Online Marketing Blog

Here we are just past the halfway mark in 2010 and we’ve tapped into the stream of future marketing planning with our readers for 2011 with a poll. Our question? What 3 online marketing channels & tactics will you emphasize in 2011? The number one answer? Not social media, not email marketing.

The top digital marketing tactic for OMB readers in 2011 is Search Engine Optimization

Our poll this year provided 44 different answers to choose from ranging from display advertising to no holds barred spam. Over 200 readers took the poll and made their choices. While there are many signs of marketing budgets making a recovery, the vast majority of marketers are still focused on planning the most efficient and effective online marketing mix they can for the new year.

It’s safe to say 2009 and 2010 were breakout years for social media. Our last Digital Marketing poll showed 6 of the top 10 tactics as social media complemented by search engine marketing and email.  Slimmer marketing budgets and mass media attention have inspired a rush to many types social media marketing tactics bringing a certain over-optimism about what the social web can do for a company’s bottom line.

With the economy recovering slowly, what will 2011 bring? Are social media and content marketing the glue that brings multi channel marketing together? Is 2011 finally the year for mobile? Will companies focus on more holistic online marketing?

We’d love to hear your opinions in the 2011 TopRank Digital Marketing Poll.  Please take the poll here and share it, post it, bookmark it and help us reach over 200 responses:

Online Marketing Blog has been toying around with a new blog header and thought it would be best to get your opinion on which design we should choose.

In the upper left corner of this post there are 5 different headers to check out, each with it’s own name. Click on each one and the header will change – see what you think.

Once you decide which one you like best, please vote below!

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We’ll let voting run until Friday this week and then we’ll update the blog design with the most popular header. All thanks to you

Social media is everyone’s shiny object in the digital marketing world. Personally, professionally and otherwise, millions of people worldwide are switching from other information and entertainment channels (or multitasking) for social destinations online and on the mobile web.

I know there are a good number of early adopters that read Online Marketing Blog and since you’re probably prone to trying the latest apps and tools, there are undoubtedly certain types of social media sites that have really turned out to be a time suck.

That assumption leads us to our 60th Reader Poll! (pick up to 3)

No, I didn’t include online games of any kind in this poll because, while they can absolutely be social, I consider them to be inherently time wasting. Whereas the sites/tools listed in the poll above have at least the remotest possibility of helping people become more productive.

A great photo can really add a lot of flavor to a blog post and in our own analysis at Online Marketing Blog as well as with clients, including quality images with a blog post can boost traffic and referrals 30-50%. To make posts more personal, I try to use my own photos as much as possible and do use imags from Flickr under Creative Commons from time to time. This is an area of significant impact for blogs as effective communication and marketing tools, so last week we ran a Reader Poll on the best site for royalty free, stock photos for bloggers.

We had the most comments from iStockphoto users and interestingly enough, the “Other” category came in second place with suggestions including: screenshots, stock.xchng, PhotoXpress.com and Creative Commons imagies from Flickr.

The Best Pint of Abbot Ale, Ever

Blogs have been touted as effective tools for companies to publish content and demonstrate the conversational side of their corporate personality. Blogs have also long been promoted as a SEO tool. Despite plenty of optimism about blogging, there’s still a lot of mis-information, mis-perceptions and lack of awareness about effective, productive blogging for business.

Take This Blog SEO Survey: If you or your company publishes a blog, please take this quick poll looking into the perceived SEO benefits of blogging. Results will be published on Online Marketing Blog in the next week.  Like a fine pint of Abbot, this survey is smooth, to the point and might just put a smile on your face.

With all the hubub about personalized and real time search and the potential impact on the SEO work that can influence search visibility, the question about relevance comes to mind when considering books about search engine optimization. Search engines like Google change often (38 new search products in 70 days) so one could argue that a book published in print would become outdated.  For those books that outline very specific tactics and even tricks/loopholes, that indeed is the case.

However, there are many SEO books that focus on strategy and tactics worth considering.  Well understood principles of information retrieval, content optimization & promotion, consumer search behaviors and analytics are timeless.

TopRank has been publishing the BIGLIST of SEM blogs since Jan 2007. We’ve created other BIGLISTs of resources as well including the BIGLIST of 100+ Search Marketing Resources posted in October.  The categories for that list of SEM resources includes books, conferences, newsletters, blogs, forums and many more. We decided it would be interesting to see which resources from that list our readers felt were the best.

In the past 3 plus years TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog has run over 50 polls: Everything from Best Social Media Podcast to best Keyword Research Tool to Best City for a Search Marketing Conference. In that longstanding tradition, we recently conducted a poll focused on Best Paid Subscription SEM Communities. We defined the category as membership and subscription model sites that include forums,  tools and/or training or content focused on search marketing. After asking for additional suggestions in the BIGLIST 100+ SEM Resources post, no additional sites besides SEOmoz, SEOBook, WebmasterWorld Supporters and SEO Dojo were suggested.

With Twitter riding the social media wave to a $1 billion valuation, the attention from celebrities, usefulness for everything from real-time communications in natural disasters to serving as a profitable marketing channel, a momentum of interest has spawned in how to make the most out of spending time on Twitter. Like any tool, Twitter is what you make of it. But Twitter and social communication applications like it are a lot more than just tools. One question about Twitter best practices that often comes up deals with how people (not bots) decide to follow one another on Twitter.

The notion of social web and how companies can engage is as multi-faceted as anything I’ve seen in my 12+years of marketing online. The many ways for companies to involve themselves using social technologies are as varied as the reasons they may do so. Whether it’s to better connect with customers, attract more media attention or crowdsource product ideas, social web participation can offer many benefits.

This understanding of different perspectives and methods leads us to a new TopRank Reader Poll that considers the many different approaches companies may take towards social media. As a poll, it’s only a snapshot in time, but the results will be of great interest to all who participate.   Please select up to 1 “best” answer:

I’ve had some back and forth with collegues recently about the popularity of podcasting, live audio streaming and also how podcasting fits within the social media category of communication channels.

eMarketer says podcasts are rising in popularity: “As a percentage of Internet users, podcast downloaders will grow from 9% in 2008 to 17% in 2013″.  The Pew Internet & American Life Project also indicates an uptick in podcast popularity, stating that 19% of all internet users have downloaded a podcast in 2008, up from 12% in 2006.

It seems to me that live streaming audio is likely more on the rise but I did not find any research at eMarketer or at Pew about the distinction between podcasts and streaming audio on the web. Hopefully you can help me out by taking this poll.

With concerns over the recession and its impact on marketing, we decided to run a TopRank Reader Poll to discover reader (and their networks) preferences for digital marketing tactics in 2009.  Companies world-wide are cutting costs as well as looking for creative, high impact and accountable marketing.  Our amazing readers both on Online Marketing Blog and followers at @leeodden helped uncover the top tactics.

Over the past 11 days 532 readers have cast 1559 votes for their 3 top digital marketing tactics for 2009 with Blogging, Twitter and Search Engine Optimization topping the list.  Equally interesting was that out of the top 10 tactics, 6 fall into the category of Social Media Marketing. See the full list below along with other statistics about where voters came from as well as info about the readership of Online Marketing Blog.