Online Marketing Blog

Minnesotans are used to the freezing cold, the slippery snow, and the driving obstacles that come with Winter. Like many Northerners who get to experience Minnesnowta Ice, we often daydream about going somewhere warmer like California, Florida, or even Las Vegas.

Well, I don’t have to daydream about warmer anymore.

Along with my TopRank Online Marketing teammates Ben and Nick, I’m going to NMX in Las Vegas!  With attendees from over 50 countries, NMX aka Blogworld, offers everything from blogging, podcasting, business, and video sessions to lots of power networking and some much needed warmth.

But that’s not the only reason we’re excited to attend NMX with 4 tracks of content ranging from podcasting to web TV. Here are 7 more reasons we can’t wait to board our plane and head off to the city that literally never sleeps:

One of the hot topics amongst the public relations world this year will gain even more momentum into 2014: convergence of digital marketing and PR.  More PR organizations are being held accountable beyond media placements including leads, sales and customer acquisition. At the same time, marketing organizations are starved for creative messaging and amplification with their content.

For some PR agencies and departments within companies, the drive towards marketing and PR integration is a substantial and uncomfortable shift. Marketers often think of PR simply as the people who you call only once you want to promote something to the media. For PR, marketing can seem like a content machine generating a spew of information, often of nominal value or newsworthiness.

Content Marketing Hacks That Will Help You Stand – Keeping content fresh, exciting and bringing back visitors is a challenge for all businesses. Startups, government bodies and Fortune 500 companies all struggle with keeping their content compelling and unique. It’s definitely industry and team dependent, but it’s a challenge that can often be resolved with a few fresh content marketing hacks. Here are a few hacks that will help you stand out. Ross Simmonds

15 Excellent Responsive Email Templates for Small Businesses – The consumer shift towards mobile devices means that businesses should have a strategy in place to optimize their email marketing for smaller screens. Check out these great examples. eConsultancy

Most marketers “get” that services like Facebook, Google and media are where customers can be attracted and engaged. They use email marketing and advertising to promote offers to convert and life is good.

At least that’s how it used to be.

The reality is that customers are becoming more complex, requiring more points of contact and information as they move through the sales cycle. Companies offering up single, direct channel promotions are finding it increasingly difficult to compete.

This is why I’m such a big advocate of taking a customer-centric view and then integrating tactics so brands can become the most logical solution when and where it matters most to buyers.

In Optimize, I include guidelines for doing a number of different audits to establish a basis for determining the gap between a company’s current situation and where they need to be in order to succeed.

One of those audits is a type that has gained a tremendous amount of popularity given the dramatic increase in attention and budget towards the area. Of course I’m talking about a Social Media Audit.

Why do an audit? If you don’t know where you’re starting from, a lot of time and resources can be wasted improving things that don’t need it and neglecting things that really need your attention.

Early adopters of mobile technology in their digital marketing mix have been experiencing great results by providing convenient methods for customers and prospects to find, consume and act on brand information. Mobile commerce success is here too: According to IBM, 25.8% of total online sales for Thanksgiving, and 21.8% for Black Friday were via mobile.

As companies discover innovative uses of mobile technology for marketing and communications, they can help differentiate their services, reinforce corporate culture, and build long-term customer loyalty.

With growing demand as a content delivery and customer experience channel, mobile applications represent a substantial digital and content marketing opportunity for brands. Mobile is now 28% of all web traffic and the smart money is on those companies and organizations that can attract, engage and convert through the creative content opportunities mobile apps provide.

Metro statue from a recent trip to Moscow

This post marks number 3,401 on Online Marketing Blog. Did you know? December is our 10 year blog birthday month!

We’ve covered a variety of topics in depth over those thousands of posts, especially the integration of search, social media and content with marketing and public relations.

TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog has been a top ranked marketing blog on AdAge 150 from day one and is the only blog to have been named the #1 content marketing blog 3 times by Junta42 (Content Marketing Institute).

Reflecting back over the past year there have been more changes in the digital marketing industry than seems reasonable to track best practices on. To help with that, I thought it would be handy to have a list of our top social media and content marketing posts based on traffic, shares and engagement.

StumbleUpon Marketing: How to Drive More Traffic to Your Content – In this podcast, Michael Stelzner interviews Nick Robinson, co-author of StumbleUpon for Dummies. Nick shares how StumbleUpon works and why it’s different than other platforms, how to discover shareable content and the type of content that works. Social Media Examiner

How to Use LinkedIn to Promote Your Professional Services – Build a routine, deepen your network, and share. These practices have worked for decades in helping professionals earn new clients and matters. Now this same process can be done online, on LinkedIn. It would be a shame to waste the opportunity. MarketingProfs

Ethical Content Curation: A 10-Step Checklist – Curation is nothing new, but many content curators are still unsure about what constitutes ethical content curation. Use this 10-step checklist as a guide. Content Marketing Institute

Figure out what your customers want, and give it to them. Monitor what works and what doesn’t. Adapt and optimize performance.

This would appear to be common sense marketing and yet, when you examine a lot of what gets published in the name of content marketing, social media and SEO, the “makes sense” doesn’t seem so common.

Over the past 3 weeks I’ve given presentations to audiences in the U.S., Spain, Russia and the UK.  For just about every audience, there is a common language everyone seems to understand and if you can connect with that, it’s amazing what progress you can make.

When Matt Cutts, head of Google’s web spam team, announced that links in press releases have no value for SEO, it created a lot of discussion and debate in the SEM community. But, if you look at his comments in their entirety, you’ll notice that he also said press release sites do have value for press and marketing reasons as Cheryl Conner, contributing writer at Forbes, so eloquently points out.

Consider,

• 92% of journalists use search engines to research stories and 81% of journalists use search engines daily (MarketingSherpa)
• Blog readership, RSS feed subscriptions and social media sites are visited in record numbers
• Journalists using Google News surpass usage of major networks, like MSNBC & CNN!

Influencers are influential. They have a significant following on their social channels and are so knowledgeable about a topic that people not only like to consume their content, but share it. Engaging an influencer and being promoted by them is a great way for your brand to increase visibility, grow a following, and rank in search. Sounds simple right? It’s actually something many brands struggle with.

There are over 500 million registered Twitter accounts, 300 million active monthly Google+ users, and 1.26 billion Facebook users. Add to that the 150 million people that are active on Instagram in any given month, the 70 million on Pinterest, and the 238 million members on LinkedIn and it’s no wonder finding influencers is a bit like playing “Where’s Waldo?”

Tips From Women Who Have Broken the Glass Ceiling – Barri Rafferty, Senior Partner and CEO, Ketchum North America, kicks off the ‘Real Women Fostering Women’s Leadership’ now in its fifth year. Hear the most dynamic women in the digital marketing world discuss overcoming obstacles. Women rock at TopRank! CommPro

Just 71% of Companies Test Their Websites – Companies whose conversion rates have improved carry out 50% more tests on their websites than companies whose conversion didn’t improve. However, 7% are testing nothing at all. eConsultancy

Digital Marketing Tactics for 2014 – This article examines a few trends that must be taken into consideration for any digital marketing endeavor in 2014, including visual content, Google+ and SlideShare and 3D printing. Social Media Today