Happy Thanksgiving! I would be remiss if I didn't say how thankful I am every day to work in such a great industry with amazing co-workers, clients and vendors. I am certainly appreciative that you are reading this post today as well!
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Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp, is planning on partnering with Apple to deliver a tablet-only subscription-based newspaper later this year called "The Daily." Rumor has it that the magazine will cost 99 cents per issue, and will be the first of many publications to embrace Apple's new subscription platform in iOS. With the pains that traditional print publications are currently struggling through there is no doubt that more media outlets will move towards offering digital versions of their paper publications (in some cases they may offer only digital content, as with The Daily), and this means that businesses will have the opportunity to deliver more dynamic and interactive advertisements to their potential customers.
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By now most of you have already planned out your Black Friday shopping. You will likely stay up the night before and hit the stores at midnight or wake up extremely early to make sure the items you are looking for aren't sold out. One benefit nowadays that wasn't available in the past: if you can't get what you were looking for on Black Friday or can't make it to the store, there's always Cyber Monday!
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With the amount of tweets that have been posted, it is surprising that most people that create an account abandon it within 2 weeks. Why does this happen?
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Inevitably most small businesses that we meet or talk to think of excuses not to blog instead of reasons to blog. Most of these are the same businesses that feel like they should get involved with social media, but only because they hear Facebook and Twitter on TV or from other businesses telling them they should, not because they actually see the value. Needless to say, these businesses are not generally successful at either. Let's take a look at some of the common excuses and why they are wrong.
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The most common argument print publications have agains the huge success and adoption of blogging is that, in their eyes, blogs lack the professional journalists necessary to properly research unique and creative content. Well, this weekend we had a great example of why that isn't at all the case, as one culinary magazine was actually caught lifting content from blogs without any accreditation.
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A common theme we see with small businesses is that they come to us wanting to work on the website, not their web marketing. Anymore, it's just as important to focus on the off-site elements of your website as it is the on-site elements. What I mean by this is that the whole concept of inbound marketing relies heavily on using external tools like Facebook, Twitter, a blog and email marketing to drive traffic to your main website. SEO will get you well on your way, but these other channels are the glue that fills the holes in your lead generation efforts. Lead generation will only happen if your website is a workhorse! You can drive traffic from all walks of the web, but unless your website is the true workhorse that it should be, you won't reap the rewards you have the potential to. To understand what I mean by calling your website a workhorse, ask yourself the following about your site: Do you effectively use Calls to Action throughout your site? Do you have a strategy for capturing ...
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This is the 4th and final post in my Small Business Takeaways from IMS 2010 series. If you missed the first 3 posts in this series, check them out below:
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If you haven't already, I highly recommend that you check out my previous two posts on IMS 2010 Takeaways for Small Businesses:
Read moreUnless you have been away from the computer, TV, or radio for the past few days, you have probably heard of Google's latest feature, Google Instant Search. Basically the search engine starts showing results as you start typing your query. There have been a lot of mixed reviews and suggestions. One of my personal favorites was from @GregBoser:
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If you are executing digital marketing, congratulations! You are most likely already one step ahead of your competition, and making strides to meaningfully connect with prospects online. But, how do you know if you’re seeing continual success year over year, and improving your metrics?
Without the tools in place to analyze and benchmark your efforts, it is impossible to scale your online marketing and ensure continuous success.
