Online Business Directories – the Good, Bad and Ugly
Online business directories provide, among other things, links to a business website and if you’re a business just establishing or wanting to improve your ranking in search engines, they can help. The question is which online business directories will give me the best effect to my SEO?
I get a lot of requests in our strategy side of the business and in my work around Economic Gardening. The use of online directories is a popular tactic to build links and positively impact SEO, but on the other hand, if the site is just a link farm, the effect might be negative. How can I tell the difference of one business directory versus another? read more…
The Social Economic Gardener
Waiting on my plane to depart from Chicago Midway, I had just sat down after an intense four-day session learning the principals of Economic Gardening and I was so inspired it was somewhat difficult to collect my racing thoughts into something I could share. I had been exposed to concepts around about how personality, organic system complexity, chaos theory and other frameworks could be applied to the practice of economic development. It was like drinking from a fire hose for sure, but now a week later, I feel like I can put some of the pieces together and connect them to how social media and SEO practices fit the practice of economic gardening, or ‘EG’ as it’s called by those involved.
read more…
Getting the right B2B message to the right B2B audience – Everytime…
What three things (among the zillions of possible things) are impacting how marketers connect with and get the right message to the right audience? First is that the noise in social media is deafening and secondly, if the message does get through the din, how can you get the executive responsible a message that appeals direct to him and not a generic, one-size-fits-all bit of malarkey? And third, we are at the front edge of a wave where we should expect consumers (and buyers) will opt out of the behavioral tracking model that many marketers rely on to help present a message at the right time (assuming it ever could that is).
Thanks to our friends at LinkedIn©, business-to-business (B2B) targeted messaging has taken a turn for the better. LinkedIn© Company Pages and a new multiple-audience messaging capability for the Product & Services page have arrived and wow, are they exciting! This development is important to businesses for a few reasons – read more…
Condensed Edition of Colorado Social Business Survey Now Available for Download!
Social marketing and the use of social media to attract prospects, service existing customers and connect with stakeholders is clearly becoming more and more relevant for businesses everywhere. We are also clearly well past the point in adoption of social media by consumers to believe that the use of social media is a fad that warrants no further investigation.
Business Cards to Digital Exchange – A Paradigm Shift
The writing is on the wall for the end of business cards. Let’s face it – traditional business cards are archaic in a world of digital alternatives. While I’ve carried them for years, I have never been a big fan of them. Once you have them in your hand, you know that once you get them home, they’ll end up in a box, gathering dust. Even if you find a great storage and retrieval system, you can never seem to find the one you need at just the right moment. When you need one, it’s most certain to be in your desk drawer and not at your disposal. I’ve even considered purchasing a business card scanner to scan in the hundreds of cards collected during networking events and shows, but opted to wait. I’m sure glad I did. read more…
Adapt or Die – Are They Only Alternatives?
The demands for better and better social marketing tactics for the digital marketer is constant and unrelenting. In an article on ‘Digital Darwinism’ posted at PandoDaily.com, Brian Solis makes the case that traditional marketers need to update their skill set to include digital or run the risk of being considered irrelevant. I am right there with him and think he’s right in a hundred ways, but in my mind I see that the trend to digital is well past the early stage and seriously into being a fixed element in the markets bag of tricks – at least that is, if you’re paying attention.
Social Marketing Conversations Announces the Colorado Social Business Survey
“It is rapidly becoming a liability for companies to ignore their social presence – we make sure our clients dodge that bullet”
Steven Groves / CEO, coauthor “ROI of Social Media”
Social marketing is becoming a lynch-pin of any marketing campaign, whether it starts offline, in traditional media or online. In Colorado it may be even more relevant, according to a recent survey of over 150 companies by Colorado-based Social Marketing Conversations. read more…
3 Reasons Why You’ll Give Up Ownership of Your Content
Recently I was asked about who owns the content posted on a social networking platform – not the first time though. The question came up after my friend had heard that the platform took ownership of the content after the member posted it and that they could do anything they wanted with it! I suggested first that the initial comment might have come from a person that was repeating what they had heard, wanting to appear well-informed, but may not have actually read the Term of Service (TOS) for the platform as most people never look at the TOS when they create an account anyway.
Wanting to reply in-fact and not heresay in my response, I linked to the TOS of one of my favorite platforms, LinkedIn (TOS link), and singled out the first paragraph to draw attention to how they dealt with the issue. read more…
Intent Engines and Facebook Verbs
Facebook is releasing the hounds. Those consumers who wish to share whatever it is they are doing, when they are doing it will be able to do so – as long as the appropriate verbs can be properly conjugated and developers promise to publish actions that are ‘simple, genuine and non-abusive’. Facebook also published guidelines of what they are looking for as well as what they’re are not very fond of, which is a way of saying what will not be allowed in the approved verb list. read more…
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Diigo’d Items
- 9 Metrics to Measure Social Media Marketing Success | SmartData Collective
- The Truth About What Works in Digital Marketing | News - Advertising Age
- Jumptap: In Mobile, Size May Not Matter | Jumptap
- MediaPost Publications Facebook Ads Do So Work, Says Facebook 06/12/2012
- Loyalty: Six Social Media "Personas" Call For Segmented Marketing - MarketingVOX