I was trying to phone my father last Thursday.

I couldn’t get through.

The lines were down because a pickup truck had snapped the telephone wire connecting to their house. Their internet and tv was also offline.

I finally reached my father when he went to a coffee shop. He told me that Telus, their telecom provider, couldn’t come by the house for 2 days.

And no, we don’t live in the country. We live in the heart of an urban Canadian city.

Waiting 2 days for your phone and internet would be a pain for most people. And considering my dad runs an international business from his home office (and is on the phone at all hours of the night), this was a real problem.

What did Telus do? 

Writing an epic blog post is a lot of work.

Most of the time, it’s worth it.

But there are days when you’re not feeling up to the challenge.

We’ve all been there.

Don’t worry about it. 

On the days when you don’t have the time, energy or resources to write a masterpiece, you can still share something that’s relevant and engaging with your readers.

Here are 4 tricks to writing a blog post without doing any work.

I have a confession to make.

I love content marketing.

It’s one of the best ways for small businesses to attract customers.

But…

There are 3 misconceptions about content marketing that keep coming up, and if you’re going to blog about your business or use content marketing to attract customers, you should know about them.

Let’s dive right in.

The jig is up.

Forget about work and making calls – you’re spending 2 of every 10 minutes at your computer on social networks, and 3 of every 10 minutes on your phone.  

It’s not just you.

It’s your customers.

Together, we spend 121.8 billion minutes on social, every month. That’s a lot of time!

What does that mean for your small business?

This is where people want you to help them. This is where they want customer service. And it’s one of the biggest and easiest opportunities for you to capitalize on.

And no, you don’t need a huge team or budget to do it. In fact, we’re going to look at the 2 biggest things you can do to delight your customers and deliver remarkable experiences, in less than 5 minutes a day.

Alright, it’s time to learn how to hack customer service on social media.

We don’t often blog about new features we add to Spokal, but I thought we’d make an exception for this one. 

 It’s a significant step forward to increase reach and distribution through Social Media – while keeping it all seamlessly tied to your overall content marketing strategy.

Now, not only can you write SEO optimized blog posts, drag and drop attributed Flickr images and Tweets into your posts right from within Spokal, but you can customize what gets published to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn (or even Buffer). 

You can also auto-schedule multiple tweets for each new piece of content using a simple, yet powerful auto-scheduler function. 

You can customize each Tweet or post before it goes out, re-schedule it, remove it or add new ones all from the super simple drag and drop calendar. See all you self-promotional tweets at a glance. 

No thanks.

I’m not ready.

I’m like the rest of the people who land on your website – 97% of us don’t want to buy something today.

But 70% of us will buy something similar to what you sell in the next 2 years.

The goal of content marketing is simple: capture that 70% so people buy from you, not your competition.

By creating and sharing content your customers love, you can start building a relationship with them. And when they’re ready to buy – either today, tomorrow or 2 years from now – you’ll be top of mind.

Here’s the problem.

We’re obsessed with native advertising.

Every publisher is hooked. From Forbes, The New York Times and Washington Post to BuzzFeed, Mashable, StumbleUpon, Twitter and Facebook.

And every brand is jumping onboard. From RedBull, Porsche and Oreo to AT&T, Intel and Target.

A few weeks ago we answered one of your biggest qs about this trend –  will native advertising work for my business? Now we’re going one step further. 

With more than $4.6 billion being invested in the latest marketing craze, how are you going to maximize the impact of your native advertising campaigns to get customers?

These 5 steps will guide you.

p.s. Need a quick refresher on native advertising?

It’s advertising designed specifically for a digital channel (like Facebook or Twitter) that doesn’t interrupt the user experience (aka we enjoy consuming it). This infographic from Mashable will tell you everything you need to know.

This isn’t your typical bucket list of stats.

Those are overwhelming. And often out of context.

We’re going to do something a little special. Sort of like paint by numbers, except without the paint. We’re going to explore 9 facts that impact you – even if you don’t realize they do – and you can:

0. Stop reading. Yup, that’s always an option.

1. See why they’ll make you a better blogger.

2. Learn how to implement them to pimp out your blog.

3. Share them if you want remarkable content.

Wait, why?

Facts, stats and data show your readers you know what you’re talking about. They’re a great way to establish your online authority and give you street cred because they back up what you’re saying.

This is the trifecta of blogging stats.

Let’s begin.

The World Is Big