As I many have mentioned one or two (hundred) times, your target market is not everybody. There is always some way or other that you can narrow down who you really want to speak to, even if everybody could, technically, buy what you provide.

If I had a tenner for every time I've seen a blog where the latest post was added about three years ago, I'd be writing this from a villa in the Bahamas. It happens all the time though. Great intentions fizzle out when time is short and it can be really hard to get back on track.

In this short video Julie explains the three ways that blogging is a lot like running.

You keep hearing that you should be blogging but it sounds like a lot of effort for just another page on your website that nobody is going to read. You're busy and you have better things to do with your time, like getting more customers, for example.

I'm going to tell you a story. It's a true story and it has a happy ending. So... are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.

Inbound marketing is the art of attracting potential customers, engaging with them and converting them into leads. It's a structured process which involves careful planning and a long term view.

In my last blog post I described the different stages of a customer journey from the moment they first hear about your business to when they become a lead and then an advocate. When it comes to actually producing the content for each of those stages, where do you start?

Julie explains in this video why doing clever stuff with keywords is not what SEO is all about. Google^TM wants to give its users the best possible experience, which means ensuring that they find exactly what they are searching for. For you, this means providing useful content that addresses their problems.

SEO has always had an air of mystery about it. It goes back to the early days when it was possible to improve your rankings in Google by using slightly dodgy tactics. Remember keyword stuffing, invisible text and the numerous meaningless directories that linked back to your site. 

If you work in marketing you'll be well aware of the importance of understanding your customers, your target market, your audience... whatever you choose to call those people to whom you are reaching out in the hope of getting them to buy something from you. While it sounds strange to many of our clients, we have found that persona development is a great place to start.

Defining your topic is a vital part of your content strategy - without it you won't know what to talk about or how to engage your audience and you can't start to develop a content plan. Here's a video explaining how to figure your topic out.

It's Christmas Eve, which in my day meant the big double door on the advent calendar, and these days means an extra big chocolate and tracking Santa as he whooshes around the globe on a sleigh laden with pressies.

Whether you like it or not, content has become an essential part of our day to day business and marketing lives. Without good content a company is unable to express what differentiates them from their competitors, clarify and publicise the services and products they offer and generally create and build on relationships with potential, new and existing clients. Despite this being common knowledge many companies can find themselves floundering when it comes to creating website content, in particular when creating a new website.

We all know the statistics, it's 7 times more expensive to gain a new customer than to keep an existing one, so it's incredibly important to hang on to your customers, keep them happy and make sure they come back again. Online marketing can help you with customer loyalty and even turn your fans into advocates. 

One of the first and most important aspects of creating a content marketing strategy is getting your messages right. It's not enough to agree on one message. You need several, to meet the varying needs of your different audiences and the different stages of the buying process at which they find themselves.