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As of October 2017, there are roughly sixteen marketing channels available to us. Businesses need to get very, very good at getting clients in just a few of these channels. Trying to master them all is not only extremely hard to do, it is also the fastest way to get stuck in the "idea of the week" rut. You need to discover the channels that are relevant to your audience and focus solely on those....
As a busy blogger, you’re probably juggling a multitude of different tasks, many of which are repetitive and frankly, quite boring. For your blog to take off and scale into something greater than a company of one employee, you must use your time efficiently and learn to automate and delegate.
Read on to learn about the practical tools of automation and how to use them to grow your business.
Looking for some new apps and tools to add to your social media marketing toolbox? Wondering which graphics, analytics, and productivity tools can help streamline your workflow? In this article, you’ll discover 23 tools and apps shared in the Social Media Marketing podcast’s Discovery of the Week....
The most successful inbound marketers learn skills and create habits in their first 100 days in this new role. To make sure your trajectory is set correctly, we've catalogued much of what you'll need to succeed in inbound marketing. Don't be scared by the length -- remember, this document is one to use over the course of three months. Still, it's not intended to be a complete list of every little thing you need to know -- rather, it’s a fairly comprehensive collection of the fundamentals. Your company's own plan can be tailored based on the goals you need to achieve, but this outline is a good guide to begin with....
If there's something that the early days of social media--circa 1990's and early 2000's with AOL and MySpace followed by the rise of Facebook--taught me, it's that people control the medium while brands merely ride the wave until the next new channel comes along. Successful brands and influencers find that by building communities of advocates on the platforms where their audiences live, they're able to maintain such relevancy provided that they also evolve with their audience and platforms. However, social media can be a waste of time for you and your business if you're not strategically positioning your marketing efforts around industry trends. Below are five reasons brand engagement is declining online, and what you can do about it....
The whole lead generation process is tough -- especially when you only rely on traditional methods. Sending cold emails and scraping together lists can be incredibly demoralizing because, let's face it -- most of those people don't really want to talk to you.
What if you could still reach your lead generation goals using methods that actually add value for your prospects?
This utopia of lead generation is, in fact, a possibility. To walk you through some of the different options, we've detailed several examples of modern lead generation methods below. These ideas provide valuable information to prospects that helps them instead of pushing them to buy from your brand. ...
The list can go on and on.Now don't get me wrong, all work to a degree. But if they're that well-known, how are they going to help you stand out? The good news is that there's still quite a few overlooked, but effective tactics you can add to your strategy. Below I share 11 of my favorite social media marketing tactics that you should test today....
Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) get almost 24 calls a month from marketing providers looking to sell them advertising or marketing products and services. Competition is fierce, and SMBs often have a difficult time choosing a provider.
Last month, I covered how the trend of fake online content leads to a general distrust of digital and online media. But the local digital marketing industry, especially in the area of SEO, suffers from its own share of issues that lead to a lack of trust by SMBs.
LSA (Local Search Association) conducted a survey to examine what challenges SMBs face when shopping for a digital marketing provider and what areas they feel are most important for marketers to address when trying to gain their business.
Below I discuss the results of the survey, data regarding client churn in the industry and ways in which marketers need to respond....
Want to get more out of your social media content? Wondering how you can save time and increase engagement? By repurposing popular posts and content on one platform for use on another, you can give your followers more of what they want. In this article, you’ll discover five ways to find and repurpose your most popular Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram posts....
I recently wrote an article about how you can "crush it" on social media in 2017--and the real truth everyone needs to hear in terms of actually seeing a worthwhile return on your investment. However, based on the amount of people who have reached out asking how to formulate effective social media strategies for the new year, I thought it would be helpful to dive a bit more into the weeds. Cutting right to the core, here is the number one rule every single business, brand, freelancer and online influencer needs to remember when it comes to social media marketing: Don't try to be everywhere at once....
I’ve been blogging for almost 4 years now and the one big regret I have is that I didn’t focus on building my list earlier. It wasn’t that I didn’t have an email list. I did. But it was really small and while I didn’t discourage signups, I certainly didn’t encourage them. And I didn’t have a good capture technique. Obviously, I learned my lesson and focused on building my list. But I was definitely behind on all the momentum I could have had. Lesson learned! So, if you have wanted to grow your email list, I want to make sure you have the resources to do so. I’m going to share with you my best tips for ways to use social media to grow your email list....
SEO and SMM are like pizza and cheese: you can get one without the other, but, believe me, it isn’t worth it.
Nowadays SEO cannot be effective without well-executed content curation. And that’s where social media kicks in — it helps you unlock untapped potential. Compared to other marketing channels, social media benefits SEO in unexpected ways. It’s not surprising that SEO and SMM have slowly become closely intertwined activities that all businesses want to take advantage of. But how exactly can SEO and SMM work together? Do social media signals affect your site’s visibility in Google? I’ve been investigating this topic for quite a long time and here's what I’ve learned so far
Marketo vs. Eloqua vs. HubSpot. Kapost vs. Newscred vs. Percolate. Sprinklr vs. Buffer vs. Hootsuite. And so on, and so on. The list of marketing technology vendors keeps growing. Which makes sorting through and implementing those martech tools a job in itself. But how does the explosion in martech help your marketing team get sh*t done today? It doesn't. So, while waiting for you to evaluate, decide, deploy, integrate, and optimize the spaghetti of solutions, try feeding your team a few lightweight apps that cost next to nothing and are dead simple to use....
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When was the last time you clicked on a banner ad? Was is it on purpose? As many as 60 percent of banner ad clicks are accidental. Only 9 percent of them are viewed for more than one second. Yet every day, experienced marketers waltz into the office with their latest banner ad idea. Or worse, autoplay video. This is partly why I'm building an AR company that helps make ads more interactive, but also a tell-tale sign that disruption is inevitable. Marketers are desperate to increase numbers and generate traffic using old-school techniques such as SEO, content, social, email, webinars and influencers. Of course, consumers sense these tactics and are feeling increasingly suffocated by belligerent ads while marketers aimlessly spin their wheels....
Social media is crucial to the success of any company's digital marketing strategy. Despite this, brands of all kinds and sizes are not using this tool to its full potential. Although the number of "follows", "likes" and "shares" is still important, the credibility of a brand is distinguished by far more than just this. Today, social media requires a unique set of skills whereby brands need to fully understand the needs of their audience. To help you out, I've put together 10 social media strategies you need to implement this year, whether you are a young entrepreneur or a well-established brand....
Why is research so important? It makes your claims credible, your content authoritative, and helps you earn more social shares and backlinks. In fact, an analysis of over one million articles from Moz and BuzzSumo revealed that research-backed content generates more shares and more backlinks than other content types. The thing is, finding the research to cite is tough sometimes. The original source data can be hard to track down and citations might be incorrect or missing, among other issues. For all of you content creators, bloggers, SEOs, and market researchers, we feel your pain. So we put together a comprehensive list of sources with original research data about all things marketing. Bookmark this blog post to have ideas handy for where to go when you need a stat to support your claim, or if you’re looking for great sources to learn about forthcoming trends in the marketing world....
With the caveat in the section above–that we’re often doing a little of both–and some informal polling of many esteemed marketers I know, here is where I’ve landed on social marketing vs. content marketing. Social marketing is a channel where we find potential customers by listening to earned conversations and analyzing our owned accounts. We then interact with those people to move them through the customer journey. You can use various tactics to make that movement happen. Content marketing is a tactic. It’s a method of marketing that allows companies to add value for potential customers by creating and distributing (sometimes through social) collateral like blog posts, videos, and web pages. These pieces of collateral entertain and educate your target audience about topics related to your product. They’re intended to generate interest in your offering by reinforcing relevant problems, challenges, misconceptions, and, finally, solutions....
Is social media part of your marketing strategy? If it is, you know how hard it can be to keep up with all of the latest news from the different social platforms. Things changing constantly can make it difficult to craft a cohesive social media marketing strategy for your business. Have no fear – I’ve put together 50 amazing social media marketing ideas, strategies & tips to help you put together a successful social media marketing plan. I’ll cover 10 takeaways each for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube....
So the question shouldn’t be how can I create content on the cheap, but rather, how can I do more with less?
The answer: create masterful content that is worth more. Content that generates traffic. Content that inspires shares. Content that gets written and talked about. Content that earns conversions. Content that wins trust. Content that positions you as an authority. Content that wins business, retains customers, and invokes referrals....
During November 2016, HubSpot launched a free Content Marketing Certification course. The course offers 10 classes covering the following topics:
- Understanding Content Marketing (class length – 14:41)
- The Power of Storytelling (class length – 24:55)
- Generating Content Ideas (class length – 15:29)
- Planning a Long-Term content Strategy (class length – 19:00)
- Building a Content Creation Framework (class length – 20:11)
- Becoming an Effective Writer (class length – 22:48)
- Extending the Value of Your Content Through Repurposing (class length – 24:47)
- How to Effectively Promote Content (class length – 22:07)
- Measuring and Analyzing Your Content (class length – 26:19)
- Developing a Growth Marketing Mentality (class length – 20:24)
The free certification course is designed to provide foundational principles needed to become an effective content marketer....
As social media marketing becomes more challenging and time-consuming, it’s time to get more organised when managing your brand’s social presence. It’s not easy handling a brand’s social presence, but its successful management can lead to great results. Social networks keep growing and they are heading into a more mature phase, which means that the challenges grow for every brand that tries to stay competent. No matter what goals you set for the new year, you still need to stay on top of your brand’s social media marketing and the right checklist may help you with all the tasks you need to do at the beginning of the year....
Visual content, done well, can be incredibly popular. Infographics, videos, data visualizations, and other forms of visual content can generate tons of engagement and attract links to your site.
More importantly, visuals help tell your story. Visual content can be an incredibly powerful marketing tool, one that helps your target audience remember you – better than a 1,000 word text article alone (no matter how great it is) ever could.
Here’s what’s trending in visual content marketing for 2017, according to a survey of 300 online marketers from Venngage, a platform that helps you create free infographics....
Some 53% of small business owners say social media is now their main tactic for online marketing, according to recent research fromVistaprint Digital. The report was based on data from a survey conducted in September 2016 of 1,000 owners of businesses in the United States with fewer than 10 employees. The researchers also included data from a survey conducted in May 2016 of 2,000 consumers in the United States. One-third of small business owners say their company website is a primary marketing channel, and 53% say their online presence is very important. Some 70% of respondents say they use a mix of print and online tools to market their small business. Check out the infographic for more findings from the report:...
I think many marketers are still reluctant to go all in on LinkedIn simply because they don’t understand how to utilize it properly. It’s also possible they don’t fully understand all the opportunities it presents.
Maybe it’s because of its robust set of features, the inherent learning curve, or the lack of understanding of the nuts and bolts of the platform. Whatever the reason, there’s a definite trend of marketers failing to extract LinkedIn’s full potential.
In fact, a study from the Content Marketing Institute found that an overwhelming number of LinkedIn users consider it to be ineffective as a marketing tool:
B2C marketers in North America in particular saw only limited results.
But what if I told you that there’s a way to kill it on LinkedIn and generate valuable, ongoing leads for your business? What if you could have an amazing ROI by following a fairly simple formula?
It’s definitely possible. The key is to infiltrate LinkedIn Groups....
In a platform world, publishers face tough decisions on where to place their resources. In August, The Economist faced this head on and axed its ailing Pinterest and Tumblr accounts while ramping up its commitment to LinkedIn.
The publisher had been experimenting on Pinterest for the past six months. But even with a social media team that had grown from two to 10 people, The Economist couldn’t make it click. “From day one, it was a struggle,” said Denise Law, community editor at The Economist. “We found it difficult to articulate what our raison d’être for Pinterest was. It’s not the place to share serious content; it’s more where people go to share ideas.”
For Pinterest, The Economist was posting pieces from 1843, its culture and lifestyle magazine, then called Intelligent Life. Articles from travel blog Gulliver’s Travels were also going there, as well as pieces from its archives and links to items from The Economist Store. But it was gaining no traction. When it cut the account, it had 5,000 followers. “Not enough to move the needle,” said Law, adding that its Tumblr account shared the same fate. Earlier this year, The Economist also culled a number of its Twitter accounts.here's
The Economist’s approach to social media is, according to the publisher, to promote quality over quantity. It’s taken that mission to LinkedIn, which it uses for brand awareness rather than to drive traffic. By tweaking its approach to publish a broader spectrum of content, The Economist saw its LinkedIn follower count grow from half a million last year to 2.4 million, and it continues to grow at a rate of 25,000 followers a week, according to Law....
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John Jantsch says trying to master all marketing channels is not only extremely hard to do, it is also the fastest way to get stuck in the "idea of the week" rut.