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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While some people get too wrapped up in monitoring web analytics data such as toolbar PageRank, top 30 rankings and number of daily visitors, there are some crucial metrics to follow and act on in order to improve your website and your search engine rankings.

To get a real sense for how your website is performing, spend your time monitoring things that illustrate successes and failure, such as conversion rates, how many backlinks you've collected and how engaged you visitors are. Here's a look at the three online marketing metrics you'll want to pay close attention to:

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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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