IM NewsWatch has taken Overnight Rankings to The Proving Ground. This a report of our findings. If you want to have marketing success, the basic principle successful marketers use is “enter into the conversation in your audience’s mind.” In a chapter titled “Minds Don’t Change”, in his book, The New Positioning,... [Read more]

Pamella Neely says, “For all the benefits of content marketing, there’s one big drawback: You have to create content. A lot of content. If you can knock out blog posts at a moment’s notice, that’s good. If you can’t, it’s a problem. Content creation is a problem for most small businesses. It’s not that they don’t create any content... [Read more]

Re/code team says, “Alibaba Group Holding founder Jack Ma on Monday gave potential investors little new information about his Chinese e-commerce giant, but surprised them by addressing governance concerns, including a controversial 2010 spin-off of its online payment service. Ma made the remarks at a luncheon at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York... [Read more]

In the movie “The Graduate”, the one word for successful businesses of the future was “plastics”. For online marketers today, the one word is “Video”. Online video can get opt-ins, hold attention during a presentation, drive viral traffic and bring in sales like nothing else. Increasingly, sites without video are... [Read more]

Jason Bowden says, “Top brands receive high leverage from social media marketing and internet companies are getting highly interested on how they pull it off. By social media marketing, a brand or business is able to build its popularity by increasing its website presence and growing the number of its followers using the social media. There are many... [Read more]

Martin Beck says, “Twitter took the wraps off its long awaited e-commerce plans today, announcing a test of a Buy button that will enable users to make purchases from within tweets on their iOS and Android devices. The test is being pushed out to a small percentage of U.S. users, who will be seeing the button on tweets from a select group of... [Read more]

Samantha Winchell says, “When you hear the name “Matt Cutts”, the head of Google’s webspam team, do you break out in a nervous sweat? For most, this is not the case, but for some, the mere thought of a Google penalty keeps them up at night. The fact of the matter is, Google is very clear about what is and is not acceptable under... [Read more]

It’s important that a business site look professional, not amateurish. How does your own site look? It can make a difference in your sales. If you build sites for other people, your expertise is judged by how professional the site you build looks. The majority of marketers who try to build a professional looking website fail. Starting with a professional... [Read more]

Tim Allen says, “Diving into Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) for the first time can be a challenge. You are faced with a whole armoury of new tools, each containing a huge variety of features. Optimizely is one of those tools you will quickly encounter and through this post I’m going to cover 6 features I wish I had known from day one that... [Read more]

Seth Fiegerman says, “Facebook is quickly transforming into FaceTube. Facebook revealed on Sunday that its users have viewed an average of 1 billion videos each day on the social network since June. Roughly two-thirds of those views are happening on mobile. “The goal of News Feed is to deliver the right stories to the right people at the right... [Read more]

Minter Dial says, “Both the sales and marketing functions have been significantly impacted by the arrival of the connected customer plus a new set of digital tools, devices and platforms. Brand marketers and sales teams need to adopt to the new world order or risk serious business consequences. At its core, the change required is one of mindset.... [Read more]

Matt Bush just created new whiteboard videos that you can use with your clients to help them market their business. As in his previous volumes, Local Whiteboard Video Producer Vol 4 is well-researched to be just what businesses in these niches need. The four niches in this latest package are: • Pest Control • Home and Business Security Services •... [Read more]

Selena Larson says, “After months of speculation and high-profile hires, Twitter is finally moving into e-commerce. On Monday, the company announced it is testing a way for users to buy stuff directly from a tweet. Rumors of the company’s move into payments have circulated for months. Now, Twitter joins Facebook in testing a “Buy” button... [Read more]

Ayaz Nanji says, “How long should should content pitches to media outlets be? Should they include fully formed assets or, instead, opportunities to collaborate? Do publishers value exclusive research? What are the biggest mistakes people make when pitching? Fractl recently set out to answer such questions by surveying 500 writers, editors, and... [Read more]

Adam Franklin says, “Imagine travelling all the way to the INBOUND 2014 conference and forgetting to exchange business cards with all the people you met. You’d be kicking yourself, right? You would’ve had jovial conversations with a bunch of interesting people and probably talked some serious shop. However, if you couldn’t reconnect... [Read more]

Hans Peter Jeschke (a.k.a. HP) was looking for a way to make a good return on a small investment of time. He settled on affiliate marketing, and took action. Here’s what he did: On August 14, Jeschke spent about 20 minutes setting up an ad campaign. Then, he spent $1.19 on advertising. The result was that he earned $40.20 in less than a day. Well,... [Read more]

David Moth says, “I probably don’t need to convince you of the value of content marketing as much has been written on the topic in the past few years. However it can still be difficult to measure the precise ROI of content marketing, as one can’t simply point to a blog post or YouTube video and say it definitely led to someone making a purchase. However... [Read more]

Daniel Faggella says, “Newsletters are a powerful tool to promote your business and attract and retain new clients. Once you’ve studied your customer database and you know their demographics, you’re ready to go; but before you start, there are some important issues to consider so that you don’t succumb to the same mistakes that many companies... [Read more]

Sharon Hurley Hall says, “I don’t know about you, but I love infographics. I’m not talking about hastily put together images with some random stats to ride the infographic craze. I mean infographics that are heavy on the info, with some real meat to them. Recently, I’ve been trawling the interwebs for additional information on content marketing.... [Read more]

Walter Jayanth is offering you what he calls “the easiest button creator ever built”. See if you agree. With his Eye Catching Buttons & Banners software, it takes just a few seconds to create a professional button image with optional motion effects when pressed. This software comes with hundreds of premium designs you can adapt to... [Read more]

JP Gownder says, “Tomorrow, Apple will reportedly unveil its wearable device, widely dubbed “iWatch” (though we don’t yet know for certain what Apple will actually call the device). I’ll be at the event in person along with a number of Forrester analysts. In advance of the event, my colleague James McQuivey and I have... [Read more]

Owen Thomas says, “After months of talking up its interest in Bitcoin, PayPal is taking concrete steps to accepting the digital currency as payment. Bill Ready, CEO of PayPal subsidiary Braintree Payments, announced that the company would let merchants accept bitcoins through a partnership with Coinbase, a startup which offers a virtual wallet for... [Read more]

Christopher Ratcliff says, “Marketing has had to become less planned and much more reactive. As the consumer lifestyle becomes increasingly ‘always-on’ thanks to our multiple devices and improvements in connectivity, the more we demand rapid and personalised responses from companies we engage with. Those same consumers are also business people;... [Read more]

There are several different formats for graphics. Over 20 years ago, the BMP file was invented by Microsoft. Not long after came the JPG file (invented by an industry group not wanting to be tied to Microsoft). This is all techy stuff we can mostly ignore, but one graphics style has a special use, the GIF file. Unlike all the others, not only can it... [Read more]