A few years ago, after a company layoff, I tried a career as a freelancer. Since my new path wasn’t completely by design, I called myself The Accidental Freelancer.

In the early days, most of the work was writing, and I had regular and one-off gigs. Since then, I established a marketing agency (Attention Retention LLC) and offer services around consulting, content marketing strategy, social media, and product marketing.

Though I’m focused on consulting and still write occasionally, I more often assign writing projects received through inbound requests or my consulting clients to freelancers. Though I’m the only full-time employee, my network of freelancers serves as the agency’s virtual team to satisfy client requests.Continue Reading

Let’s face it. Much of what we do in content marketing is based on assumptions.

Example: “People don’t open business emails on the weekend, so we must always schedule our emails for a weekday.”

If we sent emails on the weekend to our audiences and the data proved they didn’t open them, that’s one thing. But too often, we don’t have the data. We base our decisions on accepted truths – things we’ve heard other marketers claim at conferences, in coffee chats, and in online professional groups.

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With several video meetings under your belt, it’s time to make yourself the star of the show. Step out from those internal meetings and go live for all to see. You’ll gain visibility and enhance your personal brand.

Ian Anderson Gray is here to help.

Founder of Seriously Social, a U.K.-based marketing consultancy, Ian helps clients use live video to boost their impact. He is host of the aptly named Confident Live Marketing Show aired on YouTube Live and Facebook Live. He also hosts the Confident Live Marketing Podcast.

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Are your sales and marketing teams aligned?

“Of course,” you say. “We meet once a week and the communications between us have never been better.”

But that reasoning isn’t enough. The answer also can’t just come from the chief marketing officer, the vice president of sales, or even the CEO.

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If you’re like me, LinkedIn is a place to highlight your professional experience and achievements. I maintain a polished profile with endorsements and recommendations. I publish articles and posts, and comment when others tag me. For the most part, I sit back and wait for people to find me.

Michaela Alexis thinks bigger. LinkedIn is a place for her to stand out in front of an audience of 600 million business professionals. It is a multimedia publishing platform to help her achieve business goals – new jobs, clients, opportunities.

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Picture a street map. To get from point A to point B, you chart a course. You might take the main thoroughfare through town, make a right on Main Street, then find your destination on the right.

Now consider a career map. It might start with an undergraduate degree in communications, followed by a turn into an entry-level job at an advertising agency. Industry experience leads to a turn as director of marketing at a software company. After helping that company to a successful initial public offering, a new road as the chief marketing officer is built.

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In November 2008, I read a new blog post from David Meerman Scott – “Downsized? Fired? Here Are the New Rules of Finding a Job.” A month later, I was laid off from my job. Returning home, I immediately reread the post.

The takeaway can be distilled into these two sentences:

You want to find a new job? You have to stop thinking like an advertiser of a product and start thinking like a publisher of information.

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From caveman drawings to silent movies, visual storytelling has been used to educate, engage, and motivate audiences for centuries.

The digital age, though, has ushered in a new set of tools and technologies for visual storytelling. Eric Goodstadt, president of Manifest, and Sacha Reeb, chief creative officer at the content marketing agency, tackled the topic in their Content Marketing World presentation, Five Very Different Examples of Stellar Visual Storytelling and Why They Are a Step Above the Marketplace.

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