Are These 4 Common Legal Mistakes Putting Your Content at Risk?

By Rachel Rodgers

how to get the law on your side

If you’re doing it right, your digital media business is probably an intellectual property factory.

Smart small businesses have a content creation conveyor belt and publish new content all day everyday, from ebooks to infographics.

And while there is a lot of talk about the benefits of creating content, there is very little talk about protecting it.

Yeah, I said it. Your content needs protection.

Because your content is intellectual property, otherwise known as original creative works used in commerce.

Your content needs protectin’

Have you left your most valuable business asset flapping in the wind?

Being an insanely talented content marketer comes with …read more      

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How Bestselling Author Ann Handley Writes

By Rainmaker.FM

ann-handley-file

In this episode of The Writer Files, host Kelton Reid invited digital marketing pioneer Ann Handley to chat about her writing process. She’s a Wall Street Journal bestselling author, brilliant keynote speaker, the world’s first Chief Content Officer, and a prolific digital content creator.

Ann Handley appeared on The Writer Files written interview series on Copyblogger last year and stopped by again to share her methods of madness with us.

You can also see Ann live at Authority Rainmaker, a carefully designed live educational experience that presents a complete and effective online marketing strategy to help you immediately accelerate your …read more      

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Button Boost: How to Label and Design High-Converting Buttons

By Rainmaker.FM

high-converting-buttons

Your website visitor hovers over your button, deciding whether or not to click. It’s the moment of truth!

There’s a lot more to creating a high-converting button than simply getting the design right. Whether or not that button gets clicked depends on the button label, the text around the button, and even the content on the rest of your website.

This week on Hit Publish, host Pamela Wilson invited three Copyblogger experts to share their best advice on creating buttons that work.

Tune in to Hit Publish to hear from host Pamela Wilson, Chris Garrett, Brian Gardner, and …read more      

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226 Transitional Words and Phrases Every Writer Should Know

By Rainmaker.FM

transitional-words

Good writing uses transitional words and phrases to help the reader smoothly work through what you wrote. It’s strange how simple, but powerful, these words can be.

Basically, these words and phrases are used to connect one idea to the next.

Look at the word “consequently,” for example. Consequently means “as a result.” When X happens, as a result, or “consequently,” Y happens.

So, “Demian Farnworth, the most unlucky mime in the world, performed the one routine you should never perform in a prison. Consequently, he was thrown out a window.”

If you take the …read more      

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Why #VanityMetrics Are Worthless (and What Really Matters)

By Hugh MacLeod

vanity-metrics

It’s been a bad couple of weeks for Web 2.0.

The original queen of mommy bloggers, Dooce, is retiring from blogging. And blogging’s original crown prince, Jason Kottke is having similar thoughts. For no other reason than what used to seem like a decent business model (ad-driven, independent blogging) isn’t so much anymore.

Across town, Twitter just lost billions of dollars in market cap, for pretty similar reasons — Web 2.0 just isn’t as valuable a place to spend time as it used to be.

At least, not for people hoping to make money.

<a class="colorbox" href="http://feeds.copyblogger.com/~/t/0/0/copyblogger/~www.mckinsey.com/insights/marketing_sales/why_marketers_should_keep_sending_you_emails" …read more      

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