The last news roundup of 2012! Can you believe that the year is almost over, and all that has happened? Here's some of the best inbound marketing and business blogging news and articles that we've come across in the past 30 days or so.
6 Steps Toward Creating Great Marketing Content for Consumers - Search Engine Journal - Content creating is much more than coming up with good topics and writing about them. The content also needs to be targeted toward your potential customers, which means you need to think about things like publishing medium, personas, metrics, and any additional resources you may need to put together the great content. It's all part of making sure that the message you deliver is the right message.
Experts Round Table: 10 Unusual Ideas for Your Business Blog - Business2Community - Need to do something crazy or different for your business blog, something that could end the year well or maybe start 2013 off right? This article offers 10 unusual, but good, ideas for your business blog that you should try, such as a quick customer case study, transparency in how you run your business (yes, essentially sharing a trade secret), or an interesting tips and tricks article.
B2B Marketing Content: Adoption Surging, but Objectives are Shifting - MarketingProfs - According to this survey, it seems that more and more marketers are realizing what content marketing is really good for (thought leadership, customer engagement, and market education) versus the traditional marketing goals that don't apply to the latest forms of marketing. Yes, business still want to drive sales and to increase web traffic, but that's only half the story, and content marketing is that other half that bridges the gap for consumers.
100+ Social Media and Content Marketing Predictions for 2013 - Content Marketing Institute - Have a prediction on what's going to trend next year? Or perhaps a guess on what will change or fall out of style? If so, take a look at what 80 other prominent marketers think is going to be big next year, on everything ranging from mobile to social media, from print advertising to demand generation. Our one prediction to contribute: businesses will need new ways for their business blogs and other content to stand out in an increasingly oversaturated world.
13 Hilarious Examples of Truly Awful Stock Photography - Hubspot - Stock photos are great, but it's also important to make sure that they stock photos don't make your business look fake or generic. After all, does your entire team always dress in formal business attire and greet people at the door? Or even enjoy meetings or collaborate happily and peacefully all the time? Probably not. If you're going to use a stock photo, don't use one of these, or something similar that evokes something equally ridiculous.
Is the Exact Match Domain Dead After the Recent Google Algorithm Updates? -TechWyse - If you have an EMD for the sake of SEO purposes i.e. contentmarketing.com because you want to rank for the keyword "content marketing", then the website probably got punished in the latest round of algorithm updates. However, if you have an EMD, but still made an effort to provide quality content, to build a brand, and to offer potential customers value, then you probably weren't hurt by the updates despite Google's goal to punish low quality sites that were only ranking for keywords because of the EMD. Does this answer the question?
12 Attributes of a Successful Content Curation Strategy - Heidi Cohen - There's tons of articles about inbound marketing strategy and business blogging strategy, but developing a content curation strategy is a completely different beast. Granted, there are similarities between a content curation strategy and other strategies involving content, but one of the biggest differences is working with third-party content and ensuring that their content is on message and relevant to your audience.
