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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...
Content marketing isn't the "new SEO" – or even new. Have you been drinking the Kool-Aid and not spending enough time on your search optimization? Here are 12 things you should check with the arrival of Google Penguin 2.0 and more changes coming.... What Should Lead Your Online Marketing Strategy: SEO or Content". "Why Content Marketing is the New SEO". "Is Google's love affair with content marketing usurping SEO?" "Content Marketing is the New SEO " These are actual titles from articles in the top search results for [content marketing and SEO]....
A brand is essentially the sum of what people say about it. We’re connected and social now. And that’s not all. We’re hypercritical, hyperactive and so hyper-online, we’re barely offline when we sleep. ...Along the way, it’s nearly impossible to avoid subjects such as blogging, search, social, and some of the other tricks of the trade. Why? Because the best website in the world won’t make you a dime unless people come to it and find themselves engaged with the content there. There I go again. I can’t stop spouting the gospel. I want my clients to understand the key to effective online marketing, or any marketing, is to get customers to know, like and trust you. That’s a high bar seldom achieved with a heavy dependence on ad or brochure-like communications. Ugh. Stop me now before I talk you into doing content marketing against your will....
Heart-warming. The moment a little girl saw her father after 18 months apart.
If you could only had one social media option to support your business goals which one would you choose? Chances are you said Facebook without a second thought. As the 800 pound gorilla of social media, it should be a no-brainer but is it really the best for your business? Roughly half of the respondents named Facebook as the most important social media platform in Social Media Examiner’s 2013 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, which surveyed a cross section of businesses using social media in their marketing mix. As Syncapse research revealed, Facebook drives revenues. Besides, there’s something to be said for a large audience of engaged users. Actionable Marketing Advice: Create a Facebook presence and be active there. What’s interesting about Social Media Examiner’s data is how the other social media venues measure up....
Less than a year ago links were everything to the SEO industry. Whether it was guest blogging or content marketing, the sole aim of many agencies revolved purely around sourcing and acquiring links. The answer is simple. By combining knowledge on entities, associations, co-occurrence and authorship, you can build a strategy that actually solves a problem or satisfies a need for your target audience. By doing this you will increase traffic and naturally generate links. Like Hannah Smith mentioned at this year’s LinkLove conference, if you do stuff that gets links, rather than doing it for links, you are much more likely to succeed. And to save you the hassle of pooling all this together, I’ve done it for you. You’re welcome....
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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:
This kind of thing might happen to Rand all the time, but it’s not often that a digital marketing company based in Leeds gets 100,000+ people reading anything it does (at least on its own site). That’s what unexpectedly happened to us on www.branded3.com a few weeks ago – what essentially started as a rant from some guy having a bad day blew up and now has 1,184 votes on Hacker News (and incoming links from some of the biggest sites in the world). I think it’s likely I’ll never replicate this, and I didn’t intend this either – so I’ll not preach: “this is how you get 100,000 page views.” Everyone else is just as qualified as I am to write a post that’s read all around the world, and that’s exactly what I want to happen. I’d like to tell you what I’m taking away from this, and how I’ll use it when I’m creating content for my clients in the future....
As crappy content keeps adding to the clutter, the business blogging world will change for the better. If you haven't yet flipped through Velocity Partners' SlideShare deck, "Crap. The Content Marketing Deluge," it's definitely worth a look (we've embedded it below). It's no wonder the 2013 State of Inbound Marketing report revealed that 18% of marketers are making quality content their top priority this year. The good news is, while it's becoming harder and harder to get eyeballs on your content, the future is bright for marketers committed to quality. And because business blogging is one of the most effective ways for marketers to consistently deliver content to their audiences -- and because it's right in my wheelhouse as HubSpot's blog manager -- I thought I'd share with you what I think the future of business blogging holds....
Without curators, the internet is quicksand. I have huge confidence in the future of curation. That's because we have so much information coming at us in this digital era. The more “stuff” the internet and all the shiny new social media channels throw at us, the more we need brilliant curators. Without curators, we run the risk of information overload.
...Over the past few months I’ve spoken to two authors who’d signed with the same, well-reputed PR firm for a book launch campaign, paid a considerable amount of money and then…nothing. Barely a review or author interview to show for the firm’s initial promises and excitement. Needless to say, this makes my blood boil. It’s deeply unfair to the authors who placed their trust in this firm, it’s disrespectful of authors in general – taking advantage of their earnest hope and vulnerability – and it’s an insult to all the devoted, hard-working publicists out there who go above and beyond to generate results. It also brings to light something that absolutely has to change: Many – possibly most? – authors simply have no idea what they should look for when hiring a PR firm. Nor do they know what’s “normal” or what they should expect from this relationship. So here’s my laundry list of must-haves in determining whether the firm you hire to publicize your book is up to par, and in understanding whether it’s doing (or will do) what it should for you...
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Here's a really good look at content marketing, best practices and tips on maximizing your return on investment in content.