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

From the category archives:

Marketing

How to Select an Interactive Marketing Agency

January 31, 2012

This is a guest post by Brad Shorr. Check out his earlier posts on How to Hire Your Social Media Marketing Partner and How to Hire Your SEO Partner.

It’s very difficult for small and mid-size firms to select the right interactive marketing agency — as evidenced by how often agencies get fired, and how frequently client-agency relationships subsist at a low level of productivity and mutual satisfaction.

The best way to prevent agency angst is to select the right agency to begin with. Here are 25 selection criteria to help you do this. I’ve listed the most important ones first, followed by several others that are also important for agencies that get passing grades on the first set of criteria.

A couple of side notes:

  1. First, a quick definition of terms: An interactive agency is one that provides a full suite of digital services that typically includes SEO, paid search advertising, email marketing, social media, mobile marketing, and branding support. Web development could be part of the mix, but not necessarily.
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5 Things I’ve Learned from Running BizSugar

January 24, 2012

This is a guest post by Anita Campbell.

When my company, Small Business Trends, LLC, first purchased BizSugar in the summer of 2009, the best way I could describe it was as a miniature version of Digg, except that BizSugar focused soley on sharing information geared toward small and mid-sized businesses. This is still true. But as BizSugar has grown over the last couple of years, it’s also become a small business networking site where business owners can discuss issues, get and give advice, and gain insight into the ins and outs of running a small business.

As the site has changed and evolved, so have I, both in my understanding of how the site functions best, and how to help it continue to grow. If you’re considering acquiring or building a user generated content site, here are a few things I’ve learned that may help you.

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Attack of the Consumer! The Many Ways Consumers Can Put You Out of Business Online

January 17, 2012

This is a guest post by David Rodnitzky.

Having the best prices and largest selection of products means nothing on the Internet if you don’t back it up with incredible customer service. Treat customers badly and you will be out of business – period! Bad customer service will get you banned from major advertising networks, skewered in organic results, and ridiculed on social networks. Here are the top ways consumers can crush your business online.

Advertising Bans

If consumers complain about your business, your money won’t be green enough to buy advertising online. Both eBay and Amazon uses customer reviews as a baseline metric of eligibility to participate in their marketplace.

On eBay, too many negative customer reviews will get a seller kicked off, or in eBay terms, the seller will be declared “Not a Registered User.”

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How to Hire Your Social Media Marketing Partner

January 11, 2012

This is a guest post by Brad Shorr. Want more? See How to Hire Your SEO Partner from November.

After taking the social media plunge, companies quickly discover that it is vastly more complicated and time-consuming than they thought.  The normal response is,

HELP!

But companies must avoid a panicky response, because hiring a social media marketing (SMM) partner requires careful study. As I’ll run down in a minute, SMM involves a wide range of activities that require totally different skills. So,

  • First, we’ll take a look at what the activities are, to help clarify the type of support you need.
  • Then, I’ll review your best SMM support options.
  • In conclusion, I’ll offer several suggestions of what to look for in a potential SMM partner.

Social Media Marketing Activities and Skills

There are any number of ways to slice and dice social media activities. This is basically how our agency organizes the work. (If I’ve left out anything, your comments and suggestions would be most appreciated!)

Pre-launch SMM Activities

  • Strategy involves competitive research, benchmarking, messaging, audience identification, determining platforms for engagement, setting overall program and conversion goals, and setting up metrics. It requires experience and analytical skills.

This is a preview of How to Hire Your Social Media Marketing Partner. Read the full post (1288 words, 2 images, estimated 5:09 mins reading time)
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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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