Christopher August

In many ways, content marketing is more than just a way to work around the fact that approximately 200 million people now use ad blockers when they browse the Internet. It does more than just produce 7.8 times as much site traffic and increase brand recall, all while costing 62% less than traditional outbound marketing channels. It's a way to create a reaction in your target audience. It's about generating an emotional response that doesn't just get people to sit up and pay attention, but that leads to the type of action that your customers won't be able to stop themselves from taking. THE LOVEMARKS THEORY The Lovemarks Theory is a simple one: while human beings may be the home of reason, what they're really driven by at the end of the day is emotion. Famed neurologist Donald Calne put it eloquently when he said "the essential difference between emotions and reasons is that emotion leads to action, while reason leads to conclusions." When you create a ...

When it comes to generating the type online visibility that your small business depends on, Google is still your number one priority in terms of search. Not only do the vast majority of all interactions between a customer and a business begin with a search engine, but Google also has a 65.2% share of total search volumes worldwide. To that end, it's always essential to play by Google's rules - and the company recently introduced a significant new penalty that you absolutely need to be aware of moving forward. GOOGLE'S INTRUSIVE INTERSTITIAL PENALTY Have you ever been browsing a mobile site on your smartphone or tablet, enjoying a piece of content and then suddenly find yourself re-directed to your platform's app store? This is exactly the type of activity that Google is trying to curb with its new "Intrusive Interstitial Penalty," which officially went live around the world on January 10. In addition to the aforementioned example, Google also specif...