Making Your Brand Social Search Optimized

Facebook recently overtook Yahoo as the second most visited site in the United States. And in doing so, Facebook along with other social networks set the stage for a confluence of social and search that fundamentally changes who we, as a society, discover and share information, and in turn, where our attention is directed and [...]

Adoption Of Social Media Doubled Among SMBs

More and more SMB’s are, at the very least, experimenting with social media. You can sense that as you see the activity by local businesses no matter where you are. The “Check Us Out on Facebook” and “Follow Us On Twitter” signs are springing up more and more on Main Street USA and for good [...]

Using Good Data Streams To Focus Your Business

Several sessions this afternoon on data quality and governance. Rather than blogging these separately, here are some thoughts:

Does Your Search Marketing Team Maintain A Service Benchmark?

As a search marketing agency develops its positioning in the market, whether it is to serve a particular business niche; work with small to medium sized businesses or as a market leader, developing enterprise level solutions for multinationals; it is important to set and maintain a service benchmark by which the agency can be measured.

Weighing The Pros And Cons Of Webinars

Tim Bourquin wrote a thought-provoking column talking about his company’s use of both live and recorded webinars. Tim is very open and detailed in his description of how they use webinars to boost awareness and revenue and it’s worth reading as a business use case. But he also brings up two major problems he is [...]

Giving Perks To Gain Customer Loyalty

A new report from the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council report indicates that marketers under-value loyalty programs even as customers give the perks, discounts, deals and additional service opportunities high marks.
What makes a loyalty program successful? Both customers and marketers agree: deeper engagement and personalized contact drives loyalty, not mass blast communications and gimmicks.
The Marketer’s [...]

Vanessa Fox Talks Post Google Marketing

Vanessa Fox works as Entrepreneur-in-residence with Ignition Partners but is especially well known in the Search Marketing world because of her past work as Google’s search engine strategy spokesperson and creator of Google Webmaster Central. I’ve interviewed Vanessa several times on video in the past here, here, here and podcast here but nothing as substantial [...]

Increasing Awareness And Revenue Using Social Media

Social Media impacts every business, every brand, and in doing so, connects a network of distributed communities of influence, making the world a much smaller place in the process.  Small businesses are in fact at an advantage in Social Media Marketing as they can focus on hyper-local activity that can offer immediate rewards or at [...]

Training Does Not Have To Be Tedious

Training is easily perceived as a chore by inhouse web teams, but it doesn’t have to be. Here are 7 easily-implemented tips to make training fun and get your staff’s buy-in.
1. Buy them essential web books, videos or audio recordings. Create a mini reference library.
Many people are motivated to learn on their own, and enjoy [...]

Business Planning Is The Key To True Success

This week, I’ve got a question for you…
What is one of the critical differences between successful businesses owners and unsuccessful businesses owners?
It’s not how much money they start with, or where they come from.
It’s not their level of education.