This is a guest post by Joseph Payne from CouponsMonk. 

From research to playing with words, you make efforts on each and every blog posts. But do you earn enough inbound links on it? Does your hard work pay off?

Be it an article or video content in blog posts, earning inbound links is a prerequisite to succeed in SEO. This is one of the best ways to drive traffic to your website and engage readers. But most of the marketers lag behind in creating attractive content. 

Content is a crucial thing that can either make or break your marketing strategy. In order to survive in this cut-throat competition, it becomes part and parcel to focus on content creation. 

It’s time for you to craft blog posts in such a way that it drives skyrocket traffic to your site. As a result, it would greatly impact your marketing strategy, improving your brand values and your SEO ranking. 

Getting smart with the strategy simply means understanding your audience thoroughly and creating content accordingly. When content is created while considering the audience, then i's apparent that you can significantly engage readers. 

Here are some key ideas to take into consideration when revamping your content marketing strategy in such a way that it can earn better inbound links.

5 Types of Blog Posts That Earn Inbound Links

The State of Inbound is out!

It's a yearly survey we do at HubSpot and it reveals the top challenges and priorities facing businesses today in the realms of marketing and sales and changing consumer habits.

The survey also looks at the future to highlight new trends and channels that will soon affect the way we all do business. 

You can grab the global report here, however, I want to look at the EMEA results and share with you 17 about that you need to know now to plan the rest of your year and 2018. 

17 Facts About The State of Inbound That You Need to Know Now: 

1. 62% of marketers say their top challenge is generating leads. 
2. 63% of marketers believe their organisation's marketing strategy is effective. 
3. 73% of C-level executives believe their organisation's marketing strategy is effective. 
4. 55% of individual contributors believe their organisation's marketing strategy is effective. 

My start-up Smile Arty has now been live for about three months. 

Painful months. It was hard, really hard in the beginning. Things like getting the company registered, getting a bank account, setting up everything for accounting, revenue etc. were nerve-racking. 

The one thing that was easy was the website and all the content. 

I say easy because I have a PR background and I now work in inbound marketing so I didn't have to start learning any of this from scratch whereas the whole administrative thing for a new business was completely new to me.

I have to say, though, in less than three months, content started working. 

This is a guest post by Alex Kulbov from Escreo. 

Before we think with our heads, we need to see with our eyes. And what lies before them usually sets the course for the way we perceive and evaluate it.

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t necessarily need to create something beautiful in order for it to be effective. You just have to make it memorable. To provoke a reaction. Whether it’s an ad, a step-by-step guide or a new web design, the visual elements of your marketing need to catch the eye and build a positive, credible persona for your clients to appreciate.

Design is crucial for every business. If you’ve neglected it so far, it’s about time you utilize its admirable effect.

Design trends have a lifespan of approximately two years, so it’s important to stay ahead of the game. Most of them are dictated by media and technology, but user-based feedback and demands will yet inculcate themselves into the market.

Here’s how to upgrade your marketing visual content in 2017 in order for your business strategies to cut the mustard.

As some of you know, I'm starting my own business together with my mum. 

It's an e-commerce startup for arts and crafts and we'll be launching the website next week. 

As part of the process, I've been developing the website (by the way, Shopify is amazing for e-commerce!) and planning all PESO (paid, earned, shared, owned) activities with a particular focus on social media. 

And because I work at HubSpot – the pioneers of inbound marketing – and consult my clients day in and day out on best practices for inbound, I'm truly preaching what I teach with my own business. 

While preparing my buyer personas, their buyer's journey and working through the content plan for them, I needed a template or a tool that would work for me. 

I couldn't find anything suitable so I ended up creating my own simple Google Sheet that with just one view visualises all the important parts of this planning and follows the correct way of doing content creation for inbound. It also helps with your keywords strategy. 

This template for buyer persona, buyer's journey and content campaign plan development is what I want to give to you today.