Mike Volpe says, “Sophisticated marketers measure everything from website traffic and pageviews to form submissions and email click-through rates. But when measuring social media, most rely on fluffy metrics, such as “new followers” and “increased brand awareness.” Only 1 in 3 marketers can measure the ROI of their social... [Read more]

Aaron Strout says, “As we kick off another new year, it’s helpful for marketers to look backward and forward as they set their blueprint for the next twelve months. On the mobile front, this year had a number of important milestones. eMarketer predicted that smartphone usage worldwide would grow 25% in 2014, with the number of people that... [Read more]

Kim Celestre says, “”If there is no struggle there is no progress” — Frederick Douglass Despite spending years optimizing their social marketing efforts, advanced marketers share a common hurdle: How do they make sense of all the data that their social marketing programs generate? It seems that this isn’t an easy endeavor — all... [Read more]

Jeremy Ellens says, “Take a moment to think of your favorite meal. Now, picture eating that meal everyday for the next year. For those of you thinking you could, in fact, eat the same meal every day and be okay with it, picture drinking your favorite alcoholic beverage instead; day, after day, after day. Feeling sick yet? Good, because that is... [Read more]

Jason Abbruzzese says, “Google’s grip on the Internet search market loosened in December, as the search engine saw its largest drop since 2009. That loss was Yahoo’s gain, as the Marissa Mayer-helmed company added almost 2% from November to December to bring its market share back into double digits. Google’s lead remains overwhelming,... [Read more]

Lauren Orsini says, “Video posts per person have increased 75% globally, 94% in the United States since the last year, Facebook reports. In a Thursday post on itss media blog, the social network revealed that Facebook has averaged more than 1 billion video views every day since June 2014, and in the United States, 50% of returning visitors watch... [Read more]

Margot daCunha says, “Instagram recently announced that they’ve gained over 300 million users, even surpassing their much older cousin Twitter. “Over the past four years, what began as two friends with a dream has grown into a global community that shares more than 70 million photos and videos each day,” writes co-founder and CEO Kevin Systrom... [Read more]

Ayaz Nanji says, “More than half of digital display ad impressions are not actually seen by consumers, according to a recent report from Google. The study, based on an analysis of July and October 2014 data from Google-owned advertising platforms such as DoubleClick, found that 56% of all display impressions are not viewable. A display ad was... [Read more]

Alex Mohr says, “As a great appreciator of finely crafted email newsletters, it hurts that I have to caution so strongly against their use. But the (very few) marketers who actually are sending high-end newsletters know more than anyone that newsletters, as a general rule, don’t convert well. If successful marketers thought newsletters were just... [Read more]

Alan Bleiweiss says, “There are several reasons a reconsideration request might fail. But some of the most common mistakes site owners and inexperienced SEOs make when trying to lift a link-related Google penalty are entirely avoidable. Here’s a list of the top 12 most common mistakes made when submitting reconsideration requests, and how... [Read more]

Andrew Bartels says, “We have just published Forrester’s semi-annual global tech market outlook report for 2015 and 2016 (see “The Global Tech Market Outlook For 2015 To 2016 — Five Themes That Will Define The Tech Market“). In this report, we are projecting growth of 4.1% in 2015 and 6.3% in 2016 business and government... [Read more]

Seth Fiegerman says, “Facebook is kicking off 2015 with a series of acquisitions. The social network announced Thursday that it has acquired QuickFire Networks, a video infrastructure startup, as part of its continued effort to expand and improve the video experience on site. “Video is an essential part of the Facebook experience,” a Facebook... [Read more]

Eric Wittlake says, “It is that time of year again. The time when predictions of the obvious abound and resolutions are quickly broken. I’ll spare you my New Year’s resolutions (well, most of them at least, read on). Instead, here are my five B2B marketing predictions for 2015. 1. Predictive Marketing Goes Mainstream Predictive marketing is already... [Read more]

Amy Gesenhues says, “According to comScore’s latest reports, this past holiday season proved to be another gangbuster two months for online retailers. Desktop e-commerce sales increased 15 percent over 2013′s November and December sales results, reaching more than $53 billion in sales for the 2014 holiday season. Online desktop sales occurring... [Read more]

Entrepreneur team says, “For many good reasons, blogging is likely the heart of your content marketing strategy. Recent industry statistics are astounding: 77 percent of Internet users read blogs, 52 percent of consumers make purchasing decisions after reading a blog’s advice, and 57 percent of marketers have acquired new customers via their blogs. With... [Read more]

Mark Donnolo says, “Organizations change, as do sales strategies. As those strategies are modified, sales roles either evolve or fail. When companies grow from year to year, they don’t grow in a straight line. Typically, companies retain revenue from current customers, gain revenue when current customers purchase additional products or services,... [Read more]

T J Keitt says, “Thanks to digitization and inexpensive storage, businesses can now collect incredible amounts of information on their customers, competitors, and other market factors. But you only profit from this bounty if an employee can find the right data nugget when they need it. And here lies our problem: The average information worker... [Read more]

Christina Warren says, “Last week, word leaked that Microsoft is hard at work on a new web browser for Windows 10and that it is not going to be Internet Explorer. More details of that project — codenamedSpartan — started to eke out Thursday. Tom Warren at The Verge, citing sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans, says that Spartan will... [Read more]

Jonathan Long says, “A massive pay-per-click and SEO budget can deliver high-quality traffic to your website, but if you are sending that traffic to poorly optimizedlanding pages you are essentially throwing your money down the drain. If you want to convert more of your traffic into leads, sales and revenue make sure that your landing pages feature... [Read more]

Jeanette Anzon says, “When it comes to marketing your business, social media engagement is the best way to go. The question is, which social media would you go for? If you have already created a Facebook page, then you then you have made a great start. Your next step should be pinning with the queen of visual social media networks, Pinterest. Shareaholic.com... [Read more]

Rachel Foster says, “LinkedIn’s publishing platform used to be reserved for select influencers; however, now anyone can publish articles there. But is the platform worth your time? According to an Oktopost study, LinkedIn is the best social network for generating B2B leads. Over 80% of B2B social leads come from LinkedIn, compared with 12.73%... [Read more]

Larry Kim says, “When it launched last year, Twitter Analytics marked a solid (if long overdue) move towards greater transparency and measurement abilities for users. And since then, Twitter has continued to make upgrades to the tool, most recently by adding analytics access in its mobile app. Though users now have more insight into their Twitter... [Read more]

Kevin says, “As far as basic tenants of SEO practice go, creating a quality link profile for a client’s site (or yours) is fundamental to the success of any SEO campaign. As basic as this practice is in the SEO world, it is astounding at how complicated many SEO’s seem determined to make it. Which is why me and the guys over at FosterSEO created... [Read more]

Tom Sather says, “In late 2014, Google announced “Inbox by Google,” update to the nearly ten-year-old Gmail interface that is essentially a re-imagined email client for Gmail, but focused on helping people manage their busy lives. The effort takes the best ideas from products like Google Now and Gmail as well as from upstart email apps like... [Read more]