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You have a local based brick and mortar business, so no reason to invest in online marketing, right? Location based businesses couldn’t be more wrong. You have a local based brick and mortar business, so no reason to invest in online marketing, right? Location based businesses couldn’t be more wrong. Do not miss out on sales and customers by ignoring or avoiding online marketing. One of the key principles of business is to be where your target audience is looking for you. A growing number of consumers are searching online before making a purchase decision, so your business needs to be there in order for them to find you and include your company in their decision making process. According to the BIA/Kelsey report, 97% of consumers use online media before making local purchases. Google Research showed that 9 out of 10 internet searches resulted in a follow up action, such as calling or visiting the business. Mobile searches triggered an additional action or conversion 73% of the time; and 28% of mobile searches resulted in a store visit or purchase. Since mobile searches are on the rise, this behavior is only going to continue to increase. How do consumers search for businesses? - 90% use a search engine - 48% use the online Yellow Pages - 42% use comparison shopping websites Embracing and online marketing can help you get the edge on your competition; especially when you take into consideration that a recent study shows that 50% of small businesses’ online listings are incorrect and 70% of small business owners state they do not have time to keep their online listings updated. Therefore, something as simple as updating and optimizing your online listings, including the Yellow Pages, will give your business the edge over the competition. Four takeaways for brick and mortar businesses looking to take advantage of online marketing...
There’s never been a better time for marketers for to see, understand and respond to the customer journey. Today’s “open social age” has created a “looking glass” for companies to understand the complex nature of their customers as millions of them are broadcasting their opinions, attitudes, behaviors, experiences and even unmet needs on a real-time basis. In fact, society is rapidly approaching a complete digital state. New technologies have transformed the way people work, learn, communicate and share. And consumers freely share their opinions and experiences on social networks, blogs, micro-blogs, message boards, forums, mainstream news sites and a variety of other online platforms. According to Dimensional Research, over 90 percent of these consumers rely on independent reviews of products and services before they make a purchasing decision....
Tips on going beyond Twitter to dig for news and contacts... In this feature we look at how can journalists reach out to people beyond their normal networks, for example using forums, SMS and other social networks such as Weibo, to find news stories and sources from different communities.
It focuses on gathering news and finding contacts from BME (black, minority and ethnic) communities in the UK, and also at newsgathering in different parts of the world.
There is also advice on thinking about the social networks and online spaces where you push out stories....
Via Andy Bull
Emaze vision – to change the way people create presentations through a simple, fully automated process that generate powerful and engaging showcases.
Via Baiba Svenca, Gust MEES
Highlight, focus or magnify objects in PowerPoint presentations, on the fly and with zero preperation
Via Robin Good
Bloomingdale's is a leader in fashion in the brick and mortar world. But how does a store with history back to the 1800s adapt to the new online world? Let's look at a few tactics Bloomingdale's uses in content marketing and a few SEO opportunities....
It is no longer all fun and games. A few years back it used to be a lot easier to build and manage a social following or maintain a brand’s online presence. A good old portfolio website and a Facebook brand page with a few hundred fans was all you needed. Now, you need a strategy, a plan, a manager and of course an ‘oh, crap what just happened’ plan. While on the surface it might seem easier than ever to manage a brand, I want you to consider the contrarian take that it is in fact more difficult to manage a brand in the age of new media. Why? Ponder and please comment on these 4 points...
Attention! Here is an invaluable guide for creating content that gets noticed. So if you want to engage, enthral and entice, read on... Tom Barton, UK head of communications at IT business and consulting services company Capgemini, says a question he is asked nearly every day is “Can you help us produce great content?”. His number one rule is to think about your audience. “Picture a person reading your writing and ask yourself who they are and what they want to know. It is unlikely they are going to be too dissimilar to you, so try to make it personal. Making it great is making sure it is useful to your reader. And for it to be useful, it must be clear and provide something practical to take away, whether food for thought, or a tip which can be implemented easily. It should also be unique – don’t write something that’s too similar to content found easily elsewhere.” To make sure your content is king, follow this expert guide....
Have you seen what’s been dubbed “the greatest car commercial ever?” If you haven’t, don’t bother looking for it on TV. It’s online . . . and it’s racking up millions of viewers. Audi’s latest spot pits the “Old Spock” (Leonard Nimoy) vs. the “New Spock” (Zachary Quinto) in a promotion for the new Audi S7. (Watch the video below.) It’s engaging. It’s persuasive. It’s relevant. And it’s a great example of the impact and reach of video marketing. Marketers recognize videos like these play an increasingly important role in the marketing mix, yet many of us have questions about producing effective video campaigns –regardless of whether we have Audi-sized budgets or not. How can you squeeze every ounce of value from your investment, and use video not only to inform and entertain, but also to capture leads and drive revenue?...
A good SEO strategy is the difference between your business easily being found online and getting lost in the noise of thousands of other businesses trying to stand out. With Google’s ever-changing algorithm, it can be difficult to know what’s effective here and now. In 2013, success in SEO hinges on businesses putting together a robust combination strategy that brings together an integrated web of great content, credible links, and social signals. Each of these pieces supports the other, providing tremendous value to readers, building your authority and brand value, and distributing your content across new channels. Here are the highlights of what to think about in terms of each of the three pillars of great SEO....
It has become a staple of the Facebook world: the social media guru. These are the “experts” in social media marketing who often come armed with an iron-clad addiction to Twitter to go with questionable credentials in marketing. Here are some signs if you’re falling into the guru category....
With talks of the new Google Penguin update and how social media can help stabilize and improve a site’s performance online, site owners are increasingly focusing on social media marketing campaigns. The question is – how do you really know how effective your campaigns are, and how can you determine ROI? Of course, the ultimate way to track the effectiveness of your social SEO campaign is increased revenue, but there are other forms of tracking that can be beneficial as well. After all, not everything you do is going to generate an instant increase in revenue. In this article I will discuss how to track the effects of your social seo efforts, and the best methods and tools to add to your toolbox....
If the success of your content marketing strategy is in any way dependent on your search engine optimization and search engine rankings, explore these 8 tools and tactics for tracking your keywords... It would be easy to shrug our shoulders and dismiss them as annoying gremlins that mysteriously move from one spot to the next. But the reality is that rankings are based on sophisticated — and often proprietary technologies — and will therefore vary among the search engine results pages (SERPs) of different search tools. Geography (influenced by IP addresses) and personalization (including anonymous cookies that track browsing history) will also continue to make an impact. Take heart: If the success of your content marketing strategy is in any way dependent on your search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine rankings, there are plenty of tools and tactics available that might merit your time and effort to explore. Here are eight ways I check keyword rankings as a part of an overall SEO-focused content marketing strategy:
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Education is a powerful content marketing strategy and brands that focus on it are wisely choosing the road less traveled. Find out how it's working effectively in these 17 examples. I just finished reading this Richard Branson post about following your passions in life. In it, he restates this magnificent quote from Nelson Mandela: “Education is the most powerful weapon to change the world.” I truly believe in this. I also believe that the brands that place a priority on educating their prospects and customers through the creation of remarkable content are wisely choosing the road less traveled. Think about this truth: Our customers don’t care about our products or services; they care about themselves. If we buy into this, then we must also accept that the majority of the information we produce for marketing purposes cannot be about ourselves. Our content must be based on fulfilling our customers’ needs and interests, so that they come to build a trusted and emotional connection with our brands....
The newest research says 80% of marketers aren't planning to use Daily Deal sites in their upcoming campaigns Social Media Examiner has just released its annual Social Media Marketing report. It reveals some interesting data about this year’s social media marketing trends. The entire report is available for download here, but I’d like to highlight some of the report’s most surprising and significant points. In a survey of 3,025 marketers, the study determined the following: -The use of social bookmarking sites has plummeted from 26% of respondents in 2011 to just 10% in 2013. De.licio.us, DIGG, Friendfeed, etc., are rapidly falling in favor where marketers are concerned. (According to ebizMBA, the most popular bookmarking sites are currently Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit and StumbleUpon.) -Forums (24% in 2011; 16% this year) and geo-location services such as Foursquare (17% in 2011; 11% this year) are also in decline. -Respondents with more than 5 years experience are far more likely to use LinkedIn LNKD -1.43% than the average respondent (92% vs. 70%)....
A search engine optimizer is only as effective as his or her tools. In order to keep up with this fast paced industry and still produce excellent results, you need to have a toolkit.
Via DashBurst
raw wood arranged like a pixelated skin and a volume of glazing meet in the form of a guiginette, a french typology for a open-air lounge and bar.
Via Brian Yanish - MarketingHits.com
Abercrombie & Fitch’s two-hour meeting this week with critics of its no-large-sizes strategy, and of CEO Mike Jeffries’ 2006 remarks that it only courts “attractive, cool” kids, prompted a mea culpa from the chain, and a vow to “take concrete steps to demonstrate our commitment to anti-bullying in addition to our ongoing support of diversity and inclusion,” the teen retailer said in a statement.
During the meeting, 18-year old activist Benjamin O’Keefe — whose Change.org petition urged A&F to carry larger sizes – Lyne Grefe, the CEO of the National Eating Disorder Association, among others, urged Abercrombie executives to add bigger clothes to store shelves, feature larger models in their branding efforts, cease hawking hyper sexualized advertising to its teen audience and redefine its warped, harmful notions of cool, O’Keefe told Forbes.com. Although the CEO was not at the meeting, the retailer offered a tacit apology for Jeffries’ remarks seven years ago, which included this gem: “A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes] and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.”...
Guy Kawasaki once said: 'If you have more money than brains, you should focus on outbound marketing. If you have more brains than money, you should focus on inbound marketing'. We’d like to think that no matter what you have, money or brains or both, inbound marketing is the only kind of marketing that works today. Inbound marketing, by the way, has a lot to do with digital marketing. If you are a digital marketer, you are probably forgetting a few marketing principles. Here are some of them including: - be remarkable - not about you - big rocks first - and more...
Use these 7 strategies to come up with a virtually endless supply of fresh ideas for content creation. Several of them involve simply tapping into the power of some websites you are probably already using... Content marketing poses many different challenges to businesses of all sizes, one being producing enough content. In fact, according to a Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs study, 64 percent of small businesses and 53 percent of enterprise businesses note that producing enough content is a content marketing challenge they currently face. Often businesses aren’t able to produce “enough” content because they believe they simply do not have any new ideas for their content marketing projects. Though content creation can seem daunting, there are many easy ways to make the content marketing process easier. Not only are a variety of tools available to help inspire fresh concepts, but there are also some hassle-free methods that businesses in any industry can take advantage of — simply by tapping into the power of some of the websites you are probably already using every day....
I confess, there are plenty of things that make Twitter's six second video service, Vine seem to be utterly dismissible. But that just may be its paradoxical strength, after all... Vine is the shallow end of a bigger movement There are three big changes (call them macrotrends if you like) that Vine and other services are driving. Good online experiences contain fewer words and richer content Christopher Baily, Chief Creative Officer for Burberry, says his fashion line is more a content and media company than a design firm. He is describing how content increasingly creates the context for consumer experiences....
Social media is a fantastic tool for generating leads and can be a great complement to a strong email marketing presence. Strategist Annetta Powell recently wrote an article on Business2community.com identifying best practices for generating leads through social media. Powell wrote, “In social media marketing, businesses try to send messages about their products to people and encourage them to share it with other people in their social circle. This way the message of the company is sent to a larger network of people on its own without the company having to do anything.” “The driving force behind a social media marketing campaign is one customer’s recommendation to the other through word-of-mouth,” continued Powell, “This is the reason why the traffic coming to your website due to social media marketing is called earned traffic rather being called paid traffic.” Powell separated social media into three different categories, each of which have different lead generating strategies....
Many social media campaigns focus on individuals, missing the relationships among individuals and the economic power of those relationships. A recent report from Forrester Research found that a third of U.S. marketers surveyed were dissatisfied with their social marketing results. Meanwhile, only 38 percent of those surveyed targeted their fans on social networks, and just 38 percent targeted friends of fans. You would think those results would give marketers pause. Forrester also reports, however, that U.S. marketers are pouring more than $2 billion annually into social media—including ads and promoted content—to try to reach the 1 billion-plus social media users. What many big social media advertisers have failed to grasp is the “social” component of social media. To date, many brands have focused on individuals rather than relationships among individuals and the economic power of those relationships. Who is most likely to influence their friends? Who is most likely to share with friends? Who is most likely to buy or take some other action? Those are vital questions to address to truly unlock the social value of an audience....
This checklist is intended to assist small business owners. It outlines the must have elements for your website so you can ensure it has the best chance of succeeding online. This is the first in a short series which aims primarily to benefit small businesses with regards to their websites and online success. Consequently it might also help if you’re a web designer building small sites for businesses on a budget. This small business website checklist will be most relevant for small sites or simple ecommerce sites because it’s a general checklist, but it’s amazing how many bigger (and often expensive) websites belonging to large companies fail to adhere to some basic web design fundamentals. The list below will enable you to quickly check the most fundamental elements are in place on your website and it should take you no longer than 30 minutes to carry out the checks....
Google’s fourth Penguin update — what the company is calling Penguin 2.0 — hit last night, and less than 24 hours later we’re already getting a first chance to look at what sites might be considered “losers” in terms of search visibility. Google’s fourth Penguin update — what the company is calling Penguin 2.0 — hit last night, and less than 24 hours later we’re already getting a first chance to look at what sites might be considered “losers” in terms of search visibility. In a nutshell, the list includes: porn sites, game sites and big brands like Dish.com, the Salvation Army, CheapOair and Educational Testing Service (yes, ETS, the company that makes a lot of those standardized tests you probably took as a child). The SEO software company, SearchMetrics, has just shared its initial look at what sites have been affected the most by the latest Penguin update. As always, SearchMetrics is using its “SEO Visibility” benchmark, which looks at the visibility of a company’s web pages as they appear (or don’t appear) across a wide range of keywords in Google’s search results. Here’s their initial list of the 25 biggest Penguin 2.0 losers...
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