CBA hikes home loan rates

THE Commonwealth Bank has joined Westpac in hiking interest rates for home loan customers, delivering a $450 slug to the typical owner occupier.

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Mortgage pain: Commonwealth Bank hikes rates

AUSTRALIA’S largest bank is hiking interest rates, which spells more pain for homeowners.

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Who is responsible for Canada’s new PM?

AN AUSTRALIAN election guru reportedly left Canada just days before the party he was working with was dumped. But some say he wasn’t even there.

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Coles grocery sales slowdown

COLES’ food and liquor sales growth has eased further as the price war ramps up with German discounter Aldi’s aggressive expansion.

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Amazon’s feud with NY Times gets ugly

AMAZON is getting dirty in its fight with The New York Times over a front-page story which bashed the e-commerce giant.

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Keep an Eye Out for This New Credit Card Scam

Photo: Ciaran McGuiggan

You may have heard about the shift to EMV credit cards, the new chip-enabled technology that touts increased consumer safety by adding an extra layer of fraud protection on in-person transactions. Banks have gradually been replacing existing credit and debit cards and issuing EMV cards to consumers in recent months — more than 120 million new cards have been issued to date.

This shift has been a gradual one, however, and many people have yet to receive their new chip-enabled cards. As a result, there’s been a surge in scams taking advantage of people’s confusion as they wait for replacement cards. The Federal Trade Commission this week warned of one particular scam making the rounds.

How the Scam Works

According to the FTC, online scammers are sending out fake emails to consumers, posing as credit card issuers. These emails instruct people to confirm personal information or click on a fraudulent link to receive their updated credit card.

Replying to these emails inevitably puts consumers at an increased risk for identity theft, and clicking on phishing links can install harmful malware that places the computer’s (and user’s) security in jeopardy.

What You Should Do

• Do not provide your credit card number over email: According to the FTC, “there is no reason your card issuer needs to contact you by email — or by phone, for that matter — to confirm personal information before sending you a new chip card.”
• Call your credit card company: If you’re not sure whether the emails you’re receiving are legitimate, call the number on the back of your credit card and speak to a representative to make sure.
• Do not open links from unknown sources: With the anonymity of the Internet, you should always exercise caution when opening links found in emails. If you don’t know the sender, think twice — and when it comes to finance, it’s always a good idea to type your bank’s website directly into your browser rather than clicking on an email link.
• Remain vigilant when it comes to your credit: This is far from the only credit card scam out there. Read up on credit card fraud and the simple steps you can take on a daily basis to prevent it from happening to you. EMV chip-enabled cards may increase security in person, but the chip doesn’t help you online — so be extra careful anytime you have to enter personal information.

I Thought Chip-Enabled Cards Were Supposed to Reduce Fraud?

Scams aside, the new chip-enabled cards provide increased security for in-person credit card transactions by generating a unique code for each transaction, thereby making it more difficult for hackers to collect card information. This shift is undoubtedly a necessary one, considering over 340,000 Americans experience credit card fraud annually. If you haven’t gotten your new card yet, take the steps outlined above to make sure your information is safe in the meantime.

• Related: What You Should Know About EMV Credit Cards

The post Keep an Eye Out for This New Credit Card Scam appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

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10 Financial Fees You Should Never Pay

Fees. Not only can they be unpleasant, sometimes they’re sneaky.

The financial industry is awash with fees that come in all shapes and sizes. Many of them are well-known while a few are so covert that consumers get caught off guard when they realize they’ve been paying thousands of dollars in fees without knowing it.

Not all fees are bad, however. After all, financial professionals have to make a living. But that doesn’t mean they have a right to keep you blissfully unaware of what you’re paying for the services they’re providing.

Before you hire a financial advisor, it’s a good idea to learn how they get paid. Ask them directly how they make their dough. If they dance around the question, take your business elsewhere.

There are a few financial fees you should never pay. Many times, these are the sneaky ones that pop up when you least expect them. Avoid these, and you’ll be well on your way to brighter financial future.

1. Mutual Fund Loads

Some mutual funds have loads. For example, Class A shares are types of mutual funds that charge an upfront commission. You might pay, say, 3.75% of your investment money up front to buy the fund.

This is all fine and dandy until you realize that many of these mutual funds also charge an ongoing management fee (called an expense ratio). Add these fees together, and you’re paying quite a hefty amount of money to own some mutual funds.

Miranda Marquit, writing for ExcessReturn.net, explains:

Sometimes, when you buy or sell a mutual fund, you pay a load fee. This can be a real drag on your returns. Paying load fees doesn’t make much sense, either, since you can find plenty of funds and brokers that don’t charge these fees.

Load mutual funds aren’t necessarily a horrible option, but there are certainly better options out there. Ask several financial advisors what they would recommend and compare the differences.

2. 12b-1 Fees

A 12b-1 fee is a marketing or distribution fee that is applied every year. This fee is considered an operational expense, so it is included in the fund’s expense ratio.

Take a look at your mutual fund statements and see if you’re being charged 12b-1 fees. I don’t know about you, but I would never want to pay marketing fees. If a mutual fund has to be marketed, it may testify to the possibility that it’s not a good fund in the first place – otherwise the mutual fund would sell itself.

3. Variable Annuity Fees

One day a prospective client walked into my office and told me she had been working with a big brokerage firm that she felt wasn’t being completely honest with her.

The advisor had sold her a variable annuity and some mutual funds. She wasn’t really concerned about the mutual funds, but she let me know she wasn’t exactly sure how the variable annuity worked.

Never, never buy a financial product without understanding how it works! Back to the story . . . .

I asked her how much she was paying for her variable annuity and she thought she saw a fee for around $50. That’s not bad, right? Well, later we learned that she paid over $3,500 in variable annuity fees and didn’t even know it.

Your jaw should drop right about now.

I’m not a fan of variable annuities. The fees are just too high – and many times sneaky, too.

4. Late Fees

Late fees are another type of fee you should never pay. These fees may occur when you’re late paying your bills.

The formula you can use to pay your bills on time is pretty straightforward. First, you must have enough cash to pay. It’s a good idea to save up extra cash in your checking account to ensure you have enough for all bills – including the unexpected ones.

Second, you’re going to need to process your mailbox, email, and other inboxes where you receive bills on a regular basis. Keep track of your automated bills and payment methods. Make sure to have a good system in place for remembering to pay your bills on time!

5. Overdraft Fees

Nobody should ever have to pay overdraft fees. The only time you’re going to overdraft on your checking account is if you intentionally do so (don’t do that) or if you aren’t keeping track of your transactions.

This is yet another reason to keep a buffer of cash in your checking account. If you forget about a transaction it will be pulled from your buffer of cash instead of putting your account into the negative which may result in an overdraft fee.  If you to spend that extra buffer, then work with your bank or get an online checking account that will automatically draft from a savings account.  This way you keep the money out of your regular checking but still have that buffer to cover any mistakes.

6. Foreign Transaction Fees

Credit card companies (and even banks) sometimes charge their customers fees when they use their cards overseas.

These foreign transaction fees can be easily avoided by signing up for a card without foreign transaction fees or by using an alternative payment method such as cash.

These foreign transaction fees can be easily avoided by signing up for a credit card without foreign transaction fees or by using an alternative payment method such as cash.

“Would you rather spend an extra 2-4% of your purchases on credit card fees, or on a nice meal at your destination?” asks Gerri Detweiler, director of credit education at Credit.com.

7. Low Balance Fees

Some banks, credit unions, and wealth management firms charge a fee when balances on certain types of accounts fall under various thresholds. Many times, financial institutions will reward customers in the form of a higher interest rate or other perks for participating in these types of accounts.

Brian O’Connell, writing for TheStreet.com, explains the joy of avoiding these types of fees:

Saving a few bucks on bank fees is a cathartic experience — it’s a rare chance to pull one over on your bank instead of vice-versa.

You should never pay a low balance fee. If you can’t keep enough money in an account to meet the minimum balance requirement, skip the perked account and opt for a simpler, boring, and fee-less account.

8. ATM Fees

ATM fees are brutal. Many times, customers will use an ATM to get a small amount of cash out of their bank accounts and be charged an exorbitant percentage of the funds they withdrew for the pleasure.

For example, say you take out $20. You’re charged a $1.50 fee. That’s effectively a 7.5% charge. Forget about it!

Instead, make sure to ask your bank or credit union which ATMs in your area are “surcharge-free” and within their ATM network. Nowadays, you’re sure to find several surcharge-free ATMs where you need them most.

9. Payment Fees

This is perhaps one of the most annoying fees I’ve ever encountered. Imagine being charged a fee for making a payment. Um, no thank you.

Some merchants have been known to charge these “convenience” – what I call “payment” – fees when you make a payment over the phone or through a store representative instead of through their automated systems such as store kiosks.

Avoid paying to make payments. It just doesn’t make sense.

10. Inactivity Fees

If you don’t need or use an account, why have it? Some banks and credit unions (especially online banks) charge inactivity fees when the account sits idle. These fees can usually be avoided by any kind of account activity like making a purchase or initiating a transfer.

Brokerage firms are starting to do this, too.  I’ve noticed this with new clients bringing in their statements and finding “inactivity fees” or “small account” fees on accounts that don’t generate any fees or commissions over a period of time (usually one year).

The Bottom Line

You can avoid these fees (and others) by doing a little homework before you sign up for a product or service.

Read the fine print. Ask financial advisors about their fees. Talk with your bank’s or credit union’s branch manager to uncover every fee they might charge.

Say goodbye to these nasty fees and hello to better financial accounts!

This post originally appeared on DailyFinance.com.

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How Hip-Hop, Fiction and Games Can Teach Kids Financial Literacy

New, creative ways are helping kids learn about money. 

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10 Money Action Steps to Take Before 2016

With big end-of-year deadlines approaching, now is the time to act.

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3 Ways to Use LinkedIn Groups for Your Job Search

Plus, what you need to know about LinkedIn's most recent update.

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Learn From the Best: 12 Lessons from 5 Content Marketing Case Studies

Not everyone will have to solve a specific problem for their content marketing.

However, you can often learn methods to make your current or prospective content marketing more effective.

The way to achieve this is to study other people who have successfully used content marketing to grow their own or their client’s business.

There are 2 schools of thought:

Study companies similar to yours and emulate their strategy. Or study companies different from yours and apply their tactics to your niche.

Both have their merits.

You need a complete view of content marketing as a whole, and to get that, you need to study a wide variety of ­­examples.

For instance, you should study how different companies use content marketing for different purposes.

According to a recent report, the top 3 goals of content marketing are:

• lead generation
• thought leadership
• brand awareness

There are many different ways to achieve each of these 3 broad goals.

Some will come to you naturally, but others won’t make sense until you see the successful example of others.

The problem is that you can’t study just any random company because most don’t understand what your objective is.

In another report, it was found that only 30% of B2B marketers thought that their organization used content marketing effectively.

Although that’s a respectable percentage, it means that at the same time, there’s a lot of poor content being produced.

You want to steer clear of that since there isn’t much to learn from it.

This is where case studies come in. Typically, only businesses with something to actually show off create public case studies.

I’ve rounded up some of the best case studies I’ve come across that illustrate some important aspects of content marketing.

I’m going to be breaking down 12 lessons from five case studies to show you how you can apply them to your content marketing efforts.

Some may just be good refreshers, while others may be brand new for you. I think most marketers will be able to learn at least a few substantial things from these case studies.  

Case Study #1: PTC used content marketing to go from 0 to 100,000 visitors per month

(Original case study)

For me, crossing the 100,000 visitor per month threshold has always been an important goal.

If you can get to that level, you can sustainably grow just about any kind of business.

This content marketing campaign was more about brand awareness than anything else.

PTC wanted to create awareness for their new product launch in a very crowded space and had the secondary goal of getting initial sales for this product.

Most successful products aren’t brand new inventions. It’s likely that you’ll never sell one.

Nevertheless, you may sell products that are innovative—that improve upon others. Your challenge will be breaking into a crowded market.

You just may be able to learn from this case study.

A quick overview: I’m not going to go into too much depth, but let me give you a quick rundown of what PTC is.

It’s a huge software company that sells software to other companies in a variety of high-tech niches.

First, they decided to try to use content marketing to improve awareness of a new product they were about to launch—Creo.

Creo is a design software that solves many of the problems that other types of CAD software often have.

Without a doubt, it’s a quality product, which is where you should always begin.

Lesson #1 – Outsourcing content marketing can work: One of the reasons that companies are afraid to really invest in content marketing is because they believe it will take away from their existing marketing efforts.

They believe that they need to get employees to spend time creating blog posts and promoting them.

Understandably, it’s tough to make this kind of commitment when most employees are already overworked.

On top of that, most employees don’t know how to create effective posts that will get results.

The companies that do try content marketing usually conclude that it’s not effective.

There are 2 good reasons to outsource your content marketing:

1. You don’t have the manpower to execute a content strategy
2. You don’t have the expertise to develop or execute a content strategy

In this case, PTC hired Content Marketing Institute’s Joe Pulizzi and Robert Rose, both well-known top content marketers (even back in 2010).

A company like PTC isn’t short on resources, but they didn’t have the expertise for this kind of work.

Joe and Robert got the industry and company knowledge needed to create a great content marketing strategy by working with some of PTC’s key employees.

One concern when outsourcing content marketing is that you’re stuck with them forever, but that’s rarely the case unless you want it to be.

Most content marketers will spend a majority of their time creating a strategy for you to follow and then figuring out the best way to execute it.

In most cases, including this one, the content marketers will find writers who are also experts in a particular niche.

Joe and Robert hired Barb Schmitz, an experienced writer in their industry, to kick off the blog content. She continued contributing to the blog for another 4 years.

Even if PTC completely stopped working with the content marketers they hired, they’d still have a plan in place and writers who could continue to contribute.

Lesson #2 – Know your content marketing goals: As we looked at earlier, content marketing can fulfill many different goals.

The actual goals that you are trying to accomplish will influence what type of content you produce and your overall content strategy.

In this case, PTC had one main goal that was made clear from the start:

Goal: To create buzz and launch the new Creo product (in the following 8-9 months).

At that point, their target audience had never even heard of Creo, which was another important factor.

If you create a blog for a popular product (e.g., Canva’s design school), you can be successful writing content such as product tutorials.

If you don’t have a product yet, tutorials aren’t going to draw much attention. Instead, you will need to educate the market to provide value.

As you become more trusted, you can steer attention toward a product launch.

Goals dictate what type of content to produce, but also how much to produce.

Since there was a limited amount of time before the launch, Robert and Joe were fairly aggressive with their editorial calendar. They published around a post a day (although the posts were on the shorter side).

Lesson #2b – Goals can change: Your content marketing strategy should always be evolving and growing with your business.

Once the product launch was complete, they shifted  towards improving sales and market share.

If you go to the Creo blog today, you’ll see a different type of content:

Now that Creo is well known (and multiple versions of it have been released), content can also include product tutorials that show in what way Creo is better than its competitors.

If PTC didn’t re-evaluate their goals, they would have stopped the blog after the product launch.

Instead, they were able to continue to grow the blog and hit 100,000 visitors per month in a pretty “unsexy” niche.

Over 70% of those visitors are also new to PTC and are potential leads.

Case Study #2: Growing to $100,000 per month in revenue behind content marketing

(Original case study)

If you ever want to study a recent example of growing a business using content marketing, Groove is an excellent place to start (also check out my 0 to $100,000 case study posts).

Groove was far from a struggling company when they began their content marketing, but it still had a long way to go in order to hit their goal of $100,000 in monthly revenue:

If you’re not familiar with Groove, they sell help-desk software, which means that users pay a regular subscription fee every month.

Since they started blogging back in 2013, they’ve easily surpassed their original goal, which shows the effect content marketing can have on sales:

Lesson #3 – Content marketing isn’t always slow (if you can do this…): One of the things I always make sure to mention when I write about content marketing is that it usually takes time to produce results.

You’re not going to get tens of thousands of readers overnight, but it also doesn’t necessarily have to take months to get any traction.

Groove was one of the very notable exceptions to the normal growth of a blog.

On the very first post they published, they received more than 100 comments:

You can check out the dates on these comments, but most of them were made when it was first published.

And it wasn’t just random people. They even got Gary Vaynerchuk to chime in:

Considering that these influencers not only commented on the post but shared it as well, it’s not surprising that they were able to pass 1,000 subscribers from that single post.

These aren’t typical results, but they’re possible if you have 2 things:

1. A really interesting idea
2. Extensive promotion

One of the key things for Groove was being able to pitch the idea of a behind-the-scenes look at how they were growing their income. Even experienced marketers are interested in that if it’s executed well.

As for the second part, they identified a ton of relevant influencers and found ways to connect with them.

After that, they sent a really well-done email to formally introduce the idea and post:

If you want big results quickly, you need to implement content marketing tactics better than everyone else.

Lesson #4 – Transparency and content marketing should go hand in hand: If you look at just about any of the content that Groove has published on their blog since its inception, you will get smacked over the head by the transparency (in a good way).

Now that transparency is more common these days (thanks to marketers like Pat Flynn), Groove took it a step further.

Instead of just showing their successes, like most “transparent” bloggers do (which is still pretty interesting), Groove doesn’t hide much of anything.

As long as it adds value to content, they include it for the reader.

When they try different experiments, they share the results of all of them, even the bad ones:

The real value is in explaining how they overcame their challenges and achieved their successes.

And, of course, they share that too.

One final note on this: Don’t be transparent for the sake of it. Be transparent if it adds value to your content.

Since Groove usually focuses on their marketing efforts and experiments, the private data behind them actually adds a lot of value to the content, so it makes sense to include it.

Decide what parts of your business your readers would actually be interested in, and don’t be afraid to shed some light on them.

Lesson #5 – Always be actionable: In theory, it’s fairly simple to succeed using content marketing. Just create content that is as valuable as possible.

Of course, it’s more complicated than that in practice because there are many ways to go about it.

There are many key factors behind valuable content, but none is probably as important as its ability to be actionable.

If you can get readers to take action and achieve success with it, you will make your content extremely valuable to them.

By continuously providing actionable content, you attract loyal hordes of readers.

Any chance they get at the Groove blog, they show exactly how they tested something.

Case Study #3: 1,000 new email subscribers with one content marketing tactic

(Original case study)

This case study isn’t of an overall content marketing strategy—it’s of one specific content marketing tactic.

Jimmy Daly of Vero used Brian Dean’s skyscraper technique and got some amazing results:

• 30,000 page views
• 1,000 new email subscribers
• #2 Google ranking for a fairly competitive term

I think most content marketers would be happy to get these kinds of results with a single piece of content.

Lesson #6 – Quality always makes the difference: The key principle of the skyscraper technique is to look at the content that contains a particular keyword or subject and then create something on a much higher level.

If you truly have the highest quality content, along with good promotion, you’ll get great results on a consistent basis.

If you’d like to take a look, here’s the post that Jimmy made. Judge the quality for yourself, but I think it’s very high, especially compared to his competition back then.

At the time, he had the following table of contents for the post, which I think is very creative:

I’ve actually used this table of contents as an example of an effective formatting tactic a few times in the past.

Compare that to your typical table of contents modeled on Wikipedia:

Sure, it’s still useful, but it’s not of the same level of quality.

Show the 2 different tables of contents to a reader, and most will be unimpressed by the second one, but really impressed by the quality of the first.

If you actually check out his article now, he’s changed his table of contents to this:

It’s still more attractive than a typical table of contents, even if it’s simpler. I suspect that the reason for this change is to increase usability for mobile readers.

Regardless of the outcome, the intention was good. Jimmy was trying to make his content as high in quality as possible.

If you improve the quality of your content in as many ways as you can, you’ll get amazing results with your content marketing.

Lesson #7 – Influencers can drive explosive results: There are many different ways to grow a website (or more specifically, a blog’s readership).

There are 2 main types of successful blogs.

The first is the grinding blog. They do all the promotion themselves, find their readers, and convince them to come to the blog.

It works, but it can take a very long time.

The other type is the one that comes out of nowhere and becomes very popular in its niche.

Those are the ones that other established influencers love.

Once you can get influencers to support you, they can send you a great deal of consistent, high-quality traffic quickly. If you have enough influencers supporting you, you’ll have everything you need to become one yourself.

This is the ideal case; it’s very difficult to actually implement unless you’re offering something truly exceptional.

But it’s not an all-or-nothing situation.

Just because an influencer isn’t mentioning you at every opportunity doesn’t mean they won’t mention you at all.

Getting a few shares or article mentions from an influencer is a much more realistic, but still really effective, way to grow your blog.

One of the reasons why Jimmy was able to drive the initial burst of traffic to his post was that he connected with a few key influencers.

He emailed them beforehand, telling them about the post, and asked for a short piece of advice to feature in the article.

One of the influencers was Alex (the chief contributing blogger) at Groove:

Guess what happens when you feature someone in an article like that?

They are much more likely to share and help you promote the article (at least in little ways).

Look for ways to connect with influencers in your niche, and give value to them (in some form). That’s how you start to gain their support, which can accelerate the growth of your blog.

Case Study #4: 500-700 organic search traffic visitors per day with a simple strategy

(Original case study)

The first 2 case studies focused on the results that you can achieve with a great content marketing strategy, but I understand that not everyone is at the level where they’re aiming for hundreds of thousands of visitors per month.

This case study features good results, but nothing anyone else couldn’t achieve too.

After following their content marketing strategy, Express Writers were able to get about 18,000 search visitors per month to their blog—definitely a solid number, but nothing incredibly difficult for someone else.

They are in a fairly crowded niche: selling writing.

They offer a wide variety of writing services to businesses, such as blog post creation, press release writing, etc.

What was the strategy? In the words of one of their bloggers, Julia McCoy:

Four 2000-word pieces per week for our own blog, along with 4-6 more pieces per week for major guest blogs including such high-authority sites as Search Engine Journal, Site Pro News, SEM Rush and Content Marketing Institute.

The result of following that strategy was being able to outrank most of their competitors and getting consistent search traffic:

Lesson #8 – Successful content marketing is consistent: Unlike a few of the case studies we’ve looked at already, there’s nothing big or peculiar about this strategy.

That’s actually a really good thing.

You don’t want to count on going viral to succeed. It’s nice if it happens, but if you need it to grow your blog significantly, you have other problems.

Most marketers should be growing their blogs by consistently producing high quality content.

Express Writers created 8-10 strong posts every single week, and it led to these results. Keep in mind that the average visitor in this niche is a high value one. A business hiring a writer can spend thousands of dollars on a regular basis.

Additionally, from their regular readers, new readers from search engine results, and visitors from other places, they are able to get about 700 visits a day to their content shop (main sales page).

 

With a decent conversion rate, they are generating solid, consistent, and recurring revenue.

Lesson #9 – Practice what you preach: On top of driving traffic to their website with this content marketing strategy, the company enjoyed one other huge benefit—proof of success.

Since Express Writers is a company that sells content creation services, mainly to help clients improve their own traffic, this is a big deal.

A potential client can land on the blog, see that they know what they’re doing, and eventually end up hiring them based on that impression.

That’s huge.

Even more than that, I think that you should always be able to demonstrate to yourself that your product performs.

When you do that, you will never turn to cheap sales tricks to sell products; you will truly believe (and have the data to back it up) that your product or service is valuable.

It’s easy for this team of writers to sell their content and assert that it’s some of the best out there because it actually gets the results they claim it does.

If you’re advising leads or customers to do or buy something, make sure you’re the one to do it first. It will add an element of power and persuasiveness to your message.

Case Study #5: Image based content marketing tactic to increase overall organic traffic by 175%

(Original case study)

This fifth case study is one shared by Brian Dean again, but it’s his own results.

He used a technique for which he coined a term, guestographics, in order to get more backlinks for a page and improve its search engine rankings.

Originally, he wrote a post about on-page SEO.

As any other article he posts, this was a high-quality article.

It was getting a bit of search traffic, but not as much as Brian had hoped. So, he used this technique and was able to increase organic search traffic by 175.59%.

Not too shabby. And it also would have improved his rankings for other related posts on his site.

The tactic itself is pretty simple:

1. Create a great infographic.
2. Create a list of sites that write about whatever topic you covered.
3. Send them a link to your infographic.
4. Offer to write a custom intro if they agree to post it on their site.

Lesson #10 – Different types of content lets you expand your reach: So far, we’ve mainly looked at standard blog posts being used in content marketing.

Yes, those may make up a larger percentage of the content you end up producing, but there are many other types of content that you can produce.

For some messages, there are better forms of content than just standard blog posts.

In this case, Brian created an infographic.

And then, he combined it with his original article.

By doing this, he was able to promote his post again and further improve its rankings. He was able to take the original message of the article and reproduce it in an easier to digest format, which benefits his readers.

The takeaway from this case study is that whenever you create content, you should be thinking of 2 things:

• What is the best way to cover this topic? (to your readers)
• Would creating this content in multiple forms enhance the reading experience?

If you said yes to the second, you can get creative with your repurposing to create extra promotional opportunities.

Also, by creating different forms of content, you can expose your content to a new audience that you may not normally reach.

Lesson #11 – Great content is nothing without promotion: One of the biggest aspects of successful content marketing that you need to have drilled into your head until it’s habit is that all content needs promotion.

The only exception is when you have a large audience, because your audience will essentially promote your content for you by sharing it.

Other than that, there’s no point creating content if it isn’t getting in front of new readers.

When Brian created the infographic, he was able to email new sites who didn’t already link to him, and get them to link to his article. Check out what his referring domains graph looked like shortly after:

 

That’s a lot of new backlinks and the reason why his organic traffic increased.

Lesson #12 – Good marketing can be simple: You see popular blogs all the time and may think that they must be using some secret marketing techniques.

But the truth is that marketing comes down to building connections with the right people.

In most cases, there’s nothing secret or advanced going on.

In his case study, Brian shared the simple email template that he sent to various website owners to get them to post his infographic on their sites and link to him: 

You could write something like that, couldn’t you?

The difference between someone like Brian and a mediocre marketer is one of the lessons we have already studied—consistency.

He doesn’t just send these types of articles out to 10 or 20 website owners; he sends it out to hundreds.

He doesn’t just do it for one of his posts; he does it for every single post he creates.

This kind of consistent promotion is how you get the backlinks and the search traffic that comes with them.

Don’t stop yourself from taking action just because the content marketing strategy seems too simple or because you think there must be more to it.

Simple strategies are good. Execute them consistently and improve them when you can, and you will get the results you’re looking for.

Conclusion

If you ever get overwhelmed or confused during your content marketing journey, take a step back.

No matter what niche you’re in and no matter what type of business you run, someone has done it before.

This means that you can study them, learn from them, and use this information to overcome any obstacles that stand in your way.

In this post, I went over 12 lessons from 5 awesome content marketing case studies. These are lessons that apply to just about any content marketing strategy.

I strongly encourage you to implement these lessons as soon as you can. You’ll reach your goals faster because of it.

If you have any cool case studies (personal or otherwise), it’d be great if you could share them in a comment below.

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The Tricks of Financial Scam Artists

One side effect of being a personal finance writer is that you eventually wind up on the mailing list of all kinds of different financial publishing companies who want to send you copies of their books. I get at least a couple of emails a week offering to send me a review copy of some personal finance book or another and, to be honest, I usually don’t even bother with them unless there’s something distinctive and new about the book.

Most personal finance books fall into one of three categories.

Many books offer very basic personal finance information and serve as a basic reference guide on finances, explaining things like what a 401(k) is and why you might want one, or provides a big collection of tips and tactics that don’t build up into an overall strategy. These are great books for people just starting out, but in a universe where you can look up such information online, you really don’t need to read more than one of these. Sometimes, you’ll find one from a really great author with a great voice, like Amy Dacyczyn’s The Complete Tightwad Gazette, and those are worth reading.

Many more offer what I would call a gameplan of some kind, one that involves putting specific strategies to work in your life to achieve larger financial goals. These are generally the most interesting ones to me as they’re usually oriented around some central philosophy. For example, Your Money or Your Life is all about finding financial independence through strict frugality. The Total Money Makeover is about debt freedom through a smart debt repayment plan and self-motivation. These books are usually very clear right from the cover as to what their plan is all about – there’s no smoke and mirrors, just a path that involves some real work on your part.

Of course, there’s a third kind of book. I like to call this one the “secret” book. It’s the kind of personal finance book that claims to have some kind of “secret” that “they” don’t want you to know about that will lead you to financial riches. The language these books use is designed to make it sound like the world is a giant conspiracy and that the only way to success is knowing an obscure secret strategy or two that will bring you unimaginable wealth.

This latter group is the group of personal finance books that I have a real problem with. There is no secret to personal finance. There is no “hidden plan” that “they” don’t want you to know about. There is no hidden strategy that is going to suddenly bring you wealth. It doesn’t exist.

Trust me – I’ve researched and/or experimented with almost every financial tactic under the sun. What I’ve found again and again is that there are a handful of very telltale signs that indicate that a personal finance book is pitching some complete garbage that doesn’t ever work, doesn’t work without extreme luck, or makes someone else a lot of money while leaving you in the dust.

If you see a personal finance book or article or pamphlet doing any of these things, just close it and walk away. It’s probably a scam and even if it isn’t, the information they’re peddling is available elsewhere.

The Strategy Can’t Be Summarized in a Single Sentence

Almost every good personal finance strategy can be summed up in a single sentence. Spend less than you earn and save the difference to live a comfortable life and retire comfortably. Spend way less than you earn to retire early. Organize your debts by interest rate and make large payments on the top one on the list.

Naturally, such plans have many details that can be discussed, but you can understand the core idea in just one relatively short sentence and that short sentence makes sense.

Plans that are claimed to be more complex than that are suffering from one of two key problems. Either they truly can’t be compressed down like that, which means that they’re talking about some sort of short-term inefficiency that has likely already been gobbled up by the time you hear about it, or if you compress their plan down to a single sentence, it doesn’t make sense.

I call this the “single sentence test,” and it’s a powerful way to filter out some of the real nonsense out there.

The Plan Isn’t Clear From Reading the Book Cover or the First Few Paragraphs of the Article

If a personal finance plan passes the “single sentence test,” then that writer and that publisher is going to want to tout that single sentence right up front. After all, the value of a personal finance book isn’t in that single sentence, but in the implementation of that sentence.

Thus, if you read the back cover of a book or the first few paragraphs of an article and still don’t know what the single sentence summary of the plan they’re touting is, then your alarms should be going off. If they’re not leading with this single sentence plan summary, then it likely has one of the two flaws I discussed above.

Why is this? It’s because the single sentence plans that actually work are everywhere. It’s easy to find quick summaries of plans that work. Almost every personal finance blog out there is loaded with them. The value of the book is in how to implement that single sentence summary. Thus, if they don’t give you that summary up front, something is amiss and you shouldn’t waste your time with it.

The Article/Book/Pamphlet Is Telling You to Buy Additional Seminars

Many groups like to write articles or record podcasts or even produce full books or pamphlets for the sole purpose of promoting their seminars or other educational materials, which are often sold at a really high price. If you see any mention of high-cost materials or seminars, run.

Why run? I have seen a lot of seminar packages over the years and I have yet to see one that wasn’t just a repackaging of material you can find online or at your local library. Even worse, some of them don’t even pass the “one sentence test,” which means that they’re peddling a strategy that really doesn’t work all that well.

The purpose of personal finance seminars and learning materials is so someone can walk you through a Powerpoint presentation of something you can get from a book at your library or from a blog online – and you’re paying exorbitant amounts for this. They’re not offering secrets you can’t get anywhere else – they’re just charging you a huge premium for the same material you can get elsewhere. (If you really like to have someone talking to you, go to the audiobook section of the library instead and you’ll find exactly what you’re looking for.)

The Author Talks About Conspiracies and Insults Those Who Use Other Strategies

As soon as an author starts calling people who don’t follow his plan “hamsters,” you’re seeing a sure sign of someone who can’t rely on the strength of his plan alone. Instead, he has to stoop to personal insults to get the point across.

As soon as an author starts talking about vague powerful groups that are keeping knowledge from you, you’re seeing another sure sign of someone who can’t rely on the strength of his plan alone. Instead, he has to try to tweak your sense of the world being unfair to get you to listen.

A good personal finance plan makes sense on its own. It doesn’t need personal insults. It doesn’t need conspiracy theories and shadowy powers. It just needs to make sense and be followed with a clear plan of implementation. If you have that, you don’t need to call people “hamsters” or imply that you have “secret knowledge” or talk about the “shadow governments” that are keeping you from personal finance success.

The Author Talks About Results That Are Exceptional Without a Lot of Work Involved

Many personal finance books claim good results if you follow their plan – and they’re usually right. The catch is that the plan usually involves a lot of personal effort above everything else. It usually involves years of frugal choices, lots of introspection, and likely many more hours per year spent working to earn more money. Investment books might even tout great returns that “beat the market,” but they narrowly beat the market and involve lots and lots and lots of research to gain even a little bit – and even then, that little bit is often fleeting.

Why is that? It’s because getting ahead financially takes a lot of work and it’s because there is no way for the average investor to “beat the market” because any inefficiencies are already gobbled up by hedge funds and huge institutions with far more attention and resources than you have. That’s just reality.

That doesn’t stop some writers from telling you that they have the secret to huge returns on your investments or quick ways to pay off all of your debts or strategies for getting houses for free.

Here’s the catch with all of this stuff: if it truly were that easy, everyone would do it.

These plans either don’t work or they’re hiding a tremendous amount of effort that you have to contribute yourself to make them work.

Final Thoughts

There are a lot of good personal finance books and articles and plans out there, but the good ones always have a few key traits. The core of the plan is easy to explain and it’s never hidden. The author isn’t trying to sell you additional items like seminars or expensive learning materials. The author isn’t claiming unbelievable returns or making insane claims, nor are they spending their time talking about conspiracies or insulting people who aren’t following their plan.

Once you realize those things, it becomes pretty easy to filter out a lot of the nonsense in personal finance writing, and if you do that, you’ll be left with just good advice that makes sense and will work for you.

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