The end of 2017 brings a focus to planning, strategy and change in the marketing teams of every business, whether you have an actual team or it’s just you, the solopreneur. This collection of the best of December articles reflects this focus and gives you the thoughts and processes for consideration as you launch into the new year.

This article about sincerity and dialogue in business is my most popular for 2017. The value of sincerity in business cannot be overstated, especially as building solid, long-term relationships with your customers is easily one of the most profitable things you can do.

Who doesn’t want their blog to succeed? Yet, especially since the definition of success may be a bit different from blogger to blogger, this can be tough. This post from the team at Postach.io outlines seven key ideas that will move you closer to success, regardless of how you define it!

According to a report by the Content Marketing Institute, 83% of marketers consider a content strategy very effective in increasing revenue. Despite this broad understanding, only 31% have a documented strategy. Why the big gap here? This article from Entrepreneur outlines what a solid strategy is made of and how this can drive your bottom line.

What is “long-form content”? It is typically described as being longer than 2,000 words, and is frequently longer (there is a feature in The Guardian entitled “The Long Read“ that regularly tops up at 5,000 – 7,000 words!). Long-form wi more work and takes longer to write well, so why do it, especially when you’re already so slammed? Why not just set up a few dozen Facebook posts and be done with it? This article by Irfan Ahmad not only outlines the WHY but a bit of the HOW as well.

Valeria Maltoni is, hands-down, a top expert on conversation, dialogue and communication in business. This article is a deep-dive into the particulars of negotiation and its importance in business and relationship-building. A great number of conversations today are not actually conversations but exercises in confrontation. Valeria writes, “Getting past no is a good primer to organize our thinking and not fall prey of a closed mindset that ascribes fixed traits to the other party. We want to give them the benefit of being heard, rather than approaching the conversation with the idea we can do little or nothing to change their behavior.”

I have spoken to a large number of business owners who have had a negative experience with Facebook Ads. They use the wizard to create the ad, allot some cash and a time-frame to it, and hit GO. Much of the time they equate a Large dollar figure with how they expect the ad to perform. They are disappointed with the outcome for a number of reasons…..which is the topic of this great article by Nital Shah at Business2Community.

Who ISN’T trying to operate their marketing on a tight budget? With the ongoing growth of content marketing, this gets to be an even tougher nut to crack. This article by Jonathan Chan of Foundr outlines five top strategies to make sure you can do this on a shoestring budget.