Link building is seriously the best way to boost your SEO. Seriously. But it’s also difficult and time-consuming. On the flip side, there’s link earning, but it’s also difficult and time-consuming. Damn, we just can’t win.

There’s really no easy way to get backlinks unless you want spammy links (hint: you don’t). But getting links is still 100% essential in digital marketing. Today we’re gonna teach you about link earning, which will allow you to leverage what you’re already doing to get more links.

Aaron Agius and Sujan Patel outline the whole idea in their 13-minute podcast, but we’ve got the show notes right here as usual:

• (1:22) Link earning is crushing it for Sujan’s company MailShake. It’s getting them 50+ backlinks per month.
• (2:16) Link earning comes from creating content that is based on actual customer problems and questions. You know this story, it’s gotta be killer content.
• (3:37) Sujan publishes all of this content on their company blog — no guest posting or anything like that.
• (4:17) You can earn links from your customers. If you have a customer who writes a blog that relates to what you do, just get in touch with them. It’s literally that simple. If they love your product, they’re probably willing to write about you.
• (7:10) Having a good product is important for link earning, but having a well thought out brand is even more important.
• (10:20) About 1/3rd of Sujan’s links come from creating content that fixes gaps in the industry.
• (11:55) Creating one piece of anchor content can do the work for you.

Yo, that is a lot of cheddar. And it’s something you definitely can’t get with the yawn-inducing, trashcan-clicking “Just Checking In” email.

As creatures now hyper-consuming only things we want to see — and editing newsfeeds and inboxes accordingly — the window of opportunity to grab our reader’s attention is fleeting. In fact, the average person decides in less than 3 seconds whether they’ll read an email or not.

So, how do you break through the noise? HubSpot asked the experts, interviewing entrepreneurs, salespeople, and all-around hustlers to get a look at their most powerful email templates.

Like driving $400 million in revenue and achieving an 80% open rate kind of powerful. Not to mention: Connecting with over 27 CEOs (from Amazon, Twitter, and more) without any introductions and increasing average sales quota by 215%.

Take some time and bookmark these. They are solid gold, baby.

Given the exponential rise of LinkedIn, it’s no wonder regular job listing sites have taken the back seat. So, what do you do when you want to remind everyone that you’re still there? For Monster.com, you go big — literally.

With their new campaign starring a giant, fuzzy, heroic monster — something Pixar could have created — the company rebrands themselves as a powerful, reliable, and approachable source. Remember their terribly off-putting former mascot?? Hard pass.

Despite the ad’s focus on a giant purple monster, this new campaign is incredibly human, addressing poor working conditions, equal pay rights, and more. Fall in love with the purple giant below.