Articles by John Hargrave
Anoint a Content King (or Queen)
Reading this post will be the most lucrative thing you do today. I’m going to share with you one simple tip that will save you and your company thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars. It’s a tip we’ve learned from watching hundreds of customers use our Media Shower content marketing platform: companies... Read More...
How to Write a Good Article Pitch
At Media Shower, all our content begins with the article pitch, which is a title and description of the article we’re proposing to our customer. For example: Title: How to Write a Good Article Pitch Description: This article explains how to write a high-performing article pitch. It explains everything we’ve learned across thousands of article... Read More...
The Average Blog Post Gets 3.3 Conversions
A few years back, my family and I were debating the merits of Apple vs. Android around the dinner table (this is the kind of conversation you have in a geek family). We were upgrading all our cellphones, and trying to decide whether we should buy into the iPhone or the Android ecosystem. The four... Read More...
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Internal Bottlenecks (Or, How to Get Your Team Out of Their Own Way)
At our content marketing company Media Shower, we’ve worked with hundreds of organizations, and by far the biggest problem we see is internal bottlenecks that keep good content from getting published. Regular readers of our blog know that the average blog post gets 3.3 conversions. This means there’s a simple formula: More content =... Read More...
You Gotta Make Hay While the Sun Shines
I once had a manager who would often tell us, “You know, as they say back in my home state of Indiana, you gotta make hay while the sun shines.” This was a man who’d be wearing $300 Italian loafers and a $500 Hugo Boss sport coat, so it was a little hard to believe... Read More...
On the 20th Anniversary of Media Shower
Media Shower officially began in June 1995, twenty years ago. It doesn’t seem like twenty years. It seems more like nineteen, nineteen and a half. As I look back two decades later, I want to highlight a few lessons that I hope will be helpful for those just starting the journey of starting a company.... Read More...
Practice, Not Perfection
My son Isaac recently performed in the spring concert at his middle school. His jazz combo played “‘Round Midnight” by Thelonious Monk, and it was incredible. These kids were playing this technically difficult, harmonically complex song, and playing it with feeling. The audience felt it, too: even the adults who thought Thelonious Monk was a... Read More...
What I Learned from Jay and Christy’s Wedding
My friends Jay Stevens and Christy Ramsey recently got married, and they asked me to officiate. I warned them that I do not have any formal religious training, and in fact have been banned from a number of churches and synagogues. They didn’t seem to mind. Jay and Christy did something simple and brilliant for... Read More...
How to Do a Podcast Interview
I’ve been doing a number of podcast interviews for my upcoming book Mind Hacking, which hits bookshelves in January 2016. It’s a little unusual to do publicity so far in advance, but I’m treating it as a way to work out the material for the official promotional tour. My first interview was with the programming... Read More...
How to Make Facebook Better
I recently read a great book on business relationships called Riding Elevators Backwards by Larry Stevens, a partner at PriceWaterhouseCoopers. He dedicates a chapter to building relationships on social media, including Facebook and LinkedIn. I will quote just two words from the book: “be deliberate.” Be deliberate in what you post to social media. With... Read More...