Nico Dato says, “Online reviews can be difficult to get from your customers. But, with 92 percent of consumers now reading online reviews, generating them is no longer an option. For many businesses, the only time they get online reviews is when disgruntled customers go online and voice their discontent. For others, employee contests, printed... [Read more]

Mike Templeman says, “Content marketing has evolved from a buzzword into a major component of marketing strategies for companies of all sizes. Thirty-seven percent of business-to-consumer (B2C) marketers have a documented content marketing strategy, and 61 percent of the most-effective business-to-business (B2B) marketers meet daily or weekly... [Read more]

Verónica Maria Jarski says, “Understanding the following hot marketing trends and planning for them can help you succeed in 2016. One hot trend is virtual reality. “As virtual reality becomes scaled and highly adopted, it will seamlessly integrate digital imagery with the real world—significantly impacting how you can engage customers,”... [Read more]

Best-selling Kindle author Jenn Dize has put together a guide for beginners on Writing Kindle Fiction Made Easy. Amazon sells many thousands of Kindle books every day, and a lot of them are fiction. This is a big market for all kinds of fiction, and any author can find a niche that will be a good opportunity for expressing creativity. Everything you... [Read more]

Quinn Whissen says, “The Pinterest waitlist waiting will soon be over. The company said today that starting in January all US advertisers will be able to buy Promoted Pins. The company officially launched Promoted Pins, its first advertising product, last January but limited access to partner advertisers. Earlier this year, it opened up access... [Read more]

Susannah Morris says, “This holiday season, you’re probably focused on reaching new customers and reeling them in with dazzling specials. Reaching out to holiday shoppers who need your help making good decisions on purchases for others is a great way to boost your bottom line, but what about all those shoppers who went before? What about... [Read more]

Quinn Whissen says, “Link building has had a rough year. Thanks in part to Google’s John Mueller’s comments that link building, in general, is a strategy to avoid, a number of SEO practitioners have moved away from the practice. More specifically, they’ve flocked to a more natural form of link building involving the creation, syndication... [Read more]

If you want to take advantage of the current craze for video, either with your own videos or with ones you curate from elsewhere, you need a design that is customized for displaying videos... [Read more]

Shelby Dorsey says, “Every year it feels like Christmas decorations go up earlier. Black Friday email sends are starting to arrive before Halloween, peppy toy commercials appear on every channel and our favorite brands’ social media accounts become a testament to the holidays long before it feels like we are ready. Even in the age of the Internet,... [Read more]

Daniel Burstein says, “Ecommerce is killing it! My inbox is filled with press pitches about the growth of ecommerce this holiday season, based on vendors’ work with their customers: Year-over-year revenue from social rose by 115 percent, Renee Newby Friedman wrote, based on MarketLive data. Online shopping traffic was up 16% year-over-year,... [Read more]

Gary Ritkes says, “Brands with a portion or the bulk of their sales coming from an indirect sales model have a unique set of marketing challenges, but this sector of business should be rejoicing in the current age of through-channel marketing automation. Instead, as report after report shows, a growth-stifling disconnect exists between brand... [Read more]

Many YouTube courses online are created by people with little experience. Justin Sardi has been using paid traffic to build a stable, recurring business. He has taken everything he knows and created a course around it... [Read more]

Chris Lucas says, “The Web has been abuzz the past few months with talk of Apple’s recent backing of mobile ad blockers. With the release of iOS 9, millionsof iPhone and iPad users can now block ads in the Safari browser. And they appear to be doing just that. Ad-blocking apps topped the Apple Store download list just one day after i0S 9 debuted.... [Read more]

Juliana Crispo says, “Every holiday season, it’s like the floodgates burst open: All of a sudden, there are holiday marketing campaigns everywhere. Every business is trying to cash in on the spending frenzy with emails, social media posts, television advertisements, and other related efforts. While these campaigns can sometimes seem out... [Read more]

Stacy DeBroff says, “From Pinterest to Instagram to YouTube, visual platforms continue their deepening influence with consumers. And in our work with influencer marketing campaigns, as well as our consumer research studies, we’ve particularly seen how visual channels resonate with Millennial women. In our 2015 study of more than 1,000 Millennial... [Read more]

Simon Harries is a Facebook marketer of considerable experience. He has uncovered a method for creating a large group of followers in Facebook without using any paid ads... [Read more]

Chris Perkins says, “With little fanfare, a new Facebook feature has emerged. The desktop-only feature called Facebook Professional Services lets users find reviews and information on local businesses. Search Engine Land first reported about it Monday night. A click on one of Facebook’s business categories brings up a list of well-rated... [Read more]

Demian Farnworth says, “Cornerstone content is the foundation of your content marketing plan. It will help you establish a clear picture of the specific problems you can solve for potential customers. As I said in Your Cornerstone Content Blueprint: Answers to 9 Common Questions, it can also help you achieve some even bigger goals, including: Getting... [Read more]

Mackenzie Fogelson says, “In 1989, I was conquering the eighth grade with a pair of Hammer pants, big bangs, and a stockpile of Aqua Net hairspray. During class, notes would be passed so friends could arrange to drink Dr. Pepper, eat Skor Bars, and play Debbie Gibson’s Electric Youth album on a ghetto blaster after school. On a real good day,... [Read more]

Matthew Neer reports that he makes good money in affiliate marketing, and he does it mostly on autopilot. In fact, he says that he earned over $400,000 last year, alone. He is hoping to grow it to over $1 Million this year... [Read more]

Tyler Rhodes says, “Even though the digital publishing industry is in flux, there’s one truth that remains steady: email is and will continue to be an important part of any future monetization plan. Here’s why. Study after study says that email is one of the most valuable marketing channels out there. It’s also versatile. You can use... [Read more]

Ayaz Nanji says, “Recipes are the most repinned content type by consumers on Pinterest, according to a recent report from quintly. The report was based on an analysis of third-quarter 2015 data (pins, repins, comments, and likes) from the Pinterest accounts of 220 brands. More than one-third (35%) of all repins examined by the researchers in 3Q15... [Read more]

Tony Adword says, “It’s going to be 2016 soon, and if you still don’t have synergy between SEO and your other marketing channels, you are most likely not going to see solid organic traffic growth. SEO in this day and age cannot live in its own silo anymore because we now know how much it is impacted, both directly and indirectly, by other... [Read more]

Michael Guta says, “One of the pressing issues in the digital world is security. Whether you are a small business with an eCommerce website or an individual making payment for a service, the security threat landscape is very real and ever present. A new partnership announced between GoDaddy and SiteLock looks to bring some peace of mind to small... [Read more]

Zak Stambor says, “Pinterest acquires mobile shopping and discovery service The Hunt and image-focused search app Pext. Pinterest Inc. has acquired two startups, social shopping service The Hunt and image-focused search app Pext, that could help consumers find and buy products they’re likely to be interested in. Terms of the deals were not... [Read more]

Christina Sullivan says, “There’s no denying that podcasts have grown in popularity over recent years. In fact, 33 percent of Americans older than age 12 have listened to at least one podcast, according to the Pew Research Center. With endless podcasts out there, it can be tough to narrow down the key shows and episodes that you’re most interested... [Read more]

Quinn Whissen says, “Content marketing strategies can be intense. After all, there’s a lot riding on the plans that will guide all your efforts ranging from who to target, what type of content to create, what KPIs to measure, where to promote, how to distribute, how to segment your list, what numbers to hit… OK, STOP! Let’s take a big deep... [Read more]

Sheena White says, “It seems like Facebook can’t catch a break. The social media platform has1.55 billion monthly active users, with over 700 million of those users visiting Facebook on mobile each day, and yet still, all you’re likely to hear about Facebook from business owners is that the organic reach is terrible and that their ads don’t... [Read more]