Generative AI, and ChatGPT in particular have been catnip to the tech press, the mainstream media, and the conversations of professionals in nearly every field. How is it going to disrupt your work?! Will AI replace you? Are Hollywood writers, real estate agents, dog walkers, and anesthesiologists even useful anymore? In concert with the fine
Two Announcements: SparkToro V2 Coming Soon and Brendan Hufford (Temporarily) Joining the Team
By How is it only August? It feels like two years since January. Especially here at SparkToro, where the year’s had so much upheaval, despite our attempts to maintain Chill Work. Shortly after our pricing change in February, Twitter/X’s new owner announced a bevy of pricing and access changes to their API, including the deprecation of
Why the Worst Search Marketers Start Content Strategy with “SEO Keywords” — 5-Minute Whiteboard
By I’m worried. Worried that thousands of agencies, in-house practitioners, and even marketing leaders who should know better are STILL prioritizing their content efforts based primarily or entirely on keywords for search. I get it. 10 years ago, that practice worked. It still technically works in a number of fields. Prioritize keywords, create content, publish, get
Modern Content Marketing: Your New Growth Flywheel
By Many of us know the classic content marketing strategy to a tee. You use an SEO tool like Moz or Ahrefs to identify high volume keywords, ideally with low difficulty, you write the content that satisfies the query for those search terms, and then over time, you rank for keywords, improve your search rank, and
4 Ways to Distribute Content on Social Media | 5-Minute Whiteboard
By Tactically, there’s an infinite number of ways to promote via social media. But, when it comes to distributing content, there are just four categories of promotion that every technique fits under. What are they? Which one should you use? Should you adopt a mix or stick to a single system? Find out in this week’s
5-Minute Whiteboard: Is Generative AI in Search Results the SEO Apocalypse?
By In the not-too-distant future, we’ll look back at the days when a full 1/3rd of Google searches resulted in a free click to the open web and marvel at how good we had it. For the last few months, Google’s been telegraphing that generative AI answers will soon appear in search results. These pieces of
5-Minute Whiteboard: Why You Can’t Just Crank Up Marketing to Get More Sales
By CEO/Sales Leader: “Hey marketing team! We’re behind on our quarterly sales goals and only have 3 weeks left. Do some marketing why doncha?! Crank up them SQLs!“ Marketer: “Yeah, that’s not really how this discipline works. It’s a long lead cycle between awareness, branding, and conversion, and…“ CEO/Sales Leader: “Sorry exec team. Marketing underperformed and
How One Media Placement Led to 1,600 Customers — And How You Can Do It Too
By “But, customer acquisition isn’t how you measure the success of public relations.” I didn’t have formal PR or marketing training and still, I knew it was a ridiculous KPI. This was during my time at direct-to-consumer (DTC) healthy snack startup NatureBox. We were a series A startup, a lean team that needed to grow our
5-Minute Whiteboard: Zero-Click Marketing 101
By When did you first promote content on the Internet? Some of us have been doing it long enough to—GASP—remember when Facebook post CTRs were 10%. Yes, folks, that meant a full 15% of all your Facebook page likes (back then we called them “fans”) would click a link you posted, and then we web marketers
An Employee’s Guide to Building a Personal Brand
By You don’t need to announce your bid to join the creator economy. You don’t need to sell templates or courses, or even start a podcast. And you certainly don’t need to quit your job. Because here’s the thing: focusing on your personal brand doesn’t need to mean becoming a creator. Taking charge of your personal