If you haven't heard of marketing automation, you probably don't actively market your business.

Marketing automation typically consists of software and technologies that allow marketers to automate repetitive tasks through a variety of channels such as social media, websites, and email.

Many marketers opt to use MailChimp for their marketing efforts, and rightfully so! MailChimp offers great tools including list and audience management, social media integration, data driven insights, and marketing automation. The last of which will be the tool we're focusing on today.

Before you start writing blogs, before you even start an inbound marketing campaign, you need to know who your audience is and how to talk to them. If you’re not truly speaking to them, you may as well be talking with a mouthful of crackers.

A mix of evergreen and topical content is essential for a successful marketing strategy. This video explains why you need to create both and what ratio to start with.

You’ve finished a beautiful new video and you’re ready to share it with the masses on YouTube.
If you’re like me, this is when your workflow is derailed by a daunting blank “description” box.

So I’m getting you back on track with some tips and best practices for getting the most from your video’s description.

Let’s face it, most manufacturing Facebook business pages are easy to ignore, and it’s not hard to see why. They’re bland. They look like other industry pages. They don’t offer a lot of unique value to prospective customers.

Today, to new and potential customers, a good business website is often the face of a company. It represents your business to a worldwide audience, answers customer queries, and should help generate leads. A great-looking website isn't enough if it can’t attract adequate traffic to it. The best manufacturing websites have mastered several ways to increase traffic on their sites.

You're a manufacturer. You want to increase sales. You want to impress your prospects with your capabilities and experience, so you deck out your website with page after page of your excellence. Unfortunately, you're not even in the top 1,000 best manufacturing websites...

McHone Industries started out as a single-facility small-town manufacturing operation in Salamanca, NY. They struggled to fill their one facility with work. Now, they’re seeing business growth beyond their wildest dreams.

Manufacturers, in general, have been slow to learn and adopt digital best practices like content marketing to stand out in the 21st century. Not being absolutely sure about website traffic isn’t an option in the breakneck speed and high stakes of the digital world.

I have a friend over while sitting down to write this. She’s trying to finish her degree in education. Strewn about the coffee table and couch are textbooks and piles of paper she printed at the library - a crazy, disorganized organization. This cluttered scene makes sense only to overly caffeinated college students and old-time movie detectives haphazardly connecting pictures and newspaper articles on the wall with thumbtacks and string.

Oh, yeah, she’s doing some online research, too. And this got me thinking about blogging best practices and the role research plays in crafting a well-fed, credible, informative, well-performing blog.