Online Marketing Blog

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

We all have friends. One thing that makes us friends is that we have things in common, and what we have in common are our personalities and our interests. We interact with others based on those things—and with the social atmosphere so crucial to a brand’s persona, they want to be our “friends” too.

2013 has been a great year for content marketing. Savvy marketers have come up with new, unique ways to create bonds with their audiences, encouraging interaction and ultimately intent to purchase. Viral has become a buzzword that many strive for, yet few achieve. But regardless of how frequently online marketing changes, one thing will remain the same: brands will continue to use stories, interaction, and creativity to attract customers.

Creating event-based content can be tricky. The room is full of extremely smart people. And they’re all talking. Loudly. You find a chair in front between two people you don’t know, but who smile and offer a handshake and a name. Looking around, everyone is working on a laptop. Or a smartphone. Or both.

A hush falls over the crowd. A speaker stands up at the microphone, offers an introduction, and launches into a mind-blowing presentation full of statistics, facts, tips and tools. There are dozens of keys being typed, tweets being sent, and people whispering.

And you have to make sure you catch it all.

In the past, the term microsites had often been used interchangeably with mini-sites, those one page stand-alone Web pages used by direct marketers in the 90s. Mini-sites became popular with the introduction of Google’s revolutionary (at the time) pay-per-click business model.

Microsites are perfectly acceptable to serve as landing pages or hubs for search engine advertising. This is one main reason for creating microsites – to create a hyper-focused website that meets the needs of a specific search query – and to satisfy Google’s Quality Score criteria.

B2B lead generation is another prime example for why marketers create microsites; they don’t want their prime prospects to get lost on the parent website and thus lose a lead. In TopRank’s experience with Marketo, optimized landing pages improved conversion rates by as high as 200%.