5 Ways Content is Experiencing Its Own Health Reform

During a recent project, I got a crash course in Healthcare Reform. Not ObamaCare but rather the undercurrent of initiatives causing a major paradigm shift in the industry. To survive the shift, healthcare entities will have to marry new-school technologies with old-school industry values.  And, the key initiatives, when stripped down, are strikingly familiar. That’s…

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What Makes Content Effective?

Like all marketing efforts, Content Marketing has one ultimate goal — to produce new customers or clients. That’s a given. However, HOW content achieves this goal is a different story. In fact, there is no one magic recipe for creating effective content that sells. That’s actually what makes Content Marketers’ jobs so much stinkin’ fun! Content has to be…

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5 Questions to Ask Before Publishing B2B Content

We’ve been considering an “Infrequently Asked Questions” series—covering the most common mistakes B2B content teams make and how to avoid them. For now, we’re going to highlight a few of our favorites. Feel free to add your own or ask for more! 1. Did you remember to use industry jargon and acronyms? That’s right! Unlike traditional…

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Why Your New Website May Never See the Light of Day

Building a successful and impactful web presence is more important than ever—especially for B2Bs and businesses with a complex product to sell or story to tell. Today, the “creative process” is more about solving the visitor’s problem than about whether the masthead should “pop” more. So why do so many well-intentioned, brilliant web projects fall…

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Is Your B2B Content Getting the Mileage it Deserves?

Business-to-Business (B2B) marketers are forever chasing the challenge of publishing valuable, relevant content to their blogs and websites. And for good reason. Companies with blogs gather 68% more leads than those without blogs (HubSpot). Those who turn a standard blog into a well-produced, highly-relevant content machine may even see that number rise to a whopping…

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What Does Your Twitter Avatar Say About You?

Twitter avatars are more critical than some may think. In a terrific post on ThoughtPick, the author lists 5 reasons your avatar matters in your Twitter presence: Recognition Expression Intrusion Uniqueness Meaning & Relevancy We’d like to add a few more to this list. Most clients are a tad surprised when we spend a good…

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Shut Up, Listen Up, and Read!

For those of you who have endured my voice and tone workshops and training, brace yourself. Deana’s got her “rant” voice on today. If you’re a thought leader who’s genuinely ready to enlighten, educate and inspire others…awesome! Guess what? Your business will grow along with your online influence. This blog and my business are ALL…

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The Most Essential Part of Your Blog’s Design

YOU! Hmmm… I could actually just end this post right there. 🙂 It really IS that simple. As a Thought Leader, your impact doesn’t end with the content. You also need to dominate your blog’s design. That means incorporating an image of YOU in your blog’s masthead, header or another prominent, site-wide area. Feeling shy…

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5 Steps to Organizing the Blogs You Follow

One of the best ways to stay on top of what’s shaking in your industry and “sharpen the saw” each week is to read content-rich blogs! Just as reading books helps make us better writers, reading blogs helps make us better thinkers and bigger networkers! Yet, I still hear over and over again, “Yea…I’ve been…

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