After having an email exchange with Heather Lloyd-Martin, I know I need to take a step back to get a bigger perspective on what I’m doing re website renovation. The net of my exchange with Heather was that I will use fairly competitive, generic keyphrases on my home page.

Those keyphrases will be ‘SEO copywriting’, ‘B2B marketing’ and ‘marketing consulting’, or some variations on those. They won’t… Continue reading Keyphrases and a New Definition for 'Funnel'...

I know it sounds corny, but it’s true. The conference last week was a life-changing event for me. So much of what I learned from the pros (and these people are truly at the top of their professions) coincided with what I’ve learned on my own and what I’ve been espousing to my clients. The puzzle pieces fit together.

I figured this past week’s analytics wouldn’t tell me much. I thought they’d be the same as the week before because I haven’t made any changes to my website yet.

Wrong!

And this taught me a valuable lesson. Actually, retaught me.

Three website related but offline occurrences were different between the two weeks. This week I had much less traffic than… Continue reading Bolen Website Analytics from 7/27 to 8/02...

I think Evan Schuman’s ‘The Top B2B Communication Mistakes’ whitepaper has spot on advice for today’s B2B content marketer. I boiled it down to its essence here below.

1. Understand Your Prospects and Use That Information

Do you know what your customers’ and prospects’ top ten business concerns are? Most of you probably do. The mistake is not ensuring that all of your content reflects or includes those concerns. Closely review all… Continue reading The Top Seven B2B Communication Mistakes...

I had an interesting phone conversation yesterday with Evan Schuman, founder and CEO of The Content Firm. I had requested use of a whitepaper from his site. I want this blog to deliver relevant and useful information, so I dig deep when researching for it.

Evan’s concern was that I dug too deep. The whitepaper I was interested in is several years old. He didn’t want… Continue reading Walking the Tightrope and Making It Look Easy...

This is a follow-on to the last post, ‘Honest and Transparent Marketing’. A buddy of mine pointed out that what successful marketers do is not just compile and deliver the unvarnished truth. It’s much more complex than that. And he’s right. There’s a lot more that goes into it than just straight reporting. There are a number of necessary steps and inputs that result in content that’s relevant and useful… Continue reading Subliminally Persuasive...

This topic’s been brewing in the back of my head for a couple of years, ever since I read ‘All Marketers Are Liars’, by Seth Godin. It bugged me then, and I find it even more irksome now.

To be fair, the title is meant to provoke and the book is more about story-telling than making false claims. Godin’s premise is that perception trumps reality. For example, wine tastes better in… Continue reading Honest and Transparent Marketing...