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Five Expert Guides to the Best Blogging Tools

March 26, 2015 by Tom Pick

Blogging, like any other task, is faster and easier with the right tools. But while there’s no shortage of online tools, plugins, and browser extensions available—for every purpose from generating post topic ideas to speeding up page load time—not all of them are worth spending much time investigating, let alone using on a regular basis.

Image credit: Twelveskip

What the best blogging tools based on your objectives and level of expertise? Which tools are the favorites of top blogging pros? What are the best tools for increasing your blogging productivity? Sharing your content socially? Building your opt-in email list?

Find these answers and more here in a handful of the best blogging tool reviews and roundups of the past year.

The Step by Step Guide to Generating Hundreds of Blog Post Ideas by Digital Rhinos

How can you come up with creative and effective new blog post ideas when “you’ve got timelines to adhere to, targets to hit and people within your company counting on you to keep pumping out high-quality content that appeals to your personas and gets noticed”? Adrian Cordiner demonstrates how to use 18 useful post topic / content asset idea-generating tools, such as BuzzSumo, which will “will spit out the most popularly shared articles (amongst other content types such as infographics) over any time in the last year.”

63 Blogging Tools That Will Make You Insanely Productive by Boost Blog Traffic

Marsha Stopa understands you don’t “need another post on all the cool tools (you) don’t have time to use,” so she has very helpfully categorized the tools here as ideal for the minimalist blogger (“You’re willing to dip your toe in the water, [but]you don’t need the fancy tools…[for you] a blog is a side project that you can give no more than 10 hours per week, if that”), the serious and committed blogger, and the entrepreneur blogger. Just check out the tools most appropriate for your level.

26 Awesome Blogging Tools Used By The Pros by Twelveskip

Pauline Cabrera shares advice on the best tools from eight top blogging pros, including Ian Cleary (“I love Optinmonster. It’s a popup that is only displayed when a user is exiting the site. As soon as the user moves their mouse outside of the main window it’s likely they are planning to exit so this pops up”), Daniel Sharkov, Mike Allton, and Aaron Lee (one of his favorites is Flipboard: “What not many people know is you can actually load twitter lists into onto Flipboard to manage your twitter stream”).

52 Essential Tools And Resources For Bloggers by Blogging Wizard
***** 5 STARS

Adam Connell compiles “a detailed list of all of the resources and tools that (he relies) on day in, day out,” from planning and research (tools like SEMrush and UberSuggest) to various sources for WordPress themes through SEO tools, email list-building tools (e.g., GetResponse), productivity tools (like Dropbox) and various WordPress plugins.

How-to: Report Stolen Content That Ranks Higher Than The Original by Twelveskip

You work hard to write compelling, original blog content. Then another site brazenly steals it, reposting your sparkling prose word for word. Worse, they outrank you. It’s infuriating. Pauline Cabrera (again) explains how to fight back using Google’s scraper report form: “Through this form, content creators who have any complaint against a scraper website that outranks you can now ask Google’s help to correct the situation.”

This was post #3 of Blogging for Business Week 2015 (#b4bweek) on Webbiquity.

#1: Welcome to Blogging for Business Week!

#2: 13 Great Guides to Growing Your Blog Audience

104 Fascinating Social Media and Marketing Statistics for 2014 (and 2015)

December 2, 2014 by Tom Pick

Looking at marketing surveys and studies from the past year, a few trends are clear, among them that buyers are firmly (and increasingly) in control of the purchase cycle. They prefer searching to being found, and will often be close to their final decision point before talking to a salesperson.

In response, marketers are producing an increasing amount and variety of content to support all stages of the decision process. They’re distributing and promoting this content through all channels in the web presence optimization (WPO) model, to maximize their opportunities to be “found” online when buyers are looking.

And although digital is taking an increasing share of marketing budgets, the move to online is paradoxically making some old-school tactics even more valuable.

What do buyers say is the most important signal of vendor credibility? What type of content is most effective? What do marketers rate as the single most valuable SEO tactic? What are the top barriers to adopting social business practices?

Find the answers to these questions and many others in more than 100 social and online marketing stats from 20+ different sources.

9 General Marketing Stats

1. People want to be in control of the content they receive:

• 86% of people skip TV commercials.
• 44% of direct mail is never opened.
• 91% of people have unsubscribed from company emails they previously opted into.

(NewsCred)

2. 72% of marketers think branded content is more effective than advertising in a magazine; 69% say it is superior to direct mail and PR. (NewsCred)

3. Nearly half (46%) of people say a website’s design is their number one criterion for determining the credibility of a company. (NewsCred)

4. 71% of companies planned to increase their digital marketing budgets this year, by an average of 27%. (Econsultancy)

5. 67 percent of marketers say increasing sales directly attributable to digital marketing campaigns is a top priority this year. (Forbes)

6. Internet advertising will make up 25% of the entire ad market in 2015. (Social Fresh)

7. Despite all the hype about online, 67% of B2B content marketers consider event marketing to be their most effective strategy. (Social Fresh)

8. Videos on landing pages increase conversions by 86%. (Social Fresh)

9. As one would suspect, Facebook is the most popular method for sharing interesting content. Surprisingly though, the fifth-most popular sharing method is offline (print) shares. (Heidi Cohen)

5 Online Demographics Stats

10. The Google+ platform has 67 percent male users. (Rocket Post)

11. There are 76 million millennials (born between 1981 and 2000) in the U.S. — 27% of the total population. (leaderswest Digital Marketing Journal)

12. 63% of millennials have at least a bachelors degree. (leaderswest Digital Marketing Journal)

13. 63% of millennials say they stay updated on brands through social networks; 51% say social opinions influence their purchase decisions; and 46% “count on social media” when buying online. (leaderswest Digital Marketing Journal)

14. 89% of 18-29 year-olds are active on social media, as are 43% of adults 65 and older. (Jeff Bullas)

13 Content Marketing Stats

15. B2B content matters. 57% of a typical purchase decision is made before a customer even talks to a supplier. (Corporate Executive Board)

16. By 2020, customers will manage 85 percent of their relationship with an enterprise without interacting with a human. (Target Marketing)

17. Not all content has to be original. 48% of marketers curate noteworthy content from third-party sources weekly (this post is an example). (Design & Promote)

18. 62% of companies outsource their content marketing. (Iconsive)

19. $118 billion was spend on content marketing last year. (NewsCred)

20. 70% of consumers say they prefer getting to know a company via articles rather than ads. (NewsCred)

21. 90% of organizations market with content. 86% of B2C marketers and 91% of B2B marketers use content marketing. (NewsCred)

22. Or maybe 93% of B2B marketers use content marketing. (Iconsive)

23. And yet…54% of brands don’t have an onsite, dedicated content director. (NewsCred)

24. There are 27 million pieces of content shared each day. (NewsCred)

25. Companies will spend $135 billion on digital marketing collateral this year. (Social Fresh)

26. Customer testimonials have the highest effectiveness rating for content marketing at 89%. (Social Fresh)

27. 17% of marketers plan to increase efforts on SlideShare this year. (Forbes)

7 Blogging Stats

28. 34% of Fortune 500 companies now maintain active blogs – the largest share since 2008. (Forbes)

29. Each month, 329 million people read blogs. (NewsCred)

30. 37% of marketers say blogs are the most valuable content type for marketing. (NewsCred)

31. Companies that publish new blog posts 15+ times per month (3-4 posts per week) generate five times more traffic than companies that don’t blog at all. (NewsCred)

32. 17% of marketers plan to increase blogging efforts this year. (Forbes)

33. Blogging increases web traffic by 55% for brands. (Rocket Post)

34. B2B companies that blog generate 67% more leads than those without blogs. (Social Fresh)

7 Visual and Video Marketing Stats

35. Pinterest grabs 41% of the ecommerce traffic compared to Facebook’s 37%. Food is the top category of content on Pinterest with 57% of its user base sharing food-related content. (Rocket Post)

36. 16% of marketers plan to increase efforts on Pinterest this year. (Forbes)

37. The use of video content for marketing increased 73% this year; use of infographics grew 51%. (Digital Marketing Philippines)

38. Articles with images get 94% more views than those without. (NewsCred)

39. Posts with videos attract three times as many inbound links as plain text posts. (NewsCred)

40. 62% of marketers use video in their content marketing. (NewsCred)

41. Two-thirds of firms plan to increase spending on video marketing in the coming year. (Heidi Cohen)

5 SEO Stats

42. 81% of B2B purchase cycles start with web search, and 90% of buyers say when they are ready to buy, “they’ll find you.” (Earnest Agency)

43. More than half (53%) of marketers rank content creation as the single most effective SEO tactic. (NewsCred)

44. 57% of B2B marketers say SEO has the biggest impact on lead generation. (NewsCred)

45. Organic search leads have a 14.6% close rate, compared to 1.7% for outbound marketing leads. (NewsCred)

46. 33% of clicks from organic search results go to the top listing on Google. (Social Fresh)

15 Social Media Marketing Stats

47. 85% of B2B buyers believe companies should present information via social networks. (Iconsive)

48. And yet – only 20% of CMOs leverage social networks to engage with customers. (Marketing Land)

49. Marketers will spend $8.3 billion on social media advertising in 2015. (NewsCred)

50. “Interesting content” is one of the top three reasons people follow brands on social media. (NewsCred)

51. 87% of B2B marketers use social media to distribute content. (NewsCred)

52. 17% of marketers plan to increase podcasting efforts this year. (Forbes)

53. As consumer use of social media for brand comments and complaints continues to increase, brands are having a hard time keeping up. Only about 20% of consumer comments generate brand responses, and the average response time is over 11 hours. (eMarketer)

54. Nearly three-quarters of US marketers believe customer response management on digital channels is important (so…25% think it’s okay to ignore consumers?); however, just one-third say their company does a good job at this. (eMarketer)

55. Social media marketing budgets are projected to double over the next five years (Social Fresh)

56. 66% of marketers claim that social indirectly impacts their business performance but only 9%t claim that it can be directly linked to revenue. (Forbes)

57. Over 70% of US online adults use some form of social media networking. (Heidi Cohen)

58. 72% of all internet users are now active on social media. (Jeff Bullas)

59. The top two barriers impeding adoption of social business within organizations are lack of overall strategy and competing priorities. Just 11% of marketers cite legal or regulatory concerns. (i-SCOOP)

60. 78% of companies now say they have dedicated social media teams, up from 67% in 2012. (i-SCOOP)

61. By department, companies most often have dedicated social media staff (not surprisingly) in marketing (73%), communications/PR (66%) and customer support (40%). At the other end of the scale are legal (9%) and market research (8%). (i-SCOOP)

7 Facebook Marketing stats

62. Facebook accounts for 15.8% of total time spent on the Internet. (Rocket Post)

63. 71% of online adults use Facebook. 63% of Facebook users visit daily and 40% visit multiple times per day. (Heidi Cohen)

64. More than a third (36%) of online adults use only one social networking site. Of these, 83% use Facebook. 8% use LinkedIn. (Heidi Cohen)

65. One million web pages are accessed using the “Login with Facebook” feature. (Jeff Bullas)

66. Nearly a quarter (232%) of Facebook users login at least five times per day. (Jeff Bullas)

67. 47% of Americans say Facebook is their #1 influencer of purchases. (Jeff Bullas)

68. 70% of marketers used Facebook to gain new customers. (Jeff Bullas)

3 LinkedIn Marketing Stats

69. LinkedIn is the top social network for B2B marketing (not a shock). 83% of marketers say they prefer to use LinkedIn for distributing B2B content, and more than half of vendors say they have generated sales through LinkedIn. (Real Business Rescue)

70. The average time spent on LinkedIn per month is 17 minutes. (Rocket Post)

71. 91 of the Fortune 100 companies use LinkedIn for candidate searches. (Rocket Post)

7 Twitter Marketing Stats

72. The average time per month spent by users on Twitter is 170 minutes. (Rocket Post)

73. Only about half of the people who log in to Twitter once a month are actually taking the time to tweet. The rest are lurkers. (Rocket Post)

74. Ironically, the most-followed brand on Twitter is…Facebook, with more than 13 million followers. Google is #3. (AllTwitter)

75. eBay is the most engaging brand on Twitter. Starbucks is the fourth-most-engaging, and also has the fourth highest number of followers of any major brand. (AllTwitter)

76. Not a shock: retailers and restaurants are the most engaging industries on Twtitter. Surprising: apparel brands are the least engaging. (AllTwitter)

77. Twitter now has over 550 million registered users, and 215 million active monthly users. (Jeff Bullas)

78. 34% of marketers use Twitter to successfully generate leads. (Jeff Bullas)

3 Google+ Stats

79. 18% of marketers plan to increase efforts on Google+ this year. (Forbes)

80. There are now over 1 billion Google+ accounts, and that figure is growing 33% per year. (Jeff Bullas)

81. Google+ has 359 million monthly active users. (Jeff Bullas)

13 Email Marketing Stats

82. There are nine times as many marketing emails sent each year as direct mail pieces delivered by the U.S. Postal Service. (Mark the Marketer)

83. Email marketing delivers the highest ROI (about $44 per dollar spent, on average) of any digital marketing tactic. SEO is #2. Banner ads have the lowest ROI. (Mark the Marketer)

84. 66% of consumers have made a purchase online as a result of an e-mail marketing message. (Mark the Marketer)

85. Email subject lines matter. Really. 64% of people say they open an e-mail because of the subject line. (Mark the Marketer)

86. Personalized subject lines are 22.2% more likely to be opened. For B2C emails, the words “Alert,” “New,” “News,” “Bulletin,” “Sale,” “Video,” “Daily,” or “Weekly” (though not “Monthly”) all increase open and click-through rates. (Mark the Marketer)

87. For B2B companies, subject lines that contained “money,” “revenue,” and “profit” performed the best. (Mark the Marketer)

88. Timing is important too. 76% of e-mail opens occur in the first two days after an e-mail is sent. E-mail open rates are noticeably lower on weekends than on weekdays. (Mark the Marketer)

89. Only 8% of companies and agencies have an e-mail marketing team. E-mail marketing responsibilities usually fall on one person as a part of her wider range of marketing responsibilities. (Mark the Marketer)

90. 72% of B2B buyers are most likely to share useful content via e-mail. (Mark the Marketer)

91. Still, the average click-through rate for B2B marketing e-mails is just 1.7%. (Mark the Marketer)

92. Emails with social sharing buttons increase click-through rates by 158%. (Social Fresh)

93. 64 percent of marketers say increasing email click-throughs and open rates is among their top priorities this year. (Forbes)

94. 67 percent of marketers say that email is ke3y for attracting and engaging prospects, and the best path to increase marketing ROI. (Forbes)

10 Mobile Marketing Stats

95. 94% of CMOs plan to use mobile applications within the next 3-5 years. (Marketing Land)

96. 75% of smartphone owners watch videos on their phones; 26% at least once per day. (NewsCred)

97. Over half of all mobile searches lead to a purchase. (Rocket Post)

98. 78% of Facebook users are mobile-only. (Rocket Post)

99. E-mail is the most popular activity on smartphones among users ages 18-44. (Mark the Marketer)

100. 64% of decision-makers read their e-mail via mobile devices. (Mark the Marketer)

101. Almost half–48%–of all emails are opened on mobile devices. Yet 39% of marketers say they have no strategy for mobile email, and only 11% of e-mails are optimized for mobile. (Mark the Marketer)

102. Mobile is the channel of choice for keep relationships with existing customers alive because it cuts through the clutter of email and social. (Forbes)

103. 71% of users access social media from a mobile device. (Jeff Bullas)

104. 50% of millennials use their smartphones to research products or services while shopping, and 41% have made purchases using their phones. (leaderswest Digital Marketing Journal)

How to Promote Blog Posts: 200+ Ideas from Eight Experts

February 17, 2014 by Tom Pick

Company blogs have become virtually essential, and very powerful, component of digital marketing. In addition to their SEO benefits and role in maximizing web presence for brands, blogs produce sales and leads. According to recent research, more than half (52%) of consumers say blogs have impacted their purchase decisions; and 57% of marketers say they’ve acquired new customers with their blogs.

But creating and maintaining a successful blog takes more than just producing helpful and original content; as social media expert Heidi Cohen recently wrote, “The most epic content will FAIL without content distribution. If no one sees your content, what good is it?”

So, once you’ve created great content, how do you get it “out there”? Which content promotion tools are most useful? Which blog post promotion tactics are most effective? Is it still worthwhile to get listed in blog directories, and if so, which ones?

Find the answers to these questions and more here among hundreds of recommendations about tools, tactics and techniques to promote blog posts.

25 Easy Ways to Promote Your Blog by Kim Garst

Kim Garst shares a list she’s compiled of “strategies that will help you promote your blog and drive traffic to your website,” such as promoting posts to your email list, commenting on other blogs, participating in industry forums, creating a Slideshare based on a post, and buying “cheap banner ads on niche sites.”

50 Experts Reveal How to Promote Your Blog with Just 3 Tools by clambr
***** 5 STARS

Richard Marriott curates answers from 50 (actually 53) experts on which tools they would use to promote their blog content if they could only use three. Among the tools mentioned are Buffer, Triberr, Wistia, Facebook, and several others; but according to this group of experts, the three most helpful tools are…(read the post).

120 Marketing Tactics for Blogs [Infographic] by Customer Think
***** 5 STARS

Pam Dyer outlines five steps for creating a successful blog—from understanding your goals to using marketing tactics to create visibility—then showcases an infographic illustrating 120 blog marketing tactics, from social networks to eBooks to PR to video, contests, “egobait” and forum posting.

How I promote my new blog posts by The Social Media Hat

Mike Alton updates a detailed post about post promotion, helpfully advising readers not only how to promote their blog posts but also which tactics to avoid or drop, as they are no longer effective; for example, regarding social sharing sites, “The New MySpace no longer allows link sharing. And I have dropped Bebo and Diigo and Viadeo.”

25 Smart Ways to Promote Your Latest Blog Post by Rebekah Radice
***** 5 STARS

Pinterest diva Rebekah Radice here outlines more than two dozen tactics for promoting posts, from social networks to blogger communities like Triberr, Social Buzz Club and Viral Content Buzz, to manual and automated social bookmarking sites.

25 Tactics to Promote Your Blog via Facebook and Twitter by Heidi Cohen

Heidi Cohen serves up more than two dozen tips for promoting your blog through social media, among them: writing “regular features responding to your audience’s needs and interests;” including sidebar links that make it easy for readers to follow you on Facebook and Twitter (and other social networks, as applicable): and thanking people for sharing your posts.

50 Ways to Promote and Market your Blog Posts by jeffbullas.com
***** 5 STARS

Guest author Samuel Pustea suggests more than four dozen ways to promote blog posts, from the big social networks to newer tools like Pinterest, Triberr, Pligg and Scoop.it to RSS directory posting, infographics and guest blogging.

Active RSS and Blog Directories List by Buzzkeep

As Arvid Linde notes here, there were once hundreds of blog directories across the web—but most existed solely for “spam purposes.” This post provides a short list of 43 still-active, reasonably high-quality directories that can actually drive traffic, even if the links no longer have much SEO benefit.

Guest Blogging is NOT Dead (And Matt Cutts Didn’t Say It Is)

January 22, 2014 by Tom Pick

The digital marketing blogs and media have lit up in the last couple of days with reports that “guest blogging is dead,” based on this post from Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s Webspam team.

The post was widely misinterpreted to mean “stop doing guest blogging,” as even Matt acknowledged in a later addition to his original post:

“I’m not trying to throw the baby out with the bath water. There are still many good reasons to do some guest blogging (exposure, branding, increased reach, community, etc.). Those reasons existed way before Google and they’ll continue into the future. And there are absolutely some fantastic, high-quality guest bloggers out there. ..I just want to highlight that a bunch of low-quality or spam sites have latched on to ‘guest blogging’ as their link-building strategy, and we see a lot more spammy attempts to do guest blogging. Because of that, I’d recommend skepticism (or at least caution) when someone reaches out and offers you a guest blog article.”

The point is pretty clear. Guest posting done with the interest of the community and readers in mind still have value. But attempts at getting guest posts published in a manipulative manner, purely or primarily for the SEO benefit of the backlinks, are no longer going to be effective (and by implication, may even lead to penalties or ranking degradation).

And the gray area isn’t even that large; it’s generally fairly easy to separate legitimate guest post requests from the spammy ones.

Sender: legitimate guest post requests will generally come from people you know, or have heard of, or who at least seem to have a reputable online presence and can tell you exactly why they want to write for your blog (beyond just “Hey, I love your blog!”).

Relevance: a legitimate request will generally focus on one specific post, suitable for your audience and relevant to your typical topics and style. For example, this post on fascinating social media facts and statistics was a great fit for Jeff Bullas’ blog, because it meshes well both topically and stylistically with the kinds of posts Jeff often writes. But this style would not have worked as well on a site like Social Media Examiner.

Spammy guest posters, on the other hand, are often miraculously able to write a post on any topic from household cleaning tips to space travel—or a custom topic if you prefer! Ugh.

Compensation: Matt calls this out specifically in his post, noting that “email offering money to get links that pass PageRank (are) a clear violation of Google’s quality guidelines.” A legitimate guest blogger offers a post that has value to your blog in and of itself, and so would not propose monetary compensation.

Backlinks: virtually all guest posts include backlinks. Nothing wrong with that alone. The difference here between a legitimate and a spammy request is 1) the purpose of the links: do they appear to be there to guide the reader to additional, relevant information—or are they trying to sell something, or link to a page with little or no relevance to the post? (or worse, to something sketchy like an online pharmacy site); and 2) the author’s approach to the links. If he or she is comfortable with you changing, deleting, or no-following the links, then the guest post is clearly not just a spammy attempt at link building.

Comfort level: this is a bit amorphous, and will vary among individuals, but essentially: based on what you know about the person proposing the guest post, would you be open to connecting with him or her on various social media platforms? Possibly even to—under the right circumstances—write your own guest post for that person’s blog?

For example, there’s been some cross-posting over the years between Webbiquity and the Blue Focus Marketing blog. The cross-posting is decidedly non-spammy because both blogs focus on b2b marketing and branding; Cheryl and Mark Burgess are excellent writers and authors; and they are awesome people. It would make sense even in the absence of any SEO benefit (though there likely is, still, some).

Motivation: as Matt notes in the addition to his original post quoted above, “There are still many good reasons to do guest blogging.” It increases brand awareness, provides the opportunity to connect with a new audience, and helps increase overall web presence for a brand or product.

And Matt’s post doesn’t specifically say that no type of guest blogging still provides some SEO benefit—only that guest-blogging is no longer effective as a large scale link-building strategy, and that he would “recommend skepticism (or at least caution) when someone reaches out and offers you a guest blog article.”

While Google can’t look into a blogger’s heart to determine true motivation, it can and presumably will continue to look at characteristics like a site’s overall link profile (do guest post links make up an inordinate share of all backlinks?) and the quality of linking sites in determining rankings.

This latest development will also likely increase the importance of Google Authorship as a way to separate legitimate guest authors from spammers.

In short, guest blogging is not dead. Far from it. The only thing that has died is the practice of generating large numbers of backlinks through spammy email outreach for guest posts. And good riddance.

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