Online Marketing Blog

Happy Halloween to all the online marketing ghosts, ghouls, and goblins out there.

Have you ever heard or received a really bad piece of online marketing advice?  Maybe the recommendation was founded on total hearsay, completely out of date or you discovered that the suggestions actually hurt, rather than helped? Scary! At one time or another we’ve all received the trick and not the treat in our internet marketing candy basket.

In this post you’ll find 20 scary SEO, social media and content marketing tales from the team at TopRank Online Marketing and from our friends on Twitter @TopRank, fans on Lee’s Facebook page and the TopRank Facebook page.

BOO! Scary Stories From the Crypt

1 – Classic scary: “Build great content and it will attract visitors all on it’s own. SEO isn’t necessary for good content to stand out.”

One of the reasons I enjoy working for a company like TopRank Online Marketing is our dedication to the clients have been with us on our journey, and the way in which we are able to work side by side as a team.

In fact, our agency mantra is simple: Client, Company, Community, Self.  What does that mean?  In every situation that we are faced with we must ask ourselves:

• Is the decision I’m making good for the client?
• How will it benefit the company?
• Will it impact the community?
• Is it good for me?

A great opportunity that comes with a marketing blog that has over 50,000 subscribers is to recognize people who are doing great and interesting things. We do that in several different ways and one of the most popular is the list of 25 Women Who Rock Social Media. Check out the 2010 list for the back-story on the origination and for the initial 25 honorees. Here’s the 2011 list who nominated the amazing women below.

There’s meaningful and impactful work being done for and using the social web by these women. It brings great satisfaction to draw attention to the people who are a part of advancing social technologies for business and those who use social media to make a difference.

A History of Social Media

This recent infographic from copyblogger  takes a dive into the history of social media, and it may be a longer history than you expect.  History includes:

• 1971 – First Email – Researchers at ARPA send the worlds first email
• 1980 – USENET_ – users were able to read and post messages to distributed online bulletin boards
• 1991 – World Wide Web – Tim Berners-Lee proposes a new protocol for information distribution

Are Your Employees Engaged?  Here’s How to Find Out
Many employers as themselves if their employees are truly engaged and may not know where to start figuring it out.  There is a new tool that helps test your company’s ‘Culture IQ,’ or ‘CIQ’ score.   This test measures 10 statements.  Want to find out what they are?  Via Inc.

Imagine this: you’re a marketing manager tasked with increasing sales through digital channels. Your customer segments vary from VPs to mid-level managers. You have minimal resources for content creation and social media, but management expects a 30 percent increase in traffic and leads each quarter.

Doing more with less is the “MO” for most marketing departments, and with the increasing complexity of the search, social, and mobile web, many marketers are challenged to be efficient and effective.

The Solution Comes Down to Planning

When there are minimal resources and a demand for performance, there is no substitute for getting creative and being as efficient as possible. Smart planning enables high-performing implementation and scale. An editorial calendar is the ideal way to do that planning.

As humans we are creatures of habit.  I may be more habitual than most as I am someone that places a lot of emphasis on control and order.  In short, I like to know what to expect.

For example: I wake up at the same time each morning, but then I hit snooze so I can rest for 5 more minutes.  As I’m getting ready for work I am always tuned into Good Morning America, and then right before leaving I take my four-legged pup Kirby for a walk around the block.

As a marketer I have always been someone that is very interested in understanding why people make certain choices, how much of it is really within their control, and ways to train your brain to think differently.  I recently read the book The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life And Business by Charles Duhigg, which helped answered some of these questions for me.

Is Your Content Findable, Engaging & Shareable?

“KISS” is probably the best advice when it comes to giving advice (Keep It Simple Stupid) and for that reason this post is short and sweet on the topic of how to ensure your great content attracts, engages and converts.

Whether your goals are narrowly focused on revenue or more strategic involving branding and community as well as growing the business, the scalability of effective content is essential in today’s competitive marketplace.

No matter how much you invest in content marketing strategy, planning, production, amplification or analytics, there are three key requirements that each content object should satisfy. Great content isn’t great until it’s discovered, consumed and shared.

5 Ways to Detect Lying Clients By Reading Their Facial Cues

When meeting with clients face to face there is a lot you can learn from not only what they say but what they’re doing while they’re speaking.  Microexpressions are subtle changes in the face that happen for only a fraction of a second.  This infographic can help you identify if your clients mean what they say, and how you can adapt your approach to meet their needs.  Via American Express.

How Stories Make Customers Fall In Love
The best way to actively engage your customers is to tell stories, good ones.   The right story can turn your customers into brand advocates.  This article offers some concepts that can help you begin to woo your customers in a meaningful way.  Via Inc.

Staying up to date with your website’s analytics can seem like a full-time job. If you use Google Analytics, this past summer you were forced to adopt the newest version. Google Analytics version 5 brought a new interface and new reports. For some, that meant learning where all the reports moved. Aside from the obvious learning curve, many people had to spend more time to accessing simple metrics.

Today’s fast-moving business sometimes requires you to do a lot more while you are on-the go. Unfortunately, like most Web-based analytics graphs, the graphs in Google Analytics require Flash to render properly. Adobe Flash doesn’t fare so well on mobile browsers, especially those mobile browsers running on Apple mobile devices. So how do you stay connected to your Web analytics while on the go?

[We're trying something different and including this sponsored post from Oli Gardner, Co-Founder & Creative director at Unbounce, a sponsor for the Minneapolis launch of Lee's book Optimize.  You may know Unbounce as that clever service that gives marketers and marketing agencies an easy way to create, publish and test landing pages without IT or developers.]

As a digital marketing agency that does a substantial amount of consulting in the B2B Marketing space, we’ve paid a lot of attention to the topic here at Online Marketing Blog with tips posts and the recent B2B Marketing Innovation eBook we put together in partnership with MarketingProfs.

Have you found yourself spending more time than usual on LinkedIn within the last couple of months?  I know I have.  Much of that has to do with the recent changes that the company has rolled out which has improved usability and is encouraging users to spend more time actively participating within the platform.

LinkedIn should be viewed as a tool for marketers to connect with other professionals or companies in a meaningful way, not a platform for shouting your marketing message at unsuspecting victims.

For example, you wouldn’t approach a table full of professionals at a networking event that you don’t know and open up with “Buy my B2B marketing automation software! It will save you time and money.” Talk about open mouth and insert foot. I’m sure we can all agree that a first interaction like the one mentioned above would likely squash any chance of having a meaningful interaction with your new connections.

Content has always played an essential part of effective Public Relations. However, PR pros that don’t sink their teeth into content strategy, development and measurement quickly and effectively, will be left behind as the future of PR evolves. That’s a fairly strong statement, but it’s incredibly important and timely.

Over the past 12 years of running a digital marketing and PR agency, we’ve seen major changes in the world of PR and media relations as social technologies, devices and ubiquitous internet access have opened the doors for all-the-time, “everywhere” connectivity to the web.

That connectivity enables consumers and brands alike to:  Create, Consume, Publish, Interact and Transact anywhere, anytime. From tablets to smartphones to getting digital content via your car, the relationship between technology and people has had a major impact on how information is discovered, consumed and shared or acted upon.