Google is constantly updating its algorithms. The graphic below, from Tamar, illustrates them very well:  

Designing techniques Enterprise Software sales and Growth Hackers Marketing Growth Creation of Content   Read More  

 Use alerts to notify you whenever your business is mentioned on a review Local Web Listings are the new Yellow Page – Use it to your benefit Responding to all reviews are a good way to show your customers that you care about their opnion. Never write false reviews to puff your business nor to trash your competition   Read More  

Crime novelist John Locke has become the first independent author to sell more than 1 million ebooks through Kindle’s Direct Publishing program, Amazon announced Monday. The independent author, a self-described “niche marketer” who attributes much of his success to his $0.99 pricing model, has self-published nine novels through the Kindle Store, including New York Times bestselling ebook Saving Rachel, as well as his first non-fiction title, How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months. ...

With the Behind The Social Media Campaign Series, supported by Oneupweb, Mashable took an in-depth look at the makings of eight innovative social media campaigns from Ford, Mattel, Internships.com, Old Spice, Toy Story 3, Edge Shaving Gel, The Voice and Buffalo Wild Wings. Using Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Foursquare and SCVNGR, among other social tools, these brands executed successful and engaging social media campaigns worth applauding. This roundup is dedicated to outlining each campai...

For those of us who have taken any sort of marketing course, the 4 P’s and the 5 C’s are nothing new. Product, Price, Place, and Promotion give us 4 dimensions over which to analyze the scope of any given marketing campaign. Company, Collaborators, Customers, Competitors, and Climate – these are important tools for evaluating the background of a situation before diving in to solve your marketing problem. But Dan Ariely, famous author of Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Sh...

Steve Rubel is a pretty well known dude. As a popular blogger and PR firm Edelman's EVP of digital strategy, if Steve does something radical on the web, people will take notice. And that's exactly what happened when he decided to trade the two blogs he'd maintained over several years for a new Tumblr blog, deleting the hundreds of his blog posts he'd created along the way. That's right -- he deleted all of the content he'd created and started with a clean slate. Um...what? Discussing h...

From tweet-ups and other social gatherings to conferences and high-profile events, thousands of events take place every day all over the world. Social media and other inbound marketing tactics can combine into a strategic approach to promoting your event, increasing the hype surrounding it, and attracting the attention of both potential attendees and media. The message you send to your audience a few months in advance should be much different than the message you send a few weeks or days befo...

The concepts behind measuring the success of an eCommerce website don't stray too far from those necessary to measure a website focused on lead generation. But what tools should you be using? And how can you make sure you're measuring the correct things? Here are 3 steps to make sure you are successfully measuring your eCommerce progress. 1. Measure your total number of customers in addition to revenue. It's easy to say, "Oh! I made $X,000 this week, month or year." But how many people led to ...

I'm in the process of doing some research for the upcoming Science of Website Redesign webinar, and I just found one piece of data that was so interesting, I decided to blog about it right now. 76% of consumers say the most important factor in a website's design is "the website makes it easy for me to find what I want." What does this mean for marketers? Don't obsess over the visual design of your website Do obsess over the usability by your customers and prospects Don't worry if you...

Successful Brands on Facebook Any brand worth their social media salt has a presence on Facebook. But just because a brand is online, doesn’t necessarily mean that it is doing a good job. While it’s possible to suggest some tips and best practices, there’s no greater teacher than learning from example. Below, find eight brands that have found success on Facebook, including some takeaways on what they did right and how you can emulate their success. 1. The Pampered Chef T...

Marketing: From Direct Mail to Social Media 1872: Direct marketing begins with the first direct mail catalog sent by Montgomery Ward.  The industry has continued to grow, though response rates have been declining and costs increasing, with an estimated 44% of direct mail being discarded before it is even looked at. 1900: Stores start to install phones; stores in Manhattan take orders by phone and do local delivery.  Telemarketing and cold calling follows, reaching a peak in the 1980s or ...

Marketing Lessons from Mint This guest blog post was written by Noah Kagan, Chief Sumo of web deals site AppSumo.com,  a daily deals site for web entrepreneurs. He was formerly an early employee at both Facebook and Mint. I did all of marketing at Mint until they launched and then they subsequently sold for $170,000,000. At that time I never had traditional marketing experience but more of a LOVE for the product and a strong desire to reach a target market. 3 Inbound Marketing Lessons ...

Rethinking Social Media Strategy for Brands Social media is widely recognized not only for creating deeper, more connected relationships between people, but for the promise it makes to brands to help them become more human. But just because a brand is humanized doesn’t mean everyone will suddenly want to be its “friend” or naturally decide to “Like” it. A brand that desires to leverage social media to create meaningful, more integrated relationships with consumers is faced with...

Social Media Importance for Small Businesses In 2011, four out of five US businesses with 100 or more employees will use social media marketing. That’s a dramatic change from 2008 when just 42% of companies marketed via social media, according to research from eMarketer. As consumer usage of social media continues to increase in the US and around the world, marketers have transitioned from cautious engagement to full deployment. Increased Small Businesses use of Facebook, Twitter, Linked...

Facebook, Marketing, and Ads According to comScore, 1.1 trillion ads were served to U.S. internet users in the first quarter of 2011. Of those 1.1 trillion ads, 346 billion of those (31%) were on Facebook. That's right -- you read that correctly. Facebook now serves nearly one third of all online advertisements in the U.S. To help put this data into perspective, consider the representation of some of the other major online companies. Yahoo has a 10 percent share, Microsoft has 5 percent, a...

Internet Companies Traits I probably spend too much time on the Internet. And because I work in venture capital, I get to see Internet products in their rawest form. The primordial ooze of a consumer Internet product can be a beautiful thing. With the window dressing stripped away, one can often see the core aspects of what will make that product successful. Over time, I’ve begun to see a few patterns emerge. Here are three key characteristics of those that often do become a success. ...

Marketing Lessons from Netflix This week, video distribution company Netflix announced its first quarter earning. With the announcement came an important milestone for the company: Netflix now has more paying subscribers than Comcast, the largest cable television provider in the United States. How did a company that sent DVDs in the mail become one of the largest media distribution companies in the world? Looking at Netflix's growth, we drew five valuable lessons for marketers. 5 Marketing L...

Proper Communication to Remote Employees is an Important Way To Increase Productivity When working with remote employees, managers often don’t have the luxury of relying on visual cues to tell if an employee is truly understanding instructions or feedback. The blank stare, the quizzical look, the phony nod of understanding — all of these staple non-verbal indicators of, “I don’t get it” (or, “I’m not paying attention”) are usually unavailable when working in a virtual environm...

Marketing Lessons From the Cupcake If you have recently attended a wedding, birthday party, you likely have noticed how trendy the cupcake has become. Starting at $3 a cupcake, these confectionery delights are the craze of party goers and bakery shoppers. Search Quora and you will see reports that their fame gained traction after being offered at Magnolia Bakery and subsequently spotlighted on Sex and the City. Others feel their cuteness alone carried them to stardom. 4 Inbound Marketing Les...

Email Marketing Tactics Effective tactics for email marketing Although consumers’ communication habits have evolved with the rising popularity of social media and smartphones, brands are still turning to their dependable friend — email — to attract and retain customers and boost their bottom lines. There’s no denying that email is showing signs of decline — the number of visitors to web-based email sites fell 6% in 2010 compared to the previous year, and email engagement decline...

Social Media & Marketers Marketers strategy: Increase social media spending An overwhelming number of marketers consider social media to be integral to their strategies this year, and 70% plan to increase their social media budget by more than 10% this year, according to a poll from Effie Worldwide and Mashable. The poll, given to a group of ad agency executives and marketers from firms such as Bank of America, Colgate-Palmolive and Mini USA, among others in February, also found that ...

Social Media Benefit Great results of Social Media Marketing Do you wonder if you have what it takes to compete in the social media marketplace? Who, after all, has the time or the budget to mimic Disney or Starbucks? Certainly not a small business! Well, maybe that’s the wrong set of questions. In fact, the 2011 Social Media Marketing Industry Report has some good news for small business marketers. Small business owners are seeing the greatest results from social media marketing. M...

Social Media Impact How social media affects media agencies Facebook was born in 2004 as a simple directory of profile pages for Ivy League students. Twitter emerged one year later, imploring people to chirp what they’re up to. When these social platforms launched, few people understood the promise they held for marketers and the opportunities they would bring for brands. Five years later, we have Facebook Pages, branded Twitter accounts, pimped out YouTube pages and badges on Foursquare. ...