Content Marketing & Blogging - Round Up, 10 May 2013

What do Tiger Woods, Tom Cruise, Jim Carrey, and Serena Williams have in common? The answer lies in how they learn. Teach them to act or play their respective sports by showing them how to do it and they would quickly become more lost than an agoraphobic at a protest march.

Perhaps you have been doing guest posting for a while. Regardless of what you may have read about the next major release of Google's Penguin algo, fundamentally, guest posting remains a sound concept. In fact, link building is still legal (the referenced post was +1'ed by Google's John Mueller), you just have to go about it the right way.

Jasmine Henry Before you roll your eyes and scroll further down your RSS feed to find something that's less slimy, consider this: Every interaction we engage in has an effect on our thinking and emotions.

Lately it seems like content marketing is all people are talking about. B2B marketers however, don't always see themselves as getting a slice of that pie. It's true that B2B content marketing has unique challenges: it can be hard to get a conversation started (let alone shared) by business customers or to create viral appeal (usually pathos-driven human interest angles).

The end of last year saw Forbes comment that "brand marketers who develop focused content plans with clear objectives in 2013 will reap the rewards that content marketing can deliver for many years to come". Certainly 2013 has so far seen a variety of how-to guides explaining the key considerations for successful content marketing campaigns.

Post Panda and Penguin, guest blogging has become a more popular tactic for link-building, and I see the evidence of this in my inbox every day. We value the contribution of guest bloggers on this blog as they have been responsible for some of our best content, but it's important to manage guest writers well for the benefit of both parties.

Everyone's talking about content marketing these days. OK, maybe not "everyone," but certainly a whole bunch of people are doing so within the search marketing and digital media business. So what's all the hoopla about anyway?

Infographics became immensely popular in 2009 and Internet marketers rode the waves of the popularity of this medium to grab countless eyeballs and links. For the early adopters, infographics proved to be a gold mine, but magic of this medium faded as soon as the gold rush began.

Kind of has that too-good-to-be-true ring to it, doesn't it? Well, I'm not going to try to sell you on some never-before-heard-of facts. Instead, I've rounded up some of the strongest case studies that demonstrate how blogging for business can lead to sales for your business. Check out the findings on content-based conversions.

Jacey Gulden Some very cool branded content popped up this week from a few unexpected sources. Not only is this content unique and original, it is coming from companies new to the branded content game. It just goes to show that creative content marketing can be beneficial for just about every business.