Digital Marketing Specialist, Social Media Consultant,
and Tech Geek at Heart

From the category archives:

Blogging

Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2011

January 5, 2012

It’s my birthday and I have some great news!

In January of 2011, I said that I’d make our Internet Marketing Posts of 2011 subscriber only. And I did. Many loyal readers have checked in on the newsletter throughout 2011 to get both evergreen content, the content that typically embraces these monthly updates, in addition to something completely new, monthly digital trends – the stuff you use for presentations and proposals, for arguing that social media and online marketing does have a firm place in today’s landscape. The newsletter, which was sent within the first week of the month, would include new research findings from surveys conducted by research groups such as the Pew Research Center, new discoveries from a marketing firm’s eye tracking study, or data that was recently culled across a multitude of SEO agency case study reports.

This year, I am pleased to bring back our Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2011 thanks to an excellent sponsor, HubSpot. HubSpot has recently launched a most amazing Marketing Grader tool to help you measure the effectiveness of your website. Please be sure to check it out as it’s one of the best tools I’ve ever seen, and I would be saying that even if they weren’t a sponsor!

This is a preview of Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2011. Read the full post (10021 words, 7 images, estimated 40:05 mins reading time)
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Is Your Business Worth An Extra Hour Per Week? 5 Reasons Why Your Business Should Blog

November 2, 2011

This is a guest post by Preston Ehrler.

As a business owner, do I really have time to blog?  I’m a business owner too, and I realize that we are already pressed to our limits for time.  We are responsible for everything, including finding new business, working with our existing customers, interfacing with suppliers, running our books, and infinitely more.  Attempting to convince a business owner that we should add yet another task can understandably seem like a herculean endeavor.  For anything that is going to take more time, the rewards must be tangible and immediate.  As many of us cannot clearly identify what the rewards are that can be reaped by blogging, it is not placed high on the list of priorities.  It should be.

So, you ask, how important could blogging really be for my business?

My answer:  Instead of spinning out a list of theories we’ve heard again and again, what if we looked at blogging from a different perspective?  Employing a new paradigm by utilizing real data, what can we learn about how blogging, coupled with an effectively constructed website, can affect your company?  What, specifically, can we extrapolate?  How do we know blogging is worth the effort?

This is a preview of Is Your Business Worth An Extra Hour Per Week? 5 Reasons Why Your Business Should Blog. Read the full post (1521 words, 2 images, estimated 6:05 mins reading time)
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How to Use Social Media Strategy to Reach Mommy Blogs

September 8, 2011

This is a guest post by Vanessa Van Petten.

If you have a brand or product for parents, targeting and partnering with mommy bloggers is a great way to get exposure. I run a website for parents written by kids called RadicalParenting.com, and when we first started, we had 2 unique visitors: me and my mom. Since I had no marketing budget, I decided to spend all of my efforts partnering with other mom blogs and asking them to post about us. This increased our traffic to over 200,000 uniques per month and exposure through guest posts got us on a number of media outlets like CNN, Fox News and the Wall Street Journal — no PR person involved.

Here is how you can reach out to Mom Blogs:

Make a Target List

You want to start with a list of mom blogs that you like — ones that jive with your brand, are in your target demo, and look like they get medium to high traffic. For example, if you have a product for teenagers you would not want to pick a pregnancy blogger. Here is the list I use. You are welcome to start with this list.

This is a preview of How to Use Social Media Strategy to Reach Mommy Blogs. Read the full post (960 words, 1 image, estimated 3:50 mins reading time)
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Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2010

January 5, 2011

Want more than what you see here? Get the monthly newsletter, new for 2011.

As many of you know, I have an annual tradition of giving back to the community on my birthday, which is why this year is no different. Of course, then, today is my birthday, & it’s a big one. Today, I’m 30.

I started this “best posts” idea 5 years ago & it’s grown huge. 2010 by far was the biggest year yet in the Internet Marketing realm. That’s why this is the biggest post I’ve ever written (with over 10,000 words). In honor of my 30th birthday, I have 300 posts.

Here’s how I do it: I read & review hundreds — thousands — of articles yearly, on all Internet Marketing topics from SEO to social media to general entrepreneurship (new for 2010!), also gathering intelligence via their rankings on top social sites & by stumbling upon new items in my feed reader. Since I can’t read everything written by the Internet Marketing community, I ask my Twitter & Facebook followers for their own recommendations. Based on specific criteria, normally actionable takeaways & evergreen content, I review the content & post it here to share with Techipedia readers & new visitors. The content is typically introductory but occasionally more intermediate/advanced, so there’s a mix that should work for everyone.

This is a preview of Best Internet Marketing Posts of 2010. Read the full post (9658 words, 11 images, estimated 38:38 mins reading time)
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3 Golden Business Rules for Social Media Engagement

August 25, 2010

If you’re doing social media for your business, there’s nothing better than to do it right. Many companies partake in this “shiny toy syndrome” and do it all without a plan or strategy in place. Worse, many don’t really understand what to do once they start. They hear about tools, put forth a miserable effort, and are either too busy or just lazy.

With social media, an abundance of resources are at your fingertips. However, without a successful plan and any adequate preparation, your social media efforts will fail. Here are three dos and don’ts you should think about before you move forward.

Don’t self promote.

Okay, so this should be obvious, but there are so many businesses that don’t get it. On a particular forum I am active on (yes, I still use them!), I noticed someone asking for advice. A response came from a business owner who had the perfect answer on her website and directed the original poster to the website for a detailed reply. Sadly, this person’s post was pulled by the strict moderators on that forum; the post was purely self-promotional and nothing but. When I reviewed the poster’s account, I understood why. I noticed that she had done the same thing on other discussions on the same forum over a period of several months and all of them were pulled!

This is a preview of 3 Golden Business Rules for Social Media Engagement. Read the full post (1150 words, 3 images, estimated 4:36 mins reading time)
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