Happy Friday everyone! I'm looking forward to yet another great discussion this afternoon! Can't wait to get into it.

Sounds great!

The path you layout for all of us to follow is truly brilliant in its simplicity and ability to connect the dots from engagement to conversion. The only quandary I have though is being able to close the loop with sales. From experience, I know this is easier said than done especially when working with a sales team that does not believe in marketing. What strategy do you recommend I use for increasing the chances of sales buy-in to my content strategy?

What often happens is marketing neglects sales and the knowledge they bring to the table, that's a big mistake...

Once they understand your strategy and have an opportunity to provide input they will feel more comfortable about it. Tell them how you plan to release your strategy and how you will need their help to measure the effectiveness...

Your last article on calls to action incorporated itself really well into this article. I have never given the CTA a great deal of thought, but by using landing pages with social media has been a huge innovation for my company. Using it as you say in this article will surely only improve my list building activities! My concern though, is this looks like it could get logistically heavy to manage. How have you done what you suggest in your article today easily so it didn’t take forever?

The way I like to do it is by initiative. Don't overwhelm yourself by trying to do too many things at once. Break each initiative down and get each one done every week...

So first, build your content, whatever it may be - an article for download, a report, a white paper, whatever! Build it...

Third step is going putting a second call to action in the piece people are downloading...this piece can offer a free trial of a product, a sales call, or a link to a recorded webinar...

There's no mistaking it, this can be a very difficult task if you don't break it down into digestible pieces. Start small and work your way up.

I would like to write more content but I have huge problem in that I don’t know what to write about! Do you have strategies for coming up with new ideas on things to write?

First things first, your content will be so much better if you're able to do two things - make it hyper relevant to your audience (so know who you're writing for) and solve problems!...

As far as ideas for generating new content, I get this question all the time. There are a few things you can do to generate new content, I'll give you a few ways...

2. Interview someone

4. Pick a company and demonstrate how they did something right.

6. Share how you were successful at doing something

8. Let a guest write for you.

A long shot, but what would you recommend for a guy who sells specialty designer shoes? Like, I could write about the shoes, but eventually I’m going to run out of things to say. I have to imagine this is something that everyone worries about at some point, not having anything to write.