7 Tips To Jump Start Your Job Search

How to Reposition Your Personal Brand For The Job Market

Whether you’ve been sitting on the job search sidelines, itching for a new job, or entering the workforce for the first time, looking for a job is tough work, especially if you’re an introvert. Unlike going to work with its set routine and built-in colleagues, job search is lonely business, even if you’re in an outplacement office.

Where do you start and how do you get yourself pumped up to face your computer and phone every morning when you’d like nothing better than to slip back to bed and commune with your eyelids. Continue reading

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Content Marketing Versus PR – Who Wins? [Chart]

12 Salient Content Marketing & PR Attributes

Content marketing gets a bad rap because many marketers and small business owners don’t understand what content marketing is and since it includes the word marketing they think it must be expensive. By contrast they believe any form of PR will translate to sales without work on their part since it’s some “free” stuff. The reality is that neither of these views is correct.

Both content marketing and PR have their distinctive roles to play in marketing. To shed light on the similarities and differences between content marketing and PR, here’s a comparison across twelve salient attributes. Continue reading

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4Ps Drive Mobile Commerce (& The Marketing You Need!) [Research]

4 Critical Types of Mobile Info Customers Want Now!

US mobile commerce sales including travel grew to $6.7 billion in 2011, an increase of over 90% from 2010. This is despite retailers being slow to offer attractive mobile shopping options. eMarketer projects US m-commerce sales to grow at a 55% compound annual rate from 2010 to 2015.

This expansion is driven by a combination of increased smartphone ownership, enhanced use of smartphone functionality and improved m-commerce options.

What mobile information are your prospects and customers looking for? Continue reading

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16 Magnetic Titles For February Content & Blogging

February Themed Marketing to Pump Up Your Promotions

When it comes to promotional inspiration, February is a marketer’s delight because it’s filled with fun holidays. What better way to give your content marketing or blog post headlines the power to blast through and draw prospects in than a celebration?

To help you develop your editorial calendar for February, here are eight events around which to write great content or blog posts as part of a larger marketing campaign.

There are sixteen magnetic titles in all, enough to get you two blog posts a week for the month of February. (Need more choices to get your creative juices flowing? Here’re 125 Blog Titles.) Continue reading

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3 Social Media Marketing Trends You Need Now! [Research]

Social Media: Put Your Money Where Your Customers Are

Want customers? You’ll find them engaged on the social Internet (aka social media).

One out of five minutes online is spent on a social media network where women 15 and above spend 6.5 hours on average – an hour and a half more than men, according to comScore. Despite this disparity, men over 55 are the fastest growing demographic. Continue reading

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21 Ways to Make Your Content Stand Out

Pimp My Content

Everyone wants their content marketing to stand out from the crowd. What’s a marketer to do to tart up their information to attract attention? Just because your subject is serious doesn’t mean it can’t use some makeup to look pretty and get noticed.

How do you take your plain Jane content and dress it up? Here are twenty-one tips to pimp your content. Continue reading

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Craft Your Best Blog Post Yet!

20 Blog Post Questions to Help You

I’m often asked how to write a great blog post. While it sounds like a brush off, the best thing you can do to improve your blogging is to keep blogging.

Your writing improves with every post you craft since you build writing muscles and greater facility by placing word after word on the page.

To help you give your blog posts a boost, here are twenty questions to help you create better blog posts, more consistently. Continue reading

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How To Fight Your Writing Demons

7 Writing Challenges You Can Overcome

Are there days when you can’t write a single word? Recognize you’re not alone (which is difficult since writing tends to be a singular activity.) Understand that most writers, regardless of their facility and output, face these negative spirits at some point.

To get your writing back on track and keep your content compelling, know that you have the power to destroy these writing demons. Continue reading

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5 Market Research Questions Every Executive Must Ask!

The Problem With Market Research

Market research should be a required course for everyone in business school, not just marketing students. Many decision makers across functions use it but few have a clue as to whether the information they’ve been given is valid. As a result, despite good intentions, hard work and financial cost, executives often make important decisions based on poor information.

To put this in perspective, market research is core to providing the basis for developing an annual marketing plan and adapting marketing strategies throughout the year.  As result, I examine and analyze a lot of research in the course of the year. Continue reading

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3 Massive Comment Generators (& The 1 Secret They Share)

Comments are gold to bloggers, writers and marketers. Why? It’s simple—blog comments provide public evidence of an engaged community.

Even more importantly, in the current social media ecosystem where clicking a social sharing button is easier than taking the time to leave a well thought out comment, it’s difficult to garner more than a few if any comments. This means that blogs that generate lots of interesting comments really stand out. Continue reading

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How To Make Your Brand Stand Out

Branding: 5 Questions to Make a Lasting Impression

Branding matters! People, namely your prospects, customers and the public, must be able to distinguish your offering without thinking about it from a sea of competitive products and other messages vying for their attention.

Does your brand stand out? Whether it’s your logo, company colors, voice, look and feel, use of language, sounds or other attributes – does it make a strong impression? Continue reading

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Content Marketing Must Have Checklist

12 Elements Your Content Marketing Needs Now!

60% of marketers plan to increase their content marketing budget in 2012 according to research by Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs. This growth is largely attributable to the fact that content marketing supports building brands, acquiring leads and retaining customers.

Marketers’ biggest content challenge is producing content that engages prospects and customers during the purchase process. As a marketer, how can you ensure your content marketing effectively meets your needs? Continue reading

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