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B2B Marketing views, news and interviews.

17 Revealing B2B Marketing Insights From Poll Data

17 Poll Insights Purple Tech Background Image

The revelations people provide when they respond to online marketing polls include a wealth of industry information. Poll data shows what marketers are thinking about in a variety of important subjects, ranging from everyday tasks to far-reaching future trends.

Over the past four months, we’ve utilized our TopRank Marketing Twitter channel to publish a weekly poll, asking a range of questions to B2B marketers. Today, we share some of the data we’ve collected throughout this series of 17 polls.

Social Media Polls

Our first two polls asked B2B marketing about social media, and the responses can help us gauge the pulse of marketers on the social platform front.


17 Revealing B2B Marketing Insights From Poll Data

Which Flavor of Social Commerce Is Right For You?

Social Commerce Flavors

Photo credit: timtak via Flickr

Social Commerce is a very hot topic right now with numerous blog posts, articles and even a few events focused on ecommerce and social media.

Adding ecommerce functionality to social sites is something that I’ve wondered about for quite a while:

“What I’d like to see more of is the availability of basic ecommerce functions as plug ‘n play options with major blog software packages. Blogs are good for business, big and small and I think there’s a lot of opportunity for business and value for consumers with ecommerce blogs.” Dec 28, 2005.

Too bad I wasn’t more of an advocate for social commerce since, but then again, consumers haven’t really responded well to shopping implementations with social media sites until recently, if at all.


Which Flavor of Social Commerce Is Right For You?

SEO Tops Digital Marketing Tactics for 2011

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.


SEO Tops Digital Marketing Tactics for 2011

2011 Digital Marketing Poll

digital marketingIt’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:


2011 Digital Marketing Poll

Blog Fun: Vote Your Favorite Header for Online Marketing Blog

TopRank Marketing Editor
TopRank Marketing Editor
Reader Polls, TopRank Agency News

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!

Which header is your favorite?

  • Blue-Oasis (30%, 53 Votes)
  • Cutout (24%, 42 Votes)
  • Mimic (17%, 29 Votes)
  • Range (15%, 26 Votes)
  • Whiteout (14%, 25 Votes)

Total Voters: 175

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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 🙂


Blog Fun: Vote Your Favorite Header for Online Marketing Blog

Reader Poll: Help Make Online Marketing Blog Even Better!

Thanks to readers like you, TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog has experienced a long and rich blogging life over the past 6+ years with 2,300+ posts, hundreds of thousands of unsolicited links from powerful industry web sites and content that has helped thousands of readers become smarter online marketers.

We watch what our readers say in comments on and off the site as well as looking at referring keywords in web analytics and site search keywords to get an idea of what our valued community is interested in. With over 30,000 RSS subscribers and well over 100,000 unique visitors, we appreciate your attention a great deal and want to do our best to be a helpful resource.


Reader Poll: Help Make Online Marketing Blog Even Better!

Losing Time on Social Media

social mediaSocial 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)

Which types of social media sites are your biggest time wasters?

  • Social Networks (Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn) (34%, 43 Votes)
  • Microcontent (Twitter) (30%, 38 Votes)
  • Video (YouTube, Vimeo) (13%, 16 Votes)

Losing Time on Social Media

Shutterstock Voted Best Royalty Free Stock Photos Site for Bloggers

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.


Shutterstock Voted Best Royalty Free Stock Photos Site for Bloggers

Art of SEO: Best Search Engine Optimization Book in 2009

Our recent reader poll of 14 books either focused on, or with significant content dedicated to, Search Engine Optimization has concluded with 174 votes. And the winner by one vote and 27% of the total votes is….

Art of SEO (Theory in Practice) by Eric Enge, Stephan Spencer, Rand Fishkin and Jessie C. Stricchiola.

.Art of SEO

Published by O’Reilly, this phone book sized bundle of SEO wisdom is chock-full of advice for marketers that want to leverage search engine optimization as a marketing channel. Congratulations on winning our Reader Poll!

Here are several reviews of Art of SEO to consider or you can take up O’Reilly’s offer to write one yourself.

Runners up for Best SEO book of 2009 were:


Art of SEO: Best Search Engine Optimization Book in 2009

Reader Poll: Best Books on SEO

best seo booksWith 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.


Reader Poll: Best Books on SEO

Reader Poll Winner: SEO Dojo for Best Paid Subscription SEM Community

poll_winner.png 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.


Reader Poll Winner: SEO Dojo for Best Paid Subscription SEM Community

Follow Me Follow You: WhyFollow Twitter Poll

twitter wave

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.


Follow Me Follow You: WhyFollow Twitter Poll