Lee Odden’s War of Words: Myth-Busting Social, Content Marketing & SEO at NMX
Our CEO at TopRank Online Marketing, Lee Odden (@leeodden), shared his War of Words: Myth-Busting Social, Content Marketing and SEO yesterday at NMX Las Vegas. The premise of Lee’s presentation was actually crowdsourced; the title War of Words comes from H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, which was turned into a radio program by Orson Wells and spawned a mass fear that Mars aliens were on their way to take over Earth. There is much misinformation in content marketing, social media and SEO that the hype spreads much like the …
Jay Baer on Content Marketing, Youtility and Why Inbound Marketing Just Isn’t Enough #NMX
Helping beats selling. If you sell someone, you can make a customer today. If you help someone, you can make a customer for life. So says social media speaker, author and coach Jay Baer, in the opening of his “Youtility” presentation at NMX Las Vegas. What is Youtility and why do marketers need to get on board? Audiences have become fragmented, there is far more competition for their attention, he says. Frame of mind awareness is all about inbound marketing, but this doesn’t create demand; it fulfills it. It’s half the cake – it’s a great thing for consumers for already know what they want. In 2004, 83{0e584ec94eaa64d073763ee1dc286a1f4d0f941424b1448bbfd01af7d90f9475} of people used search engines to…
Pinterest 101: 33 Ways To Create Engaging Content & Be More Pinnable #NMX
I am amazed at how much Debba Haupert (@girlfriendology) was able to cover in one short session at NMX Las Vegas. Debba’s session on Pinterest proved to be very informational and provided practical advice and tools that marketers can use to better engage their followers. Many brands are still struggling to determine if Pinterest is a platform that will work for their business. Companies that have taken the leap may be unsure of how exactly to use Pinterest and what their strategy should be. The numbers don’t lie. Pinterest has proven that it has staying power. 10.4 million users 25 million uni visitors/month 1/3 use …
Link Building for Beginners in 3 Simple Steps
Historically, link building was critical for companies to appear in search results, as links have long been an important signal to search engines. However, the new link building is about mentions, social visibility, and building your company’s presence, says Alison Groves, Product Coordinator at Raven Internet Marketing Tools. Groves presented her three simple steps to link building for businesses in a presentation this morning at NMX Las Vegas. Her process, she says, revolves around relationship building and nurturing in order to earn mentions from relevant websites. We need to focus less on the technical and more on attracting targeted traffic by getting our sites in front of the people most likely to be interested in …
Online Marketing News: Retail + Big Data, Fans Love Brands, Slideshare Generates Leads
The Retailer’s Guide to Big Data The explosion of mobile and social media has changed the ways that retailers view customer data. This recent infographic from Monetate takes a dive into big data and presents challenges, goals, and tips for developing a big data game plan. Google To Hire More Help, Users Enticed To Search While Signed In Google is determined to see G+, local search, and personalized search succeed. To that end, they’re hiring a new product marketing manager for search. This person would be…
6 Essential Questions & Answers About Content Marketing for 2013
For every social media, SEO or content marketing “expert” there are hundreds, if not thousands of smart business people that do not possess advanced knowledge in those areas. That’s not unreasonable, since running a business involves more than keeping up with the latest internet marketing best practices. On this blog we often include the basics of search, social and content marketing because that’s where a lot of people need confidence and affirmation that they’re on the right track. To support that approach, here are a series of questions my co-worker Miranda Miller shared with me as prep for an online radio show. Hopefully, if you’re responsible for attracting, …
Mold Your Engaged Employees Into Brand Advocates
Matt Ridings & Michael Brito Advocating For Employee Advocacy Employee engagement is key in improving productivity in any industry. A happy employee is much more likely to be more productive than their counterparts. A recent study from the National Business Research Institute (NBRI) shares just how important it is to keep employees engaged. Findings include: Engaged employees product twice as much work product in the time as unengaged employees The average adult spends a quarter to a third of their waking life at work 40{0e584ec94eaa64d073763ee1dc286a1f4d0f941424b1448bbfd01af7d90f9475} – 80{0e584ec94eaa64d073763ee1dc286a1f4d0f941424b1448bbfd01af7d90f9475} of customer satisfaction is affected by employee attitudes…
SEO for Ecommerce Websites – Managing the Duplicate Content Beast
The rise of ecommerce websites has heralded a new era of convenience for consumers, as well as the most powerful tool for retailers since electricity. However, ecommerce sites bring with them a host of SEO challenges that can quash any hopes of being found in organic search. Fortunately, with a little foresight and a bit of technical knowledge, ecommerce retailers can maximize their SEO potential and literally rise above the competition (in the search results), resulting in more customers and increased sales. Duplicate Content…
Strategies for Online Marketing Innovation in Highly Regulated Industries
On a gray and snowy morning marketers from the healthcare, finance and government sectors headed to the Swedish American Institute in downtown Minneapolis for a MIMA event titled Interactive Innovation in Highly Regulated Industries. Moderated by Melissa Berggren of Allina Health, the panel of experts included Marti Nyman, Director of Innovation and Strategy at UnitedHealth Group, Ward Tongen, Principal Digital Marketing Strategist at Medtronic and Kelli Carlson-Jagersma, Collaboration-Strategist VP, Wholesale Social Strategy at Wells Fargo. Gaining approval on marketing strategies, content and tactics within …
Online Marketing News: Facebook Graph Search, Myspace Launch Is A Dud, LinkedIn For Business
2012 Social Media Report Cards This recent infographic from Pardot features the social media platform winners and losers in 2012. You’ll find scoring based on growth, number of users, ROI as well as insight into which platforms are best for mobile, visual, or connecting. Up Close With Facebook Graph Search First off, what is Graph Search? Facebook has amped up its search capabilities by rolling out this new feature. Danny Sullivan’s article provides a step by step deep dive into using Facebook’s new Graph Search. Via Search Engine Land. The New Myspace: What A Mess The recent launch of Myspace’…
Scaling Social Media Selling – 7 Steps to Building Trust & Credibility
Interest in scaling social media sales has increased significantly over the past year and in 2013 it be even more so. Organizations of all types and sizes are coming to terms with the need to better monetize their investments and one of the most compelling opportunities to do so is through helping sales leadership develop their personal brands online. It’s understandable why: A recent study reported on by eMarketer indicates that 67{0e584ec94eaa64d073763ee1dc286a1f4d0f941424b1448bbfd01af7d90f9475} of BtoC marketers and 44{0e584ec94eaa64d073763ee1dc286a1f4d0f941424b1448bbfd01af7d90f9475} of B2B…
4 Blogging Basics For Online Retailers
Retail websites are flush with product information, specs, and images of items available for purchase. However, it may be difficult to find a way to provide detailed and engaging content for customers visiting a website when they’re just looking to purchase. Starting a company blog provides a good opportunity to attract new customers and engage current customers with content about your products and other topics that are of importance to them. It doesn’t matter if the items being sold are car parts, clothing, electronics or furniture, there is an opportunity to help solve pain points and arm your customers with information that encourages engagement and purchasing decisions. Showcase Merchandise & Industry Trends Clothing: Showing apparel …
Social Media Marketing Fatal Attraction: When Content Earns Your Brand the Wrong Type of Attention
You’re probably familiar with at least a few social media horror stories; those epic hate-bombing situations, where companies commit social suicide in one way or another and pay for it very publicly. One such company was Boners BBQ, who posted on their Facebook page a picture of a customer who had written an unfavorable Yelp review… and captioned it with a rant which included calling her horrible names and accusing her of not tipping the staff (see the full story by Scott Stratten at Unmarketing). The fatal attraction I speak of is more insidious, less intentional, yet can chip away at your time and resources, effectively undermining your social efforts and…
Top UK Online Marketing Influencers & Bloggers in 2013
For the past 2 years we’ve been publishing a list of the top UK focused internet marketing blogs in advance of speaking at events. This year I’ll be presenting on Creative Content Marketing at SES London February 19th. Since bloggers do more than just write posts, I’ve shifted the focus of this list from blogs to individuals. With the increasing importance of authorship and personal brands, I think it’s important to consider individual bloggers and the content they share whether its tweets, status updates, or other useful information…
Online Marketing News: Google Gets Explosive, Facebook Graph Gets Creepy, Tumblr Gets Sexy
How to Play the Content Marketing Game Content marketing software company SocialEars share 14 methods for winning the game of content marketing in this fun infographic. Follow the rules to earn more relevant eyes on your content; be careful, though, over-promotion could result in your company losing the game. While it’s certainly true that promotion is important, the infographic misses the mark in exactly when this becomes an important consideration. As TopRank CEO Lee Odden has said time and again, the time to think about …