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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
July 26, 2016 9:42 AM
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I joined LinkedIn in the very early days, but then went years without getting a single piece of business from the social network. Fortunately, this changed when I started publishing articles, and now I have written over 500 posts. Almost overnight, LinkedIn became an important source of new clients. Selling morphed from an annoying necessity to an easy and enjoyable process: I just answer my email. Using social media to attract new clients can be a highly efficient and effective strategy, but only if your mindset is to help people first, and to sell a distant second. This notion – win customers by selling less – is counter-intuitive. Let me explain….
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
July 26, 2016 8:50 AM
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A recent CMO Survey indicates that marketers plan to double their spending on social media in the next five years. Yet IBM’s C-Suite Study reports that nearly half of CMOs believe they are not prepared to manage the challenges of social media. This disparity highlights an important, and potentially costly, problem: Marketers continue to increase social media spending, yet many are still uncertain about management, strategies, and integration. A quick Google search returns 140 million results for “social media marketing tips,” but no matter how many headlines promise it, there really is no one-size-fits-all social media strategy. Some articles indicate that stories are an effectivemarketing and advertising tool. But what story will you tell? How will you integrate it with your traditional efforts? Other articles advise using social media networks, such as Pinterest. But what will your brand post? Is your target audience even on Pinterest? Still more articles offer a glimpse into other brands’ social media strategies. But what worked for Comcast or Best Buy or Universal Studios probably will not work for a bank, tech startup, or retail company. What marketers need is a process that leads to individual solutions. They must use fundamental marketing concepts and modify them for this new two-way, consumer-empowered medium of social media. Here’s a framework for doing that, adapted from my book Social Media Strategy....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
July 26, 2016 2:26 AM
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Given the popularity of live videos, which get 3 times more time spent than recorded videos, the new Facebook feature presents a great opportunity for businesses to interact with their target audience in real time. Videos are an integral part of Facebook’s vision for the future and the statistics also point to a massive surge in the consumption of video content on the platform. Towards the end of 2015, Facebook attracted 8 billion average daily video views from 500 million users. They have also adjusted their algorithm so that live videos appear higher in the news feed, giving businesses all the more reason to go live. Here are 11 ways that businesses can use Facebook’s Continuous Live video for higher customer engagement....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
July 26, 2016 1:42 AM
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Every marketer worth their salt needs a trusted arsenal of tools that help you take your marketing from darn good to amazing. The foundational platform we use for marketing and sales automation is HubSpot, and we’re constantly writing about how great HubSpot is. But you need more than terrific marketing automation software to get the most ROI on your marketing efforts. We’ve discovered some really cool tools that help us understand our customers, measure our success, and improve our content for our customers. We thought you’d like to check them out. You may have heard of some of these tools, but I guarantee you’ll find a new one here you’ll want to try....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
July 26, 2016 1:21 AM
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Facebook Live, the social network’s live broadcast platform, exploded into the consciousness of news organizations – literally – back in April. BuzzFeed’s watermelon/rubber band virality experiment, silly as it was, provided newsrooms a glimpse of the power this tool can hold, even in its infancy. It hasn’t taken long, however, for Facebook Live to grow up.In the past month, Facebook Live has broadcasted to the world everything from a Congressional sit-in for gun control to the immediate aftermath of a police officer shooting an African-American man during a traffic stop in Minnesota. Broadcast newsrooms, in particular, seem primed to shine on a platform like Facebook Live. They’re already used to going live multiple times a day and employ talent who are already comfortable on air. The key, though, will be a willingness to tell stories in different ways than they’re told on TV or radio....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
July 25, 2016 1:38 PM
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When you create landing pages, sometimes you’re forced to make some tough calls — deciding on the type of headline, all the way down to the colors on the page, and CTA button copy.
Every single decision has a significant impact on your conversion rate. Of course, this puts added pressure on you to get all the elements perfect before you publish the page.
The data you collect with A/B testing puts a lot of the CRO questions to bed, but the thing with testing is that it’s not an immediate solution. You can’t rely on A/B testing data as soon as you publish your page.
This is where CRO best practices come into play.
We’re going to make a case for both types of pages and argue why one should take precedence over the other. Then, we’ll give you a list of factors that will help you decide the length of your pages once and for all.
Let the debate begin....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
July 25, 2016 1:01 PM
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Are you debating whether your small business should invest time on Twitter?
Do you wonder how Twitter can help your business?
By being an active part of the Twitter community and sharing the right mix of content, you can reach a larger audience, generate more leads and become the go-to source when customers are ready to buy.
In this article I’ll show you how nine small businesses use Twitter to cater to their audiences, find prospects and expand brand recognition....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
July 25, 2016 9:11 AM
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The prevailing wisdom in PR has been that you should keep hammering away at the key messages you're trying to get across in a media interview, no matter what.Is the reporter asking you a completely unrelated question? Doesn't matter—repeat your key message. Do they want to speak to you about an issue or topic your key messages don't even cover? Doesn't matter—repeat your key message.Is the interview a fairly relaxed conversation about your company's strategy, rather than a reputation-destroying crisis? One size fits all—just repeat your key message.If you do this enough, this line of PR thinking goes, your points will stick and the reporter will repeat them. The industry even gave this approach a name of its very own: "block (the reporter's actual question) and bridge (to your key message)." Great—except it rarely works....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
July 25, 2016 1:24 AM
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Using Google Analytics properly makes you a far more effective digital marketer. The data you gather via this free tool can (and should) be used to: - Formulate a hypothesis about your content performance - Determine a questions to support itCreate a report to answer the question with data - Take action based on your analysis - Measure the results There you go: a simple five-pack. However, there are millions of possible ways to look at Google Analytics reports. It might strike you as confusing. It doesn't need to be. Andy Crestodina of Orbit Media Studios and I examined the language of Google Analytics and constructed the ABCs for "reading" your reports. Here's what we came up with. We hope it's helpful. ...
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
July 25, 2016 1:05 AM
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Each social media platform is different, and the different reasons people log on to each need to be taken into account when posting. But on top of that, each platform also has it's own best practices and procedures - it's not only the content you post on each that matters, it's how and when you post, that will also play a significant part in the subsequent performance of your content. To help you understand the best practices of each platform and what you need to pay attention to when composing and scheduling your updates, myclever have put together this updated infographic which outlines platform-specific processes and recommendations to ensure you're maximizing the performance of your updates on each. In addition, they've also included a listing of best and worst times to post - and while that information is generic, and you should always be working with your own data to determine the best times for your business, it does provide a guideline on overall activity times on each platform, which is worth taking into consideration....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
July 25, 2016 12:46 AM
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Do you use SlideShare? Wondering how to generate leads from SlideShare? With the right design and content, your SlideShare presentation can become a powerful lead-generating marketing tool. In this article, you’ll discover four simple steps for creating a SlideShare presentation that people can’t resist....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
July 24, 2016 10:30 PM
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You just can’t grow your blog or your brand these days without having a social presence – so everyone races to create their Facebook page, and their Twitter profile, and their Instagram portfolio.
Right?
But in all the busy-ness, the one platform that always seems to be ignored is LinkedIn.
Okay, sure: it might not have the billion-plus users that Facebook has, and you won’t find LinkedIn feeds at the bottom of a television broadcast like you do with Twitter.
So is LinkedIn even worth your time? Isn’t it just for job-seekers?
As we’ll cover below, not only do I think LinkedIn is the best social media platform out there for every blogger, it’s the only one I use....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
July 24, 2016 12:11 PM
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Since he lost his TV reporting job last year, Jarrett Hill has been looking for his next opportunity. It presented itself in an unexpected way. Hill was sitting at a corner table Monday night in a Culver City Starbucks, drinking a venti iced coffee and watching the Republican National Convention on an MSNBC live stream. As Melania Trump spoke, she uttered a phrase that the 31-year-old California native had heard once before — from First Lady Michelle Obama. “… the only limit to your achievements is the strength of your dreams …,” Melania Trump said during her address to the Republican National Convention. Instinctively, Hill finished the phrase aloud to his laptop screen: “… and your willingness to work for them.” “Kind of like a song that you haven’t heard in a long time and you remember the lyrics as you hear them. Or a movie that you know the line to and you kind of respond to it,” he said. He recalled the words from Michelle Obama’s speech because, he said, he had thought to himself at the time that it was “really beautifully written.” “I believe I even wrote it down or typed it,” Hill said. “Obviously having no idea that eight years later I’d hear them again from a woman who wanted to be first lady speaking at a convention in front of 40 million people.”...
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
July 26, 2016 9:05 AM
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"The U.K. is a leader in enabling drone innovation," Amazon crowed. Amazon has said it would pioneer package delivery by drone overseas if the U.S. continues to block its methods stateside. Now it’s taking another step down that path. The online retail giant announced Monday evening that it had reached an agreement with the U.K. government to expand the types of drone tests it is conducting in the region. The new arrangement will allow Amazon to test drone flights that extend beyond the line of sight of the pilot in suburban or rural areas — a necessary ingredient in the aerial delivery of packages that the U.S.’s Federal Aviation Administration currently doesn’t allow....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
July 26, 2016 8:45 AM
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During the 2012 election, the Washington Post’s political editor Rebecca Sinderbrand sent out only a handful of tweets each day. This year, however, the paper has an entire social media team, sending out about five tweets per hour, not including a separate account dedicated solely to politics. "We can’t do our jobs without having access — in particular to Twitter — but other platforms as well,” she said. “That really started to happen in 2012.” At the Republican National Convention, the Post’s social media team used Twitter, as well as Snapchat, Facebook and Facebook Live.This cycle is all about storytelling on multiple platforms and connecting those platforms. Take, for instance, a Facebook Live video Sinderbrand did with Robert Costa, the national political reporter with the Washington Post. The video appeared on Facebook, but was also tweeted along with tags to their respective Facebook pages....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
July 26, 2016 2:19 AM
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Design agencies have developed a major sweet tooth for packaging. The once humble chocolate bar has become the latest canvas for creatives to experiment with unexpected concepts and show off their design chops. Since packaging actually has a real impact on how we perceive taste, these 15 examples of chocolate brands must be absolutely delicious. Check them all out below....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
July 26, 2016 1:31 AM
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The field of search engine optimization continues to evolve at an alarming pace; SEO techniques that defined last decade are now considered outdated. You position in search engine results pages have a major role in determining how popular your business will be. Only when your website has visitors would you be able to increase revenues and sales and hence derive a high return on your marketing investment. Fortunately, there are many effective tactics that can help you to preserve search friendliness as well as increase website and brand visibility. Being at the top of results pages will bring more users to your site, to learn more about your products, services or other information your site offers. Web design concepts are important to ensure our site looks good once visitors land in your pages. They determine how fast and how easy it will be for users to find what they need once they are there. By employing SEO-friendly web design, you can get the best of both worlds. The following are ten tips to show you how to build web pages that rank highly...
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
July 26, 2016 1:08 AM
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Do you use Pinterest to generate revenue? Have you considered using affiliate links on Pinterest? Because Pinterest users are looking for useful and inspirational products, the platform is a natural place for marketers to share items and services they believe in. In this article, you’ll discover how to prepare for and use affiliate links in your Pinterest marketing....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
July 25, 2016 11:04 AM
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Influencer marketing is all the rage, but there’s not a clear understanding of what constitutes influence. A few years ago, I participated in an influencer event for a consumer brand. It was an expensive affair put on by the brand’s agency. There were a few dozen “influencers” there, which, it turned out, meant a collection of people with blogs and social media followings. A photographer captured it all as a glitzy brand experience. Some people blogged or shared about the event, some didn’t, and it left me wondering about the return on that investment. From the photos that were posted, it looked like a beautiful bit of marketing. From the actual impact, not so much. Influencer is a designation with an almost magical glow to it. But not all influencers are created equal. Not everyone with a social media following is an influencer and not every influencer is a good fit for every brand. Brands should also be wary of those who refer to themselves as influencers. There’s a lot of snake oil in influencer marketing....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
July 25, 2016 9:38 AM
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To gather the data for this article, I used MyTopTweet to pull together Buffer’s 10 most successful tweets and attempted to create a best-practices guide on why our top tweets worked and how marketers can repeat our success. First, I’d love to run through the key elements of each tweet and then I’ll go into a bit more detail about each element and how you can utilize them in your own Twitter strategy. After looking at the different types of Buffer tweets and also researching a variety of tweets from top brands, I found that there is no magic formula for virality, but there are elements to successful tweets. In other words, recurring themes continually appeared in many of the tweets that I studied. Here are the top 10 Buffer tweets and the elements that made them great:...
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
July 25, 2016 1:39 AM
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SEO is a marathon, not a sprint. And at some point, your businesses is likely to experience a lull in organic traffic performance that requires you to mix up your strategy to get back on track. One way to do this is through dynamite keyword discovery. The search landscape is always changing. This includes what people search for, how they search, and what syntax – or combination of words and phrases – they use to search for things. Efficient and resourceful keyword discovery, done on a regular basis, is key to a strong content strategy and rewarding SEO over the long term. So whether you’re in an SEO slump, or just trying to start SEO, use these 2 keyword discovery techniques to quickly identify promising terms....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
July 25, 2016 1:12 AM
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If you don’t have access to Instagram’s new brand profiles as yet, you soon will, along with the platforms new analytics tools and options, which have the potential change the way you approach the platform. In order to highlight the benefits and uses of their new business-specific additions, Instagram's released a new set of videos which examine the details of how to use each element – here’s a breakdown of the key details you need to know....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
July 25, 2016 12:53 AM
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Do you want more people to join your LinkedIn group? Are you looking for tips to get more exposure for your group? LinkedIn groups are a great way to generate leads and increase influence within an engaged community. In this article, you’ll discover five ways to quickly build a larger membership for your LinkedIn group....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
July 25, 2016 12:36 AM
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Do you want to use video marketing for your business? Each of these articles will help you understand and master a specific part of using video for business....
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Scooped by
Jeff Domansky
July 24, 2016 10:22 PM
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It's no secret that internet users are no strangers to seeking out the information they need online -- in fact, Google now processes over 40,000 search queries every second.
And as the volume of search queries continues to climb, advertisers are recognizing an opportunity to introduce a number of different types of ads. (Think: pop-up ads, autoplaying video ads, and the dreaded mobile ad that takes up the entire phone screen.)
As a reaction to some of these disruptive online ads, internet users have started installing ad blocking extensions by the millions. In case you're wondering: Ad blockers scan websites for advertising code to prevent them from loading on a browser.
To help marketers get a handle on the state of ad blocking today, HubSpot Research dove deep into the issue to create this report. Below, we've outlined some of they most noteworthy statistics and takeaways from our research to get you up to speed quickly....
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Bruce Karasoff share how using social media to attract new clients can be a highly efficient and effective strategy, but only if your mindset is to help people first, and sell a distant second.