Ayaz Nanji says, “Which areas of expertise and which skill sets are most in demand by employers looking to make marketing hires this year? To find out, McKinley Marketing Partners surveyed 186 professionals who work in a marketing function or have influence in selecting candidates for marketing positions. Respondents came from a wide range of industries and company sizes. Not surprisingly, being up to date on technology is important for job seekers, the survey found. Some 27% of companies plan to hire more people with digital marketing skills this year than they did last year—the biggest... [...]

Patricio Robles says, “Brands like BMW, Southwest Airlines, Target and GE are increasingly experimenting with livestreaming, and some believe the medium will become an important part of the digital video marketing mix. So what should brands looking to embrace livestreaming do to increase their chances of success? Here are seven tips. 1. Pick the right platform There are a number of popular livestreaming platforms. Celebrities like Madonna embraced Meerkat, which has since pivoted away from livestreaming. Twitter’s Periscope has been employed by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. And... [...]

Adam Feldstein says, “Just a few months back I wrote a blog post reviewing Moz Pro in 2015 and shared some of our lofty goals for 2016. Now that we’re a quarter of the way through the year, I wanted to share some of the progress we’ve made and offer a glimpse into other great SEO features we’ll be working on over the next three months. Want to learn more about Moz Pro? Campaign rankings leveled up We overhauled Moz Pro’s rankings architecture, dramatically improving response times and unlocking all kinds of new features. For the full scoop on the core release, check... [...]

Barry Levine says, “Google is upping its pushback against header bidding. Today, the tech giant announced on its DoubleClick Publisher Blog that it is testing exchange bidding in Dynamic Allocation, and it is making First Look available to all of its clients: Exchange bidding in Dynamic Allocation will allow publishers to invite trusted third-party exchanges and SSPs to submit real-time prices using industry-standard RTB calls. These prices will be considered along with bids from the DoubleClick Ad Exchange and the publisher’s reservation campaigns to pick the highest-paying ad. Exchange... [...]

Joe Staples says, “The last time I headed up an internal rebranding initiative, it took a total of 4½ months—from the day we said “Yes, we’re doing this” to the day we unveiled our new Workfront website and replaced the sign on the building. Fast? Undoubtedly. Every branding firm I’ve talked to says it’s a process that typically lasts 9-18 months. We cut that lowest estimate in half, without cutting any corners, by keeping nine key tips in mind. The biggest driver of this accelerated pace was that once we decided we needed a new name, every single dollar we... [...]

Jodi Harris says, “Video is a powerful storytelling medium: Not only can it serve as a prime proving ground for your business’ promotional campaigns, influential ideas, and experimental content efforts, video’s emotionally resonant combination of sound, motion, and visuals can also help you drive deeper, more satisfying relationships between your brand and its audience. Video’s value proposition Videos are among the most versatile tactics content marketers can leverage. For starters, they can be cooked up, loaded up, cut up, and served up in a wide variety of ways. They can: –... [...]

Ayaz Nanji says, “What’s the average length of a brand blog post? How many shares do blog pieces tend get on social media? Do post length and engagement differ between B2B and B2C companies? To find out, Hubspot analyzed data from 175,000 blog posts published via its platform; 49,952 on B2C customer sites and 124,876 on B2B customer sites. Blog posts published by B2B brands and B2C brands tend to be similar in length, between 550 and 600 words, the analysis found. For the B2B posts examined, the median number of words was 545 and the average was 601. For the B2C posts examined, the... [...]

Mari Smith says, “Content is king! This well-worn marketing adage still reflects this fact about online marketing: content remains important and valuable for brands. But now, we can replace that adage with “FAST loading content is king.” On April 12, Facebook will officially roll out a new feature, Instant Articles, for all users. Instant Articles must first be published on your own website or mobile app and then be converted into an Instant Article. Instant Articles’ most obvious benefit is to increase speed of access to content. This lightening fast mobile-only feature loads... [...]

There are many way to get traffic to your eCommerce site (for example, your Shopify store). Most people choose to use paid ads on platforms such as Facebook. Wouldn’t it be a big help, especially when you are starting up, to get free traffic to your store? Your start-up costs could drop dramatically. If you see value in free traffic for your eCommerce sites, but you don’t want to invest hundreds of dollars in advertising, you may want to look into Freecom Blueprint 2.0, new eCommerce strategy by Tom Yevsikov. Yevsikov made a lot of mistakes in his own eCommerce before finding a path to... [...]

Danny Sullivan says, “Facebook wants to ensure that Messenger is the new way that businesses can connect with people, pushing the platform and new bot support at today’s F8 annual developers conference. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke for the first 30 minutes of the opening keynote, outlining a broad vision of a world that’s better by being more connected. Messenger had perhaps the starring role in this, which got further detailed by others in following talks. A new Messenger Platform was announced, allowing developers to create bots that can automatically interact with customers,... [...]