The Only Guide to Content Marketing You’ll Ever Need

by AlaynaFrankenberry, posted in content writing

Notepad with words content marketing concept.

 

By now, you probably already know how to pick the right SEO keywords and how to write a blog post that generates organic traffic and converts — but what about your content marketing skills and strategy? Are they as strong — and targeted — as they should be?

We’ve been studying and honing the craft for years, and we’ve seen content marketing work ROI wonders for all of our clients, from the national brands to the small businesses. If you’re interested in making a career out of content marketing, you don’t need a degree to do it — you just need to start by reading the right articles and putting them into practice.

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When the Going Gets Tough: How to Make a Relationship Last (Content Writing)

by AlaynaFrankenberry, posted in content writing

Couple having sex in bedroom

Isn’t falling in love fun? It’s all roses and laughter, late night sexcapades and staring into each other’s eyes. But staying in love? That’s another story. As the years pile up, so do the utility bills, the misinterpreted text messages and even the occasional fight in a grocery store parking lot. So how do those “married for 70 years and still madly in love” people do it?

Here’s a secret — they aren’t any more in love than you are. They just know how to ride out the rough patches as a team, and they use a variety of skills and strategies to make it happen. Want to learn how to make a relationship last? You’ve come to the right place.

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After Hours

by AlaynaFrankenberry, posted in poetry

I watched the peaks of your egg-carton spine
writhe against the loose blue hospital knot
at your neck where the cotton fell away
after everyone else had gone.
I pressed my purpled feet, with yours,
against that ancient wooden bed frame.
Above us, in muted ecstasy
the history channel’s Indian women danced.
I envied their clasped gold-dusted hands,
remembering the pastor who hours before
had appeared at your bedside, Bible gleaming,
with that assured smile all believers own.
I wished for a painted elephant or glowing saint
to process through that stagnant and weary room;
to drape your shrunken neck with flowers and turn
your restless ageless moans to hymns.
We played the tape your father had left;
listened to man-made rain and unnamed birds.
Behind the thunder, I started to cry
realizing we’d have the charge
of manufacturing our own happiness
from now on.

Published in The Pittsburgh Post Gazette 2006.

Why You Haven’t Seen Me in Awhile

by AlaynaFrankenberry, posted in flash fiction

After you left, I crawled deep under my bed down the hidden cavern to where I keep my devious contraptions. Unscrewing a stalactite, I unearthed the secret photographs I’d taken with my eye machine of you, sleeping or sweating and always very naked. I donned the special coat I only wear for scheming and slunk down an alley, knocking on a certain door that trembled like a mouth in the rain. I knew a guy. He’d deposed royalty with a single lock of hair, but as he stooped over your photos, shuffling, a new smile squirmed onto his face. They were too good, is what he said, and we chartered a boat to the coast of Crete where he knew a guy, he said, who’d be better at dealing this particular hand. Oh, how it grew away from me, the whole broiling plot. We rose from bending back alleys to galleries by the sea. How they swooned over you, ancient art collectors with their hands still warm from fingering Epimetheus. One by one, my photographs were auctioned away. Some made to hang in ornate frames in salt buffeted bedrooms. Some locked away in cabinets full of crystal. They heaped gold upon me, decorating me like the sole medium to a god. Their ardor grew to a fever pitch. Enlarging some photos, the townspeople built giant floats for parades or carried you to sea like a saint set adrift in a halo of bindweeds. Rudely copied versions of you appeared on t-shirts, candles, even scapulars which tourists snatched up with wild abandon. I’d meant to disgrace you, you see, to your friends and neighbors but here I am, so far away from you and everyone, and it’s gotten away from me too. Even now, I can hear them outside my tiny apartment raising a call for you. I can’t move under my many jeweled hats, but I can hear them, can hear their passion pulsing through the cold clay of my bedroom walls. They are in love with you, every one of them, and it is my fault. I should have never let anyone see you through my eyes.

Published in Gigantic Sequins 2010.