Top 5 Inbound Campaigns Of 2013

  • Author: admin
  • Posted on: January 20, 2014
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  It’s a new year, and with it come new opportunities for promoting your brand. It’s the perfect time to reevaluate your inbound marketing strategy, to see what worked over the last year and create new goals for the coming year. So while you’re examining and revising your campaign for 2014, it might be a good idea to seek inspiration from those who really nailed it in 2013. The website Search Engine People has put together a list of five great examples, in all different areas of inbound marketing.  Read More

3 Ways Joining Google+ Benefits Inbound Marketing

  • Author: admin
  • Posted on: January 18, 2014
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  In many respects, Google+ was a latecomer to the social media scene. It followed on the heels of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn after they were already well established, and for many months industry commentators thought it was dead in the water. Not so, as we’re starting to see more and more evidence that it’s quietly positioning itself to be much bigger than was originally expected. For any business practicing inbound marketing, joining Google+ is becoming almost a biological imperative. Why do we say that? Because here are four ways it will help your strategy get off the ground more than anything else possibly can. #1: Establish Authorship Read More

CNN vs. TMZ: What Does Your Brand Say About You?

  • Author: admin
  • Posted on: January 17, 2014
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  On the evening of November 30, celebrity and entertainment news site TMZ released a report: “Paul Walker Dies in Fiery Car Crash.” The star of the Fast and the Furious movies, the site reported, had been riding with a friend in Santa Clarita, when the driver lost control of the car and crashed into a tree. The story immediately spread like wildfire across social media. But of the people sharing and commenting on it, many had the same question: “Is this a hoax?” And even as other sites started reporting the story as well, many people maintained their doubts about its veracity, until it was finally confirmed on Mr. Walker’s own official Facebook and Twitter pages. Read More

Using Messaging Apps For Marketing

  • Author: admin
  • Posted on: January 16, 2014
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  Smartphones, tablets and other types of mobile devices have opened up a whole range of new opportunities for communicating. Which means they’ve also opened up a whole range of new opportunities for promoting your brand. In particular, there’s the rise of messaging apps as a new form of social media. For instance, there’s Kik Messenger, which combines social media, texting, and IM, allowing you to converse and share content with your friends, privately and mobilely, either one-on-one or in groups. Or Snapchat, which lets you send photo messages to friends in short bursts that last no longer than 10 seconds before disappearing. These messaging apps eliminate the walls and newsfeeds and connect people directly with their social circles. They enable the things their users want, like messaging and sharing content, while eliminating a lot of the extraneous features of other social media platforms. And they’re quickly going from a novelty to a mainstream social media tool. According to a number of experts, these apps represent the future of how people are connecting with one another. Messaging apps are here to stay. Read More

4 Ways To Make Content Marketing More Competitive In 2014

  • Author: admin
  • Posted on: January 15, 2014
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  You’re wrapping up 2013 (what a year!) and looking ahead to 2014. The economy is improving and the outlook for business is positive, so it’s going to be a good time to maximize the return on your inbound marketing activities. We predict that in the coming 12 months content marketing will become 10 times more competitive. What does this mean for you, and how can you get ahead of the masses? Here are four ways businesses can do so: Using unique material in content Remember when having a blog made you cool? And then when business blogging became a great marketing tool and a way to get Google to pay attention to your website? Words-plus-photo blogs will become the bare minimum in 2014, and you’ll need to use every possible method to improve your content marketing. Read More

Weathering Social Media Storms – And Dancing In the Rain

  • Author: admin
  • Posted on: January 11, 2014
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  Social networking has brought a bunch of benefits for business branding, but disadvantages exist as well. One of the main difficulties is maintaining a consistent image, especially when you have an online presence 24/7 to deal with. It’s easy when you’re under pressure to react too quickly, post off-the-cuff messages that aren’t well thought out and sometimes put your foot in your proverbial mouth. If you have a strong social media persona, however, you can probably weather the resulting storm better than most. Here’s how to present the right company image in your social media marketing so that when lightning strikes, recovery is possible. Read More

How Can You Build an Effective Marketing Plan?

  • Author: admin
  • Posted on: January 10, 2014
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  Nobody does marketing just because it’s fun (although it can be a lot of fun—especially when it’s working!). We all engage in marketing activities because we want something to happen. We want traffic. We want leads. We want customers. We want results. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the particulars of marketing—in the various components of a marketing plan. But an effective marketing plan is more than just the sum of your marketing activities. Having an excellent website is great. So is having an outstanding blog.  A great Facebook presence is important. Having a strong Twitter presence to go with things such as email campaigns and online (or live) events is a good thing, too. But all these activities need to be part of an overall plan. How do you build that plan? Read More

Can I Get a Witness? Customer Testimonials And Reviews

  • Author: admin
  • Posted on: January 7, 2014
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  Here’s a quick quiz: What’s the best kind of advertising you can possibly get? The answer is easy, right? Everybody with a drop of marketing blood in his or her veins knows that word-of -mouth advertising is the Holy Grail of the marketing world. It’s one thing to know that, however, and something quite different to be able to tap into those amazing endorsements. What’s it like in your business? Can you get a witness? How can you get customers to talk about your goods and services? Read More

Marketing Trends For 2014

  • Author: admin
  • Posted on: January 1, 2014
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  Change seems to be the one constant in the marketing world these days. Every time you turn around there’s a new social media tool. Of course marketers want to know where things are headed for the future. But businesses are sometimes a little hesitant to embrace new trends, because they’re not sure if the trends will really help them—or if they’ll be outdated within a few months. So what’s in store for this year? The folks at business2community.com have identified 14 brand trends for the coming year. And while we don’t necessarily agree with all of them, we thought some of them were worth some serious consideration. Just Being Known Isn’t Enough: You may be known, but you need to be known for something meaningful and important to consumers. Your brand is no longer just what you say it is. It’s what your customers say it is. What are you known for? Engaging Emotions: Smart marketers will appeal to emotions rather than simply focus on functionality or pure reason. To be honest, this isn’t really a new trend. It’s something savvy marketers have done for years. Defining Brand “Engagement”: Successful marketers will link “engagement” to how efforts increase how well the brand is perceived and a metric that correlates highly with loyalty, sales, profitability and lifetime value. Mobile Optimized: In 2011, Brand Keys trends said mobile would move mainstream. It did. In 2014, brands will need strategies and delivery mechanisms and content that matches consumer multi-tasking and multi-screen behavior. Integration Intensification: Multi-platform traditional and digital models will need to be integrated in all marketing efforts. Again, this isn’t really a new trend. We’ve talked about it before, but it’s more important than ever that marketing efforts work together—and drive customers back to the Web. Read More