Ray Manley, top freelance writer, content creator and marketer

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4 Real-Life Ledes: Why They Work (and What Could Be Better)

OK, the original plan for this article was to provide great examples of ledes in B2B and B2C content marketing. But a funny thing happened in that search – mediocre ledes dominated. That’s disappointing because, next to the headline, the lede is everything. It’s the determining factor on whether

How to Use LinkedIn as a Brand Publishing Platform

Let’s play word association: I’ll say a word, then you answer with the first word that comes to mind. The word is “LinkedIn.” Did you answer “career”? If you did, you’re in the same camp as many LinkedIn users who think of their LinkedIn profile as their online resume.

Shouldn’t Every Piece of Content Be Clickbait?

Welcome to the clickbait debate. Credited to Jay Geiger, who first wrote about it in 2006, the term “clickbait” earned a place in The Oxford English Dictionary in 2016 with this definition: “(on the Internet) content whose main purpose is to attract attention and encourage visitors to click on

Cook Up Email Marketing Automation With These 6 Recipes

Brands earn $38 for every $1 they invest in email marketing programs, according to Email Marketing ROI: The Factors That Lead to Better Returns, a research report published by Litmus. In other words, brands generate a 3,800% ROI on email marketing. Brands generate 3,800% ROI on #email marketing via @litmusapp

5 Research Options You May Never Have Considered for Your Content

If you’re like most content marketers I speak to, the strategies and tactics you use to grow an audience and get attention just aren’t working as they once were. A BuzzSumo study, Content Trends 2018, confirms it; in a review of 100 million articles published in 2017, the company

Are You Measuring Right in Your Content Marketing?

Marketers are awash in data. But ask marketers if they’re measuring the right things and most answers are closer to “damned if I know” than “you betcha.” So, what can be done when big data gets the better of you? In May I judged a category in the 2018

15 Search Intent Tips, Examples, and Resources for SEO Keywords

If you want to leverage search intent with SEO keywords on Google and other search engines, it’s best to balance the methods with the false hopes. In a moment, I’ll dive into the big intent types like transactional, informational, and navigational. Mostly, I want to share a perspective to help

100+ Tools Content Marketers Really Love

Want to be a better content marketer? Don’t overlook the importance of technology. Need convincing? Consider this: CMI’s 2019 B2B research found that 67% of the most successful content marketers rated their organization’s content tech proficiency as expert or advanced. Only 5% of the least successful content marketers rate their

How to Get Ranked and Read With the Topic Cluster Content Model

Do you struggle to create engaging content that lands you in the top spots of Google? There is a way to solve that problem, and create content that Google loves, while building a library of content that’s super useful to your target audience. That way? The topic clusters model.

Roundup: How I Deal With the Dreaded Scope Creep

Scope creep: If you don’t nip it in the bud, it can get out of hand very quickly, robbing you of valuable hours you could be billing elsewhere. It’s often a freelancer’s first valuable lesson in business. You agree to a flat-rate project for a client and complete the work… [Read More]