Repeat after me: This holiday season, I resolve to take into consideration the increasingly mobile and visual preferences of my customers or readers, and to create and repurpose content to meet their needs, on whichever platform they use to connect with my business.

Recently, TopRank’s Alexis Hall and Lee Odden have each shared with us a few figures that underscore the importance of video in a modern day marketing strategy:

• Sixty percent of executives will watch a video before reading a word of text on their screen.
• Forty-two percent of executives have made a purchasing decision based on an online video.
• 500 years worth of YouTube videos are shared each day on Facebook.
• Over 3 billion hours of video is consumed monthly on YouTube.

Over 53% of e-commerce retailers are already using non-product related video content (informational videos) on their sites. An additional 30.5% plan to add informational videos to their content arsenal in 2013.

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The team at TopRank Online Marketing would like to wish our online community a very merry holiday season.  I for one get very nostalgic around the holidays and count down the days (starting in October) until I get to gather with family and friends to share a meal and make new memories. 

For many families, part of the holiday tradition includes singing carols and watching Christmas movies from their childhood.  There is one song in particular that gets stuck in my head every holiday season is The Twelve Days of Christmas.  For a fun spin on a classic we bring you some of our favorite tips for the 12 Days of Social Media, Content Marketing & SEO.

On the __ day of Christmas my true love gave to me…

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Google Farmer update paranoia aside, there are plenty of reasons to make content marketing a more prominent piece of your online marketing mix.  Content fuels search visibility, social sharing and consumer interaction. Great content aligns customer goals with those of the brand. Ultimately, useful content helps win and keep customers. 

Because we promote editorial marketing here and with clients so much, there are many questions from companies that want more tactical steps they can take. Whether it’s a retailer with an online catalog of products that wants to increase repeat business or a technology company full of tech specifications that wants to increase new leads, there are a number of straightforward ways to make useful content a marketing asset.

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When you opened the brick and mortar retail shop, chances are you planned for a grand opening or ribbon cutting. Marketing and advertising to get the word out about your new business was probably one of your top concerns. Marketing online is just as important for a retail store.

Don't just sit there watching cob webs gather on your website. Whether you sell products online or have a one-page website, there are many ways to generate more in-store traffic from your online presence. Increase exposure online with these Internet marketing tips for your retail store.

1. Send a Press Release

One of the fastest ways to spread word about your store, and products or services, is by sending a press release. Media outlets all thrive on press releases every day. The abundance of online news distribution services is now making it easier than ever for retailers to announce new product lines, special events and other shop news.

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1. Don’t use site-wide links. They are highly deprecated in the latest algorithm changes, and may even lead you to a penalization of your website’s SERPs. As a measure of precaution, I recommend a maximum of one site-wide (no matter the number of pages) for every 40 to 50 unique links from 40 to 50 unique domains.
2. Use the title and meta description tags as wise as possible. They are your best choice of avoiding supplemental pages. Try to make each page with it’s own unique title and description, and never repeat more than 20-25% of the title and description tags content on different pages. Use a limited number of characters (8-10) in the title tag, and put the most important of them, relevant to each page, at the beginning.
3. Read my previous post on 14 search marketing questions, asked by Digitalpoint members.
4. Try to use H tags (1,2,3 etc) at the top-most possible location in the pages of your website, in the source order, and NOT visual order.
5. Don’t be a Copycat. Don’t write news or posts just to have something for the big Google. Nowadays, duplicate-content filters are continuously evolving and even if you gain something on the short term you will loose it later. Try to be innovative.

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Looking for some basic Internet marketing tips for your small business? While there are hundreds of suggestions we can make, here’s a list of 10 that we think might be the most useful for 90% of small business owners.

1. In the words of Ron Simon, “What the hell are you trying to do?” What is the goal of your website? Ultimately, it should be to drive more business, but how exactly will it do that? Start with one goal – such as increasing the number of phone calls – and branch out from there. It’s important to set goals, but it’s just as important to come up with a system for measuring those goals.

2. Evaluate your website’s content – Content is King. What does your website say? Is the content unique and useful? Will people learn anything when they visit your site? When was the last time you added new content? Does your website have content worth reading? Does your content match your business goals?

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In a world where social media gives businesses more immediate ways to connect with customers, is e-mail marketing still relevant? I think so. In fact, the volume of e-mail marketing messages remained at record-setting levels in June, according to Chad White, research director at marketing company Responsys, and retail e-mail volume will grow about 20 percent this year (vs. more than 16 percent in 2011), thanks to a shift away from old-school direct mail and print.

 

That makes for a more crowded party. Your e-mails are competing with (literally!) millions of others, which means you must be intentional in your efforts to create messages that truly engage your customers. Here's how.

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So you want to create a video that everyone'll talk about. You want it to be shared globally and earn views, retweets and "likes." In other words, you want it to go viral, like Dollar Shave Club's hilarious video, which earned the company a whopping 12,000 new customers in the first two days it hit the internet.

How do you make that happen? There is no surefire formula. You can't conjure up viral; you can't force it. But here's the thing: If you are looking to market your business, you don't necessarily need a viral hit--you just need to attract enough attention to draw customers. Here's how.

Focus on the story. Before trying to be clever, consider the message. Why are you producing the video? What problems does your company tackle, and in what unique ways does it do so?

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Unless you’ve been under a rock like the guy in the Geico commercial, then you have probably noticed that a lot of changes have been happening on Facebook, particularly to the fan pages. Here is a look at how you can take advantage of these changes and use them to market to your targeted audience.

1. Using Facebook as a Fan Page

This is by far one of the most powerful changes, in my opinion, to fan page functionality. Why? Before this change, there were only a few ways to share your fan page with people who are not a fan of your brand on Facebook. The first was by sharing the page directly with your personal profile’s contacts. The second was by hoping that your page’s fans would share it with their contacts. And the third was by spending money with Facebook advertising. 

Now, with the option to use Facebook as your page, you can do something that reaches out to Facebook users in your targeted audience for free. Here are easy steps on how to get your brand in front of a larger Facebook audience.

How to Use Facebook as Your Page

You must be an admin of the page you want to market before going any further – if you aren’t, then become a fan of the page and ask another admin of the page to add you as administrator. 

Step 1. When logged into your personal profile, go under the Account menu and select Use Facebook as Page.

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Content marketing is a simple phrase. It involves just two key elements.

“Content” which can be articles, videos and images in all their various multi-media formats.

“Marketing” which means taking that content and letting the online world knows it exists. In essence it is implementing strategies and tactics of making your ideas spread.

Marketing your content though is a challenge in a world where there are over 2 billion internet users who are bombarded with emails, streams of tweets and banner ads.

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To best market your non-profit, learn about your constituents and converse with them through the appropriate media.

communication service image by Julia Britvich from Fotolia.com

It may seem that marketing a non-profit is counter-intuitive, but company owners must concede that no matter what your business, you are always competing for support. To make your non-profit successful you need to develop sound promotional strategies. According to branding expert Laura Reis, the more powerful a non-profit brand is, the more money it will raise and the more volunteers it attracts.

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With over 135 million users, 59% of which are located outside of the United States and with 75 of the Fortune 100 companies using the network for marketing and recruiting purposes, LinkedIn has become a critical platform for building, connecting with, and growing your personal and professional networks.

As the leading business social network, LinkedIn offers the chance to connect with professionals all around the world and from all industry backgrounds. But how do you convert networks into customers, and ‘likes’ into sales?

1. Learn from your peers

Successful marketing is all about listening to what your market needs. The LinkedIn Groups feature provides a space where you can discuss issues with others in your industry and learn from their advice. You can bounce ideas off industry experts and stay informed on new developments. You also have an opportunity to establish yourself as an expert in a certain industry/area allowing you to build relationships with current and prospective customers in a more organic and credible fashion.

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While every event is different, online event registration company EventBrite has been tracking how people register for events using its technology for several years now. After crunching some data, Tamara Mendelsohn, the company’s vice president of marketing, shared a few interesting insights at the Meeting Professionals International World Education Congress, held in late July in St. Louis.

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It’s one thing to create beautiful art, it’s another thing to produce art that is selling in the marketplace. Selling, marketing and P.R. all need to be in place before you finish that large artwork or body of work.

Take control of your future art sales, by following these 6 simple tips for marketing and selling your art.

1. Create a Press Release

Press releases are an effective way to build your public relations and search out new collectors. You don’t need to wait for a major event,  to send a press release—any news is news worth sharing”. The fact that you “are creating new work” is news. Get started today on writing and sending your release, because it could take months before you capture the attention of an editor.

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Ever increasingly your customers, everyone’s customers are spending more and more of their time online, and on the mobile net. As has always been the case, the job of every marketer is to reach into the places where potential customers are, in particular towards local. In a digital world where “local” means Facebook, Twitter, g+ and others, communities of potential buyers now hover around content and digital communities. Soon mobile will mirror and integrate for a new kind of marketing synergy.

Here are some figures and facts that may help you get up to speed on the next phases of small business success. (even large business for the matter)

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Email marketing is a great way to reach your customers where they are without spending a lot of money. But it’s a big responsibility, too—people don’t give their email addresses to just anyone. Thinking about starting a company newsletter? Here are some tips to keep in mind.

Make it easy to subscribe. Post a signup form on your homepage, blog, Facebook page, and wherever else your customers and fans are already active. You might want to collect names and birthdays (for a special offer or gift) or invite readers to join groups, but don’t go crazy with the required fields. A too-long subscribe form might scare people off.

Tell subscribers what to expect. Whether you plan to send company updates, letters from the president, e-commerce sales, daily deals, or weekly tips, it’s important to tell your readers what to expect and how often to expect it. Give them as much information as possible on your signup form, so they can decide whether they want to be on the list or not.

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If you think that publishing is going through an evolution then photography is experiencing a revolution. 

There are happy snappers everywhere. The smart phone with the inbuilt high definition camera is turning everyone into a photgrapher. Add some software technology with Instagram filters and an ordinary photo is becoming a piece of art.

Sites such as Pinterest are also allowing us to share this visual art form in glorious color, creativity and ease just by pinning images from the screen with a couple of clicks.

Competitors such as The Fancy.com are  taking these concepts of visual pinning even further into the realm of social commerce and have announced that they have reached a whopping one million users already.

The Rise of Social Mobile Commerce

The Fancy has introduced a few new features into its mobile app offering, most notably the ability to buy products (they are reportedly making an average of $50,000 each week from users snapping up the products they fancy). Up until now users could only collect images they fancied, but now you can buy them with one-click purchasing directly from your iPhone or iPad.

This revolution is changing the way businesses perform commerce online.  Online vendors are realizing that the habits and practices of  buyers online are changing rapidly and that tablet and smartphone users are much more likely to impulse buy with the convenience of one click shopping.

Pinterest has the Numbers

When it is all said and done, Pinterest still has the mind share and the numbers (currently at over 20 million users) but it certainly needs to keep developing its platform rapidly.

Online boutiques such as Boticca have turned their product categories into boards on Pinterest and are generating up to 10% of their sales from clicks from Pinterest.

So how do you use Pinterest to market your business?

10 Tips for Marketing on Pinterest

As with all marketing you need to start with a plan to win and Pinterest is no different.

1. Plan for Pinning Success

When setting up your account make sure it is set up properly and branded with your logo. Create boards that suit your target customers and your industry niche. Also make sure that you have integrated your Pinterest platform with your other social media platforms.

2. Remember Copyright

I was attending an online retailer conference recently and ShopNBC pointed out that it is important to ensure that you are not pinning images that have copyright.   Also remember to attribute your source.

3. Pin Straegically

The mantra is Pin, Repin and follow. Build up a  loyal tribe and they will reward you with significant sharing. Remember when anyone repins the link still points back to your site. Think of Pinterest as a friendly virus.

4. Be a Social Pinner

Don’t forget to comment , like other pins and @tag other pinners by name. Also remember your manners and say thanks when you are repinned.

5. Produce Pinnable Content

The rise of a much more visual web requires you to create and share high quality images. Also remember that you can also pin video as well. For B2B businesses that work in knowledge industries you can also pin images that point to your presentations on Slideshare.

6. Create and Curate

Don’t just post your images curate other quality images and photos from others. Remember to share the love. The power of reciprocation is alive and well and if you share others content they will feel obliged to share yours.

7. Be a Creative Pinner

A lot of business have great images offline that could be placed online to add to your content. Run competitions and include call to action in your pins.

8. Keep Search Engines in Mind

Google notices fresh content and also social signals. So optimize your pins with hashtags, links, categories and keywords. It is very important to pin images and content from your website. Pinterest can drive a lot of traffic to your website if you do this correctly with compelling and contagious photos and images. Infographics work very well on Pinterest.

9. Don’t Forget your Tools

The most essential tool is the “Pin It” button on your browser. Also download the Pinterest app for your mobile devices.

10. Monitor and Measure your Traffic

This will assist you in finding out what works and what doesn’t. Do more of what works. Also monitor what your competitors and other brands are doing and you will be surprised by what you will learn.

Source: Donna Moritz of Socially Sorted on the AmyPorterfield Blog

In their book No B.S. Guide to Marketing to Leading-Edge Boomers and Seniors, marketing experts Dan S. Kennedy and Chip Kessler offer small-business owners a handy guide to targeting the leading-edge boomer and senior market. In this edited excerpt, the authors describe seven ways you can differentiate yourself from the competition.

Most small businesses are missing an opportunity to become the only or preferred source of their offering to leading-edge boomers and seniors (LEB/S) simply because they've assumed that differentiation can't be done. The reality is that virtually all offerings can be made different in a way that matters to LEB/S.

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