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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....
Are you tired of all the fluff you read on marketing?Want a list of tried and tested marketing technology tools and tactics you can immediately implement in your business? I’m sure you’ll pick off a couple of tips from the list below....
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....
Do you have valuable social media posts you don’t want to lose?
Want to learn how to back up your social media profiles?
Downloading your social media profiles, content, and contacts will ensure you always have what you need to keep your business running, no matter what platform or features come and go.
In this article, you’ll discover how to download copies of your social media content and profiles....
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:...
A lot of eyes are going to be on your website in the upcoming weeks. A National Retail Foundation survey found that more than 56% of holiday shoppers will purchase gifts online. What's more, almost 80% of shoppers are heading to the internet to research gifts, even if they end up actually purchasing the item in-store. Those numbers are only going up. The smartest marketers will prepare for this not only by prepping their website for higher-than-normal traffic and optimizing it for mobile devices, but also by giving their website design a dose of holiday cheer. It all starts with the homepage: The first page many people will see when they come to your website. How have other companies redesigned their homepages for the holidays? Let's take a look....
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....
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
In addition to the Discover, Create and Engage modules, we have included a guide for journalists that will explain how to get started on Facebook or simply grow your presence. We’ve heard from journalists that they need more information when deciding between setting up a Page or a profile and about how to manage privacy settings. The “Getting Started” course seeks to answer all of those questions and covers key steps for building out a professional journalistic voice on the platform, including how to apply for the Facebook blue badge that indicates verification.
In the coming weeks, we will also commence a series of webinars on the site which will be tailored to journalists who are both new and old to Facebook. These webinars will be organized according to new products and features, a person’s level of experience using Facebook as a journalist, and their role (newsgatherer, content creator, or audience engagement specialist)....
At the same time, Twitter is also one of the best platforms for getting in touch with celebrities, YouTube stars, marketing experts and of course, influencers within any industry. Twitter is usually my platform of choice for getting in touch with many big names in the online marketing space, while also grabbing their attention when promoting each of them through expert round up posts or online interviews. Not only does it grab their attention, it also makes the process of continued social sharing even easier.
Speaking of which… here are 15 of the most influential figures in the content marketing sphere that you should be following on Twitter, presented in no particular order....
Another misconception I have heard more than once is that social selling programmes require a dedicated team of millennial social media gurus and huge budgets to put together ad hoc content packages.
Trust me, if that is what you have been told, forget it.
Having trained thousands of sales professionals in real social selling best practices, I have come to realise it is needed to take a step back and differentiate between what social selling is and what it definitely isn't....
If you’re trying to increase the number of leads that your business gets from online channels such as SEO, PPC advertising or Social Media Marketing, you need to consider how well you’re attracting prospects who are top of the funnel. These are people who are part of your target market, but who may not be ready to purchase a product or service at this time. Draw these people in with top of funnel content.
I think it helps to visualize the entire buying process in the shape of a funnel. People at the top of the funnel (often shortened to “TOFU”) are doing general online research related to your industry. Continuing down the funnel, we describe people who are further along in the buying process as being in the middle of the funnel (MOFU) or at the bottom of the funnel (BOFU)....
My job as the Social Marketing Manager at Instapage is to be on the lookout for the latest trends then figure out how we can use them to promote our brand. We identify trends here two ways. The first is by testing. Every day we're trying new methods of reaching social users. Through time we're able to establish some new norms, and discover what others are doing to successfully move the social media marketing needle. Second, we listen to our users. By listening to their feedback, then taking it a step further and reading between the data points into what type of content they are engaging with over time, we come to understand what works and what doesn’t. Here are a few of the new best practices and emerging trends that are happening right now on social media....
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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....
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....
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....
If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know we regularly discuss social selling strategy, as do many others. But if you’re someone who learns best through visualization, you may find yourself frustrated by the lack of actual social selling examples on the web. Read on to discover a wide variety of inspirational, real world examples of social selling best practices in action....
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....
Putting together an A+ landing page can be tricky.
There are so many elements that a top-notch landing page needs, and making those elements the "best" they can be often depends on what your landing page goals are.
Take form length, for example. It's just one of the many components you need to optimize, but best practices will tell you that both short and long forms perform well -- it all depends on whether you want to generate a lot of (potentially) lower quality form submissions, or a smaller number of higher quality submissions.
Download our free guide to landing pages here to learn how to design landing pages that convert.
So if you're looking to up your landing page game, it's helpful to know what goes into a great landing page and see a few examples of these nuanced elements in action. Surprisingly, when I started doing research into the latter, I realized there are hardly any sites out there with examples of modern, impressive landing pages that are more than just a sign-up form on a homepage. So we decided to compile a list of landing pages we love ourselves....
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....
With all the different types of social platforms out there, it can be challenging for brand marketers to decide when is the optimal time and day to post. According to H1 2016 research, on Facebook and Twitter, the best-performing posts were made in the evenings, and later in the work week. Between January and July 2016,TrackMaven tracked 17.5 million social media posts from 17,737 brands worldwide across various industries to determine when was the best time and day to post. Social posts at the close of a work day (in Eastern Time) at the tail of the week performed the best on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, according to the data. Pinterest took this trend a bit further with posts tending to get the best traction on Fridays at 1am. Meanwhile, LinkedIn posts, which largely cater to the business crowd, had the advantage when made midweek at 9am....
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....
Are you looking for the newest social media tips and techniques? Want to know how the experts are staying ahead of the social media marketing curve? We asked top social media pros to share their favorite tips for getting the most out of social media. In this article you’ll discover 25 ways to improve your marketing and save time....
Like their predecessors, today’s social influencers are young, savvy, and creative—and can serve as powerful vessels for brands looking to expand their reach. But this generation is even more business-minded than the last. Here, we profile seven stars and get their 17 rules for social engagement today. All about Eva: At 22, Eva Gutowski is teaching brands like Sperry and Macy’s the new rules of social engagement.[Photo: Jenny Hueston] EVA GUTOWSKI Age: 22 Audience: Instagram: 4.6 million; Twitter: 2.2 million; YouTube: 7.1 million Specialty: Lifestyle vlogs; fashion 'grams Recent hit: A YouTube tutorial on how to up your back-to-school-supplies game using DIY craft techniques (1.4 million views)...
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Kudos to a HubSpot for creating this free content marketing course. it's an excellent introduction with practical tips for any SME to benefit from. Recommended reading.