You need a website for your business. But websites aren’t simple things.

The design needs to look great. Customers need to be able to navigate it easily. You need to optimize it for search engines. And you need to protect it from spammers.

The list goes on.

So how do you manage to do all these things and more?

Use WordPress, of course.

WordPress is the world’s most popular system for managing content.

It’s so popular that users publish 17 posts every second on WordPress sites around the world.

And if you use WordPress for your website, you’re in good company. These famous sites all use WordPress, too:

• New York Observer
• New York Post
• TED
• Thought Catalog
• Fortune.com
• TIME.com
• National Post
• Spotify
• TechCrunch

It’s no wonder. WordPress is awesome.

First of all, it’s “open source.” That means the original source code is freely available and you can modify and redistribute it to your heart’s content.

That makes WordPress a flexible and customizable website builder and content management system.

But here’s the cool part.

Along with the thousands of pre-made themes you can use to help design your site, WordPress also allows you to install plugins.

Plugins are apps you can use with WordPress. They allow you to add new features to your site.

And you need them.

Plugins help you to optimize your site for search engines, protect it against spammers, and improve the user experience.

But there are over 52,000 plugins in the official directory. So which ones do you need?

Every business has different needs, but there are some plugins that every WordPress website should have, regardless of industry.

Here are nine vital (and free) WordPress plugins you need to start using today. [click to continue …]

As many as 88% of B2B marketers use content marketing as part of their marketing strategy.

Are you part of that 88%?

If you are, you’re probably well aware of all the benefits.

If you aren’t, it’s just a matter of time. You’ve likely already realized its importance and plan to make changes to include it in your overall marketing strategy ASAP.

But how do you get started if you’ve never done it before?

And how can you do it right, and well?

The good news is there are countless marketing tools at your disposal to make things easier and more successful for you.

So whether you’re just starting to use content marketing or you’ve been using it for awhile, these 15 tools will help you get the most out of your time and energy. [click to continue …]

One of the worst things to happen to content marketing was when marketers, at some point, took an assembly-line approach to creating content.

In an attempt to maximize output while reducing the overall cost, the web experienced a tsunami of “me-too” content that provided little to no value.

And while updates from Google played a big part in wiping that content aside to help audiences find more valuable answers, it hasn’t stopped people from creating fluff.

Creativity isn’t something you can scale or manage in that way.

You just wind up sacrificing quality for output, and when quality suffers, you’ll quickly become outdated.

Your audience will ignore you.

Those short posts churned out quickly with little value might make you feel productive, but they leave the audience wanting more.

According to a study from State of Inbound, most marketers spend between one and two hours writing a 500-word blog post.

Andy Crestodina of Orbit Media ran a similar study, polling more than 1,000 bloggers and found similar results.

More than half the bloggers spent two hours or less per post, and only 6% of them spent more than six hours on a post.

Keep in mind that the amount of time you spend on a post doesn’t necessarily indicate quality.

The faster you churn out content, the less likely it will be to provide value for your audience.

Unless, of course, your own experience has led you to research and produce quality content faster.

When I first started blogging years ago, it took me upwards of five hours to write some posts.

Over the years, I’ve learned to improve my research process, outlining, writing, and overall production of the content to get this down to two hours (or less) for a long-form post, without sacrificing quality.

Still, some articles can take even longer.

That’s because I’m making every effort to produce evergreen content that will stay relevant and won’t get outdated.

If you want to avoid becoming outdated, you have to commit the time to producing quality content.

But it’s more than just taking the time to write well. There are other components of content marketing to ensure your content doesn’t get ignored by your audience. [click to continue …]

You’re a writer, not a photographer.

So why do you need to add photos to your blog posts when your words should be enough to entice your audience, engage visitors, and persuade people that your content is great?

The truth is, it’s not enough.

Especially when writing a blog post for the web.

What you need to understand is that your audience is lazy.

They want information as fast as they can get it.

They don’t want to struggle to read and digest your content. They want to be able to understand it quickly and easily to ascertain whether it’s going to be of any value to them.

Just because images are important doesn’t mean your words aren’t too.

That’s why you don’t have a blog post full of only images.

Images are a supporting tool that can take your content from bland to exciting.

So it’s strange, then, that some content writers don’t understand the best practices for including images in their blog posts.

If that’s you, then keep reading.

Let’s dive in.

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I’m just going to say it: visual marketing is the wave of the future.

There’s no denying the power that images have on gaining traffic, shares, and rankings.

In fact, if you have at least one image on your blog post, you are much more likely to rank on the top page of Google.

Images should be the lifeblood of your content marketing strategy.

Great content without any images likely won’t get many shares, much buzz, or any viral promotion.

But that’s easier said than done, right?

Making images that are visually pleasing can be time-consuming.

We don’t all have the creativity or design skills to do it, either.

Heck, I surely don’t have the creativity to produce diverse designs from scratch.

But I know I need the visuals if I want my content to be viewed and shared.

Without visuals, I’d probably drive 50% less traffic.

So I make it a priority.

In every blog post I write, I try to include a visual every with 100 words.

That number can be tough to hit when I can’t think of creative designs, but thankfully, there are a ton of free (or crazy cheap) image editing tools that make you look like a professional.

And that means you can shave time off your day with just a few minutes of image editing.

And thankfully, almost all of them are easy to use even if you have little-to-no experience with graphic design.

Here are 5 image editing tools that make you look like a pro and will drive your social shares through the roof.

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