Yeah. We’ve all been there.

The hardest part of writing a blog post is simply staring at your screen wondering what new hot topic to pick at next. It can actually be more exhausting than sitting down and writing 3000 words worth of content. So most often writing content isn’t about the content and context itself, but rather about that headline. Where to start? What to write about? What is the right approach?

Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

So who’s going to win? You, or that blank white piece of that Word document? You surely won’t allow yourself to take a beating from a blank piece of paper, or digital paper in this case. If you’re along for the winning ride, buckle up and read on.

Even though it seems devilishly hard and at times impossible, stop doubting yourself, and take a more systematic approach. Creativity is one part of the deal, but research is the engine below the hood. Creativity will help you perfect the article you’re writing, but research will give you the backbone of every piece of content. In order to help you get to the backbone we’ve compiled a short guide to set you on your way.

If you find the word “guide” too intimidating, just get yourself a mug of coffee and consider this a friendly talk, no need to get too serious. After all, writing does take a more focused, but relaxed approach.

What we can do is divide the process in two steps, or two ways of approaching the brainstorming session:

1. Brainstorming blog post ideas using your own brain and two bare hands (requires some thinking and setting up)
2. Brainstorming blog post ideas using online tools (press a big shiny “generate” button and get blog post ideas — easy to use, not always relevant)

Or even better, combine the two. This way you ensure that you utilize both your brain and machine to give you the best possible results.

1. Approach One: Brainstorm using your own brain

This method requires you to put in more work, but can give you more relevant results as you know your audience and your topic better than some random headline generator tool online.

• Open up several relevant blogs and websites related to your industry. Read a few posts and highlight any interesting ideas you may find while reading the post or article. These may be anything from a problem arising which requires a solution or an idea that hasn’t been discussed/researched much.
• Utilize forums. Forums are one of the greatest places to find questions frequently asked by people which can be easily translated into headlines. What this does is allows you to directly see what kinds of problems people are facing, and create blogs accordingly to solve their issues. Simply search in Google: your niche+forum.
• Open up Quora. Quora is a kind of a forum but a lot of people use it and there are tons of questions and answers you can use to create blog post headlines. Simply search through the different categories on the website and use your creativity a little bit.
• Search through your bookshelf. Almost everyone has books related to his/her business on the bookshelf. Even a good book cover can give you dozens of ideas about your next big headline. Open up the table of contents and read a sentence or two, this alone will be enough to pump up your creativity and get your writer’s flow going.
• Make use of blog comments. Blog comments can contain a pile of gold within them, but they often go unnoticed. Searched through the comments on your blog and write down questions and ideas being discussed. If you don’t have a blog just visit a popular blog in your niche which has a lot of comments and you are sure to find enough content to come up with at least a few blog ideas if not more.

These are pretty useful ways to go about finding a good blog headline which your readers will love. Below I’ll make a short list of useful tools you can use to give your creativity a boost.

2. Approach two: Use generator tools (Hint: you still have to use your brain)

For best results I’d recommend you combine the two approaches, so far they’ve worked best for me. But try whatever you want and do your own. No two people are the same, and no two people will get the same results using any of the methods.

• Hubspot Blog Topic Generator — simply input three nouns, and instantly get five blog posts. The suggestions are actually not half bad.
• Portent’s Content Idea Generator — this is a great one. Input just one word and you’ll get awesome ideas. The little jokes the idea generator makes are a bonus. Be careful though, some of the ideas that come out may sound silly so you’ll have to work on them a bit. The key is to keep trying and use your imagination.
• Blog Post Ideas Generator — This one doesn’t even require you to write anything. Simply tap “Generate” and you’re set. The simplicity is a big bonus, however you might have to tap more than a few times to get the wanted result.
• Inbound Now — Essentially the same as the one before. Tap “Generate” until you fall asleep or you find a blog post idea.
• Link bait title generator — This one is nice because it gives you dozens of suggestions with one click. Want another batch? Simply click the button again.

If you use these idea wisely and put some effort in, there’s no doubt you’ll have dozens of ideas on your plate in a minute. Have fun, and keep writing!

How to brainstorm blog post ideas — Generate dozens of blog post ideas in minutes was originally published in The Startup on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If someone asked you: “Can you explain what Blockchain means?” if you can’t even begin to grasp the concept with your own words, don’t worry. The Blockchain is not just another cool tool. It’s a complex concept which has many applications in many different industries from medicine to marketing. What Blockchain does in its purest form, is it enables business transactions between people, companies or technological entities and makes them transparent at all times.

Where and when was a transaction made? It’s all in the Blockchain and visible to everyone. Experts predict that 2018 will be a huge year for Blockchain, the decentralized ledger technology behind the buzzword. But Blockchain is not all about Bitcoin and Ethereum, it also applies to online marketing, and it’s set to have a huge impact on it.

Since online marketing is greatly criticized for lack of transparency, and in times when traffic levels are being generated by bots even up to 50%, the criticism is surely based on good grounds. But can blockchain change the game in favor of good marketing?

By applying blockchain to online marketing, the further developments could possibly take place:

1.Build more trust with consumers — As we said above, online marketing is criticized for its lack of transparency which can lead to problems when brands are trying to establish trust with their customers. Since Blockchain has transparency at its core, when applied correctly it can definitely take trust building to a new level.

2.Privacy issues will be resolved — In 2018 consumers will have more control over what information they share, more than they have ever had. This will help in the promotion of social responsibility on the advertiser’s side at the same time.

3.Fraud Identification will continue to grow — Again, this is where Blockchain’s transparency will shine. At the present time, it’s hard to stop bots from spending valuable ad dollars from advertising companies because it’s hard to predict where and how each ad is clicked and where the money is spent. Blockchain will make sure the whole media buying and media delivering process are much more transparent, making marketing more valuable and trustworthy.

4.Influencers will be fewer in number, but better in quality — When companies or people hire influencers for their marketing campaigns it’s hard to know whether their followers are real people or simply bots bought to increase the follower count for social proof. Blockchain will again make this process more transparent, decreasing the number of influencers, but increasing their quality.

5.Advertising and spending management made easier — This process will be further simplified by the use of Blockchain when people use cryptocurrency to buy ad space. Want to know where and how your money was spent and where the ads were delivered? Simply look in the blockchain.

These are just some of the ways Blockchain has the potential to change marketing for the better, both for the consumer and for the advertisers. A change in transparency can lead to trust building, managing ad spend and managing campaigns much more easy and more efficient.

This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by 340,876+ people.

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5 ways Blockchain will change Marketing in 2018 was originally published in The Startup on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

1. Getting from “ This can’t be happening to me” to “ I can’t believe it’s this simple “.

What a scary title isn’t it? What if I told you that it’s not nearly as scary in practice as it is on paper…? Well not really paper since…nobody uses paper anymore, except for the people that uhm…do. But hey, you can’t live without paper, can you?! At least not without toilet paper he — he * weird wink. ( Hey, I’ve never been the funny guy in a group, this is as good as my jokes get. )

Silly introduction aside, almost every person on the planet that has tried to create a Social Media content plan, or has heard these three horrifying words subsequently together has probably had the thought “ Ok, time to abandon ship “ rush to his / her head.

But it’s not nearly as scary as it sounds as I said in the silly introduction. The first time I was introduced to Social Media content planning I had the same though occur to me…until I actually opened Google Sheets and created a table ( there are dozens of ready templates you can use, or like me — you can create your own. To be honest mine looked like a 3 year old toddler had been left home alone with a bunch of crayons and a blank white wall, but hey, it got the job done. )

2. How to get started.

First and foremost, what you have to do is decide which social platforms you are going to be present on. Not all social media platforms are suitable for all kinds of businesses. How do you decide which platforms? Answer: Follow your audience!

“ Thank you captain Obvious, like I i didn’t think of that. But how do I find out where my audience is at?! “ — probably comes to mind. If you don’t know where your audience is at, you have a problem to say the least. But don’t worry there is a simple solution to this seemingly scary problem.

Test. Test. Test.

The most simple way to get started is to see on which social media platforms your competition is present, and how well they are performing.

101 Competition spying guide. ( I have a friend of a friend of a friend who’s in the KGB — that’s how I know this. )

1. Conduct a quick search on all social media platforms.
2. Follow what kind of content they post on social media platforms. Photos, Videos, status updates and such.
3. Look out for engagement. Shares, comments and reactions.
4. Post frequency.
5. User / follower count.
6. Create a table in Excel or Google Sheets or a Medium ( pun intended ) of your choice, and write down useful information.

Once you have analyzed what your competition does on Social Media, it’s time to see if we can do what they do, but do it better. Start off asking the following questions.

1. Can I share content that’s more relevant than theirs?
2. Can I write content that’s more compelling than theirs?
3. Can I post more frequently, or more consistently than them?
4. Is there room to post content from relevant and trusted sources on my social media space?

But not everything is about being better, posting better content etc. There is another approach you can try. Think about what you can do differently. Sometimes doing things from a different angle can make all the difference.

And most importantly, document everything you do.

3. Choose social media goals that align well with your business goals.

Just like everything else in business, your goals across different platforms have to align well with each other. Aiming for new leads on social media, while your business goal is increasing brand awareness or targeting customer retention is probably not going to get you much results.

Being present on social media can also directly help your business goals in many different ways. Here are just a few so you can have a better idea of what I’m talking about.

1. Increase brand awareness — Being present on social media and posting relevant content consistently will increase your exposure to potential customers. More so, if you create amazing content that’s helpful to a lot of people, your social media followers will be inclined to share your content, therefore greatly increasing your exposure.
2. Help you communicate with customers — It’s never been easier to connect and communicate with old and new customers. Getting continuous feedback and replying to it is of paramount importance. You can now get instant feedback on Facebook, and reply to your customers directly.
3. Increase brand trust — Increasing brand trust is easier now, than it was in the past. If you are dedicated to giving value to your customers via social media, in different forms of content you will gain their trust. It’s all about give, give and give now. So be sure to have relevant and helpful content on your social media. It’s almost a guaranteed way to convert followers into customers.

So choose your social media goals accordingly. Choosing the right ones could jump start your business in many different ways.

4. Create a follower persona.

A persona is an imagined person that is most likely to be your follower, or might be interested to what you have to say on social media. It’s better to target less people that are more likely to convert into a customer, than to target a general group of people that have nothing to do with your brand.

It’s not about all the people — it’s about the right people.

The most simple way to do this, is to look at what your Facebook audience likes, and who they are.

1. Go to your Facebook page.
2. Open up insights

Now as you can see, my typical follower persona is the following:

1. Name: Jon Bon Jovi ( Dude, if you are seeing this, please like my page. )
2. Gender: Woman / Man
3. Age: 25–34 ( the age groups 18–24 and 35–44 are quite close to each other, and make up for a good percentage, so do not neglect those. )
4. Occupation: This can be a generalization.
5. Income: Take the average salary or wage in the industry you are targeting.
6. Location: This can be a specific location, or a wider area around the target location. You can see this data about your followers just below the demographics chart shown in the picture.
7. Using the Facebook Audience Insight App, you can also see what pages and what brands your target audience likes.

5. Set your social media tone voice.

It’s important to know how to talk to your social media followers. This doesn’t have to be complicated at all. Just analyze how your followers interact with your brand, and with each other on your social media profiles. While you’re at it, follow your competitors social media profiles to see how you target audience communicates there.

Adjust your brand tone accordingly, and you should be able to communicate messages with your audience better.

Also, pay attention to how your competitors communicate with their followers. See how you can do better, or how you can use your tone voice to stand out from the pack.

6. Choose the right social media platform

This is maybe the most important part, so you should read this sloooowly and carefully ( maybe it’s time for that cup of coffee now? ).

Not all social media platforms are suitable for all kinds of content. Each of them has it’s own advantages and disadvantages, so you will be adjusting what content you post accordingly. This mostly depends on your brand and what you’re trying to communicate to your followers.

This is a great photo that illustrates what kind of content works on different social media channels. Choose your content carefully!

7. Content creation

When it comes to content creation you should rely on your creativity and the preferences and likes of your target audience. Some advice regarding this step is:

1. Test what kinds of posts work best for the social media you’re targeting.
2. Post different content. Make variations with photos, videos and GIF’s.
3. Post every day, social media sites show your brand to more people if you post more often.
4. Analyze which time of the day your audience is most active. Usually posting after work hours, early evening is quite efficient, as well as somewhere around 12:00 PM — 14:00 PM, however these numbers vary.
5. Combine your content with unpaid and paid. For example: only 2% of traffic on Facebook comes from organic, unboosted posts.
6. When boosting posts, target them at your core audience, don’t overgeneralize.
7. If you’re posting videos on Facebook, don’t do it over YouTube. Facebook gives priority to videos posted directly on their video platform.

8. Make a content plan schedule.

There are many ready-to-download templates on the internet, however, they usually require signing up or registering, and are more limiting than if you make your own. My personal suggestion is to fire up Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel and design it as you wish.

However, if you want a ready one, check out SmartSheet, or CoSchedule.

Another good idea would be to look up how other companies make social media content schedule and pick ideas from there while implementing your own according to your needs.

This is a plan I made for my own business. However, you might want to consider:

1. Adding the photos ( content ) you plan on posting to the corresponding day and post.
2. Add timetables to further organize your plan.

This is just a preview of what’s possible.

Bottom line.

There is no universal rule to what you can, or what you should do. Keep testing different content and a different setting, and adjust according to the results you get.

Good luck, and have fun!

This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by 271,813+ people.

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Beginners Guide — How to create a Social Media content plan. was originally published in The Startup on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It really depends on the business goals and vertical. For my business, the most important marketing metric is month over month growth.

Ryan Steward — Webris

What are Marketing KPI’s?

KPI stands for “ Key Performance Indicator “ put in the most simple way. A broad definition of KPI is — a set of quantifiable measures directed towards measuring the completion of the operational and strategic objectives of the company’s goals. From a marketing perspective — A marketing metric or marketing KPI can be defined as — measurable values used by marketing teams and marketers used to measure the effectiveness of campaigns across all marketing channels.

What constitutes a good KPI?

There are many factors that make up a good KPI, but there are a few that should be looked at more closely than the others:

1. All marketing metrics without exception should help a marketer asses their performance, however a good KPI should give insight into the future impact of marketing efforts on business results.
2. KPI’s should indicate a change in performance and provide us with insight in how to influence success.
3. A good KPI should always be put in a performance perspective, targeted towards an objective so that it can be compared, measured and be used to track success.
4. What defines a good KPI should be very well clear, so that we do not stray away from our measurements.

What KPI’s should we use?

There are literally dozens of marketing KPI’s we could use to measure our performance across different channels, but that doesn’t mean that we should use all of them. There are KPI’s that reflect our business goals and are well worth the time, and then there are those that have nothing to do with our goals, and measuring them would yield no valuable feedback.

But how do we choose which ones to use?

1. Choose KPIS directly connected to your business goals.

One of the most important factors to take under consideration when choosing which KPI’s to use is to determine how our company measures success. Defining a wanted business outcome is a critical factor.

Example: Boost sales by 15% in the next quarter. KPIs can include conversion rate, daily sales and site traffic.

2. Focus on few key metrics.

Saying that you should track less KPIs than track more of them is easier said than done. It’s hard to pinpoint which are the ones you should be tracking, but experts suggest that tracking between four to ten is a good practice, because this allows us to track key KPIS which are critical to our business.

3. What stage of growth is your company at?

Just as a baby prefers milk whereas an adult prefers a cheeseburger, different companies at different stages of growth measure different KPIs. Young companies such as startups are more focused on metrics which validate their business models, more mature companies are focused on metrics like cost per acquisition or CPA.

Example of different metrics at different stages of growth:

Pre-product market fit: Qualitative Feedback

Product market fit: Monthly recurring revenue

Expansion: Cost per acquisition

4. Lagging vs. Leading performance indicators.

Even thought the word leading is quite alluring, leading indicators are not necessarily more important than lagging indicators. There is a key difference between the two. Lagging indicators measure events that have happened in the past, such as total sales last month.

Leading indicators on the other hand measure progress and the likelihood of achieving a set goal in the future, which is great at telling us how we stand on the path of achieving our goal. Having a leading indicator is good for a better chance of success with future goals.

5. Different KPIs serve different industries and different businesses.

The KPIS we choose are greatly influenced by the industry we operate in and our business model.

Example:

Online Media KPIs: unique visitors, page views and social referral growth.

Retail KPIs: stock turnover, sales per square foot and customer satisfaction.

SaaS KPIs: Monthly recurring revenue, lifetime value and churn.

At the end of the day, the most important thing is choosing company specific KPIs that cater best to our needs.

5 Metrics a Digital Marketer should be tracking.

Since we are talking about Digital Marketing, the good news is that almost everything can be tracked. We can crunch data from all kinds of sources such as Google Analytics, software automation tools and so on and so on.

However nothing of this is important if the data we’re getting from these sources doesn’t correlate to our business goals and objectives. That’s where KPIs come to the rescue. Tracking metrics is important in Digital Marketing just as in any other industry. If we want to measure sales efficiency, we can do that by dividing total sales with total leads. By tracking the right leads, we can make smarter marketing decisions.

There are loads of KPIs that marketers can use, however these few listed below stand out in many situations.

1. Digital Marketing Return on Investment.

The return on investment is probably one of the most important KPI in almost every business. It gives answer to the most head aching, brain churning question. No, not what’s the meaning of life. The more important one — Is the stuff I’m doing, actually working? Failure to measure ROI is why marketing agencies get fired, marketing departments get restructured and CMOs get fired.

This metric basically measures whether the marketing campaign we’ve invested in is returning the invested money, and making a profit on top of that.

How to calculate dmROI: (Total Revenue Attributed to Digital — Total Cost of Digital Marketing)/(Total Cost of Digital Marketing)

2. Website conversion rate

Our website is a great resource for attracting new customers and leading them through the sales funnel. A website conversion rate is the rate of people who take desired action on our website. This can be tracked by measuring the number of form submissions, tracked phone calls and tracked emails coming from our website.

How to Measure Conversion Rate: (Form Submissions + Tracked Calls + Tracked Emails)/(Total Website Visitors) = Conversion Rate

3. Cost per lead by source

Having a great deal of leads by itself, doesn’t have to mean that our marketing campaign was successful. CPL or Cost Per Lead is a great metric for tracking lead acquisition costs, and keep that CPL healthy so that we can have a good margin of profit and continue to invest our money adequately.

How to Measure Cost Per Lead: (Total Spent on Campaign)/(Total # of Leads) [note: do this for each source]

4. Revenue per Lead by Source

On the flip side of things, apart from measuring how much acquiring a new lead costs, we want to be measuring how much revenue a lead generates. This is a good metric because it helps us forecast future sales based on expected traffic and conversion rates. The most useful benefit from this metric is that it helps us see which channels bring us the most profitable leads so that we can reinvest in those same channels.

How to Measure Revenue per Lead: (Total Attributable Revenue)/(Total # of Leads) [note: do this for each source]

5. % of sales from digital

Even though the last metric is often overlooked, increasing the share of total sales attributed to digital marketing may just justify the company’s investment in our department, and may as well bring more resources to our department for future expansion.

How to Measure % Sales from Digital: (Total Revenue Attributed from Digital)/(Total Monthly Sales)

Bottom line:

While we have a vast array of different marketing metrics we can use to track goals and objectives, they are useless if we don’t make them to use educated decisions about our goals and strategies.