Kmart is at it again with a clever follow up to their highly popular video “Ship My Pants” that has had over 17 million views. The play on words this time is “Big Gas Savings” with over 1 million views in 2 days. Like the Old Spice videos that went ballistic, the question remains: They’re [...]

Source: Online Marketing Blog

I get to meet a lot of professionals in the marketing, advertising, communications and public relations industries where topics of conversation often revolve around content. Concerns about where to start, what tactics work best, how to plan, produce and promote all come into play right along with staffing, integration with other channels and measurement. Of [...]

Source: Online Marketing Blog

What if you could tap into the minds of 3,000 marketers to find out where they stand when it comes to social media marketing? How valuable would it be to know how your peers are handing the time commitments, social media platforms and measurement? Lucky you and lucky me, the answers to those questions are found [...]

Source: Online Marketing Blog

For a recent presentation at a corporate communications and PR conference, I polled my network of digital marketing and PR pros working client-side about the most pressing questions they’re dealing with when it comes to integrating Marketing and Public Relations. Since we’ve been working in the digital marketing and PR space at TopRank Marketing for [...]

Source: Online Marketing Blog

comScore reports that in April 2013 there were over 20 billion search queries and of the 13 billion+ handled by Google, 16% of daily searches have never been seen before.  Each of those attempts represents buyers looking for solutions at the moment of need. Online marketers that take advantage of modern, scalable search engine optimization [...]

Source: Online Marketing Blog

New Google+ Layout: Hangouts, Photos and Stream Reminiscent of Pinterest Google announced a major update to their social network this week that changes the way Hangouts, photos and the Google+ stream are viewed by users. The decidedly Pinterest-esque layout was just one of many announcements this week out of Google I/O, the totality of which [...]

Source: Online Marketing Blog

According to a CMI and MarketingProfs study, 91% of B2B Marketers are using content marketing and that means a few things: First, it means content marketing has gained critical mass within the popular marketing mix and any company in a competitive industry would be hard pressed to attract business without it. Second, it means competition [...]

Source: Online Marketing Blog

Visual content is certainly trendy – see the meteoric rise in infographics and social engagement with images as proof. Yet the need for content that appeals on a visual level and presents information in a more engaging format than text goes far beyond what is cool or fun to create. In creating curriculum and learning [...]

Source: Online Marketing Blog

Fast changing trends and serious competition has digital marketers chasing the latest and greatest tactics like hamsters on exercise wheels. Good advice is both hard and too easy to come by. Search “social media marketing” on Google and there are over 1 billion results. All the scrambling often means core skills are overlooked. In fact, [...]

Source: Online Marketing Blog

As part of our continuing series on content marketing tactics, I’ll be covering a topic that is absolutely near and dear to every content marketer’s heart: business blogging. According to a recent NM Incite report, there are over 181 million blogs around the world. The way many companies treat blogs in their content marketing mix is to [...]

Source: Online Marketing Blog

Planning and executing a successful social media marketing strategy sometimes requires that brands look outside their own companies for assistance. Businesses may partner with consultants or agencies to tap into the expertise, skills and resources they can offer, to help with strategy and tactical execution of the plan. However, things can go wrong in social [...]

Source: Online Marketing Blog

Your customers want more personalized messaging and content. In fact, 64% believe it’s more important that companies represent them with relevant offers, compared to 36% who don’t want their activity tracked. Given the tools available to block ads, tactics to stop tracking, opt-in nature of communications and social participation, it’s clear that customers who do [...]

Source: Online Marketing Blog

Conversion rate optimization is the marketing art of maximizing your investment in existing site traffic, through improvements and problem-solving rather than additional ad spend. At some point in any business site’s lifetime, CRO is a must; for smart marketers, it’s an ongoing process that pays dividends over and over again. Once you’ve invested in attracting [...]

Source: Online Marketing Blog

There are quite a few studies showing that companies publishing more blog posts and more content in general equates to generating more business than those that don’t. I suppose if you’re starting from scratch, adding any kind of content has the potential to improve a company’s ability to attract people seeking to buy.  Since content [...]

Source: Online Marketing Blog

Today I’m giving a keynote at the sold-out Communicator’s Conference in Portland, Oregon to 270 or so PR and Communications professionals. The colliding or collaborating (depending on your situation) worlds of digital marketing and PR have left a lot of ambiguity about roles, goals and responsibilities between these 2 very important groups. In this presentation [...]

Source: Online Marketing Blog

The average consumer goes through more than five touch points with an ecommerce business before they convert. This number is trending upward, as companies and customers continue to interact across a greater number of platforms. B2B companies, with often greater price points and a longer buying cycle, may find the number of interactions with prospects [...]

Source: Online Marketing Blog

LinkedIn Adds Rich Media Capability to Profiles LinkedIn users can now add rich media content objects to their profiles, allowing designers, analysts, authors and others to share their best works in a visually interesting format. Users can now use videos, images and presentations to demonstrate their experience. Danielle Restivo, Head of Global Programs, Corporate Communications [...]

Source: Online Marketing Blog

Inbound, content, social, mobile, converged, omni-channel, transmedia. The list of marketing channels and strategies vying for our budgetary attention goes on and on. Where should companies invest to attract more attention and engage those that would influence or act on buying? To answer that question, we could consider the promotional advantages of each discipline: Inbound [...]

Source: Online Marketing Blog

Content marketing has exploded over the past year and will continue to grow in importance throughout 2013. Still, many marketers make the mistake of rushing to publish or producing content without a purpose in an effort to capitalize on the trend. Quality rules the day when it comes to content creation. We write often here [...]

Source: Online Marketing Blog

Where do advertorials, also know in politically correct terms as “native advertising”, fit into the content marketing toolkit?  To answer this question, we first have to understand what advertorials are – and also that the definition of content marketing itself is a hotly contested topic. Adam Stetzer of HubShout, in his recent investigation into the [...]

Source: Online Marketing Blog