Greg Sterling says, “As a variation of the old saying, “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” the way to a small business’ (SMB’s) marketing budget may be through its smartphone. Vendors of local marketing services are increasingly realizing the most effective way to reach and retain busy SMBs is by leveraging their mobile devices. Accordingly Google is beefing up its smartphone apps for SMBs: Google My Businessand AdWords Express. Chief among the improvements is the ability to receive real-time alerts for Google reviews and the ability to respond through the app: Starting... [...]

Ben Davis says, “Not long ago I interviewed Beverley McIntyre, director of member services and support at News UK. The extent to which a paywall has changed life at The Sun is quite remarkable. Last weekend, fingering Twitter, I saw that The Times and Sunday Times is offering a free iPad Mini to anyone taking out a premium subscription. This intrigued me and I looked further at The Times member page, a more advanced product than The Sun when it comes to paywalls at News UK, having been in place for a while longer. I saw a lot of features that I take to be trends in publishing strategy, customer... [...]

Selena Larson says, “Facebook hasn’t peaked yet, but that point may not be far off. While 1.35 billion people use Facebook each month, its growth continues to slow, as it reported in its third quarter earnings report on Tuesday. Facebook’s monthly active user count rose 13.5% year over year in the third quarter, compared to 14% in the second, 15% in the first quarter, and 16.3% in the fourth quarter of 2013. Its continued slow growth points to a problem, albeit an enviable one. So many people already use Facebook that it’s having increasinging difficulty attracting more of... [...]

Martin Beck says, “Aiming for a bigger cut of the lucrative video advertising market, Tumblr is launching its first autoplay video ads today, Advertising Age reports. Eleven brands, including The CW, Lexus, Unilever’s Axe, Universal Pictures, JCPenney and Hulu, are testing Sponsored Video Posts before Tumblr opens them to all advertisers in mid-November. Previously, brands could purchase Promoted Posts that included video but the new offering takes advantage of Tumblr’s updated video playerthat starts videos automatically, though muted until a user clicks to activate audio. The autoplay... [...]

Ryan Skinner says, “To bring a recent piece of research on content co-marketing to life, I created a mini-podcast (8 minutes) that includes excerpts from my interviews with marketing leaders. Give it a listen (if the Soundcloud player below doesn’t show up or doesn’t work for you, you can go straight to the Soundcloud page where it lives, here). Below I’ve included notes to the podcast, and a full transcript“. Listen To This Mini-Podcast On Content Co-Marketing The Forrester Blog  [...]

Authors of published books are perceived as experts in their field, credible and a person of substance. Now you can have the credibility-boosting power of a book without having to write it yourself. Mike Cooch has created a book for you to re-brand, add your name and business details to, and make available to your clients and potential clients so they will get to know you as someone they can turn to for expert advice. In his R4 Shook offer, he is essentially being your ghost-writer. He gets no credit for the book; you take all the credit. This book is both professionally written and professionally... [...]

HubSpot has released a free ebook titled “How to Master Personalized Marketing”. Erik Devaney says, “Before the rise of inbound marketing, traditional marketers often focused on broadcasting their messages to as wide of an audience as possible. Their tactics were expensive, interruptive, and, perhaps most egregiously, untargeted. This antiquated, one-size-fits-all approach to marketing didn’t take into account who the target audience actually was. People weren’t seen as individuals — individuals with varying backgrounds, interests, and concerns. Instead, they... [...]

James Temple says, “Wikimedia’s new executive director said the nonprofit is betting heavily on mobile as it strives to reach new audiences in developing regions and stay on top of shifting trends throughout the world. “The majority of our investments are now going into product and engineering, and within that the majority is starting to go into mobility,” said Lila Tretikov at Code/Mobile, in one of her first public appearances since taking the role in May. The shift is important for the organization behind Wikipedia, the fifth-most popular destination online, because citizens... [...]

Seth Fiegerman says, “Facebook just had its first $3 billion quarter. The company reported earnings of $0.43 per share on revenue of $3.2 billion in the September quarter, coming in ahead of analyst estimates for earnings of $0.40 per share on revenue of $3.12 billion. That’s up nearly 60% from its revenue of $2.02 billion in the same quarter a year earlier. “These results show that Facebook is getting stronger every day,” Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s cofounder and CEO, said during the earnings call on Tuesday”. Facebook has its first $3 billion quarter, beats Q3 earnings... [...]

If people see your marketing messages more than once they are more likely to buy. Marketers have known this for over a century. Online, the way to do this is “retargeting”. Your ad follows your visitor after he or she leaaves your site. When they visit a “cooperative” site, they see your ad again. How do you implement retargeting? There are various ways, all involving software. Two years ago, Justin Wheeler met a retargeting expert named Shawn Shellenbarger, who had worked with Google in testing the initial retargeting solution. Shellenbarger had collected over 1 million... [...]