It's almost the end of the first month of 2013, and there's already been tons of changes and new trends rocking content marketing and inbound marketing as we know it! If you've been having a hard time keeping up with the latest news, then here's some of the best inbound marketing and content marketing news articles from the past month:
Content Strategy: 9 Secrets for Awesome Blog Post Titles - Content Marketing Institute -This is a great article on tips to writing better blog post titles. Their research said that blog posts with a brand name/proper noun in the title didn't do as well as the rest. The article also says that using the colon and starting with the keyword helps a blog post to do better (hence why we did that for this post).
Is Your Business Guilty of These 6 Blogging Mistakes? - Mashable - Another great article on business blogging mistakes, which is nice since this is a topic that's been written about over and over again. The author makes an excellent point about using images correctly, a huge step forward from using images at all. The author's example of her own legal document filing service and the blog post topics they provide is a nice tidbit.
Blog Design for Killer Search Engine Optimization [Infographic] - Business2Community - Very rarely to we share infographics in our news roundup, but we found this one to have compelling information and to be incredibly helpful. Hardly anyone thinks about how blog design affects SEO, but essentially the lesson is that a great user experience on your website will improve how it ranks on the search engines. However, we do like the idea of hubpages for showcasing your best content around a particular category or subject.
5 Ways to Decimate Your Website's Bounce Rate - Inbound Marketing Agents - What could a bounce rate indicate about your site? Maybe that the content isn't all that great, or isn't delivering what visitors are expecting it to deliver, or even that there are distracting factors that steer visitors away. If you think any of those things may apply, then read this article for ways to decrease your bounce rate.
Content Marketing Presents Uncertain Future for Publishers - PR 20/20 - Brands are publishers now, like it or not. It sounds overwhelming, but it means that companies don't have to focus on traditional media and paid advertising in order to reach people. There are now better, cheaper ways to do it, and these ways don't involve having to go through someone else to get it out there (although you might need the help to write the content). This article also comes with a slideshow, so it's a must read.
HubSpot Shares 11 Secrets that Help Them Generate More Leads than Even Salesforce.com - Forbes - Okay, it's a long title, but we saved the best for last here. This is not only a must-read but its information coming from a company that's one of the most successful at content marketing, and HubSpot is a B2B company! Our favorite is actually the first secret: you can never generate enough content and you need to worry about both quality and quantity. The more good stuff you can create, the better. Also, put a call-to-action at the end of every blog article. The point of these things is to generate leads, right?
