Latest From the Blog

Cream featured graphic titled "Marketing Consultant," with a kicker reading "same title, four jobs" and a white panel labeled "the consultant spectrum" showing four tiers by scope: tactical specialist (one channel), strategic consultant (strategy), senior advisor (full funnel), and Fractional CMO (leadership).

Digital Marketing
May 21, 2026

What Is a Marketing Consultant? The 2026 Guide to What They Do, What They Cost, and When You Actually Need One

Here’s something most “what is a marketing consultant” articles won’t tell you: the role doesn’t really have a single definition. It spans everything from a freelancer…

ByNeal Schaffer
OnMay 21, 2026

25 Content Marketing Tools featured graphic on cream, a grid of 25 tools across ten categories

Content Marketing
May 20, 2026

25 Content Marketing Tools I Actually Use and Recommend in 2026

Let’s face it: content marketing is hard, and it ain’t getting any easier. Every business, from decades-old establishments to enthusiastic startups, is fighting for attention online.…

ByNeal Schaffer
OnMay 20, 2026

Light featured graphic titled "Longtail Keywords Beat the Big Words," showing a search demand curve with a small head of high-volume terms on the left and a long tail stretching right, labeled "head terms" and "the long tail," with subcopy on low competition, high intent, and AI-search citations.

Search Engine Optimization
May 19, 2026

Longtail Keywords: The SEO Asset That Quietly Beats the Big Words (And Wins You AI Citations Too)

Most SEO budgets are pointed at the wrong end of the search demand curve. According to Ahrefs’ analysis of its U.S. keyword database, roughly 95% of…

ByNeal Schaffer
OnMay 19, 2026

Cream featured graphic titled "Get Seen on LinkedIn," with a kicker reading "written from 1,000+ posts," a stylized LinkedIn post preview on the right, and subcopy noting the first ~140 characters decide everything and describing the hook, structure, and cadence used.

LinkedIn
May 18, 2026

How to Write a LinkedIn Post That Actually Gets Seen in 2026

I’ve been publishing on LinkedIn since the platform was small enough that you could recognize most of the active voices by name. Three books later, a…

ByNeal Schaffer
OnMay 18, 2026

LinkedIn SSI Score featured graphic on light, a donut dial reading 67

LinkedIn
May 14, 2026

LinkedIn SSI: What Your Social Selling Index Score Really Means in 2026

While most marketers spend their budgets chasing attention on mass-market social networks like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, sales professionals have always known something different: LinkedIn is…

ByNeal Schaffer
OnMay 14, 2026

Cream featured graphic titled "Ecommerce Photography," with a kicker reading "product images that sell" and a list of the six product-photo types: hero, detail, scale, lifestyle, group, and 360 spin.

Ecommerce Marketing
May 13, 2026

Ecommerce Photography in 2026: A Practical Guide to Product Images That Sell

Most ecommerce stores lose sales the moment a customer lands on the product page. Not because of price. Not because of shipping. Because the photos look…

ByNeal Schaffer
OnMay 13, 2026

Ecommerce Marketing
May 12, 2026

Ecommerce Trends in 2026: 7 Shifts Rewriting Online Retail (and What Marketers Need to Do About Each One)

The shift happening in ecommerce right now is bigger than the move to mobile was fifteen years ago. I don’t say that lightly. When mobile took…

ByNeal Schaffer
OnMay 12, 2026

Neal Schaffer is an international speaker, digital marketing consultant, Fractional CMO, university educator, and the author of six books on digital and social media marketing, including Digital Threads (2024), The Age of Influence (HarperCollins Leadership, 2020), Maximize Your Social (Wiley, 2013), and Maximizing LinkedIn for Business Growth (2nd ed., 2026). He teaches social media marketing to executives at Rutgers Business School and personal branding and influencer marketing at UCLA Extension, hosts the Your Digital Marketing Coach podcast, and has keynoted in 14 countries across 4 continents. His work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Inc., Mashable, Huffington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, and the LinkedIn Business Blog, and he serves as an official Adobe Express Ambassador. Neal is President of PDCA Social and is based in Irvine, California. He is fluent in Japanese and Mandarin Chinese. Learn more about Neal →