This is a guest post by Anita Sambol from Point Visible.

These days, social media and other online mediums are main sources of information for quite a lot of people, if not all. There are plenty of blogs and websites that talk about the most random stuff you could imagine.

Despite that or maybe precisely because of that, content creation is not an easy job. Creating useful and interesting content takes a lot of time and effort, along with some creativity and imagination.

It’s true that you can talk about almost anything but that doesn’t mean every topic will reward you with the same level of engagement. The best way to ensure you’re on the right track from the start is to base all of your content-related decisions on a quality target audience analysis. That way you won’t have a mismatch between what you want to talk about and what your audience needs and wants to read, watch and consume.

All of your communication should be consumer-centered and revolve around their needs, not yours.

Just a couple of weeks left until 2017 is over. What a great year, wasn't it? 

We saw the rise of AI and live video and the slow death of ebooks and organic only on Facebook. Exciting times! 

I'm sure everyone is deep into 2018 planning so now is the time to review what's worked for you in the past year and decide what to focus on for next year and beyond. 

In your considerations, you need to think about what's happening in the marketing world and pick which trends to jump on based on your goals and priorities for the year. 

You can't always do everything so you need to be selective and choose what's going to bring you the biggest return. Technology and digital can't do anything for you unless you have a strategy and a measurement plan at hand. 

To help you plan for next year, MDG Advertising have created a very good infographic that dives into the 5 big marketing trends to watch in 2018. Take a look below: 

5 Big Marketing Trends in 2018 [Infogpraphic] 

Would you say that B2B buyers talk more to sales reps than B2C buyers do?

Many believe that B2B purchases are too complex which is why B2B customers avoid digital channels to make decisions. 

According to new research by McKinsey, that's not really the case. 

B2B buyers require both the help of sales reps and the power of digital to purchase, however, what determines the channel of choice is whether or not the buyer is making a first-time purchase. 

What's also interesting is that industry sector is not a factor in customers’ decisions to turn to a digital channel rather than a traditional one when deciding what to buy.

Let's look at the first learning. 

This is a guest post by Georgi Todorov. 

Marketers are already well-versed when it comes to working with celebrity influencers. After all, who wouldn’t want Kim Kardashian to show their product in one of her photos?

But the truth is, working with traditional influencers is often cost-prohibitive and inefficient, and it’s simply out of reach for many smaller businesses. That’s where micro-influencers come in – those slightly less famous people who still have a huge amount of influence (and followers) in their niche.

Defining micro-influencers as those with under 30,000 followers, Adweek explains that they deliver a 60% higher engagement rate and are 6.7x more cost effective. Convince & Convert, meanwhile, reminds us that micro-influencers also have more targeted audiences, which allows them to aim for relevance when it comes to the brands that they work with. In addition, influencer marketing is the fastest growing channel for customer acquisition.

And it really works. Let me show you one example:

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