Tag Archives: Google

Marketing, Social Media

Understanding “Google +1”


Although it launched months ago, Google +1 went live in June. 

If you are in marketing, you should get a baseline on it. You should understand the +1 ramifications to your paid and natural search.

Here is a great summary from Smart Insights (http://www.smartinsights.com)

My favorite implication mentioned in the article is that Google +1 offers “social proof” to search – analogous to Facebook “likes.”

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Marketing, Sales, Social Media

Are You LinkedIn?


I had the pleasure of co-facilitating a workshop on LinkedIn this week.  There were more than 20 people in the room with varying degrees of familiarity with the LinkedIn platform.  It was a fun event, and we received some great feedback on the usefulness of the tool, particularly for these folks, many of whom are in a job search.

They say you never learn something until you teach it.  What I learned was just how far this platform has come in the past 6 months.  As an early adopter, I sometimes take it for granted.  But seeing it through the eyes of a newcomer really highlighted just how powerful this tool set is.

LinkedIn is:

  • Your Personal website.  It’s YOU.com (just Google yourself and see)
  • Your LIVING Rolodex (it grows exponentially as you nurture it)
  • A “P [professional] RM” System  (moves with you from job to job)
  • A Social Media Platform  (hooks into Twitter, “like”, “sharing,” etc.)
  • A Database of Corporate Information (“Company” entity added)
  • A Job Posting / Search System (powerful for recruiters /job-seekers)

If you (or anyone you care about) are still not on LinkedIn, you need to get on pronto.  If you are a power user, it’s time to take a look at the new features available to you.   LinkedIn has centralized some very useful training information in a section called “The Learning Center” http://learn.linkedin.com/ where you can quickly update your knowledge and skills.

Get to it!

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Marketing, Sales, Social Media

Are You Content Marketing?


If you are marketing today and not doing so through organized publicity of your intellectual capital through Content Marketing, you’re missing the boat!

Before you jump in, there are a few things you need to know:

  1. It’s a LOT HARDER THAN YOU THINK!   This takes planning, organizational alignment, rigorous scheduling, and new processes to start,  and – most importantly –  discipline to maintain.
  2. It’s a LOT SIMPLER THAN YOU THINK!  The tools available to support your efforts in this area were simply inconceivable only a few years ago.  Now they enable you to do this complex job more efficiently and effectively.
  3. It’s about WILL POWER!  Focus and tenacity are the hurdles here.  If you have them, you can be winning with content marketing in very short order.

What are the benefits?  “Brand Stickiness,” “Google Juice,” – whatever you want to call it, will bring recognition>leads>business!

The graph displayed here is an image from an excellent research piece done by Roy Young of  Marketing Profs and Joe Pulizzi of  Junta 42 “(B2B Content Marketing, 2010 Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends” [download here] that will give you an overview of the major components of a content marketing effort, along with some very useful statistics.

Some highlights:

  • Nine out of 10 B2B marketers are using content marketing to grow their businesses.
  • Enthusiasm for content marketing is high; however, marketers are still unsure about the effectiveness and impact
  • Content marketing deployment is high across industries, with no single industry reporting below 78% adoption
  • Web traffic is the most widely used success metric (56%) followed by direct sales (49%)
  • On average, B2B marketers allocate approximately 26% of their total budgets to content marketing initiatives
  • The largest challenge is “producing the kind of content that engages prospects and customers” (36% of respondents
  • Social media and article posting are the most popular tactics and are currently used by 79% and 78% of B2B marketers

Get this paper and digest it today!

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Marketing, Social Media

How big is Social Media?…How big is Google?


Big news.  I just got this from a friend at 7Summits.  According to Fast Company Magazine (a must subscribe if you don’t already), Hitwise analysis says that as of this month, “…Google lost its crown as the most-visited Web site in the U.S. last week. The new king of Web site traffic is, of course, Facebook…”  That is how important social media has become.  Just a year or two ago this would not have seemed possible.   Fast Company predicts an Ad War.  Be looking for more ads in your Facebook pages as companies start to divide their spend amongst these two giant aggregators.  How seriously are you focusing your marketing plan on either of them?

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