This is a guest post from Ryan Critchett from RMC Tech.
Editor’s note: I usually don’t do this but in this case I thought it was important to point out that, the intention behind this type of content is to showcase real entrepreneurs and their stories of successful use of social media marketing, rather than presenting the usual suspects nobody can relate to, like Redbull or Starbucks. These are real examples you can put into action. The story is told by Ryan and, if you have something similar going on, share it with me. Here goes…
It’s no secret, video blogging is a great tool that anyone can benefit from by adding it to their arsenal of business marketing weapons.
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Guest post by Joel Runyon of Impossible HQ.
About a month ago, I was getting ready to launch my first product ever – Impossible TRI – a triathlon training program. I had everything in place. I had written 25,000-30,000 words, created training programs, done interviews, had them transcribed, and got it all designed into one sexy program. When I went to put it up for sale, I realized there was one small problem.
I didn’t have a landing page. How was I going to sell this thing?
I tried for a while to make landing pages based on my blog’s template, but I quickly realized I would either have to make custom templates for my theme or just use a standard blog post template for my sales page – both of which were not ideal.
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Guest post by Susie Brown from FastUpFront.
For all of you folks that thought you left analogy sentences behind when you slammed your pencil on the desk after the SAT’s- here is a blast from the past for you…
“Search Marketing is to the left brain as social marketing is to the right brain.”
Got that? Now lets’ explain.
I know that 55% of the 33% of you that graduated college probably majored in psychology, so for many of you this will be a review of what you crammed into the short-term memory of your brains before exams.
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This is a guestpost by Brad Shorr from Straight North.
Don’t get me wrong: I love SEO and we do a lot of SEO work. However some businesses turn SEO into an obsession, and that’s a big mistake.
The fatal flaw of an SEO fixation is that it takes your eye off the ball. SEO is about traffic. Traffic is important, but it’s not the goal. The fundamental purpose of Internet marketing, as I see it anyway, is conversion.
First CRO, Then SEO
A typical scenario, and one that makes no sense to me, is when a firm spends tons on SEO and pennies on conversion rate optimization (CRO). They’re driving more traffic to their site – but so what? If their lead generation site features ho-hum offers or no offers at all, people won’t inquire. If their e-commerce site has baffling navigation, people won’t buy.
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This is a guest post by Garrett Ira, a digital marketing strategist who blogs at garrettira.com.
Over the last few years, just about everyone has given their two cents on how to “do social media” the right way. You know what I’m talking about: connect with your audience, add value, it’s about relationships, and all the other advice we hear over and over.
Something has happened that few are ready to admit: companies have gotten much better at social in 2011. Yes, there are still plenty of companies doing it terribly, but if you compare the present day to two years ago, there’s a huge difference.
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If you are like most entrepreneurs navigating the Internet learning how to use social media as a marketing vehicle, you’ve probably noticed that the conversations are usually around web traffic, relationship marketing, content as an inbound tool, how to engage your reader/prospect, building community and in some cases, we can even talk about conversion.
Today, social networking, blogging and micro-blogging, geo-location and even crowdsourcing are considered solid platforms. They are there for businesses of all sizes to leverage from, they are accesible not just for brands. Some small businesses are also making a difference.
But where are we going with all this? Isn’t it time to start moving forward into other capacities that could enable our businesses to close that circle and fully leverage the social Internet?
What am I talking about?
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One of the things I consider important about looking at data or this type of visualizations is to actually get what serves us as business people. Get the data you need and adjust accordingly to your marketing plan.
For example this infographic that MBA Online published a few days ago. It shows you how different generations consume different types of content at different times of the day. Is this important?
Let’s see, if you know who your ideal prospect is and you know the age-frame, you should also be aware of the vehicles he/she uses to consume it’s media and and what times. This will take your marketing efforts to the next level.
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This is a guestpost by Eugene Farber from Reality Burst.
Few tools, platforms or communities have gotten as much coverage (and sometimes criticism) in the blogosphere of late as Triberr has. The platform/community has grown rapidly. And when you get so many people on each side of the fence, you know you’re doing something right.
So what did Dino Dogan, the marketing brains behind Triberr, do to assure its success? Here are nine marketing lessons I pulled out of Triberr’s rise:
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