low or medium amount of traffic.

This is a good way to get ideas for topics with lower competition. As a blogger just starting out, it can be easier to focus on a narrow topic with less competition. Usually the broader the topic, the more competition. If you can narrow your topic down, you may be able to drive more traffic.

4. Can you produce content for your blog?

After you’ve come up with some topics to blog about, you will want to ask yourself if you will be able to create content for that topic.

Try to brainstorm a list of blog posts ideas. If you find yourself struggling to do this, perhaps your topic will be too hard to produce content for.

Your blog topic should focus on something, but it shouldn’t be so narrow that you can’t write about it. Finding a balance will help you in the long run.

Will Your Topic Last?

You should also ask yourself if your topic will stay popular for a long time.

Try to stay away from topics that come quickly and go quickly. You don’t want to build up your blog only to see your audience fading away.

5. Narrow It Down and Decide

Once you have a few topics in mind, decide what topics you don’t want to cover.

Eliminate the ones that are don’t have enough traffic or have too much competition.

You may also decide that the topic just isn’t right for you. If you have to, go back through this process with your topics to see if they are a good fit.

If you are having trouble deciding, take a break and come back. Let your ideas sit and give them some thought before making a final decisions. You might come up with other topics in this time also.

Also, you can look at the list below to see where your ideas fit in.

144 Topic Ideas to Help You Get Started

If you haven’t come up with some ideas on what to blog about already, here is a list to get started with.

Not everyone may be for you, but you may just find one that you realize is a perfect fit.

Relationships and advice

Sports or a specific sport

General food blog: Could be a type of food or food from a     certain culture.

Bodybuilding

Question and answer

Technology

Health and fitness

Nutrition and eating healthy

Parenting

Web design

Martial arts

Coffee

Tea

Organic foods

Politics

Quotes

Inspirational

Recipes

Gardening

Antiques

Hiking

Skiing

Self-improvement

Fashion blog

Writing

Photography

Interviews

Travel blog

Location specific: A blog focusing on a certain place or city.

Social media: General social media discussion or focus on a     specific platform.

Business

Board games

Poetry

Books

Stocks

Real estate

Dairy

Card games

Chess

Entrepreneurship

Outdoors

Boating

Cars: You could also focus on a specific make or type of car,     like antiques.

Furniture

Home decor

Smoothies / nutritional shakes

Ponds

Juicing for health

Web tutorials

Learning languages

Meditation

Running

Cartoons

Mathematics

Humour

Science

Hosting a party

Bikes

Vegan or vegetarian food

Software

Men’s/women’s lifestyle

Computer parts

Dance or a specific type of dancing

Acting

Performing Arts

Art

Movies

Drawing

Pets

Carpentry

Environment

Apps

Pools

Wireless systems

Yoga

Astronomy

Woodworking

Stained glass

Animals

Birds

Insects

Vacations

Clothing

Sewing

Living naturally

Knitting

Cats

Gymnastics

Restaurants

Hotels

Product reviews

Cell phones / smart phones

Essays

Interior design/architecture

Psychology

Skateboarding

Laptops

Economics

Trends

DIY (do it yourself)

Personal finance

History

Green lifestyle

Swimming

Pottery

Tobogganing

Lighting

Painting

Origami

Arts and crafts

Marketing

Dogs

Weight lifting

Philosophy

Communication

Makeup / cosmetics

Baking

Comics

Marathons

Skydiving

Nightlife

Camping

Kitchen design

Surfing

Skiing

Snowboarding

Mountain climbing

Cross country skiing

Kids apparel

Coding languages

HTML

CSS

Weddings

Tourist destinations

Dream interpretation

Trees

Hobbies

Myth busting

Tennis

Golf

Bowling

Animation

Typography

Table tennis

Hopefully, this list has given you some ideas for what to blog about.

There are many topics you can choose from, and it might be hard to decide. Write down some that interest you and then narrow your choice through elimination.

When you have a topic you like, research and evaluate the topic with some of the methods we covered in the first section.

Conclusion

With so many options available, it can at times be hard to decide what to blog about.

With the methods we discussed, it should be easier to narrow down your choice.

Look at your passions and skills to see what you might be interested in blogging about. If you like your topic, it should be that much easier to spend time researching and blogging about.

Make sure you do enough market research when choosing a topic to blog about. You want there to be a big enough audience so you can get enough blog traffic.

A perfect example would be the Onlinefoodblog. We blog about food and how to make food.  

Also, look to see that your topic is not over saturated. If there are too many existing blogs on your topic already, it might be more difficult to compete for the same subjects.

There is always room for great, unique content that helps people answer their questions. Whatever topic you choose, make sure you focus on providing quality material and you will be on the road to successful blogging.

[byronheeutgm]

Here’s How Much Your Content Marketing Goals Matter

When it comes to content marketing, have you been slow getting out of the starting gate? Or are you struggling to keep up with larger competitors that crank out tons of content? It’s not an enviable position, but all is not lost. You’re still in the race—if you take the right approach and focus on your content marketing goals.

Despite your instinct to knock out blog post after blog post to catch up, adopting a goal-focused content strategy will provide greater dividends in both the short and long terms. If this sounds obvious, it’s actually the zag to the zig of most marketers. Some 70 percent of them lack a consistent or integrated content strategy, according to Altimeter.

Part of this no-strategy approach likely involves failing to focus on producing a single business goal with each piece of content. Some content managers won’t consider a goal at all when developing a blog post, white paper, or webinar, while others will try to shoot the moon. Both tend to produce an ROI of roughly zilch.

One Piece of Content, One Content Marketing Goal

Though your overarching content strategy will likely have multiple content goals (awareness, lead generation, customer retention, engagement, etc.), each piece of content should focus on a single one. A campaign enables brands to build upon the successes of individual pieces of content to move their audience to conversion.

For example, a blog post may lead to a newsletter sign up, which leads to downloading an ebook, which leads to requesting information from a sales representative. That’s an overly simplified roadmap, but it illustrates how you can use content to create a customized and efficient pathway for your target audience.

Your content strategy may have multiple goals, but each piece of content should focus on only one. Click To Tweet Getting Started with Business Goals

While organizations and content strategies differ, the following four steps will help you understand the content you need to produce in order to achieve your desired business objective:

Define a goal for each piece of content.

Select a specific audience that makes sense for that goal.

Identify the content topics/mediums that will move that audience to the desired outcome.

Analyze the results, adjust and/or expand.

Remember, each step should lead to the next. For example, identifying the objective and audience helps you hone your content types (blog posts, white papers, etc.) and topics, enabling you to deliver the right message at the right time with greater frequency.

Though the steps are simple, you and your team should write down your conclusions—formally, not on a dinner napkin. The extra effort pays off. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 60 percent of marketers do not formally document their objectives, audience, or goals. That diminishes their chances for success, according to a study by Dominican University’s Gail Matthews which showed that people who write down goals, review them, and share them are 33 percent more successful than those who don’t.

Preparing Individual Content Pieces

When preparing content, remember that competition is fierce for your target audience’s attention; they are the metaphorical belle of the content marketing ball, and many brands want a dance. Identifying and creating content around the specific needs of your target audience will attract their attention, and a strong call to action for the one next step (whether it’s to purchase, learn more, subscribe to your newsletter, or something else) is the final touch.

So what does this look like? Michael Smart did a masterful job with a piece of content that he posted to his blog and also distributed via email.

Objective: Get registrations for his upcoming marketing seminar.

Audience: Communications managers and executives looking to advance their career.

Resonating Content: How do you pique the interest of high-level communicators? Appeal to their skepticism. Michael wrote about an attendee at a conference who doubted he could provide new insights. He challenged her to stay. She did. She succeeded. Then he challenged his readers to sign up for the seminar’s last nine remaining seats.

Analyze and Adjust: Without speaking to him personally (and if you’re reading this Michael, give us a call some time!), it’s impossible to say with certainty that he analyzed results. However, Michael is a savvy PR professional and marketer who has dedicated enormous time and effort to creating content and building his newsletter list. He deserves the benefit of the doubt.

Navigating Around Gatekeepers

Xerox wanted to engage with senior-level executives but found they often couldn’t get past those executives’ administrators who triaged calls and removed marketing materials from snail mail piles. This, of course, impacted Xerox’s sales, so they found a different path.

To increase sales leads (Objective), Xerox created engaging content for C-suite prospects (Audience) that wouldn’t get earmarked as a solicitation by the admins. This involved reshaping the focus of its content marketing. Rather than continuing to focus on client problems, Xerox shared how clients solved those problems and the mindset that drove their success through a collaboration with Forbes on a publication called Chief Optimist magazine (Content).

The company creates five editions of the magazine that cater to specific industries and will send customized print versions to key prospects. It promoted the publications through email and printed cards that sales reps delivered personally.

It didn’t take long for the results to pile up. Email readership leaped 300 to 400 percent. The company gathered 20,000 new contacts and set up more than 1,000 appointments for its sales people. The result:  More than $1 billion in pipeline revenue with a 12- to 18-month sales cycle. To keep customers returning to the site, it launched online forums headed by business celebrities such as Bill Taylor, co-founder of Fast Company (Analyze and Adjust).

Smaller companies with fewer resources don’t have the ability to launch a full scale campaign like this, but they can identify the key concerns and topics their audiences care about with content intelligence. Solutions like the Ceralytics platform analyze content from around the web to identify key opportunities for your brand. (And yes, it can even help companies like Xerox.)

Capitalizing on Pop Culture

SunGard had a challenge that so many brands can relate to: a product or service that doesn’t stoke people’s interest. However, they became a buzzed about brand in the crowded B2B technology space (Objective) by capitalizing on our fascination with zombies.

SunGard focused specifically on reaching IT executives (Audience) with an infographic and ebook that showed the importance of having a resilient business infrastructure, in this case one that could survive a zombie apocalypse (Content). The infographic took the audience step by step through the procedures used to protect data and applications in the event of a zombie attack. To disseminate its gory graphic and the corresponding ebook, SunGard initiated two email campaigns: one broad-based to IT executives with titles director and above for companies earning more than $50 million annually, and another to IT executives who hadn’t responded to a SunGard email in six months.

What made this zombie infographic extra killer? The call to action. Recipients clicked through to a landing page where they could enter to win a physical zombie survival kit. As the campaign took off, SunGard monitored how many times the infographic was shared by influential third-party cloud-based sites (Analyze and Adjust).

The brilliance of this campaign comes from its use of zombies. Had they intended to connect with prospects only a step or two from making a purchase, zombies and a survival kit likely wouldn’t have moved the needle. When considering whether to invest in one solution or another, people tend to want cold, hard facts and case studies. However, for brand awareness, SunGard’s decision to capitalize on the zombie trend more than did the trick.

SunGard’s zombie campaign produced astounding results, tripling expected downloads and doubling expected click-through rates. Additionally, several niche cloud websites featured the infographic on their home pages. Following this success, SunGard adjusted the program, initiating a direct mail-campaign and then a social media campaign.

The accomplishments of Michael Smart, Xerox, and SunGard flow directly from their well thought-out approaches. Success doesn’t have to be predicated on a long history of content production. Content marketing come-latelys can enter this saturated arena and drive results. The key is being strategic and focused on a single goal.

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[mercedessharonwo1]

Here’s How Much Your Content Marketing Goals Matter

When it comes to content marketing, have you been slow getting out of the starting gate? Or are you struggling to keep up with larger competitors that crank out tons of content? It’s not an enviable position, but all is not lost. You’re still in the race—if you take the right approach and focus on your content marketing goals.

Despite your instinct to knock out blog post after blog post to catch up, adopting a goal-focused content strategy will provide greater dividends in both the short and long terms. If this sounds obvious, it’s actually the zag to the zig of most marketers. Some 70 percent of them lack a consistent or integrated content strategy, according to Altimeter.

Part of this no-strategy approach likely involves failing to focus on producing a single business goal with each piece of content. Some content managers won’t consider a goal at all when developing a blog post, white paper, or webinar, while others will try to shoot the moon. Both tend to produce an ROI of roughly zilch.

One Piece of Content, One Content Marketing Goal

Though your overarching content strategy will likely have multiple content goals (awareness, lead generation, customer retention, engagement, etc.), each piece of content should focus on a single one. A campaign enables brands to build upon the successes of individual pieces of content to move their audience to conversion.

For example, a blog post may lead to a newsletter sign up, which leads to downloading an ebook, which leads to requesting information from a sales representative. That’s an overly simplified roadmap, but it illustrates how you can use content to create a customized and efficient pathway for your target audience.

Your content strategy may have multiple goals, but each piece of content should focus on only one. Click To Tweet Getting Started with Business Goals

While organizations and content strategies differ, the following four steps will help you understand the content you need to produce in order to achieve your desired business objective:

Define a goal for each piece of content.

Select a specific audience that makes sense for that goal.

Identify the content topics/mediums that will move that audience to the desired outcome.

Analyze the results, adjust and/or expand.

Remember, each step should lead to the next. For example, identifying the objective and audience helps you hone your content types (blog posts, white papers, etc.) and topics, enabling you to deliver the right message at the right time with greater frequency.

Though the steps are simple, you and your team should write down your conclusions—formally, not on a dinner napkin. The extra effort pays off. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 60 percent of marketers do not formally document their objectives, audience, or goals. That diminishes their chances for success, according to a study by Dominican University’s Gail Matthews which showed that people who write down goals, review them, and share them are 33 percent more successful than those who don’t.

Preparing Individual Content Pieces

When preparing content, remember that competition is fierce for your target audience’s attention; they are the metaphorical belle of the content marketing ball, and many brands want a dance. Identifying and creating content around the specific needs of your target audience will attract their attention, and a strong call to action for the one next step (whether it’s to purchase, learn more, subscribe to your newsletter, or something else) is the final touch.

So what does this look like? Michael Smart did a masterful job with a piece of content that he posted to his blog and also distributed via email.

Objective: Get registrations for his upcoming marketing seminar.

Audience: Communications managers and executives looking to advance their career.

Resonating Content: How do you pique the interest of high-level communicators? Appeal to their skepticism. Michael wrote about an attendee at a conference who doubted he could provide new insights. He challenged her to stay. She did. She succeeded. Then he challenged his readers to sign up for the seminar’s last nine remaining seats.

Analyze and Adjust: Without speaking to him personally (and if you’re reading this Michael, give us a call some time!), it’s impossible to say with certainty that he analyzed results. However, Michael is a savvy PR professional and marketer who has dedicated enormous time and effort to creating content and building his newsletter list. He deserves the benefit of the doubt.

Navigating Around Gatekeepers

Xerox wanted to engage with senior-level executives but found they often couldn’t get past those executives’ administrators who triaged calls and removed marketing materials from snail mail piles. This, of course, impacted Xerox’s sales, so they found a different path.

To increase sales leads (Objective), Xerox created engaging content for C-suite prospects (Audience) that wouldn’t get earmarked as a solicitation by the admins. This involved reshaping the focus of its content marketing. Rather than continuing to focus on client problems, Xerox shared how clients solved those problems and the mindset that drove their success through a collaboration with Forbes on a publication called Chief Optimist magazine (Content).

The company creates five editions of the magazine that cater to specific industries and will send customized print versions to key prospects. It promoted the publications through email and printed cards that sales reps delivered personally.

It didn’t take long for the results to pile up. Email readership leaped 300 to 400 percent. The company gathered 20,000 new contacts and set up more than 1,000 appointments for its sales people. The result:  More than $1 billion in pipeline revenue with a 12- to 18-month sales cycle. To keep customers returning to the site, it launched online forums headed by business celebrities such as Bill Taylor, co-founder of Fast Company (Analyze and Adjust).

Smaller companies with fewer resources don’t have the ability to launch a full scale campaign like this, but they can identify the key concerns and topics their audiences care about with content intelligence. Solutions like the Ceralytics platform analyze content from around the web to identify key opportunities for your brand. (And yes, it can even help companies like Xerox.)

Capitalizing on Pop Culture

SunGard had a challenge that so many brands can relate to: a product or service that doesn’t stoke people’s interest. However, they became a buzzed about brand in the crowded B2B technology space (Objective) by capitalizing on our fascination with zombies.

SunGard focused specifically on reaching IT executives (Audience) with an infographic and ebook that showed the importance of having a resilient business infrastructure, in this case one that could survive a zombie apocalypse (Content). The infographic took the audience step by step through the procedures used to protect data and applications in the event of a zombie attack. To disseminate its gory graphic and the corresponding ebook, SunGard initiated two email campaigns: one broad-based to IT executives with titles director and above for companies earning more than $50 million annually, and another to IT executives who hadn’t responded to a SunGard email in six months.

What made this zombie infographic extra killer? The call to action. Recipients clicked through to a landing page where they could enter to win a physical zombie survival kit. As the campaign took off, SunGard monitored how many times the infographic was shared by influential third-party cloud-based sites (Analyze and Adjust).

The brilliance of this campaign comes from its use of zombies. Had they intended to connect with prospects only a step or two from making a purchase, zombies and a survival kit likely wouldn’t have moved the needle. When considering whether to invest in one solution or another, people tend to want cold, hard facts and case studies. However, for brand awareness, SunGard’s decision to capitalize on the zombie trend more than did the trick.

SunGard’s zombie campaign produced astounding results, tripling expected downloads and doubling expected click-through rates. Additionally, several niche cloud websites featured the infographic on their home pages. Following this success, SunGard adjusted the program, initiating a direct mail-campaign and then a social media campaign.

The accomplishments of Michael Smart, Xerox, and SunGard flow directly from their well thought-out approaches. Success doesn’t have to be predicated on a long history of content production. Content marketing come-latelys can enter this saturated arena and drive results. The key is being strategic and focused on a single goal.

http://ift.tt/2kjbRNg

[conniecogeie]

Here’s How Much Your Content Marketing Goals Matter

When it comes to content marketing, have you been slow getting out of the starting gate? Or are you struggling to keep up with larger competitors that crank out tons of content? It’s not an enviable position, but all is not lost. You’re still in the race—if you take the right approach and focus on your content marketing goals.

Despite your instinct to knock out blog post after blog post to catch up, adopting a goal-focused content strategy will provide greater dividends in both the short and long terms. If this sounds obvious, it’s actually the zag to the zig of most marketers. Some 70 percent of them lack a consistent or integrated content strategy, according to Altimeter.

Part of this no-strategy approach likely involves failing to focus on producing a single business goal with each piece of content. Some content managers won’t consider a goal at all when developing a blog post, white paper, or webinar, while others will try to shoot the moon. Both tend to produce an ROI of roughly zilch.

One Piece of Content, One Content Marketing Goal

Though your overarching content strategy will likely have multiple content goals (awareness, lead generation, customer retention, engagement, etc.), each piece of content should focus on a single one. A campaign enables brands to build upon the successes of individual pieces of content to move their audience to conversion.

For example, a blog post may lead to a newsletter sign up, which leads to downloading an ebook, which leads to requesting information from a sales representative. That’s an overly simplified roadmap, but it illustrates how you can use content to create a customized and efficient pathway for your target audience.

Your content strategy may have multiple goals, but each piece of content should focus on only one. Click To Tweet Getting Started with Business Goals

While organizations and content strategies differ, the following four steps will help you understand the content you need to produce in order to achieve your desired business objective:

Define a goal for each piece of content.

Select a specific audience that makes sense for that goal.

Identify the content topics/mediums that will move that audience to the desired outcome.

Analyze the results, adjust and/or expand.

Remember, each step should lead to the next. For example, identifying the objective and audience helps you hone your content types (blog posts, white papers, etc.) and topics, enabling you to deliver the right message at the right time with greater frequency.

Though the steps are simple, you and your team should write down your conclusions—formally, not on a dinner napkin. The extra effort pays off. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 60 percent of marketers do not formally document their objectives, audience, or goals. That diminishes their chances for success, according to a study by Dominican University’s Gail Matthews which showed that people who write down goals, review them, and share them are 33 percent more successful than those who don’t.

Preparing Individual Content Pieces

When preparing content, remember that competition is fierce for your target audience’s attention; they are the metaphorical belle of the content marketing ball, and many brands want a dance. Identifying and creating content around the specific needs of your target audience will attract their attention, and a strong call to action for the one next step (whether it’s to purchase, learn more, subscribe to your newsletter, or something else) is the final touch.

So what does this look like? Michael Smart did a masterful job with a piece of content that he posted to his blog and also distributed via email.

Objective: Get registrations for his upcoming marketing seminar.

Audience: Communications managers and executives looking to advance their career.

Resonating Content: How do you pique the interest of high-level communicators? Appeal to their skepticism. Michael wrote about an attendee at a conference who doubted he could provide new insights. He challenged her to stay. She did. She succeeded. Then he challenged his readers to sign up for the seminar’s last nine remaining seats.

Analyze and Adjust: Without speaking to him personally (and if you’re reading this Michael, give us a call some time!), it’s impossible to say with certainty that he analyzed results. However, Michael is a savvy PR professional and marketer who has dedicated enormous time and effort to creating content and building his newsletter list. He deserves the benefit of the doubt.

Navigating Around Gatekeepers

Xerox wanted to engage with senior-level executives but found they often couldn’t get past those executives’ administrators who triaged calls and removed marketing materials from snail mail piles. This, of course, impacted Xerox’s sales, so they found a different path.

To increase sales leads (Objective), Xerox created engaging content for C-suite prospects (Audience) that wouldn’t get earmarked as a solicitation by the admins. This involved reshaping the focus of its content marketing. Rather than continuing to focus on client problems, Xerox shared how clients solved those problems and the mindset that drove their success through a collaboration with Forbes on a publication called Chief Optimist magazine (Content).

The company creates five editions of the magazine that cater to specific industries and will send customized print versions to key prospects. It promoted the publications through email and printed cards that sales reps delivered personally.

It didn’t take long for the results to pile up. Email readership leaped 300 to 400 percent. The company gathered 20,000 new contacts and set up more than 1,000 appointments for its sales people. The result:  More than $1 billion in pipeline revenue with a 12- to 18-month sales cycle. To keep customers returning to the site, it launched online forums headed by business celebrities such as Bill Taylor, co-founder of Fast Company (Analyze and Adjust).

Smaller companies with fewer resources don’t have the ability to launch a full scale campaign like this, but they can identify the key concerns and topics their audiences care about with content intelligence. Solutions like the Ceralytics platform analyze content from around the web to identify key opportunities for your brand. (And yes, it can even help companies like Xerox.)

Capitalizing on Pop Culture

SunGard had a challenge that so many brands can relate to: a product or service that doesn’t stoke people’s interest. However, they became a buzzed about brand in the crowded B2B technology space (Objective) by capitalizing on our fascination with zombies.

SunGard focused specifically on reaching IT executives (Audience) with an infographic and ebook that showed the importance of having a resilient business infrastructure, in this case one that could survive a zombie apocalypse (Content). The infographic took the audience step by step through the procedures used to protect data and applications in the event of a zombie attack. To disseminate its gory graphic and the corresponding ebook, SunGard initiated two email campaigns: one broad-based to IT executives with titles director and above for companies earning more than $50 million annually, and another to IT executives who hadn’t responded to a SunGard email in six months.

What made this zombie infographic extra killer? The call to action. Recipients clicked through to a landing page where they could enter to win a physical zombie survival kit. As the campaign took off, SunGard monitored how many times the infographic was shared by influential third-party cloud-based sites (Analyze and Adjust).

The brilliance of this campaign comes from its use of zombies. Had they intended to connect with prospects only a step or two from making a purchase, zombies and a survival kit likely wouldn’t have moved the needle. When considering whether to invest in one solution or another, people tend to want cold, hard facts and case studies. However, for brand awareness, SunGard’s decision to capitalize on the zombie trend more than did the trick.

SunGard’s zombie campaign produced astounding results, tripling expected downloads and doubling expected click-through rates. Additionally, several niche cloud websites featured the infographic on their home pages. Following this success, SunGard adjusted the program, initiating a direct mail-campaign and then a social media campaign.

The accomplishments of Michael Smart, Xerox, and SunGard flow directly from their well thought-out approaches. Success doesn’t have to be predicated on a long history of content production. Content marketing come-latelys can enter this saturated arena and drive results. The key is being strategic and focused on a single goal.

http://ift.tt/2kjbRNg

[christinesumpmg]

Here’s How Much Your Content Marketing Goals Matter

When it comes to content marketing, have you been slow getting out of the starting gate? Or are you struggling to keep up with larger competitors that crank out tons of content? It’s not an enviable position, but all is not lost. You’re still in the race—if you take the right approach and focus on your content marketing goals.

Despite your instinct to knock out blog post after blog post to catch up, adopting a goal-focused content strategy will provide greater dividends in both the short and long terms. If this sounds obvious, it’s actually the zag to the zig of most marketers. Some 70 percent of them lack a consistent or integrated content strategy, according to Altimeter.

Part of this no-strategy approach likely involves failing to focus on producing a single business goal with each piece of content. Some content managers won’t consider a goal at all when developing a blog post, white paper, or webinar, while others will try to shoot the moon. Both tend to produce an ROI of roughly zilch.

One Piece of Content, One Content Marketing Goal

Though your overarching content strategy will likely have multiple content goals (awareness, lead generation, customer retention, engagement, etc.), each piece of content should focus on a single one. A campaign enables brands to build upon the successes of individual pieces of content to move their audience to conversion.

For example, a blog post may lead to a newsletter sign up, which leads to downloading an ebook, which leads to requesting information from a sales representative. That’s an overly simplified roadmap, but it illustrates how you can use content to create a customized and efficient pathway for your target audience.

Your content strategy may have multiple goals, but each piece of content should focus on only one. Click To Tweet Getting Started with Business Goals

While organizations and content strategies differ, the following four steps will help you understand the content you need to produce in order to achieve your desired business objective:

Define a goal for each piece of content.

Select a specific audience that makes sense for that goal.

Identify the content topics/mediums that will move that audience to the desired outcome.

Analyze the results, adjust and/or expand.

Remember, each step should lead to the next. For example, identifying the objective and audience helps you hone your content types (blog posts, white papers, etc.) and topics, enabling you to deliver the right message at the right time with greater frequency.

Though the steps are simple, you and your team should write down your conclusions—formally, not on a dinner napkin. The extra effort pays off. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 60 percent of marketers do not formally document their objectives, audience, or goals. That diminishes their chances for success, according to a study by Dominican University’s Gail Matthews which showed that people who write down goals, review them, and share them are 33 percent more successful than those who don’t.

Preparing Individual Content Pieces

When preparing content, remember that competition is fierce for your target audience’s attention; they are the metaphorical belle of the content marketing ball, and many brands want a dance. Identifying and creating content around the specific needs of your target audience will attract their attention, and a strong call to action for the one next step (whether it’s to purchase, learn more, subscribe to your newsletter, or something else) is the final touch.

So what does this look like? Michael Smart did a masterful job with a piece of content that he posted to his blog and also distributed via email.

Objective: Get registrations for his upcoming marketing seminar.

Audience: Communications managers and executives looking to advance their career.

Resonating Content: How do you pique the interest of high-level communicators? Appeal to their skepticism. Michael wrote about an attendee at a conference who doubted he could provide new insights. He challenged her to stay. She did. She succeeded. Then he challenged his readers to sign up for the seminar’s last nine remaining seats.

Analyze and Adjust: Without speaking to him personally (and if you’re reading this Michael, give us a call some time!), it’s impossible to say with certainty that he analyzed results. However, Michael is a savvy PR professional and marketer who has dedicated enormous time and effort to creating content and building his newsletter list. He deserves the benefit of the doubt.

Navigating Around Gatekeepers

Xerox wanted to engage with senior-level executives but found they often couldn’t get past those executives’ administrators who triaged calls and removed marketing materials from snail mail piles. This, of course, impacted Xerox’s sales, so they found a different path.

To increase sales leads (Objective), Xerox created engaging content for C-suite prospects (Audience) that wouldn’t get earmarked as a solicitation by the admins. This involved reshaping the focus of its content marketing. Rather than continuing to focus on client problems, Xerox shared how clients solved those problems and the mindset that drove their success through a collaboration with Forbes on a publication called Chief Optimist magazine (Content).

The company creates five editions of the magazine that cater to specific industries and will send customized print versions to key prospects. It promoted the publications through email and printed cards that sales reps delivered personally.

It didn’t take long for the results to pile up. Email readership leaped 300 to 400 percent. The company gathered 20,000 new contacts and set up more than 1,000 appointments for its sales people. The result:  More than $1 billion in pipeline revenue with a 12- to 18-month sales cycle. To keep customers returning to the site, it launched online forums headed by business celebrities such as Bill Taylor, co-founder of Fast Company (Analyze and Adjust).

Smaller companies with fewer resources don’t have the ability to launch a full scale campaign like this, but they can identify the key concerns and topics their audiences care about with content intelligence. Solutions like the Ceralytics platform analyze content from around the web to identify key opportunities for your brand. (And yes, it can even help companies like Xerox.)

Capitalizing on Pop Culture

SunGard had a challenge that so many brands can relate to: a product or service that doesn’t stoke people’s interest. However, they became a buzzed about brand in the crowded B2B technology space (Objective) by capitalizing on our fascination with zombies.

SunGard focused specifically on reaching IT executives (Audience) with an infographic and ebook that showed the importance of having a resilient business infrastructure, in this case one that could survive a zombie apocalypse (Content). The infographic took the audience step by step through the procedures used to protect data and applications in the event of a zombie attack. To disseminate its gory graphic and the corresponding ebook, SunGard initiated two email campaigns: one broad-based to IT executives with titles director and above for companies earning more than $50 million annually, and another to IT executives who hadn’t responded to a SunGard email in six months.

What made this zombie infographic extra killer? The call to action. Recipients clicked through to a landing page where they could enter to win a physical zombie survival kit. As the campaign took off, SunGard monitored how many times the infographic was shared by influential third-party cloud-based sites (Analyze and Adjust).

The brilliance of this campaign comes from its use of zombies. Had they intended to connect with prospects only a step or two from making a purchase, zombies and a survival kit likely wouldn’t have moved the needle. When considering whether to invest in one solution or another, people tend to want cold, hard facts and case studies. However, for brand awareness, SunGard’s decision to capitalize on the zombie trend more than did the trick.

SunGard’s zombie campaign produced astounding results, tripling expected downloads and doubling expected click-through rates. Additionally, several niche cloud websites featured the infographic on their home pages. Following this success, SunGard adjusted the program, initiating a direct mail-campaign and then a social media campaign.

The accomplishments of Michael Smart, Xerox, and SunGard flow directly from their well thought-out approaches. Success doesn’t have to be predicated on a long history of content production. Content marketing come-latelys can enter this saturated arena and drive results. The key is being strategic and focused on a single goal.

http://ift.tt/2kjbRNg

[mariasolemarionqi]

Here’s How Much Your Content Marketing Goals Matter

When it comes to content marketing, have you been slow getting out of the starting gate? Or are you struggling to keep up with larger competitors that crank out tons of content? It’s not an enviable position, but all is not lost. You’re still in the race—if you take the right approach and focus on your content marketing goals.

Despite your instinct to knock out blog post after blog post to catch up, adopting a goal-focused content strategy will provide greater dividends in both the short and long terms. If this sounds obvious, it’s actually the zag to the zig of most marketers. Some 70 percent of them lack a consistent or integrated content strategy, according to Altimeter.

Part of this no-strategy approach likely involves failing to focus on producing a single business goal with each piece of content. Some content managers won’t consider a goal at all when developing a blog post, white paper, or webinar, while others will try to shoot the moon. Both tend to produce an ROI of roughly zilch.

One Piece of Content, One Content Marketing Goal

Though your overarching content strategy will likely have multiple content goals (awareness, lead generation, customer retention, engagement, etc.), each piece of content should focus on a single one. A campaign enables brands to build upon the successes of individual pieces of content to move their audience to conversion.

For example, a blog post may lead to a newsletter sign up, which leads to downloading an ebook, which leads to requesting information from a sales representative. That’s an overly simplified roadmap, but it illustrates how you can use content to create a customized and efficient pathway for your target audience.

Your content strategy may have multiple goals, but each piece of content should focus on only one. Click To Tweet Getting Started with Business Goals

While organizations and content strategies differ, the following four steps will help you understand the content you need to produce in order to achieve your desired business objective:

Define a goal for each piece of content.

Select a specific audience that makes sense for that goal.

Identify the content topics/mediums that will move that audience to the desired outcome.

Analyze the results, adjust and/or expand.

Remember, each step should lead to the next. For example, identifying the objective and audience helps you hone your content types (blog posts, white papers, etc.) and topics, enabling you to deliver the right message at the right time with greater frequency.

Though the steps are simple, you and your team should write down your conclusions—formally, not on a dinner napkin. The extra effort pays off. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 60 percent of marketers do not formally document their objectives, audience, or goals. That diminishes their chances for success, according to a study by Dominican University’s Gail Matthews which showed that people who write down goals, review them, and share them are 33 percent more successful than those who don’t.

Preparing Individual Content Pieces

When preparing content, remember that competition is fierce for your target audience’s attention; they are the metaphorical belle of the content marketing ball, and many brands want a dance. Identifying and creating content around the specific needs of your target audience will attract their attention, and a strong call to action for the one next step (whether it’s to purchase, learn more, subscribe to your newsletter, or something else) is the final touch.

So what does this look like? Michael Smart did a masterful job with a piece of content that he posted to his blog and also distributed via email.

Objective: Get registrations for his upcoming marketing seminar.

Audience: Communications managers and executives looking to advance their career.

Resonating Content: How do you pique the interest of high-level communicators? Appeal to their skepticism. Michael wrote about an attendee at a conference who doubted he could provide new insights. He challenged her to stay. She did. She succeeded. Then he challenged his readers to sign up for the seminar’s last nine remaining seats.

Analyze and Adjust: Without speaking to him personally (and if you’re reading this Michael, give us a call some time!), it’s impossible to say with certainty that he analyzed results. However, Michael is a savvy PR professional and marketer who has dedicated enormous time and effort to creating content and building his newsletter list. He deserves the benefit of the doubt.

Navigating Around Gatekeepers

Xerox wanted to engage with senior-level executives but found they often couldn’t get past those executives’ administrators who triaged calls and removed marketing materials from snail mail piles. This, of course, impacted Xerox’s sales, so they found a different path.

To increase sales leads (Objective), Xerox created engaging content for C-suite prospects (Audience) that wouldn’t get earmarked as a solicitation by the admins. This involved reshaping the focus of its content marketing. Rather than continuing to focus on client problems, Xerox shared how clients solved those problems and the mindset that drove their success through a collaboration with Forbes on a publication called Chief Optimist magazine (Content).

The company creates five editions of the magazine that cater to specific industries and will send customized print versions to key prospects. It promoted the publications through email and printed cards that sales reps delivered personally.

It didn’t take long for the results to pile up. Email readership leaped 300 to 400 percent. The company gathered 20,000 new contacts and set up more than 1,000 appointments for its sales people. The result:  More than $1 billion in pipeline revenue with a 12- to 18-month sales cycle. To keep customers returning to the site, it launched online forums headed by business celebrities such as Bill Taylor, co-founder of Fast Company (Analyze and Adjust).

Smaller companies with fewer resources don’t have the ability to launch a full scale campaign like this, but they can identify the key concerns and topics their audiences care about with content intelligence. Solutions like the Ceralytics platform analyze content from around the web to identify key opportunities for your brand. (And yes, it can even help companies like Xerox.)

Capitalizing on Pop Culture

SunGard had a challenge that so many brands can relate to: a product or service that doesn’t stoke people’s interest. However, they became a buzzed about brand in the crowded B2B technology space (Objective) by capitalizing on our fascination with zombies.

SunGard focused specifically on reaching IT executives (Audience) with an infographic and ebook that showed the importance of having a resilient business infrastructure, in this case one that could survive a zombie apocalypse (Content). The infographic took the audience step by step through the procedures used to protect data and applications in the event of a zombie attack. To disseminate its gory graphic and the corresponding ebook, SunGard initiated two email campaigns: one broad-based to IT executives with titles director and above for companies earning more than $50 million annually, and another to IT executives who hadn’t responded to a SunGard email in six months.

What made this zombie infographic extra killer? The call to action. Recipients clicked through to a landing page where they could enter to win a physical zombie survival kit. As the campaign took off, SunGard monitored how many times the infographic was shared by influential third-party cloud-based sites (Analyze and Adjust).

The brilliance of this campaign comes from its use of zombies. Had they intended to connect with prospects only a step or two from making a purchase, zombies and a survival kit likely wouldn’t have moved the needle. When considering whether to invest in one solution or another, people tend to want cold, hard facts and case studies. However, for brand awareness, SunGard’s decision to capitalize on the zombie trend more than did the trick.

SunGard’s zombie campaign produced astounding results, tripling expected downloads and doubling expected click-through rates. Additionally, several niche cloud websites featured the infographic on their home pages. Following this success, SunGard adjusted the program, initiating a direct mail-campaign and then a social media campaign.

The accomplishments of Michael Smart, Xerox, and SunGard flow directly from their well thought-out approaches. Success doesn’t have to be predicated on a long history of content production. Content marketing come-latelys can enter this saturated arena and drive results. The key is being strategic and focused on a single goal.

http://ift.tt/2kjbRNg

[christinesumpmg1]

Here’s How Much Your Content Marketing Goals Matter

When it comes to content marketing, have you been slow getting out of the starting gate? Or are you struggling to keep up with larger competitors that crank out tons of content? It’s not an enviable position, but all is not lost. You’re still in the race—if you take the right approach and focus on your content marketing goals.

Despite your instinct to knock out blog post after blog post to catch up, adopting a goal-focused content strategy will provide greater dividends in both the short and long terms. If this sounds obvious, it’s actually the zag to the zig of most marketers. Some 70 percent of them lack a consistent or integrated content strategy, according to Altimeter.

Part of this no-strategy approach likely involves failing to focus on producing a single business goal with each piece of content. Some content managers won’t consider a goal at all when developing a blog post, white paper, or webinar, while others will try to shoot the moon. Both tend to produce an ROI of roughly zilch.

One Piece of Content, One Content Marketing Goal

Though your overarching content strategy will likely have multiple content goals (awareness, lead generation, customer retention, engagement, etc.), each piece of content should focus on a single one. A campaign enables brands to build upon the successes of individual pieces of content to move their audience to conversion.

For example, a blog post may lead to a newsletter sign up, which leads to downloading an ebook, which leads to requesting information from a sales representative. That’s an overly simplified roadmap, but it illustrates how you can use content to create a customized and efficient pathway for your target audience.

Your content strategy may have multiple goals, but each piece of content should focus on only one. Click To Tweet Getting Started with Business Goals

While organizations and content strategies differ, the following four steps will help you understand the content you need to produce in order to achieve your desired business objective:

Define a goal for each piece of content.

Select a specific audience that makes sense for that goal.

Identify the content topics/mediums that will move that audience to the desired outcome.

Analyze the results, adjust and/or expand.

Remember, each step should lead to the next. For example, identifying the objective and audience helps you hone your content types (blog posts, white papers, etc.) and topics, enabling you to deliver the right message at the right time with greater frequency.

Though the steps are simple, you and your team should write down your conclusions—formally, not on a dinner napkin. The extra effort pays off. According to the Content Marketing Institute, 60 percent of marketers do not formally document their objectives, audience, or goals. That diminishes their chances for success, according to a study by Dominican University’s Gail Matthews which showed that people who write down goals, review them, and share them are 33 percent more successful than those who don’t.

Preparing Individual Content Pieces

When preparing content, remember that competition is fierce for your target audience’s attention; they are the metaphorical belle of the content marketing ball, and many brands want a dance. Identifying and creating content around the specific needs of your target audience will attract their attention, and a strong call to action for the one next step (whether it’s to purchase, learn more, subscribe to your newsletter, or something else) is the final touch.

So what does this look like? Michael Smart did a masterful job with a piece of content that he posted to his blog and also distributed via email.

Objective: Get registrations for his upcoming marketing seminar.

Audience: Communications managers and executives looking to advance their career.

Resonating Content: How do you pique the interest of high-level communicators? Appeal to their skepticism. Michael wrote about an attendee at a conference who doubted he could provide new insights. He challenged her to stay. She did. She succeeded. Then he challenged his readers to sign up for the seminar’s last nine remaining seats.

Analyze and Adjust: Without speaking to him personally (and if you’re reading this Michael, give us a call some time!), it’s impossible to say with certainty that he analyzed results. However, Michael is a savvy PR professional and marketer who has dedicated enormous time and effort to creating content and building his newsletter list. He deserves the benefit of the doubt.

Navigating Around Gatekeepers

Xerox wanted to engage with senior-level executives but found they often couldn’t get past those executives’ administrators who triaged calls and removed marketing materials from snail mail piles. This, of course, impacted Xerox’s sales, so they found a different path.

To increase sales leads (Objective), Xerox created engaging content for C-suite prospects (Audience) that wouldn’t get earmarked as a solicitation by the admins. This involved reshaping the focus of its content marketing. Rather than continuing to focus on client problems, Xerox shared how clients solved those problems and the mindset that drove their success through a collaboration with Forbes on a publication called Chief Optimist magazine (Content).

The company creates five editions of the magazine that cater to specific industries and will send customized print versions to key prospects. It promoted the publications through email and printed cards that sales reps delivered personally.

It didn’t take long for the results to pile up. Email readership leaped 300 to 400 percent. The company gathered 20,000 new contacts and set up more than 1,000 appointments for its sales people. The result:  More than $1 billion in pipeline revenue with a 12- to 18-month sales cycle. To keep customers returning to the site, it launched online forums headed by business celebrities such as Bill Taylor, co-founder of Fast Company (Analyze and Adjust).

Smaller companies with fewer resources don’t have the ability to launch a full scale campaign like this, but they can identify the key concerns and topics their audiences care about with content intelligence. Solutions like the Ceralytics platform analyze content from around the web to identify key opportunities for your brand. (And yes, it can even help companies like Xerox.)

Capitalizing on Pop Culture

SunGard had a challenge that so many brands can relate to: a product or service that doesn’t stoke people’s interest. However, they became a buzzed about brand in the crowded B2B technology space (Objective) by capitalizing on our fascination with zombies.

SunGard focused specifically on reaching IT executives (Audience) with an infographic and ebook that showed the importance of having a resilient business infrastructure, in this case one that could survive a zombie apocalypse (Content). The infographic took the audience step by step through the procedures used to protect data and applications in the event of a zombie attack. To disseminate its gory graphic and the corresponding ebook, SunGard initiated two email campaigns: one broad-based to IT executives with titles director and above for companies earning more than $50 million annually, and another to IT executives who hadn’t responded to a SunGard email in six months.

What made this zombie infographic extra killer? The call to action. Recipients clicked through to a landing page where they could enter to win a physical zombie survival kit. As the campaign took off, SunGard monitored how many times the infographic was shared by influential third-party cloud-based sites (Analyze and Adjust).

The brilliance of this campaign comes from its use of zombies. Had they intended to connect with prospects only a step or two from making a purchase, zombies and a survival kit likely wouldn’t have moved the needle. When considering whether to invest in one solution or another, people tend to want cold, hard facts and case studies. However, for brand awareness, SunGard’s decision to capitalize on the zombie trend more than did the trick.

SunGard’s zombie campaign produced astounding results, tripling expected downloads and doubling expected click-through rates. Additionally, several niche cloud websites featured the infographic on their home pages. Following this success, SunGard adjusted the program, initiating a direct mail-campaign and then a social media campaign.

The accomplishments of Michael Smart, Xerox, and SunGard flow directly from their well thought-out approaches. Success doesn’t have to be predicated on a long history of content production. Content marketing come-latelys can enter this saturated arena and drive results. The key is being strategic and focused on a single goal.

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