Ray Manley, top freelance writer, content creator and marketer

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

How to Make the Most of Your Paid Content Promotion on Facebook

In the past five years, Facebook’s organic reach has declined significantly – 2016 alone saw a 52% drop. Facebook Pages with over 500,000 “likes” have an average organic reach of 2% or less for each post, according to research from Social@Ogilvy reported by HubSpot. Facebook Pages w/ over 500K

How to Stop Your Personal Money Habits From Affecting Your Business

If you feel that years of cultivating personal money habits are now affecting your business, now’s the best time to take action and weed those habits out. Managing cash flow can prove difficult even for seasoned companies with experienced financial officers on board. Beginning freelancers and small-business owners, however, are

Do What Most Content Marketers Don’t and Get Better Results

Let’s begin with some simple math: 0.28 x 0.47 x 0.15 x 0.65 = 0.0128 The answer, expressed as a percentage, is 1.28%. I know what you might be thinking: What happened to the content I’m used to reading here at Content Marketing Institute? Let me explain. Take the

How to Use Quora and Reddit to Fuel Your Content Marketing Needs

Sites with user-generated content like Quora and Reddit can be gold mines for referring traffic to your website, boosting brand authority, and reaching niche audiences for your business. But you better respect what is and is not allowed on these powerful channels for distributing your content and increasing engagement.