One way to sift through the murky sea of conflicting advice is to look for concrete examples. The same examples tend to get repeated so I took a different approach.

Indianapolis, my hometown and a great city to start a business (according to Kiplinger magazine), provides some great examples for a variety of content marketing approaches. Here are four that range from small-and-local to billion-dollar-multi-national:

Video Focus for Local Promotion

Ben Risinger and the folks at DoItIndy have done a fantastic job using video to promote the great things happening in the city of Indianapolis. In fact, their fun and informative videos have landed them a regular spot on a local news channel.

A blog, calendar of events and an active social media presence top off their content marketing efforts. If your organization or business has a local focus and likes the idea of video, use DoItIndy as your model.

Multifaceted Approach to a One-Man-Brand

Peter Dunn, know as Pete the Planner, covers all the bases if you are trying to clearly market your expertise on multiple platforms.

Pete uses a blog, radio, TV, books, speaking, training and social media to clearly show you what he does and why he’s an expert. Pete is able to demonstrate expertise in a complicated and competitive area while using his quick wit to add humor. He also gives you a snapshot of his personal life that humanizes his work beyond simply numbers.

Content marketing isn’t just blogging or whitepapers and Pete shows how you can use both “traditional” and new media effectively.

Content Marketing for a New Business Approach

SlingshotSEO saw the future and morphed its business model from primarily SEO to SEO and inbound marketing. Content and search go hand-in-hand in any effective content marketing program so, while the synergy is obvious, the company mission needed to be articulated clearly.

Chad Pollitt, Steven Shattuck and the rest of the marketing team ramped-up the gated content and blog posts to provide valuable resources to interested inbound marketers. The plan appears to have simultaneously clarified their company mission while generating leads with useful content.

Compelling Research From A Billion-Dollar Company

ExactTarget is a billion-dollar cross-channel global marketing SaaS company. With such interesting and timely marketing topics covering email, mobile, social and more, it would be easy to crank out daily 3-step blog posts everyday without having to think very much.

However, Jeff Rohrs spearheaded the meaty research being done for the SUBSCRIBERS, FANS & FOLLOWERS series. The research reports have become extremely popular downloads for the company and give Rohrs and Kyle Lacy plenty of unique material as they travel the globe for various speaking engagements.

In a company this large and in this space, webinars, videos, community building and a popular international conference all work together to bring value to current and prospective customers. Take a deep dive into the ExactTarget website and get some ideas on how you can replicate the successful content marketing efforts of this global brand.

There are a variety of ways to grow your business through content marketing. Wherever you are located and whatever the size of your organization, you can have success marketing with valuable content. Find inspiration, get good advice and get started!

There is no shortage of advice that will have you second-guessing every word you write. You’ll be worried about punctuation, style manuals, catchy headlines, appealing to search engines and sounding smart.

Vivek Wadhwa wrote an article for LinkedIn that captured four points every writer should post to their wall (I already have). Follow this advice and keep writing. You’ll be fine, I promise.

Speak fearlessly from the heart;

Get to the point immediately;

Keep the message simple and focused;

Use the fewest words you can.

As I stared down at the buttons of yet another basketball scoreboard system, this one made sense.

You would think it would be easy. Just make adding or subtracting the score simple, be clear on where and how to add team fouls and make my passion for the game the only obstacle to correctly starting and stopping the clock.

However, at each basketball venue, a different system stared back at me. From new to antiquated, tabletop to handheld, some of the systems were complex to the point of being impossible to use without a brief training session.

Shouldn’t putting six minutes on the clock every quarter be simple?

At some point along the way, the complexity of the technology and all of the potential uses of the scoreboard complicated the design.

Have you ever walked into someone’s house only to find five remote controls that operate their television, satellite dish, dvr and game console?

Turning on the TV is a complete guessing game.

None of the controls are intuitive.

It’s as if the complexity somehow justifies the expense.

And so it goes with our writing.

Everyone can write so they assume clear, concise writing is easy.

If that is the case, why is it so hard to find a well-written website?

The words flow and the copy envelopes the site. Page upon page explain the reader into submission. In the digital world, submission means clicking onto a different site. Submission is not your goal.

A clear message with the fat judiciously removed flows so easily.

A captivating story, a 30-second video script and an explanatory tagline make all of the difference in a noisy, crowded digital world.

You might be able to fall into this occasionally or have a special gift for this kind of writing. More than likely though, you have drafted, studied, invited feedback and worked diligently to develop this talent.

The end result is beautiful and simple…and everyone thinks they can do it themselves.

Search engine optimization is one topic where you are guaranteed to find conflicting information. With changing algorithms and some firms still employing outdated tactics, expert advice is needed now more than ever.

Fortunately, someone has already done the hard work of polling the experts to find out the information you have to know in order to integrate SEO into your content strategy. That someone is Erin Nelson, Press & Communication Manager of international start-up exploreB2B.

Tell me  a little bit about ExploreB2B?

Our start-up, exploreB2B is a professional network and publishing platform for professionals. The goal is to share ideas and expertise in the form of articles. Articles serve as a means to promote industry leadership, communicate valuable marketing messages, and inspire relevant connections.

I, personally, have used exploreB2B as a platform to share (and leverage) my experience with content marketing and brand strategy. I’ve achieved a degree of social media influence by running several interview series, most recently, with SEO experts.

So much more than I anticipated! First, I learned that someone’s professional history has a large impact on their relationship to SEO. While almost everyone I interviewed focused on the necessity of optimizing high-quality content to provide value to the reader, their attachment to the term “SEO” varied, depending on their past and current roles.

One interviewee adamantly proclaimed the death of SEO, while another described it as an algorithm shift that could be managed by sharing purposeful, desirable and relevant content. Yet at the end of the day, what they each were saying was the same: optimization is a technical necessity, but a moot point if you don’t provide a foundation of thoughtful content that promises utility for the reader or further promote the content within your (or your client’s) active, social communities.

Maybe most surprising was that each interviewee was eager to talk about the theory surrounding SEO, rather than the technical aspects of page ranking, keyword placement, back links and search engine crawlers. I took this to mean that SEO is secondary to the value produced by the content, even in the context of optimization itself.

SEO is a large part of any marketer’s world. While our main mission at exploreB2B is to provide value for our readers, we have to ensure that the content we produce can be found.

We place a strong emphasis on developing meaning within our articles and marketing literature to suit the desires of our readership over those of the search engine crawlers scanning our text, but always in the back of our minds are tactics that can be implemented to elevate the discovery of our content that is a bi-product of labor and love. The most success we have found, whether considered SEO-related or not, has been our investment in creating strong, social media communities to propel our message.

Expert Advice

The Debunking SEO series Erin referenced has some invaluable content from SEO experts and other marketers dealing with SEO on a daily basis. Here are links to some key interviews in the series listed by expert:

Adam Torkildson

Learn Adam’s thoughts on the merger of SEO, content marketing and PR.

Lee Odden

What does the future of optimization look like? Find out from Lee.

Lisa Barone

Building SEO into content marketing and community engagement.

Melissa Fach

Learn the technical components of an optimal SEO strategy.

Kevin Cain

Optimization tools, tricks and tactics from a content marketer. 

What other content would you like to see on SEO? Let me know in the comments.

They value beautiful, simple design in both their product and website design. When you see their product in action, you will notice that it fascinates first-time users with its ingenious utility. Square is a wonderful example of designers driving entrepreneurialism.

Square will serve as an example to give you insight into what a copywriter and content marketer thinks about when evaluating a site. It will also help you know what you are getting when you hire a great copywriter.

Main Message and Navigation

Start accepting credit cards today.

The copy is well-written and specific. Specificity is essential on the web. Readers have to know what you can do for them quickly.

The design is uncluttered and you almost miss the ultra-light gray navigation selections at the bottom of the page. Not a bad idea for keeping you focused on the main call-to-action while maintaining choices for those seriously searching for more information.

The main message and desired action are clear while important secondary actions are available but not distracting.

Testing

The clear call-to-action is to sign up and get your free card reader.

But is there enough information to compel a reader to sign up? In other words, is it too early in the buying process to ask for a sign up?

Testing is a great way to alleviate incorrect assumptions about copy.

The home page design is a great place to test.

Rather than the sign up slider, Square could try the three product choices as the call-to-action. Once a product page was selected, that page would contain the first call for signing up and includes longer copy that addresses the concerns of how Square works and it’s pricing model.

Storytelling

In their own words, “Square is a design and story-driven company.”

They clearly care about design, but how developed is the storytelling?

Square does a nice job telling the story of their customers, which is typically more important than telling your company story. On their testimonials page, short videos show how business owners use Square and why it benefits their business.

Video is a great way to tell a story. It creates a visual connection and is great for search engine results.

The testimonials page headline “Square is for everyone” could be refined. The idea is to cast a broad net but the ideal user might need to be defined in order to connect. Plus, no benefit is conveyed in this statement, missing an opportunity to tell potential customers what they gain.

The testimonial page features business owners so here are some possible options to replace “Square is for everyone”:

Square makes payment easy.

Makes life easier for your customer and your business.

Square grows your business.

Easy payment means fewer missed sales.

Square is the greatest revelation in business transactions since the handshake.

Might be more appropriate for something like a magazine ad but catchy.

Square is for closers.

Light-hearted play on the famous line from the movie Glengarry Glen Ross. Also might be better for an ad.

Update: No joke, as I was editing this post, Square added a subhead to the testimonial page. Subhead helps but doesn’t negate the suggestions above.

One thing that’s missing is the story of Square itself. They have an interesting story and impressive founders. They also have a product that needs to show its legitimacy.

Trust is a key part of their business and the company story would really help solidify the image of the company in the minds of new customers. A company that has the luxury of founders that most people would recognize should take advantage of that connection.

A complete navigation, content and copywriting analysis would go into much greater detail and depth. However, you should now have an idea of what to look for on your own site as well as some standards to use when hiring a copywriter for revisions or analysis.

And remember, Square is a great site. Imagine what proper analysis and writing could do for a terrible site!!

Need an analysis of your site?

Hit the contact page and get in touch.

Most businesses slap their story on their “About” page and forget about them.

They move on to more important things like building their email list and writing blog posts. However, these companies are missing the importance of their history.

Your company story gives you a chance to connect with your audience in a way that allows them to know why you are in business in the first place. That story alone can validate your mission in a way that makes your audience want to join you. See TOMS or Charity Water.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could tell an interesting story about your company and build your email list at the same time? (Pause for fake suspense.)

You can!

Tell Your Brand Story With An Email Series

There is a formula that you can use to start building your audience, email list and relationships. The formula combines your company story with the elements of narrative storytelling and bite-sized emails segmented into an autoresponder series.

Splitting your story into an email autoresponder series builds interest and prevents the reader fatigue that will occur with a lengthy “About” page. People sign up to learn your story, you get to tell it in short, digestible segments and you build a deeper understanding with your audience as they learn the reason your company exists.

Although I gave you two examples earlier, I’m going to resist the urge to focus on non-profits or companies involved in promoting social change because that might not be your business. You might run a boring law firm or content marketing agency. (I kid because I know.)

So what are the three parts of a narrative story?

The Setup

Your first step in a narrative story (and one of your emails) is to define the main characters and their situation.

This is the perfect opportunity to talk about your founder and why she started your company.

Describe in detail the main characters and what was going on in their lives at the time they started your company. Think about the stories of young college dropouts starting a company in a garage while sleeping on their parents couch as an example of a great setup.

Provide enough tension to make your audience understand your founder and want to read about what happens next. Do NOT give into the urge to lie in order to sound interesting. The story alone will be interesting enough and is not worth compromising your business or ethics over.

The Conflict

The conflict here is the inciting incident that shocks your founder into action.

Imagine a small town watchmaker in the early 1940s listening to the stories told by his pilot cousin about how difficult it was to navigate a plane because he couldn’t properly time the distance between two points from the air. With war on the horizon, the watchmaker devotes all his time and energy into developing something that can save his country from the ravages of war.

For a company that created paper scanners, the inciting incident could be the frustration of spending an entire day stapling expense receipts to paper forms in order to ask for reimbursement. There has to be a better way, right?

The conflict sets the stage for you being able to tell the company inspiration and why you are different.

The Resolution

The final step is the resolution. Here, the characters confront the conflict and create a solution.

For example, the watchmaker develops the first chronograph used by fighter pilots and improves the entire aviation industry.

Or, after seeing the possibility of pattern recognition integrated with technology, the first paper scanner is developed and expense reports can now be categorized and emailed, staple-free.

Your company resolved to solve an important problem and your product or service is the incarnation of that vision. Problem resolved.

Get Creative

The three steps of narrative storytelling will form the core of your email autoresponder.

Now it’s your turn to get creative. Make your story interesting.

You could tell your story through a series of video interviews.

The watchmaker could create a comic book series that tells their story in a more visual and nostalgic format.

Some companies have created a fictitious over-the-top character to tell a funny version of a story that gives their brand a laid back and informal feel.

Your story matters to your customers but it’s your job to tell it in an interesting way.

Any questions?

That’s why there is a comment section.

“Good web design starts with content.”

-Jeffrey Zeldman keynote at An Event Apart Washington D.C 2012 via Luke Wroblewski, Design Consultant

Content and web design go together. Content shapes design choices, site structure and user experience. The words themselves even take on a design element with font selection.

It seems obvious that content developers and designers would be part of the same team (sometimes they are the same person). Both are intertwined in such a way that they should be part of the same process. However, this is not always the case.

An often unspoken tension exists between content development and design.

In the past, this topic has been addressed by 37signals in a chapter of Getting Real called Copywriting is Interface Design. Joshua Porter, Director of UX at HubSpot, responded with his post Interface Design is Copywriting. Both assert that words direct the experience of the audience.

The fact that this topic needs to be addressed and commented on suggests that there was disagreement in the first place. The issue is not as simple as art versus business because many on either side believe that both matter (although clearly some, if you surf the web even occasionally, do not share this belief).

Assumptions often create this tension. Addressing the accuracy of the assumptions as well as the process of implementation can help alleviate this tension. This article will explore some of these issues and propose solutions that will benefit the most important party in this process, the site user.

This is not an attempt to build a case on who serves in the role of content creator. A variety of factors, including talent and economics, dictate who serves in this capacity. Generally, it is either going to be the web designer or someone within the design company, a dedicated writer or someone from the marketing department within the client organization, or an independent copywriter or content marketer.

So let’s take a look at each assumption.

Content Will Alter My Design

The creative process is delicate. It’s not easy to create a design that pleases both the user and the client.

Some designers might prefer to put off content until after the design is complete because of this assumption. This feeling also might come from clients demanding an initial design mock-up prior to discussing content purpose and goals.

The problem here is with the process.

If content is part of the design process from the beginning, content and design align to determine goals together. –Click to Tweet

Depending on site, the content could range from a brief tagline leading to a free trial to an extensive brand-building story. Both have major implications on the design of the site.

The same works in reverse. Content writers are often given a design and told exactly how much space they have to accomplish their goal.

This isn’t altogether bad as writers often seek to be clear and concise and space constraints can facilitate this goal. The difficulty comes when the content is being squeezed into an area of bullet points when storytelling is necessary. Witty catch phrases can replace meaningful descriptions. A thoughtful, three-step process can turn into a pushy two-step process.

Giving equal weight to design elements and content from the outset solves this error in process.

Copywriting Will Degrade The Design

This is different from altering the design from a visual aesthetic standpoint. This idea is that copywriting makes the design worse.

It’s no coincidence that many design-oriented sites use the term “content” more freely than “copy” or “copywriting” which are viewed as marketing terms. “Content marketing” is another phrase that is intended to capture the purpose of certain content.

Brian Clark of Copyblogger explains content marketing as content created for a marketing purpose and copywriting as crafting content to direct the reader to take a specific action. Both fall under the general umbrella of content and both work together in creating a user experience.

So why are designers and writers often using different terminology?

Perspective plays a role in this difference. Assumptions that designers are only concerned with a visual aesthetic and that marketers only care about financial gain are a starting point.

These assumptions exist because sometimes they are true.

Plenty of websites exist with beautiful designs and a dead-end user experience because the visual look and feel trumped moving the user toward a goal with content.

From the copywriting side, we have all seen plenty of sites with bold red text and yellow highlights imploring us to buy now to solve all of our problems before this product with fake scarcity magically disappears. Also, the days of SEO keyword stuffing are still fresh in the minds of designers and degraded the look, feel and effectiveness of countless websites in the name of organic search ranking (which was thought to be a precursor to more sales).

The idea that copywriting will degrade a design could also imply not just bad writing, but writing that doesn’t fit the ethical standards of the designer.

Massaged data is one example. Say an increase in sales from $1 to $11 is disclosed as a 1000% sales increase. It’s not quite as impressive as $1000 to $11,000 and it just doesn’t feel right when you consider the perspective of your reader.

One way to deal with these extreme assumptions is to discard them. If you are a writer working with a designer that sees no value in your work or in a site that leads users toward a specific goal, don’t work with him.

As a designer, working with someone whose words conjure up images of snake oil salesman is a big mistake. Finding people whose intentions are the same as yours and who are open to honest dialogue is not that difficult. It does require saying “no” sometimes.

If the problem is terminology because “copywriting” conjures images of shady ad men and the term “content” softens these perceptions, outstanding. However, it’s important to agree that words and design are part of a user-focused experience meant to accomplish something. That “something” could be a buying decision or it could be something that logically leads to a different next step.

Content Trumps Design

Content creators and clients often create their list of essential content without regard for the impact on design. The visual aesthetic, ease of navigation and general user experience should directly impact the volume, flow and placement of content.

The assumption of content trumping design is muddled with data trumping everything.

Slaves to data believe that it should dictate the words you use, placement of buttons, color scheme, etc…

This naive interpretation (or misinterpretation) of numbers completely disregards the complexity of the design process, focuses only on the goal of a perceived increase in conversions, and often sacrifices long-term prosperity and alignment with the mission of a business for short-term results.

Design helps communicate brand identity, style and purpose (among other things) and should be viewed as part of the solution to your customer’s problem. Content and data should be used in conjunction to solve the problems of your customers with your solutions.

If you are working with an external writer, take a look at their website to see how they value design. –Click to Tweet

If you’re still not sure, ask them how they feel about something on which you have a strong opinion, like pop-up subscription boxes. This should give you a strong indication as to whether you could work together.

Good Websites Look Like Other Good Websites

Creative people don’t follow the crowd.

A designer is often looking to create something different. They could be looking to provoke the crowd rather than follow it.

The business of creating websites is already crowded and standing out can be important. Once again, content creation and design have to be aligned with the same goals.

If a content writer is driven only by data and examples of what has worked in the past, aligning with an innovative design could be difficult.

The writer will need to focus more on storytelling or innovative writing techniques to accomplish the same goals. Useless maxims need to be discarded and exceptions need to be embraced.

The idea that any important call-to-action needs to be above the fold is the perfect example. Generally, this is probably a great idea and supported by data.

One exception is when the call-to-action is better supported by long-form copy. Asking for an action from a reader before such an action has been supported by the content is ineffective. It’s better to ask when appropriate and ignore the desire to stay above the fold.

Sometimes storytelling better serves the mission of the site as opposed to punchy copywriting strictly above the fold. Stories connect readers with the company and product while distancing those that aren’t potential fans in the first place.

Narrowing your market to true prospects through storytelling can save a company significant time and money rather than being in a race to build clicks and subscriptions.

When the goal of a site is to do something different, it’s essential that content be a part of this process. Content writing can be unique just like web designs can be formulaic. It’s important for both to work together.

Breaking down these and other assumptions can help alleviate tension and allow content and design to work together toward the same goal.

What assumptions do you believe create tension between content and design? How do you eliminate this tension?

Wouldn’t it be great if you could just take a potential customer and read their mind?

For those of you that are mind readers, you can go back to what you were doing. (You knew I was going to say that, didn’t you?)

The good news for the rest of us is that someone read the minds of our customers for us!

Modern neuroscience has developed amazing technology to conduct studies that assist marketers in understanding the brains of their customers. In his book Brainfluence, author and marketing consultant Roger Dooley uses the findings from a multitude of studies to give you 100 actionable techniques to build your brand.

You’ll have to buy the book for all 100 techniques but here are a few that will help your content marketing efforts immediately.

Tell Stories To Engage Their Brains

According to research, good stories reach parts of our memories that statistics cannot. When you hear a good story, your brain connects to the vivid details.

As a content marketer, it’s important to remember that you are a storyteller (or you can hire one). You have the opportunity to tell stories in blog posts, your about page, case studies, white papers, videos and squeeze pages.

One of the best storytelling sales letters ever, written by copywriter John Caples, was a very short story that triggered familiar emotions of fear, embarrassment and triumph. Even though it was written in the 1920’s, it was so effective that it still made a contemporary list of the top 100 advertising campaigns of the century.

Remember that you not only have the story of your company, but stories for each of your products that have yet to be invented. They are the vivid descriptions that allow your customer to imagine what their life would be like with your product.

Use Customer Success Stories

Customer success stories add an element of trust to your storytelling as well. Although a rating of 3 out of 4 stars on a review site can make a difference, a story by a real person explaining how your product improved their business makes the story relevant and accessible.

Don’t Create Negative Stories

And, as you can imagine, a disgruntled customer success story can make an even larger impression. When a friend tells you an airline is terrible, it stands out much more than an anonymous review. When that friend makes a video about his terrible flight experience, it might impact millions. Make sure you are creating beautiful stories and satisfying your few disgruntled customers before they create their own.

You Need An Enemy

People develop group loyalty very quickly. If you can show your customers that you are part of a group with them, loyalty can grow.

Being a part of the same LinkedIn group is probably not enough. It’s much more powerful if it is an us vs. them scenario.

Apple creating the PC versus Mac campaign is a perfect example. But you don’t have to be a huge brand. You could be battling alongside your prospects to fight greedy high-commission competitors or unethical industry counterparts.

You can go too far with this so don’t bash your competition specifically. Refer to ideals (like fair commission rates or no ATM fees) and avoid having too much content with this slant. You still want to build on features and benefits of your product and should often bolster this idea subtly.

Time Builds Trust

Brainfluence has a chapter titled “Time Builds Trust and Loyalty”. The concept of content marketing is that, over time, you provide valuable resources to your potential customers and become a trusted resource. The theory is that when a buying decision is made, a prospective customer will choose the company they trust.

Trust does more than just influence a buying decision. Here are a few more ways building trust helps your business:

Trust elevates fairness - If your customers trust you, they are more likely to assume that you are being fair. Something like a price increase might not be met with the same kind of resistance if your customers trust that you wouldn’t raise prices without a good reason.

Trust buys you time - Sometimes a misunderstanding can cause a customer to assume they are getting the shaft. When trust is built, customers are more likely to give you time to clear-up a misunderstanding rather than jumping to the conclusion that you are out only to get their money.

Trust gives you grace - In business, you are going to make mistakes. Having a trusting relationship with your customers allows you to apologize and be forgiven. They will view you as human and move forward rather than waiting for a mistake to give them a reason to sever the relationship.

Now that your interest is piqued, head over to Mr. Dooley’s blog Neuromarketing for more great information and be sure to buy the book. You won’t just be reading a great book, you’ll be studying the brain of your customer.

The thought of being the best in the world at something (or even among the elite) is invigorating. As a child, it probably inspired you to imitate your favorite athlete or try a new sport that caught your attention.

As an adult, the Olympics and elite athletes are just as inspiration but in a different sense. Adults know their athletic capabilities are limited but we still want to strive for greatness.

Swimmers are often in the Olympic spotlight because they participate in sport that most of us have at least attempted at a recreational level. We realize the difficulty of their achievements and want to know how they got to such a level. Someone like Ryan Lochte seizes the stage as we all wait to see if he can, even for a moment, be considered the greatest swimmer in the world.

In the world of blogging, some estimates put over 150,000,000 blogs in existence! With that much competition, elite status, just like for Olympians, does not come easy. Instant success is out of the question.

However, deep within you resides the desire to overcome mediocrity and reach the limits of your own writing capabilities. Excellence is exciting and the idea that you could grow your blog to a level that would affirm all of your hard work is motivating.

So what can Ryan Lochte teach you that will help you take your blog to elite status?

Practice, Practice, Practice

The practice time of olympic swimmers is legendary. Lochte estimates that he swims about 20 hours per week totalling about 70,000 meters! When you add in dryland and weight training, the total training time rises to 35 hours.

If you have spent time around competitive swimmers of any age or skill level, practice time is essential. The technical aspects of the sport combined with the need to build endurance require repetitive and consistent training.

It is impossible to improve without practice.

As much as writing ability can be portrayed as a gift, randomly bestowed on a select few, it simply does not emerge without practice. In fact, writing can be boiled down to a simple 10 step practice plan. (See, practice is the key component!)

Fuel For Performance

When a number is so out of the ordinary that it immediately triggers skepticism, you know it is extreme.

12,000 calories a day is one of those numbers.

That’s the caloric intake of Lochte on a typical training day. Four times the daily intake of the average guy in case you were wondering.

As a writer, this doesn’t mean you have to ingest the equivalent of 12,000 calories of information on a daily basis. The point is, you have to fuel yourself for your specific performance goals.

You can’t just write your way to expertise in a particular area. Always seek out the latest research, experts in your field and related fields, and practical examples of success. Remember, you are more detective than writer.

Creative fuel can also come by stepping away from writing and information. Take a walk, rest or seek out beauty in ways that consistently inspire you to be great.

Choose A Specialty

Have you ever noticed that the Olympic swimmers that excel at the 100-meter events are not part of the 1500-meter event?

The difference does not even have to be that extreme. 50-meter sprints are often a specialty  but so are middle distances, endurance races and even unique move like the breaststroke.

Most of Lochte’s Olympic events are in the 200-meter range. He knows where he has the best chance for gold.

It’s impossible to reach everyone so narrow your universe.

Choosing a specialty gives you the ability to be great at one thing (or a few things) rather than mediocre at many. With so many blogs competing for your reader’s attention, it is much easier to stand out by being an expert on a particular topic than a generalist on many.

If your blog is struggling to increase traffic and revenue, choose your specialty.

Love What You Do

So far, we have talked about some decisions that take serious dedication.

Commitment like this difficult without passion. A swimmer’s journey requires a love for the sport or burnout is inevitable.

Prior to the start of the London Olympic Games, Lochte had already committed to the 2016 Games in Brazil. To already commit to another four years of this kind of intensity takes a love for not only the sport but also the process.

Caring about what you are doing is your key to longevity.

You can love blogging, love your readers, love the process or even love the results. You just have to find the thing that you must do during those times of distraction or doubt.

Stars Get The Attention

If you haven’t noticed, a few swimmers seem to get all of the attention.

Plenty of others have put in the same amount of hard work and will produce amazing swims. However, for a variety of reasons, certain swimmers like Ryan Lochte become media darlings and receive disproportionate notoriety.

Like it or not, it’s reality.

As a writer, you’ve seen plenty of great work go unnoticed, including your own. You want to earn respect and page views and know that anonymity doesn’t serve your goals.

So what can you do when you aren’t receiving the attention of a blogging superstar?

• Keep Writing. Just like the Olympics, there are no overnight success stories. Even those that appear to have just popped onto the scene are backed by years of hard work.

• Write for a Superstar. Don’t sit around being offended that someone else is getting all of the attention. Tap into the audience of popular blogs by writing a successful guest post for their audience.

• Shift Your Focus to Service. Instead of caring about being popular, change your focus to being of service. When you serve your audience, you will gain a loyal audience. This is far greater than being popular with the wrong audience.

Have the Olympics Inspired Your Writing?

So have the Olympics inspired any of your content marketing goals (or am I just a sucker for a great story)? What do you think keeps you from elite blogging status or how did you reach the elite level?

Let me know in the comments.

As a marketing director, you have to be an expert in multiple areas that have a direct impact on your business. You have to understand advertising, branding, email marketing and lead generation. You manage internal employees, external resources and often jump in and create campaigns and content on your own.

You probably thrive off of having so many responsibilities but you also know that you can’t possibly have time for everything.

As for your blog, you know that an effective business blog is built by providing great information to your readers. In turn, your readers will view you as a trusted source and move from visitors to warm leads, fans or buyers.

In order to reach your business blogging goals, your blog (and site for that matter) needs to be designed to facilitate this progression.  Whether you are building a brand new blog or embarking on an ambitious redesign, there are specific tips and techniques you can follow to create a high performance business blog.

You can use this blog post as a checklist to see if you have the essential elements of your design in place so that you are capturing all of the benefits of your traffic.

Three Key Areas

There are three main categories that need to be addressed when evaluating your business blog:

• Design Elements
• Search Engine Optimization
• Lead Generation

All of these categories are intertwined and difficult to separate. However, breaking down this information into categories helps you address each one with focus and keeps the process from overwhelming you.

Design, SEO and lead generation all merit much lengthier discussions. Entire websites and thousands of books cover each of these topics. Often, there are multiple conclusions, differing opinions and constant change in each of these areas.

Rather than letting this sea of information freeze you in your ability to address your blog design, quickly attack the key elements in this post and you will be well on your way to the perfect blog setup.

Design Elements

Every brand, no matter your color scheme, logo or volume of information can improve their design by addressing these three elements:

Create Contrast

Make sure that contrast exists between your text and your background. According to web designer Rafal Tomal, contrast accommodates people with poor vision as well as those reading on mobile devices. For great examples and a more in-depth look at the importance of contrast,check out the site Contrast Rebellion.

Simplify Your Navigation

The fewer options the better for navigation.  The key to your site is to make it easy for visitors to know what your site is about and where to go next.  You also want to lead them to your primary call-to-action on each page. If you are having trouble limiting your primary navigation menu, think about using sub-menus to reduce clutter.

Typography

Use typography combinations to make your text more interesting and easier to read. Typography is a design element that keeps your site simple and doesn’t add the clutter of unnecessary images.

You don’t always have the time or resources for a redesign and typography can make your blog stand out as well as making it more readable. Just My Type has examples of font combinations that look great together. When in doubt, make the font bigger!

Search Engine Optimization

You are always going to get asked about SEO. It’s one of those areas where people know just enough to realize it’s important but not enough to differentiate good advice from bad advice.

Here are some SEO areas you can improve right now without diluting your content:

Linking

• Link to Your Best Content. Internal linking is extremely important for SEO purposes.  In order to maximize your internal linking opportunities, start out by building a great site map. On every blog post, make sure that you are linking internally to your best content. Link externally to trusted experts, clients and prospects when appropriate.

• Resource Pages. Determine 3-7 areas that are your main focus of blog content. For each area, build a resource page that explains to your reader what they can learn about the topic. Link to your best posts on each topic.

• Don’t Go Overboard. SEO experts have determined that there is such a thing as too many links per page. The threshold is probably right around 100.  That shouldn’t be a problem for most of us.  However, if you are creating a large resource page, keep this in mind.

Encourage Sharing

Social sharing has a huge impact on organic search. Make sure to include social sharing buttons on your blog posts. Only include buttons for the social sites where you are active. If readers are going to share your post, it should be in a venue where you can thank them and track discussions.

Comments can also improve your long-tail keyword search results.  There are many ways to encourage comments.

First, make sure that you ask for comments.  End your post with a question and directly ask for reader feedback in the comments.

Second, make sure your comment section is easy to use.  Many questions surround the use of comment moderation and the risk of inhibiting comments in the name of decreasing spam. Ask for recommendations and keep your comment system simple.

Test for Speed

Speed is something you need to test but don’t have a lot of time to fine tune. For most people, you should test your site speed to see if it is terrible. If it is OK, move on. If it is really slow, hire someone to fix it.

For a quick test, pick your favorite blogs as a comparison. Run your blog and a few of your favorites through Pingdom (scored in seconds) and Google Labs Page Speed (scored on a scale of 100).

If the results are similar, your speed is likely fine. An ideal page loading speed is 2.9 seconds according to a study by Geoff Kenyon.  For those of you interested in aiming for the ideal speed, SEOmoz walks you through some actionable steps here.

Resource: Cyrus Shepard has an in-depth post called Blog Design for Killer SEO with a beautiful infographic designed by his wife Dawn. It was a great resource for this post and you should definitely give it a read.

Lead Generation

As a business, you always want to be generating qualified leads and moving those leads closer to a buying decision. Your blog provides valuable free information so it is the perfect place to extend an offer to explore your business further.

Email List Building

Your email list is a powerful tool in your marketing arsenal. Once you capture the attention of a reader, you want to make it as easy as possible for them to receive automatic updates.

Make the subscription box obvious and explain to the reader what they will receive. It doesn’t get more obvious than Chris Brogan’s blog. Also, be sure to have a subscription box at the end of every post.

Call-to-Action

Depending on your business resources, the primary call-to-action on your blog might be something other than a subscription. You might have a valuable email autoresponder that is a great lead generation tool.

You might also find that your sales process is most effective if visitors read a case study or white paper. For others, a free trial is the most desired outcome. Decide where it makes sense to send your readers next and ask them to take that step.

Keep it Above the Fold

Your primary call-to-action should be above the fold.

A large eye tracking study determined that 80% of a users attention is directed above the fold.  That doesn’t mean there is no value in information below the fold but it makes sense to get your message out early.  It also confirms the importance of writing great content and having a beautiful design in order to entice a user to keep exploring.

Some people will argue that modern users know to scroll down and that great design is not limited by the fold. While I agree in part, getting to the point is important for most businesses and there appear to still be some lead-generating implications.

To find the fold on your blog, try the following tools:

http://whereisthefold.com

http://www.foldtester.com/

http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/

Conclusion

While blog optimization is an ongoing process, you can drastically improve your business results by addressing each area in this blog post.

What areas of your business blog are you struggling with?

Share in the comments so we can help you find even more success.