Ben Davis says, “For years, brands and publishers in particular have been warned of the dangers of wallowing too far into Facebook. The rationale was that if brands didn’t prioritise their own publishing platforms (apps and websites), they would be vulnerable if Facebook decided to shake things up. 2016, to my mind, has seen the old argument finally put to bed, as Facebook steams into new features and publishers realise the art is in hedging bets and learning as they go. Facebook forges ahead in 2016 There are several features that Facebook is currently prioritising that promise value... [...]

Craig Bradwhaw says, “As digital marketers, the amount of data that we have to collect, process, and analyze is overwhelming. This is never more true than when we’re looking into what competitors are doing from a link building perspective. Thankfully, there are a few things we can do to make this job a little bit easier. In this post, I want to share with you the processes I use to supercharge my analysis of competitor backlinks. In this post, you’ll learn: – How to use URL Profiler for bulk data collection – How to use fusion graphs to create powerful data visualizations –... [...]

Robert Bruce says, “Every writer who has ever lived has lusted after ideas. Where are they, how do I get them, and how do I keep them coming? If you’ve been writing long enough, you know that — like Solomon — there is nothing new under the sun. Try as you might to sweat them out of your head or pull them gently from the stars above, there are no new ideas. So, relax. But the page is not going to write itself, is it? Where then do we turn for ideas that work, ideas that move, ideas that persuade? In short, we “steal” them”. The Art of Finding Ideas Copyblogger  [...]

Blaise Lucey says, “Social ROI. What does it mean to you? Besides new followers and fans. Besides clicks and shares. Hard cash. A Facebook fan’s value. The cash money associated with a click on Twitter. Maybe it means very little. According to The CMO Survey, 40 percent of CMOs say that social media is underperforming relative to the rest of the organization’s marketing efforts. Just 11.5 percent have said they can prove the impact of social media quantitatively. Last year, a survey fielded by small business directory Manta showed that 59 percent of small businesses hadn’t seen any... [...]

Anita Campbell says, “If you run a B2B company (i.e., a business that sells to other businesses), have you ever wanted to benchmark your company’s social media efforts? See how you’re doing compared to others? TrackMaven recently conducted a study of B2B brands and their social media activity. The study found that LinkedIn just kills it when it comes to the average number of social media followers among B2B businesses. B2B companies had an impressive 109,000 LinkedIn followers on average. Other social networks didn’t even come close when it came to the average number of social media... [...]

Joe Shervell says, “I specialize in getting people to click on content. Whether that content is a blog post, an interactive resource or even an infographic, my aim is to get as many people as possible to click on the content, engage with it and share it. Related: How to Create Compelling Online Content That Gets Traffic My main message here is that, generally, when you place a piece of content in strategic places online (forums/communities/social media), you increase the chance that it will be picked up by other websites. And, therefore, you increase the number of people clicking on it. In... [...]

Jack Simpson says, “Not too many years ago brands were deliberating on whether to embrace social media at all, and for those that did there were relatively few platforms to choose from. Now, however, it seems there’s a new social media platform to get excited about every month. The landscape has completely changed, and it can be daunting for brands to take the plunge and plough resources into something that isn’t guaranteed to return any value. To make your decision easier, I’m going to cover five key questions every brand should answer before committing to a new social media channel.... [...]

Ayaz Nanji says, “More than two-thirds (67%) of small and midsize businesses are are already using social media as part of their marketing efforts or plan to start doing so sometime this year, according to a recent report from Clutch. The report was based on data from a survey of 352 owners and managers of businesses located the United States with 1-500 employees. The majority of businesses included in the survey have 1-10 employees and less than $1 million in annual revenue. Some 5% of SMBs that do not yet use social media say they plan to start doing so by the end of 2017; 18% say they... [...]

Brian Massey says, “As I soar 35,000 feet above the Amazon jungle, my thoughts turn to the attentive audience I addressed in São Paulo, Brazil, this week. The attendees were executives and professionals from Brazil’s largest online businesses. These online retailers — brought together by Compasso, a UOLDIVEO company — sold everything from apparel to books to shoes to men’s clothing, and even college degrees. Some would argue that the Brazilians are behind North America and Europe when it comes to online tech. In my experience, online businesses run from the US are still scaling the... [...]

Tamar Weinberg says, “In the startup world, an entrepreneur wears a lot of hats. From business operations to sales to marketing to customer communications, it’s a busy task especially for smaller lean teams that may not have the budget or revenues to support additional manpower. And that’s why automation is a great way to help minimize the workload, if just for a bit (or with some other tools, pretty substantially). We’d like to walk through a list of marketing automation tools that are sure winners for startups, but as small businesses, they’d be great for you too. 1. Autosend Autosend... [...]