Kate Swoboda says, “Whether you’ve just completed your first website, or you’re trying to re-assess an existing site to see where it can be improved, it’s important that the questions you ask are both representative of your brand as well as results-driven. Here are the top eight questions — with action steps — for assessing your... [Read more]

Marina Hoffmeier says, ““People don’t always remember what you say or even what you do, but they always remember how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou What you say is powerful, but how you say it leaves lasting impact. Imagine how the verbiage would be noticeably different in an email about financial investments compared to an email... [Read more]

Frederick Vallaeys says, “After hosting Brandcast and I/O, Google wrapped up a busy month of announcements with Performance Summit, the new name for their combined AdWords and Analytics launch event. I had the good fortune of getting invited to a press event where I could ask questions of Sridhar Ramaswamy and Jerry Dischler, my former colleagues... [Read more]

The top three marketing tasks, in terms of difficulty, probably are: getting your content ranked, generating traffic and converting the traffic you get. Of these three, getting your content ranked is the most critical since without that, you can’t generate any organic traffic and have to rely on paid traffic. Jitendra Vaswani just released private... [Read more]

Matthew Dibling says, “Producing good content, making it easy for prospects to find, and using content to build relationships over time is what inbound marketing is all about. And it makes sense, because chances are your leads have become immune to marketing messaging and they’re doing their own research and educating themselves on every... [Read more]

Sam Davtyan says, “When search engines first became the way we looked for information on the Internet, they operated something like a very limited card catalog. To find an article on Dean Martin, you would need to search “Dean Martin,” not “heaviest drinking member of the Rat Pack,” and you’d still probably end up... [Read more]

Zak Stambor says, “Twitter’s Promoted Tweet Carousel ads also let a retailer highlight tweets from online influencers. Twitter Inc. is testing a swipeable ad unit that lets retailers and other advertisers showcase multiple products or messages in a single ad on the social network. Twitter calls the ad format Promoted Tweet Carousel. The ads... [Read more]

Luke Maguire and Anthony Morrison have been studying Facebook and its potential for creating a dramatic improvement in marketing success... [Read more]

Jeff Charles says, “If you want to learn how to sell more persuasively, you need to understand what your prospects want. You can’t convince anyone to do anything if you don’t know what drives them. You have to figure out what their desires are. Selling is a skill that anyone can learn with enough practice and application of the right principles.... [Read more]

Aja Frost says, “I’ve been a member of the five-sentence club for about a year now. Anyone can become a member, but staying in? Well, that’s much harder. To remain eligible, you can’t send an email longer than five sentences. As you can imagine, being in the club requires a lot of work. But it’s worth it: The first month I joined, my response... [Read more]

Tim Peterson says, “Facebook has conditioned brands and media companies to believe mobile videos are best when they’re basically silent movies because they’re usually played on mute. “Not true!” according to Snapchat. Snapchat claims that two-thirds of the videos posted to its mobile app are viewed with the sound on, the company announced... [Read more]

Pixal has been in development for a year. Refinement after refinement has been added to it, making it a candidate for best software of the year. It will only be available with an unlimited license for 5 days. More about this in a moment. Pixal is impressive software, but even more impressive is the license they give you.  You are allowed to not only use it, but also sell it... [Read more]

Patricio Robles says, “Much has been made of the fact that Snapchat reportedly now has more daily active users than Twitter, but is overall usage of all social apps peaking? According to data from website traffic and mobile app analytics service SimilarWeb, the answer just might be yes. The company compared Q1 usage for the Facebook, Snapchat,... [Read more]

Larry Kim says, “Your organic click-through rate is ridiculously important. While it may not be a direct ranking signal that’s even part of Google’s core algorithm, I believe CTR is an indirect signal that definitely impacts rank. And if you improve your click-through rate, you should see your rankings and conversions improve. Although... [Read more]

Lindsay Kolowich says, “With over 400 million active users, brands are quickly recognizing the need to have a presence on Instagram. But, as with any social network, the brands that are getting the most out of Instagram are the ones who are smart about what they post, when they post, how often they post, and whom they’re targeting. But how... [Read more]

If you don't know much about Instagram, you could be giving your competitors an unfair advantage. But there's a solution, and it's free. Tuesday- Friday, this week  only, you can attend Instagram Success Summit, online... [Read more]

Ben Davis says, “This week saw Econsultancy’s Future of Digital Marketing conference take place in London. One of the speakers was Nic Newman, former journalist, product manager and now an academic, researching changing media. Nic delivered a terrific assessment of the current state of video in media, leaning on insights from the Reuters... [Read more]

Demian Farnworth says, “Let’s imagine you’ve published more than 100 articles on your website and you have 500 subscribers. Many of those articles drive substantial traffic to your site, and you’ve published 12 guest blog posts on other websites. Those guest posts also drive traffic and help you gain subscribers. About once a month, you... [Read more]

Tony Messer says, “Content marketing. Is it a real business strategy or just the latest wheeze from the online marketing community? No doubt you’ve heard that “content is king,” but people often find it hard to understand where to start and how to identify the business benefits. If you’re unsure, just answer this question —... [Read more]

If you need to build websites for local merchants, the Ink Themes team, led by Neeraj Agarwal has a kit of online assets that will make your life a lot easier... [Read more]

Mayur Gupta says, “There’s no denying that the consumer has been at the center of marketing’s ecosystem for decades — but only in “theory.” As marketers, we haven’t been able to transform the theory into reality and deliver the most immersive and seamless experiences for the consumer. In actual practice, we continue to put the channel,... [Read more]

Ayaz Nanji says, “Almost all of the 100 most expensive Google AdWords keywords in the United States are related to lucrative legal terms, according to recent research from ClickZ, EmpericalProof, and SEMrush. The report was based on March 2016 US data from SEMrush’s database of more than 80 million keywords. The researchers looked at the... [Read more]

Zak Stambor says, “Instagram Business Tools let retailers choose how they want their customers to contact them, as well as analyze who their followers are and which posts resonate with them. Facebook Inc.-owned Instagram today launched Instagram Business Tools, which give retailers and other business more ways to interact with and understand their... [Read more]

Joshua Sophy says, “If you’ve been dawdling capitalizing on the ecommerce movement, you’re not alone as a small business owner. New data from SurePayroll’s monthly Small Business Scorecard shows that only 26 percent of small businesses have an ecommerce site or even use their website in any way to conduct sales. Considering the push for... [Read more]

Courtney Feairheller says, “A common mistake companies make in marketing efforts is positioning their company or product as the hero of the story. You may want to don the cape, drive the Batmobile, and kick the villain’s butt (and who could blame you?), but most brands overlook the interests of customers when they focus on themselves. The... [Read more]

Patricio Robles says, “In an effort to reach consumers via social channels, in recent years a growing number of brands large and small have embraced influencer marketing. But as evidenced by Essena O’Neill, a popular 18-year-old influencer from Australia, influencer marketing has a dark side. That dark side was on display for all to see... [Read more]

Sarah Sikowitz says, “In collaboration with Susan Bidel, Richard Joyce and Jim Nail. Yesterday, the ANA released the findings from an eight month research study into the issue of transparency within the media agency industry. The findings are damning, but not surprising for those who have been following this issue. The phrase in the report that... [Read more]

Pete Caputa says, “Connecting with prospects is harder now than ever before. In today’s technology-driven world, fewer and fewer prospects answer their phone and even less respond to voicemails. Not even 1% of phone calls are returned! Although I’ve resisted telling my salespeople for years that the phone is less important than email when... [Read more]