Ray Manley, top freelance writer, content creator and marketer

Don’t stick your head in the sand about robo-writing. Marketers are using AI-powered tools to produce practical, well-constructed, high-performing content. Let’s explore the full range of applications and some important caveats. Continue reading → The post How to Create Content in a World With Bots appeared first on Content Marketing

57+ Tools, Tips, and Examples to Make Your Writing Better

To help you tackle the many challenges you face as a writer, we offer dozens and dozens of tips, tools, and examples. They’ll help you write content that stays on mission, wins readers over, and more. Continue reading → The post 57+ Tools, Tips, and Examples to Make Your Writing

The Easy A-to-Z Guide to Writing Great Headlines [Infographic]

If you like to scan content to pick up some helpful tips, this article and infographic are for you. Make your way through the alphabet for 26 nuggets to improve your headline-writing chops. Continue reading → The post The Easy A-to-Z Guide to Writing Great Headlines [Infographic] appeared first on

How to Write Headlines That Get Your Brand What It Wants [Checklist]

Counting headlines is an antiquated skill. But the sentiment should live on: Writing a headline that best fits its environment is what makes it great. Follow this checklist for headlines that work for your audience and your brand. Continue reading → The post How to Write Headlines That Get Your

How to Make Your Writing More Powerful

Digital media fostered a generation of lazy writing. Without finite space demanded of print, writers aren’t forced to edit. To keep skills sharp, writers must do writing workouts. Start with these five exercises. Continue reading → The post How to Make Your Writing More Powerful appeared first on Content Marketing

Want to be Trusted? Here’s a Crash Course in Brand Journalism

If your company wants to be seen as a media outlet, your brand journalism can’t be light on ethics, riddled with errors, and sopping with self-interest that suffocates readers. Real journalism is about building an audience by telling true stories. “Your content needs to meet journalistic standards if you want

How to Get the Content Marketing Salary You Deserve

Recently, Tatiana Morand, a content and SEO manager, asked her employer for a raise. She got it. Content marketer Allison Gagliardi asked for 10% raises at two previous employers. Both times, she got the salary bump. How? Both of them say they didn’t just ask for a raise. They

3 Tools to Make Your Editorial Calendar More Effective

A few short years ago, simply writing useful articles regularly was enough to keep your audience engaged and see your SEO rankings steadily grow. Now, consumers are more demanding and the Google algorithm is more advanced. To accommodate both, you need to be always testing new tools and tactics.

Are You in a Boring, All-the-Same Industry? Your Content Doesn’t Have to Be

You’re a contestant on a Content Marketing Game Show and you see three marked doors. Behind each door is a content marketing position. Is your dream job behind one of these doors? Let’s see. Door No. 1: Apple! Door No. 2: Acme Accounting! Door No. 3: ABC Plumbing! With

Your 2020 Mission: A Unified Strategy for Content in Your Marketing

In case you haven’t noticed – over the years here at CMI we’ve spent quite a few brain cells and digital ink defining and defending the approach of content marketing as a separate and distinct methodology to influence customer behavior. More than a decade ago, my good friend and