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The Competitive Advantage

tag: content marketing

March 1, 2022

What should you post on LinkedIn? Hint: it’s not about you!

When you look at the LinkedIn posts made by most professionals and most firms in our industry, they generally fall into three categories:

  1. Promoting their content – a recent blog or an invitation to a webinar
  2. Office news – a company anniversary or the hiring of a new employee
  3. Or a sales pitch!

And because most firms aren’t producing content very often or haven’t hired someone in a while, they’re left with selling. Far too much. Of all the things you can do on LinkedIn, selling should be the lowest priority. One rule of thumb I’ve heard says that, ‘Only one in five social posts should be a sales pitch.’ Frankly, even that is too often. Social media is – first and foremost – a ‘social’ platform. It’s about connecting with people and building relationships. Sharing will help you do that… selling will not.

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December 14, 2021

I Stopped Blogging for a Month… And Here’s What Happened

At our firm, we are all big believers in content marketing – for our clients and for ourselves – because of all the great things it can do for a business:

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October 19, 2021

The Marketing Trifecta: The 3 Tactics You Need to Achieve Your Marketing Goals

In my last post, I wrote about a few different things I would recommend to help you in preparing for putting together your 2022 Sales & Marketing plan. I’ll assume you’ve done all those things (wink-wink), so now, I want to explore the implementation of your plan, particularly on the Marketing side; we’ll talk about Sales implementation in the next post.

Look around… there are a thousand different ways – especially in light of all the technology available to everyone these days – to implement your marketing. But I want to simplify it for you. In fact, not just simplify it, but let you know that this can be done for no (or almost no) cost!

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December 30, 2019

The Top 11 Most-Read Marketing & Sales Blog Posts of 2019

As you may have seen in a post earlier this year, in the 7+ years since starting Harpeth Marketing, I have published more than 400 articles (this one is #420, to be exact!)… making this blog, The Competitive Advantage – the #1 marketing & sales resource in our industry! One of the benefits of writing so frequently is that my writing has developed a bit of a following (both on our website and on my LinkedIn profile). So, at this time every year, I like to look back at the articles I posted over the year and showcase those that were the most popular.

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July 25, 2019

Help! I’ve got a horrible case of writer’s block!

A few weeks ago, I published a post proudly proclaiming my 400th blog post at Harpeth Marketing… not bad, huh? But now, just a few days later… nuthin’! I’ve had writer’s block before, and it usually lasts a day or two… then I get inspired by something I see or read, and I’m back on track.

But I am in a serious funk right now.

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July 5, 2019

I just published my 400th blog post!

Yeah… it’s a little hard to believe, but this is the 400th blog post I’ve published since Harpeth Marketing opened its doors a little over 7 years ago. And it’s not just the blog posts… we’ve also published a dozen eBooks, numerous Tip Sheets, as well as delivered several conference presentations and a bunch of webinars.

There’s a ton of time and [some] money rolled up in all that content. Has it been worth it?

The answer is a big, unequivocal “YES!” And here’s why…

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November 6, 2018

6 Reasons Why eBooks are a Great Marketing Tool

eBooks have been a staple of content marketing for some time. Loosely defined as booklets of multiple pages (usually 8 or more), well-designed and covering fairly broad topics, eBooks have proven to be a great marketing tool. If you’ve not considered producing an eBook for your firm, here are 6 reasons why you should.

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October 16, 2018

Case Studies: Your ‘Proof Source’ for Closing Deals.

This past week, I sat in on a webinar entitled, “How to Engage and Sell Today’s Corporate Research Buyer,” hosted by GreenBook. It was the presentation of data collected by GreenBook, Collaborata and David Harris. In it, a lot of really good information was presented, but one of the recurring themes – directly stated by the buyers themselves – was the value of ‘case studies’ and their role in the buying decision.

Some content – eBooks and checklists, for example – are used to generate interest and awareness… to get prospects into the “top of the funnel.”

Other content – for the middle of the funnel – is used to educate and inform (and showcase your Subject Matter Expertise). Think webinars, blog posts and infographics.

But at the bottom of the funnel – at decision time – your prospective buyer wants proof. Proof that you can do what you say you can do… and that’s where case studies come in to play.

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