I love the power that mind maps give us to organize our thoughts. Unlike traditional outlining, mind maps let us rearrange our thoughts easily and see connections between different ideas. Mind maps are one of my secrets to productivity – I find I’m able to outline and plan much faster with them than other planning…
2016 was quite a year on the blog. I experimented with many more series, some content refreshes, and tried some things that didn’t work so well. Let’s get in the rewind machine and see how the year went. Top Posts What resonated this year? In a look back at the top posts on my site,…
An old but good article on Social Media Examiner was shared recently about podcasting tips that I’d contributed to in 2012, about how to understand our podcast audience. Much has changed since that article, so I thought I’d refresh the advice for the present day. Mobile Still Matters The percentage of your audience that uses…
Everyone finds themselves stuck from time to time, searching for something to write about. We all want to create content that’s meaningful, helpful, and if we’re honest, popular. Brainstorming only goes so far, especially if we’re a one-person show. How can we create blog topics, blog ideas at scale? Let’s look at 4 of my favorite methods.…
Content shock, a topic we’ve discussed many times on this blog, is the state where marketers and publishers create more content than any human could possibly consume. We’ve reached content shock already, and the artificial intelligence revolution has barely begun. Warcraft’s Content Shock In the video game World of Warcraft, we’ve had a bit of…
At a talk I gave at MarketingProfs B2B Forum, one of my audience members asked a very interesting question: “We know how to value a macro-conversion like a generated lead or a sale, but how do we value micro-conversions like engagements, video views, etc.?” Unlike macro-conversions, which have defined formulae, micro-conversions require a few more…
One of my SHIFT Communications coworkers recently asked, “what’s the difference between whitepapers and eBooks?” This is a surprisingly common question among content marketers. What constitutes a whitepaper vs. an eBook? Is it length? Intended audience? Format? Noted marketing author and friend David Meerman Scott says, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that a whitepaper is any document printed…
