Throughout the course of every day, I use the Google Keep app on my phone and on the web, to save and make notes about what I want to share, review, read, and remember. I tag the notes liberally since there’s a lot of crossover between my interests and my work.

This morning I was perusing the notes that I had recently tagged “Content to Curate” and “Travel.”

Here are 4 things I have been reading…

1. Ann Handley: WHY WE NEED SMALLER STORIES IN CONTENT MARKETING. Ann makes the case for honing in on the specific, detailed stories that we’re telling to create content that helps our audience relate to our message.

2. Peru: take the high road to Inca glory – I’m obsessed with Peru (as you might know). I love the country and I went back recently for two weeks to share my love of the Andes with a group of women and their daughters. We trekked to Machu Picchu. This article reveals how much more there is to Peru, beyond MP.

3.   I read A LOT. And I read many genres, including world literature. Yesterday, I found out that Amazon is giving away 9 Kindle books by authors from around the world, to celebrate World Book Day. You can download any or all of the books here. I downloaded 8 of the books since I had already read one of them.

4.  In the Marketing Trailblazers Book Club, we’re reading The 12 Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks than Others Do in 12 Months* by Brian P. Moran. The book was recommended by my colleague, Sue Painter of Confident Marketer.

What I’m Checking Out

5. The geek in me loves trying out new marketing tools. In fact, when I did my taxes, I discovered software was one of my biggest expenses last year! I justify it by telling myself that it’s my job to experiment with tools and software in order to make the best recommendations to my clients so that they can be more productive and efficient with their time and energy.

I’ve been seeing a lot of buzz about the launch of a tool called iTaggz*, software that helps you find the best, trending hashtags on Instagram. I bought it yesterday and logged in this morning to give it a test.

Impressive. Hashtags are the secret sauce of Instagram. It’s how your content gets found and seen by a wider audience. It’s how you find influencers and grow your following.

The iTaggz software is easy to use to research what hashtags brands and niche businesses are using and the amount of engagement they’re getting. You can save and categorize your research and even have daily emails sent to you with the top recent posts and hashtags in your niche. Make a list of the top hashtags and use them in your IG posts (make sure they make sense for YOUR content). The tutorial videos are short and simple to understand and implement. iTaggz is currently $49.

What have you enjoyed reading and experimenting with in the last few weeks? Please let me know in the comments, below. And, feel free to share the post with your friends and colleagues!

Denise
You Guide To Better Visibility on the Web

This post was originally published as an email on April 19, 2019.

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Photo by Reinis Birznieks on Unsplash

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