Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

The first cog is your website.

It starts with you designing and building your website for the social web and surround it with tools and technology that search engines and social networks love.

The second cog is content.

The next piece of the puzzle is the content. Creating and publishing it is just the start.

Marketing it to the world is the next step. Ensure your content is easy to share when they show up and is pushed out after the publishing button has been punched.

The final cog? Focused digital marketing of your products and services.

Making sure that the products that sit at the epicenter of your website are tempting people enough to hand over their name, email and maybe even their phone number. Then taking them on the buyer’s journey.

Here is some of the tactics, technology and the tools to make this happen for your startup, blog or business....

Content creation is one of the most vital aspects of digital marketing – posting content that will inform, interest and amuse your online audience so that you’re one of the first places they turn to when they go online. This means creating content of a consistently good quality on a continual basis. That's a pretty tall order, even for the most imaginative of digital marketers. The biggest challenge faced by B2B content marketers is producing enough content, closely followed by producing the type of content that engages the target audience.

I listed 25 content creation ideas that business bloggers can use when they run out of ideas for attention-grabbing new content. But besides ideas you need more to create content better.

Most professionals use a toolkit of some type or another and that’s just as true for content creators. Today we’re looking at some of the most useful content creation tools that you could add to your content creation toolkit, including some tools that will help you to post some great visual content – we all know that images, GIFs and videos pack a powerful punch when it comes to getting the marketing message across....

Domain names have always had an impact in the branding and SEO of online businesses. In the past, online marketers used “Exact Match Domains” or EMDs, which are domain names that are the same as a key phrase they are targeting. Although this is no longer as effective after Google’s EMD update in 2012, coming up with a domain name that’s relevant and conveys a meaningful message to your would-be visitors. Adding a keyword or two in the domain name has also shown to increase a website’s performance in ads and SERP listings.

Given that domain names cannot be changed when registered, it is essential for businesses and bloggers to plan very carefully ahead.This is one of the most important decisions you should make for your site to take off. To help you determine the perfect domain name for your site, here are five of the best tools out there you should consider using....

Every blogger will tell you that he or she has a collection of excellent tools that help them create outstanding content. Even more important, these tools are so good and easy to use that they save bloggers significant amounts of time in their content creation efforts.

It’s not a surprise that awesome content attracts more readers and boosts your blogging success. The simple rule is this: To produce the best materials you need to use the best tools.

Nevertheless, some bloggers remind me of Gollum with his “precious” – they don’t want to share their tools with others! I’m no Gollum, so I’m happy to recommend the tools I use on a daily basis to create high-impact blog content....

Coming up with exciting content is a bit tricky though, not just because everything has already been done to death, so it’s hard to come up with anything original, but also because once you set out to create it, it seems as if everything is turning against you and wants to prevent you from creating it. You name it: procrastination (although that one is on you), writer’s block (a little bit on you), distractions, the agony of having to edit your work, the list is seemingly endless.

We've mentioned tools to help with content marketing several times at Smart Insights. We thought it worth mentioning these tools because whilst you may already be using the likes of Trello and Hootsuite, these less well-known tools may also help you be that extra bit more effective when it comes to writing content....

Patel These tools aren’t magic – you still have to set things up.

But the good news is that once you successfully incorporate the right tools into your blogging systems, you could travel the world and your business would continue to thrive in your absence.

Without using time-saving blogging tools like these, you’ll be wasting a lot of time and will struggle to create content, with little or no time to promote it....

Creating, organizing, publishing and promoting content can take a lot of time. Luckily, there are some great blogging tools that help make the process easier for marketers who want to implement blogging into their content marketing strategy.

We’ve compiled a list of the best blogging tools and here are 10 tools you should be using to pull in your target audience:...

Words are hard.

Whether you're a published author or just getting started with blogging, it's not always easy to string words together in a way that makes sense, sounds good, and makes the reader feel something.

But every marketer should be able to write -- and, more importantly, every marketer can write. It's just a matter of finding the writing environment that works best for you, expanding your vocabulary, asking for feedback (and listening to it), and practicing. 

Luckily, there are a slew of great tools you can use to help improve your writing. Check out the list below, and feel free to add the most helpful ones you use in the comment section....

The main problem of most writers, including your humble narrator, is verbal intelligence. Grammar, punctuation, and stylistic mistakes can kill your content despite its awesomeness. Trust me, I know what I am talking about:

Editors don’t give a damn about your copy because, you see, they find typos (well, yes, s**t happens), awkward grammar constructions (hey, and what if it’s my awesome writing style?), poor punctuation (oh, really? does anybody still care about Oxford commas? I LOVE them, by the way), and so on.And the only thought that comes to your mind after yet another knockback. What an embarrassing fail!

With that in mind, you don’t stop improving your writing and editing skills, and looking for blogging tools to help you become a better content creator and get more clients.

To help you out, here are 10 of the best blogging tools....

While the old adage, “You get what you pay for,” usually rings true, sometimes what you can get for free is pretty good.

Luckily, many people sympathize with bloggers who don’t have the investment to buy tools to help improve their effort. They have created some awesome free tools that can take your blog to the next level. Here are eight that rank high on my list....