Creating Magical Moments: The Lost Art of Marketing

I bet you can recall most of the times a truly magical moment happened in your life. Our brains do a funny thing when we connect with a magical moment - we create a photographed memory the likes of which lasts a lifetime. These magical moments are what create the value we receive out of an experi...

By Bryan Kramer • Aug. 8, 2013

7 Reasons to Tell Your Brand's Story

We talk a lot about the importance of storytelling when it comes to your small business or nonprofit blog or website, and even how you use social media. We've moved away from merely spitting out messages, particularly hard sales or marketing messages, and are now emphasizing the need to tell you...

By Ken Mueller • Aug. 8, 2013

How To Measure Content Marketing Success [INFOGRAPHIC]

How does one measure if their content marketing efforts are paying off?According to this infographic from Brandpoint, there are three major areas one can use to measure content marketing success. These are: Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion.-A. For awareness, there are three indicators whi...

By Aaron Elliott • Aug. 8, 2013

Maximize Your ROI on Social Media with a Content Promotion Plan

Before you put time, effort and money into creating amazing content, you should develop a content promotion plan.For most businesses and brands, attaining a critical number of hits on their content is of utmost importance. Goals, objectives and KPIs tend to be built around audience engagement and...

By Matthew Peneycad • Aug. 8, 2013

Social Startups: Twubs Hashtag Platform Adds More to the Handy # Symbol

A lot has happened to the hashtag since Chris Messina invented it in August 2007. The little # symbol started out labeling groups and topics. Today it aids authorities, promotes brands and events, and helps spread consumer complaints. And as the hashtag has evolved, so has Twubs.The co-founders c...

By Shay Moser • Aug. 8, 2013

LinkedIn Announces Sponsored Updates for Companies

LinkedIn recently announced the introduction of Sponsored Updates. These paid posts enable any company or organization, over 3 million of which have accounts on LinkedIn, to promote their updates to a much larger audience than just their list of connections. Sponsored Updates will be targeted tow...

By Elizabeth Kent • Aug. 8, 2013

3 Most Common Brand Social Media Species

After observing many brand profiles in the social media ecosystem over the past few years, my research on these unique creatures has resulted in the discovery of three distinct species. In this article, I present my findings and welcome all peer reviews. Here are the three most common brand socia...

By Tatiana Aders • Aug. 7, 2013

3 Reasons That Blogging Isn't Dead

Every few days there seems to be a new critic saying that blogging is dead. Many of these critics say that social media networks have taken over diminishing the popularity of the blog. Yes, there's no denying the fact that social media is wildly popular and offers a quick and easy way to share id...

By Stephanie Frasco • Aug. 7, 2013

How to Use Social Media for Your Political Campaign

It's time again to begin thinking about and planning for the 2014 round of elections. This means TV ads, debates, public appearances, pictures of politicians holding children - all part of a typical political campaign. The savvy, modern politician also knows that their social media strategy is cr...

By Anqi Cong • Aug. 7, 2013

Media Relations: How to Do it On Your Own

Yesterday I was strolling through Twitter when I saw a tweet from my new friend Rebekah Iliff that said, "Dear @Inc: You do a GRAVE disservice here" and it linked to a story called, "How to Do Your Own PR."I'm a big proponent of helping small business owners figure out how to do some of this them...

By Gini Dietrich • Aug. 7, 2013

Understanding Content Curation and How It Applies to Social Media

Imagine this. You're the editor of a newspaper.... but you work on an island in the middle of the South Pacific. No internet access to help with research. No team of reporters. Not even a phone, smart or otherwise.Just a naked desk, stuck in the middle of an empty beach.Forget about what happens ...

By Carrie Morgan • Aug. 7, 2013

How to Adjust the New Gmail Tabs to Get Priority Email

Google has made some big changes recently to the Gmail user interface!If you use Gmail, you likely noticed the new "multi tab" structure across the top. Gmail is making it's own determination on what mail goes in each category for you! This means some important newsletters (like from Pam ) may ...

By Pam Moore • Aug. 7, 2013

Klout: The Online Standard of Vanity?

I've been doing a lot of thinking about the weight of Klout scores. With the gospel of influencer marketing pollinating the media, it's hard not to. Like stocks and credit scores, it's easy to get caught up in the rise and fall of where you stand in relation to others. But is there more to it tha...

By Brenda Somich • Aug. 7, 2013

Why You Need to Join Google+

It's been two years since search giant Google debuted their social networking concept called Google+. Many thought it was going to be like Google Buzz or like Orkut, both of which went silently (well, in the case of Orkut) into the night. And recently, Google has been killing off programs left an...

By Amanda Green • Aug. 7, 2013

Google Relaunches the Zagat Experience with Curated Lists

Anytime there is a Google relaunch it's a good idea to understand what has changed and how that could potentially change your SEO strategy. Just last week on July 29, Google announced that it has relaunched its Zagat rating system and will now offer access to all of the rating information without...

By Amanda DiSilvestro • Aug. 7, 2013

Ikea's 2014 Catalogue: A Perfect Marriage of Traditional Media and Technology

There are a number of inspiring businesses and brands that are pumping out some killer content and using technology in interesting new ways every day.I know that you're probably thinking there's no possible way that an Ikea catalogue could possible be anything close to being considered 'killer co...

By Matthew Peneycad • Aug. 7, 2013

Internet Marketing Statistics You Can't Ignore [INFOGRAPHIC]

In this day and age, traditional forms of advertising are quickly becoming obsolete. In research done by Nielson, Internet advertising has been outgrowing traditional forms like television, radio, magazines, and newspaper. It is projected to take up a quarter of the advertising share by 2015.

By Bernadette Coleman • Aug. 6, 2013

Why EIG Webservers Exploded This Weekend (And What You Need To Know To Be Safe)

Web Hosting Crash And Burn! Wow, Friday was an incredibly eventful day for a lot of people in social media!(Not really how we prefer to spend our Fridays!)The largest conglomerate of mid-range hosting providers, EIG, which owns companies such as HostGator (as of 2012), Bluehost and HostMonster (...

By Kimberly Castleberry • Aug. 6, 2013

10 Dirty Little Secrets Email Lead List Vendors Don't Want You To Know

How many emails soliciting lead lists do you receive on a regular basis? I receive about two to five in my inbox per day. While tempting for some, email lead list services do more harm than good for a brand. For many people, receiving unsolicited email is darn right offensive and intrusive. Unfor...

By Chad Pollitt • Aug. 6, 2013

2013 Email Marketing Calendar [INFOGRAPHIC]

Our friends at ExactTarget have published a great infographic that details dates for every company - especially retailers - to prepare some campaigns for. Consumers love sales... and holiday sales are king! Here's a rundown of the major dates for United States throughout 2013:Labor Day - Septembe...

By Douglas Karr • Aug. 6, 2013

Getting Realistic about Relationship Marketing

Good customer relationships are the cornerstone of long-term corporate success. The quest to build relationships often proves elusive and expensive because what people want is rarely delivered by the companies that serve them. Instead of investing resources in studying behavior and listening to ...

By Debra Ellis • Aug. 6, 2013

10 Tips to Generate More Social Media Traffic

Social media can be an incredible source of traffic. And best of all, it is traffic that you can count on, day after day. However, it also requires lots of constant hard work and usually it can take some time before you can actually see the results.One of the best things about social media is tha...

By Lilach Bullock • Aug. 6, 2013

10 Tips for Better Facebook Status Updates [INFOGRAPHIC]

How do you increase Facebook engagement? Write better status updates.Wording is everything when it comes to Facebook. It's essential to offer concise, easy-to-understand content with clear calls to action. Posting interesting facts, tips, and images and specifically asking your fans to comment o...

By Pam Dyer • Aug. 6, 2013

How to Increase Your Social Media Reach: Tailor Content to Different Platforms

Today, we will discuss an approach to growing your social media reach: make your content platform-specific.I like to think that social media platforms-like the people who use them-have different personalities. Likewise, you need to use different approaches to get information across each platform,...

By Joyce Sun • Aug. 6, 2013

LinkedIn to Introduce Unrestricted Ads API

LinkedIn intends to monetize its social networking site for professionals through the imminent introduction of its advertising API.The company's platform, with more than 238 million members, seems intent to ramp up its efforts in advertising, with eyes set on fellow social networking giants Faceb...

By Aaron Elliott • Aug. 6, 2013