Why You Should (Still) Be Blogging in 2018
Every year for the past 4 years, Orbit Media Studios surveys 1000+ business bloggers and publishes a research report on blogging statistics and trends. While there are some subtle changes throughout the years, one thing is clear - "Bloggers are reporting stronger results from content marketing," says Orbit Media’s co-founder, Andy Crestodina. In fact, almost 30% of respondents reported ‘strong results’ as the effectiveness of their blogging strategy. Many businesses had seen...
Facebook to Start Demoting Posts That Use “Engagement Bait”
Facebook is switching up its algorithm once again, and this time it’s going to start lowering the reach for posts that use engagement bait. According to Facebook, Engagement bait is a tactic to create Facebook posts that goad people into interacting, through likes, shares, comments, and other actions, in order to artificially boost engagement and get greater reach on News Feed. Here are a few examples of engagement bait… React Baiting Facebook's example of react baiting is a post...
New Year's Resolutions: 5 Digital Marketing Upgrades for 2018
Digital marketing is an ever-changing landscape, and what worked a year ago or even a week ago might not work as well today. Many businesses still use outdated and/or ineffective marketing methods. As you are gearing up for the start of 2018, consider throwing out some of those under-performing marketing methods to make room for new strategies that will bring your business more qualified leads and increase sales. Here are some easy, New Year's resolution upgrades to make to your marketing in...
Is Your Website ADA Compliant? Why You Need to Know
Please note: We are digital marketers, not attorneys. Therefore, this article is not legal advice. If you need legal advice, you should speak with a lawyer. More and more, we’ve been hearing about businesses that have been threatened with a lawsuit for having a website that was allegedly not ADA compliant. In some cases, these lawsuits are nothing more than a shakedown for cash. They allege that the website is not fully accessible to disabled users and that they’d be willing to...
Facebook Introduces a Website Chat Plugin for Businesses
In a news release made on November 7, 2017, Facebook announced that its newest Messenger Platform 2.2 would offer new and exciting features that work to build engagement with customers. Facebook Customer Chat Plugin Release One of the most exciting features released in this update is the ability to extend your Facebook Messenger experience to your business’ website. With customer chat plugin, people can chat with businesses on their websites and in Messenger across web, mobile or tablet...
5 Types of Content That Can Grow Your Company
High-quality, relevant content truly is the key to success for reaching new audiences, engaging your current audience, and creating new business opportunities. But where do you start if you’ve never created content for your company before? What types of content can really help you move the needle? Here are five types of content that will give you maximum impact and return on investment for your business:
1. Dedicated Pages
Your website is not only your portfolio and information...
5 Reasons Why Content Is So Important
Updated 11/6/17
Most business owners understand the importance of their
website design, their branded social media pages, and even the idea of search
engine optimization, but when it comes to content marketing or blogging, they can’t seem to pinpoint why it’s
so important.
In this article, we’ll hit on the top five reasons you
should be creating content for your business. Whether that is through adding
content to your existing web pages or starting up a news...
3 Different Facebook Advertising Options for Different Budgets
If you’ve never tried Facebook advertising for your
business, you’re not alone. There are plenty of business owners who are worried
about making the leap into social media advertising.
However, Facebook advertising is one of the easiest ways to
jumpstart your paid advertising strategy. With nearly 79% of Americans who use
the internet engaging with Facebook in some capacity, it’s a great platform to
utilize for advertising.
Thankfully, Facebook has many different ad...
Top 5 Digital Marketing Trends to Watch for in 2018
As we enter into the fourth quarter of 2017, many businesses are already looking forward to 2018 and what they can expect to plan for in their marketing strategy. While some of these trends have emerged in 2017, or even the year before, you can expect to see them become more prominent in 2018. Here are five things that you should consider adding into your marketing strategy next year in order to stay ahead of the competition online. #1 Mobile-First Indexing Optimizing for mobile has been...
Do I Need a Website Redesign?
What parts of your website really matter to customers? Can I make do with what I have? Is it worth investing in a new website design? Is my website really affecting sales that much ? There are certain aspects of your web design that visitors absolutely care about and if they don’t get their needs met, they’re going to leave… almost immediately. There is no point in spending good marketing dollars driving people to your site if they are simply going to hit the back button...
LinkedIn's New Targeting Options Help You Zero in on Audiences
Earlier this year, LinkedIn announced a new feature being launched, called Matched Audiences, that would help business owners narrow down their targeting immensely. Matched Audiences began rolling out new categories for targeting including: Website Retargeting Account Targeting Contact Targeting Senior product manager Eva Chau said that Matched Audiences is now available for all LinkedIn advertising products including Sponsored Content, Sponsored InMail and other native ad formats. With the...
There Is No Free Lunch (The Real Cost of Open Source Software)
If you have WordPress, you better keep reading… Equifax Inc. just had their second massive security breach in four years, and according to the Apache Foundation it all stems from one main issue… …Open source software. Well, to be exact, it was the consumer credit reporting agency’s failure to install patches to Apache Struts – an open source framework used to build Java web applications. In a statement released Thursday Sept. 14, the foundation said a...
Which Should You Use: Google or Facebook for Retargeting?
Have you ever visited a website and then suddenly you start seeing ads for that company all across the web? This phenomenon is called retargeting or remarketing. Your customers don’t always buy something the first time they visit your website or click on your ad. Depending on their stage in the buying process, they could continue to do research or think over the idea before making a purchase. However, you can assume they’re somewhat interested if they visited your website. There...
How to Boost Sales with Facebook Messenger & Chatbots
Marketing has changed a lot since its infancy. It used to be one message for the masses. Nowadays, people are looking for more of a personalized experience. So how do you individually market to people on a mass scale? Before we dive into the answer, we wanted to highlight two tools people are using and then we’ll give you an example. One tool businesses have started using to talk directly with the people they are marketing to is Facebook Messenger. The reason this is working so well is...
How to Design Campaigns for the Non-Buyers with Retargeting
Of course we’d love to believe that every person who comes in contact with our business follows a specific and direct path to purchase. They visit our website, read our content or download a helpful guide, and immediately decide to hand over their credit card to purchase our product or service. But that’s not always the reality… The customer journey is often much more complex. Most studies say that anywhere from 95-99% of your website traffic clicks away before ever...
How Video Testimonials Can Establish Authority
Video marketing has become one of the biggest digital marketing opportunities – and for good reason. Almost 50% of Internet users look for videos related to a product or service before visiting a store - ThinkWithGoogle People spend, on average, 2.6x more time on pages with videos than without - Wistia Online shoppers who view demo videos are 1.81x more likely to purchase than non-viewers - DMB Adobe With video marketing becoming such a valuable tool for businesses and consumers, it...
How to Get A Featured Snippet in Google's Answer Box
Google has long been a place people turn to find a solution to their problem or an answer to their question. So it makes sense that the search engine giant took another step out of the equation and created a feature that helps users get their answer even faster. Back in 2015, Google started testing what we now know as the Google Answer Box, which is a featured snippet embedded into the search results. However, it wasn’t until recently that brands have started to utilizing this feature to...
What Are Google Verified Customer Reviews and How Do You Get Them?
The new Google Verified Customer Reviews not only boost your
business’ reputation, but can also boost your visibility and authority online.
But what is a Google Verified Customer
Review? And how do you get them?
What is a Google
Verified Customer Review?
A verified customer review is a review a customer
can leave after making a purchase from a company’s website. Seller ratings
appear on Search Ads, in Google Shopping, and on an optional badge that can be
displayed...
Voice Search - What It Means for Local Businesses
The rise of virtual assistants such as Siri, Cortana and Alexa is changing the game when it comes to local search engine optimization with one little thing… your voice. If your business relies on local search traffic, this will definitely impact your strategy. What is Voice Search? Voice search is a growing trend that has really started to take off with widespread adoption of virtual assistants like Siri, Cortana, Google Assistant – all of whom perform web searches automatically if...
Top 10 Recent Social Media Updates You Need to Know (Especially #3 and #8)
If you’re operating or marketing a business, whether it’s B2C or B2B, in 2017, you probably utilize at least one social media platform for your business. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn are just a few of the social platforms you could be utilizing – and honestly, it is difficult to stay ahead of the changes that occur within these platforms as they update and add new features. That’s why we’ve rounded up 10 of the most important updates you should know...