Wearing the costume

There’s a huge difference between carrying a stethoscope and being a doctor. And being a clown requires far more than getting a clown suit. Entrepreneurs with business cards, slick websites and mission statements are confused. That’s not the hard part. If the costume puts you in the right frame of mind, that’s great. But the…

Running a Website Audit? I Talked to SEO Pros to Help You Make the Most of It

As a content marketer, a website audit is vital to my work. An analogy I like to use is that optimizing an existing website for search engines without conducting a thorough audit is akin to steering a boat without a rudder. It’s directionless, at the mercy of the wind and waves (or in this case,…

40 Best Buyer Persona Questions I’d Ask During Customer Interviews

Good marketing is always about the customers, period. That’s the most important lesson I’ve learned from all my wins and losses as a marketer. To launch successful marketing campaigns, you must know every detail about your audience — their goals, aspirations, pain points, and more. And building buyer personas is a good place to start….

The run-on sentence

Periods were an extraordinary invention. It took thousands of years of writing before we settled on this simple convention. The most direct way to improve your writing is to make your sentences shorter. I was reading a magazine article yesterday and was rapidly losing interest. The topic appealed to me, but I couldn’t keep reading….

Are AI Agents Worth It? HubSpot’s CMO and VP Weigh In

On a recent Marketing Against the Grain podcast episode, HubSpot founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah sat down with hosts Kipp Bodnar and Kieran Flanagan to discuss the rise of AI agents. When I heard the term “AI agents,” I thought of little robots sneaking around like spies, completing tasks for marketers. Obviously, that‘s not completely…