Utilizing a Small Budget to Make a Big Point with Viral Marketing

Looking to make a name for you business on social media, but don't have the money in your budget for advertising? One quick-ish way to introduce your business is with viral marketing. If you haven't heard before, viral marketing is a strategy that puts all if its efforts into spreading informati...

By Stephanie Jones • May 29, 2014

Graphics and Video Boost Social Media Success

Let visual design promote your workSocial media was born from the need and desire to share news and ideas (aka content) with lots of people as quickly as possible. Email and bulletin boards arguably served this purpose for a long time before early internet sites like GeoCities and Friendster. The...

By Alex Smith • May 29, 2014

Building a Website That Works

This post was originally published at Biznology.Your website needs to work. That's obvious. But what does "working" really mean?Well, probably just as obviously, that will depend on what your website does and how it fits into your overall marketing. Here are a few thoughts on what you should be p...

By Andrew Schulkind • May 29, 2014

3 Talking Points Following Success on Kickstarter

You've just successfully funded your product or service on Kickstarter. It might have taken you a couple of attempts, especially if you are a newcomer to your industry. There are a select few Kickstarter campaigns that not only reach their goals the first time around but completely blow by the go...

By Rob Sutter • May 29, 2014

Content Curation, Content Marketing and Facebook's New Policies

The powers that be at Facebook like to keep us on our toes. Sometimes it feels like they change security, posting, and other features on a whim. But today there was some good news - at least for some of us.A new update from Facebook's elders has quelled previously whispered rumors that they would...

By Mark Lerner • May 29, 2014

3 Ways To Grow Your Email List

Email marketing is a valuable tool in your personal branding strategy, but you may be wondering how you can find the right subscribers for your list. Here are three types of activities you can implement that will attract people to your email list - and your personal brand.#1: Host an online chall...

By Jill Celeste • May 29, 2014

What Do Yerdle, the Collaborative Economy and the Social Shake-Up Have in Common?

It's true: "One person's trash is another person's treasure."I have an addiction and it's called "yerdling." I blame Jeremiah Owyang of CrowdCompanies. He introduced me to Yerdle during a presentation on the #Collaborative Economy.So what is this Collaborative Economy and what the heck is Yerdle?...

By Natascha Thomson • May 29, 2014

Top Social Efforts to Boost Referral Traffic to Your Website

Social media has many benefits for a brand. Raising awareness, generating buzz around events or news, keeping your name or products top of mind, managing customer service, gathering consumer-generated content, market research, and the list goes on. But for some reason, many of us get hung up on t...

By Thomas J. Armitage • May 29, 2014

From Employee to Advocate: Mobilize Your Team to Share Your Brand Content

This week I moderated another webinar from the Social Media Today Best Thinker webinar series, this time on the topic of From Employee to Advocate: Mobilize Your Team to Share Your Brand Content. This webinar was sponsored by SocialChorus. The webinar included a superb group of panelists: Natanya...

By Paul Dunay • May 29, 2014

Social Media Tips from Successful Brands

To say that social media has changed the way people interact with one another is an understatement. Social media and its countless array of Internet-based tools and platforms have become an integral part of modern society from sharing photos and videos to connecting with old friends and relatives...

By Jessica Oaks • May 28, 2014

Totally Insane Ways to Triple Your Click Through Rate

What's the average click-through rate for a Google AdWords ad? When people ask this question, it's often because they want to benchmark their own ad CTR's. Unfortunately, way too many advertisers are content to reach an average click-through rate and leave it at that.We recently held a well-atten...

By Larry Kim • May 28, 2014

The Great Facebook Fail: It's All Your Fault

Hey you, you forgot the basics and now look what's happened.Where is the center of your social media universe? Facebook? Well then we have a clear #Fail.The primary goal of social media networking and sharing has always been to lead the viewer back to your "home base". Your website, your hub, t...

By Maya Paveza • May 28, 2014

A Search Engine Optimization Strategy for Content Marketing Success

Search Engine Optimization (or simply SEO) is the process of getting traffic from the "free," "organic," "editorial" or "natural" listings on search engines. All the major search engines including Google, Yahoo and Bing present search results along with links to web pages and other content including videos or local listings.

By Mark Camilleri • May 28, 2014

3 Brands That Do Crowdsourcing Right

When it comes to customer engagement, there are some brands that just do it right. Each audience is different and expects a certain type of brand to customer interaction depending on your brand's persona. Even between social media platforms, companies should make sure to tailor the message accord...

By Tara Urso • May 28, 2014

Why Controversy Works for Digital Campaigns, and Why You Should be Trying It

Working on social media campaigns can be tricky, especially when the client has no idea what they want. Yes, they know they want a viral video, which is going to get billions of shares, but they don't want it to be different or controversial in any way at all, and they don't actually specify how ...

By Iona St Joseph • May 28, 2014

A Closer Look at Native Advertising

Long Story Short: Similar to "advertorials," native advertising is designed to be entertaining enough in its own right to compel visitors to consume, be influenced by, and even share the content, be it videos, images, articles, or music, based only on the targeted and contextual appeal that holds...

By Chris Abraham • May 28, 2014

How to Avoid the 4 Common Mistakes Most Companies Make in Digital Marketing

Managing your entire digital marketing strategy is not easy. With an ever growing number of software options and services, it becomes very difficult to stay focused. One minute someone is telling you to do email marketing, then social media, and then blogging. Oh and by the way, run a business. U...

By Jason Verdelli • May 28, 2014

Founder vs. CEO: How to Scale Your Business

A few years ago, I was in a meeting with my mentor and coach and he said to me, "Do you want to be a really good communications professional or a really good business grower?"I was reminded of this conversation recently when a friend asked for my advice on growing his PR firm.He told me he spends...

By Gini Dietrich • May 28, 2014

9 New Social Media Statistics and What They Really Mean

My friends over at Social Media Examiner just released their 2014 Social Media Marketing Industry Report. It's a survey of 2,800 marketers from around the world, asking about their attitudes and plans for social media usage.This is the 6th annual version of this report, and I recommend you grab y...

By Jay Baer • May 28, 2014

How to Balance Your Professional Brand and Personal Brand on Social Media

Image by Leon Riskin via flickrWhether it's intentional or not, your personal and professional brand on social media overlap. Followers on LinkedIn might hunt down your Instagram account. Facebook friends will find you on Twitter. It can be hard to keep the professional brand professional when th...

By Evan LePage • May 27, 2014

12 Free Social Media Hacks to Fuel Your Content Marketing Efforts

It's no secret that social media is a great and leading traffic source for many businesses but not everyone is getting it right.This is the reason why Gary Vaynerchuk, in his talks, constantly makes a case about using social media as a native story telling platform and not the distribution channe...

By Salman Aslam • May 27, 2014

How to Create a Story for Your Content Marketing

Content marketing is all about storytelling. Without a story, it's a lot harder to create content (and it's a lot harder to have a reason to create that content). In this post, I want to help you think more clearly about the story behind your business so you can do a better job building more impa...

By Jason Clegg • May 27, 2014

Celebrity and Other Influence Marketing Speak

You're all familiar with the term "influence marketing" by now. Though categorizing communicative influence as marketing may not be the best way to reference the fastest medium of customer acquisition, it works as well as any. In the current age of influence communications, celebrity suggestion h...

By Phil Butler • May 27, 2014

Dear Marketers, Enough with the Fluff

As a marketer, it's no surprise that I'm inundated with content on a daily basis. I check through at least a dozen Google Alerts every morning, browse through SocialMediaToday and MarketingProfs, and receive tons of e-mails about articles I should be reading.Recently, I've also had the chance to ...

By Valerie Levin • May 27, 2014

How Marketers Are Using Social Media to Grow Their Businesses [2014 Industry Report]

Whether you are just getting started in social media or are experienced in growing your company's social presence, you probably have questions about best practices, measurements, platform popularity, and the future of social media marketing. Luckily, the world's largest online social media magazi...

By Brianna Smith • May 27, 2014