In my last post, I shared some inspiration from profound speakers at HubSpot’s content marketing conference, INBOUND 2014. Today I’d like to take a closer look at one of the recurring themes and what we as marketers can do to improve our efforts.

It’s common knowledge that good communicators are also good listeners. But as marketers (and perhaps creatures of habit), we tend to forget this fact and jump at the chance to talk about our product to anyone who even looks in our direction. So how can we listen more and talk less?

Virtually every industry on the planet is being revolutionized by technology, and marketing is no different. In the past, sellers controlled the buying cycle, with salespeople acting as the first point of contact with buyers through traditional methods such as cold calls and trade shows. However, today’s buyer has all the power, putting off talking with salespeople from anywhere between 60 to 90 percent of their way through the buying cycle. Buyers are interacting with companies on their own terms—reading blogs and website content, engaging on social media, subscribing to email newsletters, attending webinars and more—then contacting salespeople when they are good and ready.

Analytics make it simple to analyze your email marketing’s effectiveness, from hard and soft bounces to click-through rates and conversion. But what do you do with that information, and how to you improve if your campaigns are below the industry average?

Here are a few benchmarks broken down by industry, courtesy of MailChimp:

“If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.” The old quote—attributed at times to Winston Churchill—says it all. Concise writing is difficult. But it’s important—not just as a matter of good writing, but for effective marketing.

In 2013, a human being’s average attention span was calculated at 8 seconds. That was down from 12 seconds in 2000. A goldfish’s attention span? 9 seconds. That’s right, we have shorter attention spans than goldfish.

Let’s face it. Even the most well thought out strategy still requires a lot of time in the execution phase to ensure your posts will attract the right readers. Here’s a quick blogging checklist for crossing and dotting all necessary letters before hitting publish:

Topic:

• Is created with a target persona in mind – unless yours is a personal blog, it really shouldn’t be a place to freestyle and write about any topics that come to mind. What matters to your buyer personas?
• Helps solve a problem – by doing your homework up front and creating a persona, you know what your prospects’ pain points are. How can you help alleviate them through relevant blog posts?