Content Marketing Hacks That Will Help You Stand – Keeping content fresh, exciting and bringing back visitors is a challenge for all businesses. Startups, government bodies and Fortune 500 companies all struggle with keeping their content compelling and unique. It’s definitely industry and team dependent, but it’s a challenge that can often be resolved with a few fresh content marketing hacks. Here are a few hacks that will help you stand out. Ross Simmonds
15 Excellent Responsive Email Templates for Small Businesses – The consumer shift towards mobile devices means that businesses should have a strategy in place to optimize their email marketing for smaller screens. Check out these great examples. eConsultancy
IBM Thanksgiving Day U.S. Sales Data Shows 22% Of Online Transactions Made On Mobile, Average Order $132 – IBM’s results indicate that newer platforms, like mobile, are getting ever more popular: mobile accounted for over 35% of all online traffic, up almost 30% compared to 2012. Mobile sales were over 22% of all online sales. TechCrunch
5 Terrible Headline Habits – In social media, according to tracking data from bit.ly, the online short link generation company, 90 percent of the people who share your content do so, on the basis of the headline only; they don’t even bother to click and read the content before sharing. PRDaily
A Step-by-Step Guide for Using Twitter Chats in Your Content Plan – Learn how Twitter chats can be a great addition to your content plan. Content Marketing Institute
5 Creative Ways to Get More Mileage Out of Your Message – It takes a lot of time and effort to create even one piece of great content, where smaller pieces, like blog posts and checklists, can take a few hours. If you plan strategically, you can re-purpose your ideas so that one marketing message can be presented and distributed across many pieces of content. Business2Community
25 Rules and Formulas for Writing Irresistible Headlines – Spend more time figuring out the best headline for a post. Few people will read the body of the content unless the headline attracts them. Master these headline formulas, and you’ll be engaging more readers in no time. How to Make My Blog
Twitter 102: The Do’s and Don’ts of Twitter Writing – These rules will become second nature the more you write for Twitter. But, if you want to up the impact or you’re new to using Twitter, they’re important to keep in mind. Maximize Social Business
Developing an Influencer Plan –The greatest challenge you have is standing out in the crowd and becoming recognized as an authority. Social Influence Marketing is based on the influence people have on other people. There are several types of influencer and many reasons why they can be critical to your online clout. TheEducators
How to Succeed at reddit: A Visual Guide – The top 200 reddit posts of all time — color-coded. The Washington Post
4 Useful Tips on Identifying Google Ranking Drops – In most cases, ranking drops are caused by either an algorithmic update/fresh or a decline in incoming links. Find out why your rankings may have declined. Big Vision SEO
How Twitter’s New Update Will Affect Your Marketing Strategy – The brand new Twitter update promises users a more engaging, visual experience. Here’s how it is poised to affect your marketing strategies. Social Media Today
The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period! – This master website marketing checklist covers over 400 specific items through 23 topics, including website development, SEO, usability, accessibility, etc. Sometimes you need to discover first what to do with a website, so you can then understand how to market your product or service. Search Engine Guide
3 B2B Marketing Tips for the Holidays – With a little creativity, B2B brands can also implement successful holiday marketing that can attract leads or employees or both. Optimize This
Survey: 17% of Employees Required to Use Personal Social Accounts for Work – The line between personal and private online lives has blurred to invisibility. Comments to the survey complained that they now have the blandest conversations with their friends. 
While 27% of respondents are not required to use their personal accounts, they are strongly encouraged to do so. Venture Beat
Twitter Gives Verified Users New Spam & Verified-Only Filters For Mentions – Twitter says the goal with this new filtering is “to improve your experience of reading through your mentions, as well as easily communicating with other verified users.” Marketing Land
New Google Trends Topic Reports Designed to Deliver More Accurate Results – Google says it has updated its Trends Reports so that different search terms meaning the same thing will be measured accordingly. Search Engine Land
The Difference Between Social Media and Content Marketing – From the company perspective, the goal of content marketing is consumption, then behavior. The goal of social media is participation, then behavior. Read what Lee Odden has to say in this B2B Experts post. Social Media B2B
Study: More Than Half of Advertisers Cannot Measure Digital Video Campaigns – A November survey by BrandAds reveals that 60 percent of advertisers lack tools and timely data to measure digital video campaigns. ClickZ
Marketing Automation Bolsters Content Marketing Effectiveness – Using marketing automation can make marketers much more effective in using content for lead generation, according to a new report. Highly efficient marketers re-purpose content, capturing data regarding the content, customizing content for audiences with specific job titles, and intelligent targeting, state researchers at Qaqish. Direct Marketing News
6 Trends for 2014 in Mobile Marketing and Advertising – With over 75% growth in mobile advertising in 2013 (AdAge Mobile Fact Pack), mobile is no longer an emerging channel. Along with social media, it’s become an essential part of every digital marketer’s strategy; 2013 was, finally, the year of mobile. MarketingProfs
From the Online Community
On 12 Killer Social Media & Content Marketing Posts from 2013, Katherine Kotaw said, Congratulations again, Lee, on a very successful 10 years — and on this roundup, which highlights just how successful your 2013 has been! I’m beyond honored that my work has been featured on TopRank. It has definitely been a highlight of my 2013 🙂 Sending you all my very best!
On Mobile Content Marketing With Apps: Pros, Cons, Examples and Best Practices, Ed said, This is of particular interest after various sources report content marketing is going to increase and be the most important digital media channel in 2014.
Just added Top Rank blog to our [List / Aggregator] “Top 100 Blogs for Digital Marketers / Marketing Strategists.”
On What Do You Get With A Social Media Audit?, Lance Leasure said, Excellent post Lee! Audits are an essential element of any strategic initiative. One way that I’ve learned to avoid the “one and done” situation and help ensure top-of-mind awareness for the team is to leverage the work done in a gap analysis for creating a dashboard. As you point out, audits are typically done for businesses entering a new territory, so with just a few additional steps, this helps teams maintain awareness of their progress while indoctrinating them with the KPI in a new area of their business.
What’s Your Take?
With the focus on writing great headlines and clickable tweets, how are you handling the new rules of content marketing? Does your employer require you to use your own account for work? How are you re-purposing content to extend the life of your digital assets?
Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!
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