Today is the first day in the year 2016.
As you start to plan your marketing strategies for the year ahead, it would be useful to consider some of the positive moves which you can make to improve how you grow your influence and reach customers online.
Content marketing, Search Engine Optimization (aka SEO) and social media marketing.
Together, these three can work powerfully to propel your digital marketing strategy forward.
What do these digital marketing techniques involve? More importantly, how do you integrate them in a coherent and synergistic manner?
How do you incorporate Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media, and Content Marketing into your marketing efforts?
Answer: Adopt a customer-centric content marketing strategy which incorporates search and social media optimization.
Do you know what Inbound Marketing is? Keen to use inbound marketing to improve your marketing ROI?
Pioneered by co-founders of HubSpot Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, inbound marketing is a leading Business to Business (B2B) digital marketing strategy. The fact that HubSpot is a NASDAQ listed marketing automation company worth $1.24 billion in market capitalisation is a testimony to inbound marketing’s strengths.
For a long time, I thought I knew what Search Engine Optimization (SEO) was all about.
I mean, isn’t it about stuffing keywords in your website content? That is, incorporating them in the headlines, sub-headlines and body copy of your blog posts ad nauseum. And perhaps one should also stuff one’s web pages with numerous meta tags and descriptions?
How can small businesses compete against 800-pound-gorillas? What can they do to gain a foothold in the hearts and minds of consumers?
Well, Kevin M Ryan and Rob “Spider” Graham purports that digital marketing and online advertising is the answer. Targeted at small and medium sized businesses, their book Taking Down Goliath acts as a 101 guide to the world of digital marketing, covering topics like email marketing, online advertising, search engine optimization (SEO), social media, mobile marketing and more.
Customer persona. Consumer buying cycle. Keyword research. Optimize. Socialize. Analytics. Metrics.
The world of content marketing is full of buzzwords. To digital marketing luddites, it often feels like a completely alien language!
How can we simplify the processes involved in content marketing?
Enter the Five Hs of Content Marketing.
Source of image
In case you don’t already know, the world of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is going to the birds. Or more specifically, the Hummingbird.
Announcing its brand new algorithm for search recently at its birthday, Google’s Hummingbird claims to make search more natural, contextual and human. In other words, trying to “game” the system through unrelated keywords, meta-tags, links, and other spammy devices may work less effectively in future.
Social media marketing is probably the most heavily written management topic on the planet. Unfortunately, many books, articles, blogs and podcasts on social media focus too heavily on the “feel good” factor of success stories. These tend to be more inspirational than instructional.
Ric Dragon’s seminal publication Social Marketology is different. Providing a methodical framework covering strategy, organisation, execution and measurement, the book provides a step by step process to managing the social media marketing function.
Do social media gurus exist? (courtesy of Brian Copeland)
I’m caught in a digital dilemma.
On the one hand, I know that I should find ways to raise my social media score (courtesy of Klout.com). There are lots that I can do to “game the system”.