I had the opportunity to attend the Inbound Marketing Summit 2011 in Boston this year along with Donny and Josh, and one of the biggest takeaways from a developer's standpoint is that the best way to enhance user and customer experience with the websites and applications we develop is to add elements of personalization - this creates a "sticky" experience that keeps folks coming back for more over time. So what is a personalized experience?
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One of the most-important aspects of succeeding with a social media strategy is to stick with it. Posting a tweet or two per week isn’t going to cut it. On the other hand, it’s also important to set time aside to devote to your social media accounts. The problem with that is you’ll generate a whole bunch of activity in a short amount of time, and if your followers aren’t paying attention during your scheduled time there’s a good chance they’ll miss your Twitter updates entirely. So, how can you keep your Twitter account active without spending your entire day posting tweets?
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Have you started a video campaign yet? We'll admit it, creating video is probably the most intimidating form of inbound marketing for the un-initiated. With that said it's also one of the most rewarding! YouTube has long been the king when it comes to web video, but now with Facebook moving up the ranks you have even more incentive to get started with a video campaign for your small business and its service or product.
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I am sure you are aware of the recent debacle surrounding the U.S. debt crisis and the continuous debate between republicans and democrats. You may or may not know the ins and outs of what each side was proposing...but if not, it likely grabbed your attention in some way. What you may have missed if you aren't part of the tech world, is the role that Twitter played in the debate.
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With all of the “buzz” surrounding Google’s new social network, Google Plus, a lot of other cool announcements have flown by with less coverage in the tech news community. One of those announcements is Google’s new Page Speed service, an open-source and free project which helps folks optimize their web pages by applying best practices for web performance. That’s a big mouthful, but essentially what it means is that Google will help you optimize your website for speed, so when folks visit it they’ll see your content faster than ever.
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Remember when you decided to create a profile for your business Facebook page rather than setting up an actual page under your personal profile? Don't make the same mistake on Google+. As tempting as it is to setup a user profile for your business, it will bite you in the rear in a few months.
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With the launch of Google+ a couple of weeks ago, everyone has had fun learning the ins and outs of how they can best utilize it for not only themselves (circle me), but for their brands. Many brands even went ahead and created accounts as a brand despite being against Google's wishes. It did not take long for those accounts to be removed or converted to an actual name of a person, hence +Mashable converting to +Pete Cashmore. Google is currently testing accounts for brands (see Ford example below), but what is next for them? ...I have my opinions on what I'd like to see.
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There are plenty of reasons to avoid buying a smart phone these days, chief among them the cost of not just the device itself but the monthly data plan charge to go along with it. However, just because you don’t have a smart phone doesn’t mean you can’t use social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare while on the go. In this post I’ll show you how to get started with each of those services, and all you need is a texting plan!
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Inbound marketing is still a new term, especially around Western NY and Northern PA. We have given inbound marketing seminars for many of the local businesses, most of which are aware of Twitter, try and use Facebook, talked about SEO...but beyond that their inbound marketing efforts are lackluster. The one area that is very hard for these businesses to grasp is knowledge sharing.
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Not long ago Josh wrote a post about the slow adoption of Twitter in the rural PA area. One of the big barriers to entry he noted was the lack of consistent high speed internet access. Many folks in our area of small town Pennsylvania are still using 56k connections or even satellite downlink connections where data access is limited or unavailable. This makes the user experience for services like Twitter annoyingly sluggish, and with limited 3G and non-existent 4G LTE mobile data coverage much of the fun of mobile services like Twitter is inaccessible to folks in the area.
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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.
