How have social channels helped with your content marketing strategy? This week’s flashback posts touch on ways you may not be currently leveraging content-sharing opportunities on social. You’ll also learn about an easy tool to create beautiful eBooks as well as some updates Google has made that effects local search marketers. Check out my favorite posts from this past week:

There are so many opportunities for marketers to build their brand and business using social media platforms. In regard to those that offer live streaming, there has been has been a lot of discussion about the growth of these channels. This week’s posts dive deeper on Facebook’s new live streaming feature and how to do Snapchat right, in addition to some great posts on tools to up your Instagram marketing game, documenting content marketing workflows, and conversion rate optimization. Here are five interesting posts that stood out to me this past week:

Companies and organizations are often held back by their fear that they are going to do content marketing wrong. Rather than taking the necessary steps to identify their buyer-persona’s needs and formulate a content marketing plan, marketers may find themselves like a deer in headlights when contemplating the best strategy for their business. But can you really do content marketing wrong? Some content is better than no content, right? The answer to this depends on your approach. The key is to tell a good story first, and sell a great product or service second. To help overcome your fear and get your content marketing efforts on the best track, avoid these most common misperceptions.

As a partner in an agency that adopted HubSpot’s inbound marketing methodology early on, I was excited to learn about the new Inbound Sales Certification Training that is now available for sales and marketing professionals. Below you’ll find a link to learn more about this new model and training opportunity as well as more of my favorite posts from the week including information on crafting persuasive content, Google’s RankBrain, a tool to help you create Facebook videos, and a guide to local content marketing. 

Approximately twice a month, a local number appears on my caller I.D. It’s a number from a company that I don't recognize and it interrupts my work. I rarely answer calls from numbers I don’t recognize, so I just let it ring and ring. I probably should answer the phone and end this sales-cycle roller coaster. No more than a minute later, I will have a new email with the subject line “Voicemail" arrive in my inbox. By now I know the script of this particular salesperson and can tell you that they provide IT services for businesses that use Microsoft.

If you’re looking to boost your email subscribers, learn more about LinkedIn advertising strategies, discover design tips for non-designers and more, this week’s posts are for you. Also, if you are in the process of creating or refining a presentation, be sure to check out my favorite post on dumb slides you should delete immediately and what to say instead. Here are five great marketing and sales posts that stood out to me this past week:

As everyone knows, you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.  Apparently the same can’t be said for Wolves.  Wolf Paving, an asphalt paving contractor and manufacturer serving Milwaukee and Madison, WI, is celebrating 75 years in business in 2016.  Some companies that have been around that long can easily get complacent with their marketing and rely on the status quo to grow their business the ‘old fashioned’ way.  Wolf Paving isn’t one of those companies.

Did you know that Leadpages offers a fantastic feature to create simple text campaigns to grow your email list? This can be an incredible tool for people that use traditional advertising methods like print campaigns and radio spots and I’ve heard that podcasters use it as well. Once you create this simple text campaign, you have the ability to pass the email through to a HubSpot list which can then trigger a lead nurturing campaign. That’s what we are going to walk through in this video.

I’m excited to share this week’s list of posts because a couple hit close to home. The first listed on Facebook ad strategy is a great audio post by my consultant, Rick Mulready, who provides great insight about the many recent changes marketers need to know. Other posts touch on a new way to view the sales funnel, an awesome LinkedIn cheat sheet and Google’s top 3 search ranking factors. Lastly, I want to share our agency’s list of top Midwest conferences for 2016 – including our own, Experience Inbound taking place this May.

Content marketing can show great ROI for both B2B and B2C companies, so why do so many companies, even those with dedicated marketing departments, struggle with getting it done effectively and frequently? Content marketing is complex and always changing, and hiring the amount of skilled staff that you would need to do everything from writing to editing, to promoting and social-sharing, is time consuming and costly to keep all functions of content production and promotion in-house. Additionally, implementation of a strong content marketing plan can be overwhelming for many small businesses.