How many groups can you join on Facebook per day?

First of all, how many groups are there on Facebook?  Facebook may know the exact number, but according to rough Google estimates there are from 600 million to up to 1 billion groups on Facebook.

If you want to join a large number of Facebook groups, that is fine, but you will have to do it fairly slowly on a day by day basis.  If you try to join too many groups at once, you may get a message from Facebook that you are restricted from joining groups on Facebook.  

Usually, this restriction lasts for one week, but if you are a habitual abuser of adding too many groups too quickly there may be more severe penalties in store for you.

I am wondering how many of you have every faced this situation on Facebook.

I am taking a survey about joining Facebook groups with 3 questions.

1) On average, how many groups do you join per day on Facebook?  __________

2) Do you join a fairly consistent number of groups per day?   __________

3) If you have ever been suspended for joining too many groups, do you know how many groups you had tried to join in the last 24 hours when the suspension occurred?   __________

Please post your answers as comments below, and I will tabulate the responses and report back the results.

Thank you.

 

John Lombaerde – Goldfinch Digital Publishing

 

MarketHive

How many groups can you join on Facebook per day?

Things most people don’t understand about SEO

New to the world of search engine optimization (SEO)? Columnist John Lincoln explains some things you might not know about this online marketing discipline.

 

SEO is a complicated discipline. There are many components to it, and best practices change from time to time. Add to that the fact that Google updates its algorithm frequently, causing ranking shifts that are known to make digital marketers lose sleep.

Additionally, Google often releases new technologies that offer alternative ways to rank. That makes the lives of SEOs even more complicated, as they have to overcome a learning curve to properly serve their clients.

One day, it might be easier to become a doctor than an SEO — kidding! (But not really… )

Even now, though, there’s a lot of misinformation (and missing information) about what it takes to rank a page in organic search results. Here are nine things most people don’t understand about SEO.

1. Bigger really is better, in most cases, for big terms

In some niches, Google favors larger sites.

If you’re launching an e-commerce site that sells men’s jeans, it’s not likely that you’re going to rank at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs) for the search phrase, “men’s jeans.”

Why? Google “men’s jeans” right now and see who’s at the top.

Disregard the sponsored ads, and you’ll notice names like Macy’s, Nordstrom, American Eagle, Levi, and Kohl’s. Do you really think you have the SEO power to knock any of those brands out of their position?

Spoiler: You don’t.

Google will generally favor brands that are household names over new startups when it comes to ranking. That’s because the search giant wants to provide the best possible experience for its users.

So does that mean all hope is lost if you’re running a new company that wants to sell men’s jeans online? Not at all.

First of all, you can optimize for your own brand name. That way, once you’ve got some reputation in your space, people can still find your site by searching for your name.

Also, you can run paid ads. They can put you at the top of the SERPs, but keep in mind that advertising can be costly. As of this writing, the suggested bid for “men’s jeans” is $2.09 per click, according to Keyword Planner, so your margins had better be spectacular.

You should also look for alternative keywords that you can use to promote your brand. You might come across some golden opportunities that even your biggest competitors haven’t noticed.

For example, you might be offering a specific style/color combination of men’s jeans. Optimize your site for a search term that includes that style and color.

2. Websites are broken up into segments

The reality is that you’re not trying to rank a site. You’re trying to rank pages within a site.

Unless you have a site that’s a just a single landing page, then ranking a page and a site aren’t the same thing. It’s more likely that you have various segments on your website, including a home page, a contact form, a blog, a categories page, a price table, a FAQ and possibly other parts. For example, if you take a look at Levi’s website, they have a structure that breaks the site up into sections for Men, Women, Kids and so on.

Some of those segments are more valuable than others. For example, you’re probably not interested in ranking your contact form. However, you certainly want to rank the content on your blog. Focus on ranking pages that will reel in potential customers from the SERPs. Then, use your favorite method to capture their contact information and add them to your email list.

3. You might just need to rank for a few terms

You might think that to be successful in SEO, you have to rank for dozens of search terms in the top three positions. That’s not necessarily the case.

If you’re in a micro-niche or your target market is very narrow, it’s likely that you can get away with just ranking for one or two terms. For example, if you’re selling “disc profiles,” you are going to make most of your revenue from a few core terms.

The main point here is that for some sites, ranking for lots of terms makes sense. For others, you can make great money just targeting a few core terms.

4. Content marketing is very competitive

You’ve probably heard “content is king.” Unfortunately, so has everybody else in your niche.

That’s why you need to be at the top of your game when it comes to inbound marketing. Invest the right amount of time and money into keyword research, hire the best writers, update your blog consistently, and pull out all the stops to create attention-grabbing headlines with amazing content.

I recommend using BuzzSumo and Moz Content. Both allow you to analyze a site’s content, uncover their strategies, track the new content they create and search the most popular content. Both create some pretty nice reports, too.

Take a look at your competition — then make a better page for your site.

5. Early adoption pays off

As we’ve seen, Google is known to release new technologies from time to time. Some of those technologies can help you rank in the SERPs.

That’s why you should be an early adopter.

For starters, take a look at accelerated mobile pages (AMP). That’s an open-source project backed by Google that enables webpages to load lightning-fast on a mobile platform. AMP pages can appear at the very top of mobile search results in carousel format. You can see a visual of this in the video below:

 

Speaking of mobile, make sure that your site is fully mobile-friendly. Google uses mobile-friendliness as a ranking factor for mobile search results, so if you expect your site to rank there, it had better behave well for a mobile audience.

Finally, be an early adopter when it comes to using HTTPS on your website instead of HTTP. Even though Google announced back in 2014 that it was giving secure sites a ranking boost, a lot of sites have still stubbornly refused to make the switch. If you want to potentially have an edge on your competition, use HTTPS.

When it comes to SEO, you need to be the first to market with new technology. These are just a few examples. It takes a little time to plan, develop and execute, so it is always a good idea to start when the news of new tech breaks.

6. SEO can be used to target different global markets

Did you know that you can rank your site in different countries? If your product or service is something that can be appreciated by people outside the United States, you should optimize your site for an international audience.

One way to do that is by offering a country-specific domain — for example, if you’re targeting people in France, you can use the country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) of .fr. You can also host separate content for each different country on a directory or a subdomain.

When targeting other markets, don’t forget to translate your content into the appropriate foreign languages. After all, you can’t expect your content marketing efforts to be successful if people in foreign countries can’t read your articles in their native language.

You should also register your business in foreign countries, list your business in web directories specific to those countries, and even have your site hosted in those regions.

Here is a client we recently pushed into 27 different countries and languages. Check out this growth in Italy alone.

7. There are lots of ways to be visible in Google results

You might be under the impression that the only way to rank in Google is by building backlinks and using on-site SEO so that a page ends up as high in the SERPs as possible. However, there are other ways to gain visibility and visitors from the SERPs.

For example, if you can get into Google’s Knowledge Graph, your brand can potentially earn a prominent spot at the top of the SERP, to the right of organic listings. It’s quite an effort to get a Knowledge Graph entry, but once you do, you could give your brand a big boost.

You can also stand out from the crowd by using structured data markup to display rich snippets, which are visual enhancements to a SERP listing. Structured data markup is added to your website code to provide Google with more information about the content on your site.

If you Google “best pancake recipe” right now, you’ll see results that include aggregate ratings in the form of stars. You’ll also see calorie counts. Those are rich snippets, and they make the listing in the SERPs stand out.

By the way, you’ll also see that there’s a direct answer at the very top of many search engine results pages. That’s another way that you can achieve search visibility: by establishing your site as an authority in your space and producing content that Google determines to be a quick answer to a user’s query.

If you have a brick-and-mortar business, you can also rank within the local 3-pack. If you Google the name of your city plus the word “plumber,” you’ll see a map below the paid ads at the top. Just below that map, you’ll see three listings in your area. (To get started with local SEO, check out Marcus Miller’s “The big picture guide to local SEO: ranking in 2016 & beyond.”)

As discussed above, publishers can rank by appearing at the top of the mobile SERPs when they implement accelerated mobile pages (AMP).

Here is a list of common result types that appear in Google’s blended search results pages:

• Organic listings


• Knowledge Graph cards


• The local 3-pack


• Instant answers (also known as “featured snippets”)


• AMP carousel


• Google Images


• Google Videos


• Google News

 

SEMrush and many of the other SEO ranking tools actually report on these varying result types now, which is great.

The main point is, there’s more than one way to win.

8. There are many different specialties in SEO

Search engine optimization is a broad online marketing channel that includes a handful of niche disciplines. There are SEO practitioners who specialize in technical SEO, link building, content marketing, local SEO, international SEO and more.

And guess what? Each requires a different skill set.

Bottom line: You need to determine first how you want to rank a site and then select the appropriate campaign strategy.

9. There are other search engines besides Google

Sure, Google is the undisputed leader in web searches. That doesn’t mean that other search engines don’t exist and that people in your target market don’t use them.

The most obvious competitor to Google is Bing. That’s Microsoft’s search engine, and as of this writing, its share of search traffic is growing faster than Google’s.

And don’t forget about YouTube. Believe it or not, YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world behind Google.

Of course, there’s also Amazon. You might think of Amazon as more of an e-commerce giant than a search engine. However, it’s the starting point for 44 percent of consumers searching for products.

When you’re optimizing your content assets, make sure that you take into account the broad spectrum of search engines that exist online. Where you choose to focus your optimization efforts will depend on your goals online.

There is a lot to know

What you don’t know can hurt you when it comes to SEO. Going forward, it’s important that you also keep up with the latest changes in SEO best practices — otherwise, your future optimization efforts might fall flat.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

MarketHive

Things most people don't understand about SEO

Trends from Social Media Marketing World

As you may have noticed from our Facebook and Instagram profiles, our team recently attended Social Media Marketing World (SMMW). This was our fourth year in attendance, and we love connecting and collaborating with social media marketers from around the world. It’s exciting to see where the field is heading, so we’re imparting some knowledge we’ve gleaned from the sessions and talks.

One of our favorite acronyms we picked up at SMMW was “ILT”: Invest, Learn, Teach.For marketers, this means to invest in skills and tools, learn as much as you can, and then pass along that knowledge to your customers and peers. In the spirit of ILT, here are five of the biggest trends discussed at Social Media Marketing World.

 

 

Landing pages are king

A landing page is a standalone web page intended to collect leads. The art and science of an effective landing page dominated many social media marketing talks this year. Landing pages are usually focused specifically on a product, event or feature, so they can be a component to your primary website, but function independently. Luckily, ShortStack makes it super easy to create landing pages, and we have a bunch of templates to choose from depending on what you want your landing page to highlight.

Since visual and audio media was such a hot topic this year, we saw many marketers create landing pages for their podcasts or videos. Podcasting expert Paul Colligan emphasized the value of landing pages in the context of creating podcast show notes, transcripts and CTAs (call to actions). This is a way to promote your multimedia while still interacting with and collecting information from your users, which creates active consumption of your media instead of passive.

Live video broadcasts connect brands with users

Services like Facebook Live, Periscope and Blab.im provide individuals and brands the ability to live stream video broadcasts to their users and followers. This was huge this year, and the conference hall was filled with marketers live streaming in between sessions. A live video keynote (which feature notable live streamers such as Mari Smith, who is an avid Facebook Live broadcaster) discussed why live video is so effective. The takeaway? Live video shows users that their favorite brands and companies are comprised of real people. And people like connecting with other people, not just words, and images. Video allows realness to come through. Marketers can use live video to their advantage by creating a landing page to capture leads.

Creative targeted ad use can funnel content to the right people

Marketers are learning the power of creative targeted ads, particularly on Facebook. Ads are a great way to cut through Facebook’s algorithms to make sure your content is seen by the right people. Yes, it requires payin’ up, but the results are so worth it. Our friend Jon Loomer, with whom we hosted a stellar taco and margarita party during SMMW, is the master at using Facebook ads in creative ways. Try participating in one of his experiments, and you’ll be amazed at how he’s able to automate his process to share very specific content with you on your feed, controlling it all through ads.

For instance, he recently ran an ad that gave the viewer three options to choose from, based on their skill level with Facebook ads: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced. After selecting “Intermediate” (some of us around here are more savvy with ads than others), videos Jon had made for Intermediate users began appearing in our feed, with messages and information just for us. We also received an email follow-up, all by simply clicking on the Intermediate option via Facebook. We’d think it’s magic if we didn’t have some insight into how powerful ads can be in the right environment.

Which leads us to our next point…

Automation can aid in customer rapport

Automation helps marketers in numerous ways, such as streamlining workflow or connecting with customers. Facebook recently announced the ability to create “bots” for Facebook Messenger, which, like ads, can help you manage the way you respond to and collect information from your users. For instance, when a user submits a question to your company Facebook Page about an order that they want to track, the bot can respond to the user with the tracking information. This allows users to get immediate responses with your signature flair, but it doesn’t require you to answer every single request.

Marketers are also employing features like action-gating into their landing pages and websites. An action-gate requires users to interact with you somehow — such as entering an email address or other contact information — and in return, you share something with them (a downloadable guide, a contest or coupon, etc.). This follows the “if this happens, then that happens” function format. You can try this out by using our Action Widget on your ShortStack Campaign.

Omnichannel marketing is the way of the future

Omnichannel marketing means running marketing campaigns on more than one platform at once. We’ve been evangelising omnichannel marketing for a while, and we’re quite pleased that other marketers are seeing value in it, too. We’ve written about this before since our users have seen major success with running omnichannel Campaigns (in fact, here’s a whole white paper about it, with our original findings from more than 27,000 Campaigns).

So although Facebook was still discussed frequently, thanks to their Messenger and Facebook Live developments, these features were part of a bigger picture. Ultimately, our takeaway is that marketers are using a mix of platforms and tools at their disposal to connect and collect from users. But rather than getting overwhelmed with new platforms and strategies, they’re using automation to streamline this process. Smart, targeted marketing campaigns were the name of the game this year.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

MarketHive

Trends from Social Media Marketing World

What Social Media Marketing World Taught Us About Event Marketing

Each year Social Media Marketing World hosts thousands of people passionate about marketing. Attendees also have the opportunity to network with one another, and to learn (since many in attendance are experts in their own right). They left the event with 10 awesome insights relevant to event marketers or organizers hoping to create amazing events. 

 

 

 

 

1. Networking Is Everything

One of the things I loved most about SMMW, is the crazy number of opportunities created prior, during and after the event to network and communicate with other marketers. The event organizers created a “networking resources” page that served as the go-to guide for everything networking.

Starting with more than 80 Slack groups that were open for attendees to join and connect based on their very specific interests, to Table Talks that allowed attendees to eat their lunch while talking about marketing topics that interested them, to the networking sessions on Blab in which attendees learned the best networking hacks prior to the conference.

2. Live Video Is Here To Stay

If I had to mention only one thing that was discussed most in SMMW, it would surely be live video. The biggest insight presented by the founder of Social Media Examiner, Michael  Stelzner during his talk about SME’s Annual survey was that “social media marketers are embracing video” with 73% of marketers saying that they’ve increased their use of videos in 2016 and 23% of those claiming that video is their most important form of content marketing.

Stelzner, along with the majority of speakers defined Facebook’s new live video broadcasting as groundbreaking with the ability to make a huge impact on the digital marketing industry.

So what are the implications for event marketers? It starts with sharing video content with your prospects prior to the event that shows the value they will get from attending. If it’s preview of the sessions that will occur or the networking opportunities that will be available, either can work!

During the event, it’s about encouraging your attendees to share their experience online. Once the event ends, event marketers should produce an awesome video with the greatest moments and a call to action for viewers to sign up to register for next year’s event via some form of event registration software. 

3. Social Media Complaints Are Increasing Exponentially

During his session about “How to achieve social media customer service success”, Here are a few incredibly statistics: 

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  800% increase in social media complaints about business in one year in the U.K 

  
  


• 
  

  55% of customer complaints are on review websites. 

  
  


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  25% increase in customer advocacy when a complaint is answered by a business 

  
  

Events might not be a physical product with technical issues to complain about, but we all know that with everything that needs to work properly during the event, something will inevitably go wrong, and attendees will complain.

Reacting to a complaint can not only result in solving the issue but in can encourage that person to become your greatest ambassador.

One of the keys to do it right is to be fast and smart. 

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  40% of customers who complain about social media expect a response within an hour.  

  
  

Most businesses take 5 hours to respond… 

4. Find A Niche To Become A “Thought Leader”

Everyone wants to become a thought leader. With all the noise that’s out there, the biggest question is how to break through and be noticed. This is a great challenge for many event organizers trying to find a competitive advantage over other events vying for the same audience. Dorie declares it’s all about finding your specific niche and delivering on it in anyway possible.

If you’re a “women in tech” conference, being able to establish yourself as a true thought leader in the field before the actual event, can take you a long way. How can you do that? By proving the best content in the field.

Here are 2 ideas:

• 
  

  Create a designated LinkedIn or Facebook Group encouraging your past and future speakers to post their own articles. Share quick tip, videos and more

  
  

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  Conduct an industry survey and then present the findings during the event. The organizers of SMMW were wise enough to do just that. It resulted in 1,000+ social media shares during the event!

  
  

5. Know Your Audience By Heart

This might be my biggest takeaway from SMMW16. Why? Because at the end of the day, a successful event marketing strategy is tied to providing the right content at the right time.

An audience of social marketers has it’s own very unique needs: they care about being connected to social media networks at all times, they want to be able to share their experience while they’re at the event, they want to be able to miss out on sessions and attend them after.

SMMW organizers knew all that and found the perfect solutions to increase the satisfaction of their attendees and increase their engagement before, during and after the event, in the offline and online world.

The connectivity issue was resolved by putting a special emphasis on complimentary internet access that worked perfectly for all 3000 attendees, and by placing more than a couple hundred power sockets throughout the venue.

The organizers provided awesome backdrops for attendees to take pictures of themselves at the event (perfect for those who wanted to post to Instagram, or SnapChat).

For people who missed sessions, everything was recorded by professional videographers.

 

6. Keep Your Content Relevant And Segmented

As mentioned above, knowing your audience is everything.  Once you know your audience, though, you must also take the next step of crafting your content and brand experience around that.  Even when your customer or potential customer isn’t dealing directly with your product or isn’t at your event, you will always have the opportunity to influence their opinion of your brand.  

This means segmenting the content in your newsletter with where readers are in your sales funnel or by industry, excluding customers from your retargeting ads, and making sure that the same prospects aren’t inundated with the same ads, offers, and content.

You can use tools like Google Analytics, Adwords, and Facebook Ads to make “Custom Audiences” in which you can segment your website visitors by when they last visited, what pages they visited, or even target them by uploading emails of your most engaged prospects.  

With this much control over where and who you market your content to, there’s no excuse for pounding your audience’s with the same content irrespective of their needs and wants.  You’re fighting for their attention: make it worth their while! 

7. If You’re Not Looking At The Data, You’re Not Doing It Right

As an event for social media marketers, I wouldn’t say that this was a gathering of numbers people.  Analytical, for sure, but as social media marketers, we are much more in tune with understanding the human experience and the creative side of marketing, rather than cold hard stats about what worked and what didn’t.

Despite this, with the help of some amazing and very accessible tools, you are clearly losing out if you aren’t taking the time to look at the data.  With the availability of free software such as Google Analytics, it’s absolutely necessary that you track the journey of your customers.  

• 
  

  What channels do they find you through?  

  
  

• 
  

  Has paid search proven to be more impactful than social media?

  
  

• 
  

  Do you have low visits from organic search, or perhaps they’ve been steadily increasing by your push in SEO efforts?  

  
  

Ideally, your company has a marketing/sales/email automation platform in place to help you easily track and organize this data, but even if you don’t there are plenty of places to start. If you have conversion tracking setup you can see the different channels your customers are coming through and what’s really making an impact.  Time to get data-driven, folks. 

8. Learn By Doing: Don't Be Afraid Of New Marketing Initiatives

No doubt your marketing team or company has a laundry list of interesting marketing initiatives they want to take on at some point.  With all sorts of trends in media happening, with an emphasis on live video, it can be overwhelming to tackle new initiatives while also doing them well.  

You may feel like you need to do a great amount of research, see what others have done and are doing, and only then start to dip your toe into the water.  While much can be gained from learning what others are doing, even more can be gained by just doing it yourself.  

Think Snapchat could help connect your business to its audience?  Go for it. Want to see how video Facebook ads work compared to image ads?  Just jump right in.  

When it comes to these new initiatives, not everything will work.  There’s a good chance you won’t succeed at first but you might gain some traction or interesting new insight into what your audience wants to engage with and how they want to interact.  

If you choose to sit back and watch, you may find that by the time you’re actually ready to dive in, the pool is already saturated with so many others that you’ve lost the slight advantage in timing that could’ve been yours.

9. Credibility Is King

Back in Mad Men era, selling took thoughtfully crafted copy, perhaps a few striking, stylish images that could make an impact.  Today, people are surrounded by so many images, ads, videos, and everything in between that traditional advertising strategies are increasingly less effective.

Today, people have become jaded, they’ve seen it all.  They know the sales tricks, the slick talk, the thinly veiled pitch, and they’re not buying it.  

So what do to overcome a skeptical audience?  You have to build credibility.  Show that you and your company are genuine in your intentions and truly believe in your product and service. This can be achieved by positioning yourself and your company as thought leaders in your industry by publishing insightful blog posts and sharing information that’s valuable for your intended audience.  

It can also be helpful to share pictures and videos of the behind-the-scenes in your company, to publish videos with members of your team providing industry tips. It’s much easier to connect with a brand when the audience sees the real people behind it. 

10. Be Present

You don’t have to be particularly analytical to see where this is all going.  We are moving towards the world where audiences demand transparency, real-time reactions, and live, behind the scenes looks at your business.  

You don’t need to necessarily be ahead of the trends or even following each trend, but you should be available to your audience and work on cultivating an image that is genuine.  

Yes, you still have revenue goals you need to hit, but you must help your business to craft an identity that balances revenue goals with customer-centric ones. Ironically, the more we head towards a tech-saturated society, the more we want to embrace humanity.  So give the people what they want! 

Conclusion

Social Media Marketing World is a one-of-a-kind event, it featured world-class speakers, amazing networking opportunities, and loads of actionable insights that left us impressed and inspired. When it comes to putting these ideas into action, it is all about prioritization. Focus on the initiatives that you think will make the biggest impact, and will make other projects easier to complete.

Most of all, remember that potential event attendees are searching for events that demonstrate thought leadership, and feel genuine. There are many tactics to choose from when trying to accomplish these goals, the best place to start is to truly understand your audience.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

MarketHive

What Social Media Marketing World Taught Us About Event Marketing

What Is Guerrilla Marketing?

 What Is Guerrilla Marketing?

The first Guerrilla Marketing book was published by Houghton Mifflin in l984. Today there are 58 volumes in 62 languages, and more than 21 million copies have been sold worldwide. The book is required reading in many MBA programs throughout the world. The author taught the topic at the University of California, Berkeley Extension Division. He lectures on it worldwide.

This describes guerrilla marketing:

“I’m referring to the soul and essence of guerrilla marketing which remains as always — achieving conventional goals, such as profits and joy, with unconventional methods, such as investing energy instead of money.

“Guerrilla Marketing started out a single volume and has since acted biblically by being fruitful and multiplying into a library of 35 books and counting, an Association, a lush website, an abundance of video and audio versions, an email newsletter, a consulting organization, an internationally-syndicated column for newspapers, magazines, and the Internet, and presentations in enough countries for us to consider forming our own Guerrilla United Nations.

The need for guerrilla marketing can be seen in the light of three facts:

Because of big business downsizing, decentralization, relaxation of government regulations, affordable technology, and a revolution in consciousness, people around the world are gravitating to small business in record numbers.

Small business failures are also establishing record numbers and one of the main reasons for the failures is a failure to understand marketing.

Guerrilla marketing has been proven in action to work for small businesses around the world. It works because it’s simple to understand, easy to implement and outrageously inexpensive.

Guerrilla marketing is needed because it gives small businesses a delightfully unfair advantage: certainty in an uncertain world, an economy in a high-priced world, simplicity in a complicated world, marketing awareness in a clueless world.”

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

MarketHive

What Is Guerrilla Marketing?

The Rise of the Chief Marketing Technologist

 

Marketing is rapidly becoming one of the most technology-dependent functions in business. In 2012 the research and consulting firm Gartner predicted that by 2017, a company’s chief marketing officer would be spending more on technology than its chief information officer was. That oft-quoted claim seems more credible every day.

A new type of executive is emerging at the center of the transformation: the chief marketing technologist. CMTs are part strategist, part creative director, part technology leader, and part teacher. Although they have an array of titles—Kimberly-Clark has a “global head of marketing technology,” while SAP has a “business information officer for global marketing,” for example—they have a common job: aligning marketing technology with business goals, serving as a liaison to IT, and evaluating and choosing technology providers. About half are charged with helping craft new digital business models as well.

Regardless of what they’re called, the best CMTs set a technology vision for marketing. They champion greater experimentation and more agile management of that function’s capabilities. And they are change agents, working within the function and across the company to create competitive advantage.

Before we describe the role in detail,
Let’s consider the forces that gave rise to it.

In a digital world, software is the chief means of engaging prospects and customers. A marketing team’s choice of software and how to configure and operate it, along with how creatively the team applies it, materially affects how the firm perceives and influences its audience and how the audience sees the firm.

As digital marketing and e-commerce increasingly augment or replace traditional touchpoints, the importance of mastering those capabilities grows. Digital marketing budgets are expanding annually at double-digit rates, and CEOs say that digital marketing is now the most important technology-powered investment their firms can make.

This rise in digital budgets is not merely a migration of spending from traditional to digital media. A growing portion of marketing’s budget is now allocated to technology itself. A recent Gartner study found that 67% of marketing departments plan to increase their spending on technology-related activities over the next two years. In addition, 61% are increasing capital expenditures on technology, and 65% are increasing budgets for service providers that have technology-related offerings.

The challenge of effectively managing all this technology is daunting. There are now well over 1,000 marketing software providers worldwide, with offerings ranging from major platforms for CRM, content management, and marketing automation to specialized solutions for social media management, content marketing, and customer-facing apps. Relationships with agencies and service providers now include technical interfaces for the exchange and integration of code and data. And bespoke software projects to develop unique customer experiences and new sources of advantage are proliferating under marketing’s umbrella.

Bridging Marketing and IT

In this new environment, the CMO and the CIO must collaborate closely. But executive-level cooperation isn’t enough; a supporting organizational structure is also needed. A company can’t simply split marketing technology down the middle, King Solomon style, and declare that the CMO gets the marketing half and the CIO gets the technology half. Such a neat division might look good on paper, but it leaves yawning knowledge gaps in practice. Marketing might not understand how to fully leverage what IT can offer, and IT might not understand how to accurately translate marketing requirements into technical capabilities.

• 
  

  

  
  

Instead, marketing technology must be managed holistically. In a virtuous cycle, what’s possible with technology should inspire what’s desirable for marketing, and vice versa. The right structure will help marketing become proficient with the array of software it must use to attract, acquire, and retain customers. It will help marketing leadership recognize how new technologies can open up new opportunities. And it will allow marketing to deftly handle the technical facets of agency and service provider relationships in both contract negotiations and day-to-day operations.

The CMT’s job, broadly, is to enable this holistic approach. He or she is the equivalent of a business unit–level CIO or CTO. People in this role need technical depth—many have backgrounds in IT management or software development—but they must also be passionate about marketing. A common profile is an executive with an undergraduate degree in computer science and a graduate degree in business. Many CMTs have experience in digital agencies or with building customer-facing web products.

 

Most CMTs report primarily to marketing, either to the CMO or to another senior marketing executive, such as the VP of marketing operations or the VP of digital marketing. Many also have dotted-line reporting relationships with IT.

Acting as the connective tissue between different constituencies, these executives engage with four key stakeholders: the CMO and other senior marketing executives, the CIO and the IT organization, the broader marketing team, and outside software and service providers (see the exhibit “At the Nexus”). We will describe their interactions with these stakeholders in turn.

The CMO and other senior marketing executives.

The chief marketing technologist supports these executives’ strategy by ensuring technical capabilities and advocating for approaches enabled by new technologies. For example, Joseph Kurian, Aetna’s head of marketing technology and innovation for enterprise marketing, championed the use of “voice of the customer” software to collect user feedback across the company’s mobile and web interfaces. The software has improved customers’ digital interactions with Aetna—a key strategic priority.

 

 

The CIO and the IT organization.

CMTs facilitate and prioritize technology requests from marketing, translating between technical and marketing requirements and making sure that marketing’s systems adhere to IT policies. Andreas Starke, the business information officer for global marketing at SAP, is the principal point of contact between the two functions and streamlines the planning and execution of marketing technology projects. For example, he led the rollout of a shared automation platform to replace the disjointed systems used by previously siloed marketing groups.

Profile of a CMT

Mayur Gupta, Kimberly-Clark’s global head of marketing technology and operations, epitomizes the evolving role of the CMT. Before coming to Kimberly-Clark, he was an enterprise architect and marketing technology strategist at SapientNitro, a marketing services provider that combine the creative culture of an agency with the technical capabilities of a systems integrator. In his current role, he is primarily responsible for managing the company’s marketing technology strategy and road map—advising on which big bets the company should make in expanding its technology-enabled marketing capabilities and how to prioritize and manage their adoption.

Gupta and his team work closely with brand leaders throughout the company, identifying new ways to leverage software and information. For instance, he led the deployment of a new platform that integrates customer data from within and outside the firm to drive Kimberly-Clark’s “omnichannel” strategy, which aims at delivering more consistent and personalized experiences across touchpoints. More broadly, he collaborates with IT leadership throughout the life cycle of such projects, from defining goals to acquiring and implementing technology.

Gupta also leads the technology practice in the company’s Digital Innovation Lab, which is affiliated with a network of technology start-ups, accelerators, and incubators. Its projects range from experiments with connected devices and the Internet of Things to uses of augmented reality to optimize the shopping experience.

The broader marketing team.

The CMT ensures that the marketing staff has the right software and training. Brian Makas, the director of marketing technology and business intelligence at ThomasNet, saw that field sales reps and support staff were inefficiently coordinating their activities through weekly Excel spreadsheets. He jettisoned that time-­consuming process in favor of real-time views obtained through the company’s CRM system—and implemented the new protocol in just a week.

Outside software and service providers.

Here, the CMT assesses how well providers’ technical capabilities meet marketing’s needs, helps integrate the systems, and monitors their performance. Shawn Goodin, the director of marketing tech­nology at the Clorox Company, led the evaluation of six vendors for a platform that would optimize customers’ experiences across channels and devices and integrate consumer data across marketing, sales, and R&D.

The work of these CMTs shows just how open-ended this new role is—and why an executive fully at home in both marketing and IT is essential for the job.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

MarketHive

The Rise of the Chief Marketing Technologist

Valentus Specialty Chemicals Completes Second Acquisition

Huron Capital's Valentus Specialty Chemicals Completes Second Acquisition

DETROIT, April 14, 2016, /PRNewswire/ — Huron Capital Partners LLC ("Huron Capital") today announced its specialty coatings ExecFactor® platform, Valentus Specialty Chemicals, Inc. ("Valentus"), has acquired the floor finishes a business of Memphis, TN-based Precision Technology LLC. ("Precision").  Huron Capital formed Valentus in partnership with coatings industry veterans Ray Chlodney, John Ragazzini and Bob Taylor to pursue a buy-and-build initiative in the industrial coatings sector.  Valentus closed its first investment in December 2015 with the acquisition of coatings manufacturer National Paint Industries ("NPI"). 

Precision's floor coating business has a proven acid cure floor coating system which includes the Swedish Finish & Swedish Crown product lines and the Precision Polyurethane oil-based finish.  Lanny Trottman, founder, and owner of Precision will retain ownership of Precision's wood filler and wood patch products, maintenance products, and roller and brush products, which are not part of the transaction.  The floor coating business will move to NPI's facility in North Brunswick, New Jersey. 

Valentus CEO Chlodney said, "The NPI team has known Precision for a long time and has always thought highly of the business.  We are excited to add these products to the Valentus lineup as we look to expand our presence in the floor coatings market.  In partnership with Huron Capital, we are actively looking for additional complementary coatings companies as we continue to grow the Valentus platform."

Mike Beauregard, Senior Partner at Huron Capital, added, "This is the type of strategic add-on acquisition we envisioned when we created the Valentus ExecFactor® initiative, and we are pleased that it came less than four months after the first Valentus investment.  We are excited about partnering with Ray, John, and Bob, and will be looking to expand Valentus into additional geographies and new product lines."

About Huron Capital Partners LLC

Based in Detroit, Huron Capital is an operationally-focused private equity firm with a long history of growing lower middle-market companies through our proprietary ExecFactor® buy-and-build investment model. We prefer complex situations where we can help companies reach their full potential by combining our operational approach, substantial capital base, and transaction experience with seasoned operating executives. Founded in 1999, Huron Capital has raised over $1.1 billion in capital through four committed private equity funds and invested in over 100 companies, and our portfolio companies have employed over 11,000 people throughout North America. The Huron Capital buy-and-build investment model includes equity recapitalizations, family succession transactions, market-entry strategies, corporate carve-outs, and management buyouts of companies having revenues up to $200 million. Huron Capital targets both majority and less-than-majority equity stakes in fundamentally-sound companies that can benefit from the firm's operational approach to creating value. Huron Capital's sector focus includes business services, consumer products & services, specialty manufacturing and healthcare.

SOURCE Huron Capital Partners LLC

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

MarketHive

Valentus Specialty Chemicals Completes Second Acquisition

HTML Code & Search Engine Success Factors

 

 

 

 

 

HTML is the underlying code used to create web pages. Search engines can pick up ranking signals from specific HTML elements. Below are some of the most important HTML elements to achieve SEO success.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ht: HTML Title Tag

Imagine that you wrote 100 different books but gave them all the same exact title. How would anyone understand that they are all about different topics?

Imagine that you wrote 100 different books, and while they did have different titles, the titles weren’t very descriptive — maybe just a single word or two. Again, how would anyone know, at a glance, what the books were about?

HTML titles have always been and remain the most important HTML signal that search engines use to understand what a page is about. Bad titles on your pages are like having bad book titles in the examples above. In fact, if your HTML titles are deemed bad or not descriptive, Google changes them.

So think about what you hope each page will be found for, relying on the keyword research you’ve already performed. Then craft unique, descriptive titles for each of your pages. For more help about this, see our posts in the category below:

Hd: The Meta Description Tag

The meta description tag, one of the oldest supported HTML elements, allows you to suggest how you’d like your pages to be described in search listings. If the HTML title is equivalent to a book title, the meta description is like the blurb on the back describing the book.

SEO purists will argue that the meta description tag isn’t a “ranking factor” and that it doesn’t actually help your pages rank higher. Rather, it’s a “display factor,” something that helps how you look if you appear in the top results due to other factors.

Technically, that’s correct. And it’s one of the reasons we decided to call these “success” factors instead of ranking factors.

A meta description that contains the keywords searched for (in bold) may catch the user’s eye. A well-crafted meta description may help ‘sell’ that result to the user. Both can result in additional clicks to your site. As such, it makes sense for the meta description tag to be counted as a success factor.

Be forewarned, having a meta description tag doesn’t guarantee that your description will actually get used. Search engines may create different descriptions based on what they believe is most relevant for a particular query. But having one increases the odds that what you prefer will appear. And it’s easy to do. So do it.

Hs: Structured Data

What if you could tell search engines what your content was about in their own “language”? Behind the scenes, sites can use specific markup (code) that make it easy for search engines to understand the details of the page content and structure.

The result of structured data often translates into what is called a ‘rich snippet‘, a search listing that has extra bells and whistles that make it more attractive and useful to users. The most common rich snippet you’re likely to encounter  reviews/ratings which usually includes eye-catching stars.

While the use of structured data may not be a direct ranking factor, it is clearly a success factor. All things being equal, a listing with a rich snippet will get more clicks than one without. And search engines are eager for site owners to embrace structured data, providing new and easier ways for less tech-savvy webmasters to participate.

Structured data has been around for quite some time in various forms. But recently search engines have begun to rely on it more with the advent of Google’s Knowledge Graph and Bing’s Snapshot.

This element debuted in the previous edition of the periodic table, and in this edition, we’ve increased the weight, as we see it becoming more important in the future.

Hh: Header Tags

See the headline up at the top of this page? Behind the scenes, HTML code is used to make that a header tag. In this case, an H1 tag.

See the sub-headlines on the page? Those also use header tags. Each of them is the next “level” down, using H2 tags.

Header tags are a formal way to identify key sections of a web page. Search engines have long used them as clues to what a page is about. If the words you want to be found for are in header tags, you have a slightly increased chance of appearing in searches for those words.

Naturally, this knowledge has caused some people to go overboard. They’ll put entire paragraphs in header tags. That doesn’t help. Header tags are as much for making content easy to read for users as it is for search engines.

Header tags are useful when they reflect the logical structure (or outline) of a page. If you have a main headline, use an H1 tag. Relevant subheads should use an H2 tag. Use headers as they make sense and they may reinforce other ranking factors.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

MarketHive

HTML Code & Search Engine Success Factors

Personalization & Search Engine Rankings

 

 

 

 

Years ago, everyone saw exactly the same search results. Today, no one sees exactly the same search results, not on Google, not on Bing. Everyone gets a personalized experience to some degree, even in private browsing windows.

Of course, there’s still a lot commonality. It’s not that everyone sees completely different results. Instead, everyone sees many of the same “generic” listings. But there will also be some listings appearing because of where someone is, whom they know or how they surf the web.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pc: Country

One of the easiest personalization ranking factors to understand is that people are shown results relevant to the country they’re in.

Someone in the US searching for “football” will get results about American football; someone in the UK will get results about the type of football that Americans would call soccer.

If your site isn’t deemed relevant to a particular country, then you’ve got less chance of showing up when country personalization happens. If you feel you should be relevant, then you’ll probably have to work on your international SEO.

Pl: Locality

Search engines don’t stop personalizing at the country level. They’ll tailor results to match the city or metropolitan area based on the user’s location.

As with country personalization, if you want to appear when someone gets city-specific results, you need to ensure your site is relevant to that city.

Ph: Personal History

What has someone been searching for and clicking on from their search results? What sites do they regularly visit? Have they “Liked” a site using Facebook, shared it via Twitter or perhaps +1’d it?

This type of personal history is used to varying degrees and ways by both Google and Bing to influence search results. Unlike country or city personalization, there’s no easy way to try and make yourself more relevant.

Instead, it places more importance on first impressions and brand loyalty. When a user clicks on a “regular” search result, you want to ensure you’re presenting a great experience so they’ll come again. Over time, they may seek out your brand in search results, clicking on it despite it being below other listings.

This behavior reinforces your site as one that they should be shown more frequently to that user. Even better if they initiate a social gesture, such as a Like, +1 or Tweet that indicates a greater affinity for your site or brand.

History is even more important in new search interfaces such as Google Now, which will proactively present “cards” to users based on explicit preferences (i.e. – which sports teams or stocks do you track) and search history.

Ps: Social Connections

What do someone’s friends think about a website? This is one of the newer ranking factors to impact search results. Someone’s social connections can influence what they see on Google and Bing.

Those connections are what truly matter because search engines view those connections as a user’s personal set of advisors. Offline, you might trust and ask your friends to give you advice on a restaurant or gardening.

Increasingly, when you search today search engines are trying to emulate that offline scenario. So if a user is connected to a friend and that friend has reviewed a restaurant or shared an article on growing tomatoes then that restaurant and article may rank higher for that user.

If someone can follow you, or easily share your content, that helps get your site into their circle of trust and increases the odds that others they know will find you. Nowhere is this more transformative than Google+, where circling a site’s Google+ Page will change the personalized search results for that user.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

MarketHive

Personalization & Search Engine Rankings

Is learning useless stuff good for you?

We often require all students to learn things they may never need like latin, calculus, advanced trigonometry and classical literature. The implicit assumption is that learning difficult things is intrinsically good. It trains your brain. It makes you smarter.

True? Or false?

I worked on this assumption for the longest time. As an undergraduate, I took 6 courses per term instead of the required 5. I also took an extra year to graduate, doing the equivalent two majors. I probably took more college courses than 99.9% of the college graduates.

Why did I take all these courses? Because I was convinced that learning about all sorts of things would make me smarter. Many people think it works this way. That’s why we taught people Latin for a long time. In education, that is called transfer: learning something will help you learn something else, even if it is barely related. Does it work? We have reasons to doubt it:

Transfer has been studied since the turn of the XXth century. Still, there is very little empirical evidence showing meaningful transfer to occur and much less evidence showing it under experimental control. (…) significant transfer is probably rare and accounts for very little human behavior. (Detterman)

Caplan is even more categorical:

Teachers like to think that no matter how useless their lessons appear, they are teaching their students how to think. Under the heading of Transfer of Learning, educational psychologists have spent over a century looking for evidence that this sort of learning actually occurs. The results are decidedly negative.

These authors are not saying that learning French won’t help you learn Spanish. They are not saying that learning C++ won’t help you learn Java. Transfering does work, trivially, when there are similarities. Rather, they are saying that learning projective geometry won’t make you a better Java programmer. They are saying that learning fractal theory won’t help you be a better manager.

This has troubling consequences because, for many people, whatever they learned in college or in high school, has very little to do with what they do for a living. Does a degree in journalism makes you a better program manager today? You can legitimately ask the question. Yet employers are happy to assume that a degree, any degree, will help people do a better job, irrespective of the similarities between the job and the degree. For example, Tom Chi explains how his training in astrophysics made him a better business manager. From astrophysics to management? Really?

Can we at least hope that college students improve their critical thinking with all these literature, mathematics and philosophy classes? Roksaa and Arumb looked at the score of students on critical thinking tests as they progress through their studies:

A high proportion of students are progressing through higher education today without measurable gains in critical thinking.

The students have learned skills. It is difficult to go through years of studies without learning something. But this knowledge and these skills do not necessarily transfer to something as basic as critical thinking.

My point is that students might be onto something when they refuse to learn for the sake of learning. We look down at people who refuse to learn mathematics because it appears useless to them. We think that learning some mathematics would be good for them the same way we used to think that learning latin was good for the minds of little boys. We might be wrong.

But this has also a practical consequence for all of us: don’t bother learning skills “just in case” unless you do it for fun. If you want to be a better software programmer, just practice programming. This also means that if you want to acquire practical skills, a school might not be the best place to go: a degree in English might not turn you into a better novelist.

Another consequence is that you should not assume a transfer of expertise: if someone succeeded at one thing, you should not assume they will succeed at something else. If a famous baseball player starts a software company, wait before investing.

How to learn efficiently

I am convinced that much of the gap between the best college students and the worst is explained by study habits. Frankly, most students study poorly. To make matters worse, most teachers are incapable of teaching good study habits.

Learning is proportional with effort

Sitting in a classroom listening to a professor feels like learning… Reading a book on a new topic feels like learning… but because they are overwhelming passive activities, they are inefficient. It is even worse than inefficient, it is counterproductive because it gives you the false impression that you know the material. You can sit through lecture after lecture on quantum mechanics. At some point, you will become familiar with the topics and the terminology. Alas, you are fooling yourself which is worse than not learning anything.

Instead, you should always seek to challenge yourself. If some learning activity feels easy, it means that it is too easy. You should be constantly reminded of how little you know. Great lectures make it feels like the material is easy: it probably is not. Test yourself constantly: you will find that you know less than you think.

Some students blame the instructors when they feel confused. They are insistent that a course should be structured in such a way that it is always easy so that they rarely make mistakes. The opposite is true: a good course is one where you always feel that you will barely make it. It might not be a pleasant course, but it is one where you are learning. It is by struggling that we learn.

On this note, Learning Style theory is junk: while it is true that some students have an easier time doing things a certain way, having it easier is not the goal.

There are many ways to challenge yourself and learn more efficiently:

• 
  

  Seek the most difficult problems, the most difficult questions and try to address them. It is useless to read pages after pages of textbook material, but it becomes meaningful if you are doing it to solve a hard problem. This is not news to Physics students who have always learned by solving problems. Always work on the toughest problems you can address.

  
  


• 
  

  Reflect on what you have supposedly learned. As an undergraduate student, I found that writing a summary of everything I had learned in a class was one of the best ways to study for an exam. I would just sit down with a blank piece of paper and try to summarize everything as precisely as possible. Ultimately, writing your own textbook would be a very effective way to learn the material. Teaching is a great way to learn because it challenges you.

  
  


• 
  

  Avoid learning from a single source. Studying from a single textbook is counterproductive. Instead, seek multiple sources. Yes, it is confusing to pick up a different textbook where the terminology might be different, but this confusion is good for you.

  
  

If sitting docilely in a classroom is inefficient and even counterproductive, then why is it so common a practice? Why indeed!

Interleaved study trumps mass study

When studying, many people do not want to mix topics “so as not to get confused”. So if they need to learn to apply one particular idea, they study to the exclusion of everything else. That is called mass (or block) practice.

Course material and textbooks do not help: they are often neatly organized into distinct chapters, distinct sections… each one covering one specific topic.

What researchers have found is that interleaved practice is far superior. In interleaved practice, you intentionally mix up topics. Want to become a better mathematician? Do not spend one-month studying combinatorics, one-month studying calculus and so on. Instead, work on various mathematical topics, mixing them randomly.

Interleaved practice feels much harder (e.g., “you feel confused”), and it feels discouraging because progress appears to be slow. However, this confusion you feel… that is your brain learning.

Interleaved practice is exactly what a real project forces you to do. This means that real-world experience where you get to solve hard problems is probably a much more efficient learning strategy than college. Given a choice between doing challenging real work, and taking classes, you should always take the challenging work instead.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

 

 

 

MarketHive

Is learning useless stuff good for you?

Is Inbound Marketing a Waste Of Time and Money?

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Need to figure out whether inbound marketing fits in your marketing mix? 

Here’s some inbound marketing advice for small businesses.

Inbound marketing is a term coined and evangelized by the founders of HubSpot (a company that develops and markets inbound marketing software) that refers to a strategic use of content in lead generation and sales.

The concept is simple — businesses should use blogs, video, podcasts, guides, ebooks and other types of content to attract new customers. Proponents of inbound marketing claim that this is an easier, cheaper, and more effective way of getting business.

Inbound marketing is usually contrasted with outbound marketing or traditional marketing that consists of buying TV and radio advertising, direct mail campaigns, and other forms of offline marketing. Traditional marketing is seen by inbound marketers as expensive, ineffective and difficult  to measure.

Today inbound marketing has become ubiquitous and many small businesses are allocating more and more of their marketing budgets towards inbound marketing initiatives.

Are there better ways to spend your hard-earned small business marketing dollars?

Inbound Marketing Advice for Small Business

While content marketing shouldn’t be neglected it should take a backseat to a number of strategic business  and marketing strategies and methods.

Focusing on customer experience, referral marketing, increasing brand awareness would all be better choices for spending marketing dollars for most small businesses.

Why?

Because those strategies executed at the same level of competence simply produce a better return on investment in most markets.

There Is Only One Gary Vaynerchuk

Some inbound marketing aficionados will point out that doing content marketing right will propel you to stardom. Gary Vaynerchuk did it — so can you.

This is the first misconception. Practically all small businesses will miss the mark on creating remarkable content and in the process they will waste valuable time and money.

Most small businesses are simply not capable of creating content that will make anyone think twice about sharing it.

At the end of the day — how many wine bloggers do you know?

Inbound Marketing Is Not Free

Producing content, tweeting, blogging and running inbound marketing campaigns costs money or time. Let’s not forget the training costs, opportunity costs and the cost of tools.   

Inbound marketing tools are relatively expensive.

Yearly costs of using the market leading inbound marketing platform like Hubspot for a somewhat established business start at more than $12,000 per year. However, this platform is powerful and its list of features includes everything from keyword suggestions and social media monitoring to landing page creation tools and email lead nurturing.  

But it creates no content.

Great content can make a big impact on your bottom line, but this can come at a substantial cost. Creating comprehensive guides, impactful infographics, producing video and other types of remarkable content can cost thousands of dollars.

If you are like most small business owners content creation is not among your core competencies, and as a result you might find yourself in a situation where you are investing a lot of resources without acceptable returns.

Sometimes Inbound Marketing Is A Waste Of Resources

Content should always be a part of your marketing strategy. However, there are markets where serious investments in content marketing make no sense. Local niche markets like office cleaning, civil engineering or corporate catering are simply not compatible with inbound marketing.

Understanding how your market behaves online and online can save you a fortune.

Customer Experience (Not-Content) Is The One True King

Zappos didn’t become a billion dollar company because they were producing great content about shoes. They became a billion dollar company because they delivered amazing customer experience, and customers couldn’t resist telling their friends.

And what did Zappos use as the primary tool to amaze their customers? Telephone.

Instead of trying to minimize the number of calls they get (much like every other eCommerce business)  Zappos embraced every phone call as an opportunity to create a personal connection with their customers.  Zappos created an army of rabid fans, sales went through the roof, and they got acquired by Amazon for 1.2 billion dollars.

You don’t need to spend a fortune to provide a customer experience that beats expectations for your industry. Finding low-cost ways to personalize, accelerate or personalize your customer experience will go a long way towards increased loyalty and improved profits.

A simple way to improve customer experience design would be to talk to your customers regularly about their experience with your business, identify “pain points” and eliminate those systematically.

Your website can be a useful tool for improving customer experience. This is where content comes into play. You can engineer your content to enhance customer experience just by interviewing your customers. This may result in higher conversion rates and lower customer acquisition costs.    

Remember That You Customers Are Assets

Inbound marketing philosophy is centered around acquiring new customers using some content. If fully adopted as a sole marketing strategy it would limit the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.

Small businesses would benefit more by adopting a broader, more strategic approach to marketing that revolves around relationship building, customer experience, and integration of offline and online channels.

Before you make a heavy investment into inbound marketing make sure that:

• Your customer experience defies industry expectations


• You measure all important business and marketing metrics.


• You have a way of communicating with you customers long after they made their last purchase.


•  Your referral strategy is effective and results are predictable.


• Your partnerships with complementary businesses produce results.


• You developed a customer centric culture obsessed by delivering value to customers

Should I Abandon Inbound Marketing?

No.

Inbound marketing should be aligned with your overall marketing strategy as a major part of your online marketing. Content that’s useful to your targeted market can introduce new prospects to your brand but it can also help validate your company in the selection process. Great content can also help reshapes someone’s buying criteria, and compel them to pick up the phone and call you.

But heed this inbound marketing advice for small business: most small businesses can make a greater impact on their bottom lines focusing on other aspects of their marketing strategy before making a serious commitment to inbound marketing.

MarketHive

Is Inbound Marketing a Waste Of Time and Money?

Advertising

With consumers seeing millions of messages throughout each day, advertisers must use creativity, skill, and strategy to make an impact on their audiences. You must search for unique solutions in advertising, preparing them for work in advertising agencies, media firms, corporate marketing departments, design studios and more.

Major in Advertising

The B.A. in Advertising allows students to major in advertising and specialize their knowledge in one of three areas: creative, digital media strategy, or strategic brand management.

The B.A. in Advertising (all specializations) can be completed in a minimum of five semesters (one for prerequisites, plus four for major courses). Each of the three specializations is a two-year (four semester; fall and spring terms) sequence of classes that are referred to as the Foundation, the Practice, the Application, and Capstone. Students admitted to the B.A. in Advertising (any specialization) must take these courses in sequence to be able to complete the major in two years.

B.A. in Advertising

Creative Specialization

This program prepares students for careers in art direction or copywriting. Admission to the program is selective and based upon a faculty panel’s evaluation of an application used to assess a student’s creative ability and potential. This screening process improves the quality of the experience each student receives in creative courses and helps ensure that the quality of work produced by students is of the highest caliber and competitive by industry standards.

B.A. in Advertising

Digital Media Strategy Specialization

This program in Digital Media Strategy will prepare students to enter the world of advertising and marketing as digital producers, digital strategists, content managers, and media specialists. Marketing in the digital age means understanding when and where to communicate to consumers when they are going to be most receptive to your message and encourage them to share the messages. Students admitted to the specialization will learn to maximize consumers’ engagement with marketing messages using paid, owned and earned media to achieve this goal.

B.A. in Advertising

Strategic Brand Management Specialization

This program in Strategic Brand Management prepares students to enter the world of advertising and marketing as account or brand managers, project managers, planners/strategists, consumer insight experts, event and promotion specialists, as well as in new business development. The specialization covers approaches to management in advertising agencies and on the client-side. Topics include strategies for the identification of marketing-related problems and the processes needed to find solutions through messaging, promotions and other forms of consumer engagement to build brand equity and market share.

Minor in Advertising

The minor in advertising offers the student a cogent overview of the social, economic, legal and marketing environments in which advertising functions. Courses offered in the minor are designed to satisfy the needs of the consumer of advertising messages, as well as those of a person who might choose advertising as a valuable adjunct to another career choice.

Minor in Graphic Design

The graphic design minor provides a basic understanding and development of skills necessary for message design across various media. Topics and skill sets include identity (logos, branding collateral material, packaging), digital (social, mobile, online media), publication (magazines, newspapers, books), and other areas of design. The minor is designed for students who wish to incorporate an interest in graphic design into their major coursework or to pursue further study in a variety of design disciplines.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

MarketHive

Advertising

Network Marketing Boss

Network Marketing Boss

Some  Of The Top  Social Networking Sites People Are Using

The world's most popular social networking sites certainly have changed over the years, and they'll undoubtedly continue to change as time moves forward. Old social networks will die, popular ones will stick around as they're forced to evolve, and brand new ones will appear.

We've moved on from the days of MySpace to a social media era now dominated by Facebook and all sorts of other social mobile apps. A lot of kids even admit to using Snapchat the most, suggesting that it could be the future of where social networking is headed. So, what's everyone using right now? Have a look through the updated roundup of social networks below to see which ones are currently the trendiest.

Facebook

Most of us already know that Facebook is the top social network on the web. It's a thriving beast of a social networking site on the web with over 1.59 billion monthly active users as of December 2015 and over one billion that log on daily (according to Facebook itself). Statista shows that Facebook Messenger is also the second most popular messaging app behind WhatsApp. After failing to acquire Snapchat in 2013, Facebook acquired WhatsApp in 2014 so that it could be the one that was one top of instant messaging

Twitter

Twitter is known as the real-time, public microblogging network where news breaks first. Most users loved it for its iconic 140-character limit and unfiltered feed that showed them absolutely everything. Twitter has changed dramatically over the years, and today it's criticized a lot for going the way of looking and functioning almost exactly like Facebook. Besides Twitter Card integration, which now makes it easy to share all sorts of multimedia content in tweets, you can expect to see algorithmic timelines coming to Twitter soon as well.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a social network for professionals. Anyone who needs to make connections to advance their careers should be on LinkedIn. Profiles are designed to look sort of like extremely detailed resumes, with sections for work experience, education, volunteer work, certifications, awards and all sorts of other relevant work-related information. Users can promote themselves and their businesses by making connections with other professionals, interacting in group discussions, posting job ads, applying to jobs, publishing articles to LinkedIn pulse and so much more.

Google+

Making its debut in the early summer of 2011, Google+ became the fastest growing social network the web has ever seen. After failing a couple times already with Google Buzz and Google Wave, the search giant finally succeeded at creating something that stuck… kind of. Nobody really needed another Facebook clone, so Google+ had always been widely criticized for being a social network that nobody really used. In late 2015, a brand new Google+ was rolled out to put more emphasis on its Communities and Collections features to help differentiate the platform a bit more and give existing users more of what they wanted.

YouTube

Where does everyone go to watch or share video content online? It's obviously YouTube. After Google, YouTube is the second largest search engine. Despite being owned by Google, YouTube can still be recognized as a separate social network all on its own as the premier place online to go to watch videos on every topic under the sun and upload your own as well. From music videos and movies to personal blogs and independent films, YouTube has it all. YouTube recently launched a premium subscription option, called YouTube Red, which removes all advertisements from videos.

Instagram

Instagram has grown to be one of the most popular social networks for photo sharing that the mobile web has ever seen. It's the ultimate social network for sharing real-time photos and short videos while on the go. Now it's even a leading advertising platform for brands too. The app had initially just been available for the iOS platform for quite some time as it grew in popularity but has since expanded to Android and, Windows Phone also the web. Instagram was bought for a hefty $1 billion by Facebook in 2012.

Pinterest

Pinterest has become a major player both in social networking and in the search world, proving just how important visual content has become on the web. As the fastest standalone site ever to reach 10 million monthly unique visits, Pinterest's beautiful and intuitive pinboard-style platform is one of the most enticing and useful resources for collecting the best images that can be categorized into separate boards. Pinterest is also growing to become a huge influence in social shopping, now featuring "Buy" buttons right on pins of products sold by some retailers.

Tumblr

Tumblr is an extremely popular social blogging platform that's heavily used by teens and young adults. Like Pinterest, it's best known for sharing Reblogging and liking posts is a popular way to interact. If you post great content, you could end up with thousands of reblogs and likes depending on how far it gets pushed out into the Tumblr community.

Snapchat

Snapchat is a social networking app that thrives on instant messaging and is totally mobile-based. It's one of the fastest growing apps out there, building its popularity on the idea of self-destructing "snaps." You can send a photo or short video as a message (a snap) to a friend, which automatically disappears a few seconds after they've viewed it. Kids love this app because it takes the pressure off of having to share something with everyone like they would on traditional social networks. If you're unfamiliar, check out this step-by-step tutorial on how to use Snapchat. Snapchat also has a unique feature called Stories, which allows users to share snaps publicly when they want.

Reddit

Reddit has never really had the nicest design, but don't let that fool you–it's a happening place on the web. It has a very strong and smart community of people who come together to talk about the topics they love while sharing links, photos, and videos relevant to the subreddit topic thread where they're participating. Reddit AMAs are another cool feature, which allow users to ask questions to celebs and other public figures who agree to host one. Reddit works by displaying submitted links that get voted up or down by users. The ones that receive the most upvotes will get pushed to the first page of their subreddits.

Flickr

Flickr is Yahoo's popular photo-sharing network, which existed long before other popular competing networks like Pinterest and Instagram entered the social photo sharing game. It's still one of the best places to upload photos, create albums and show off your photography skills to your friends. Yahoo has also worked hard at regularly updating its mobile apps with lots of great features and functions so that it's easy and enjoyable to use from a mobile device. Users can upload 1,000 GB worth of photos for free to Flickr and use the powerful app to organize and edit them however they like.

Swarm by Foursquare

Foursquare has broken up its location-based app into two parts. While its main Foursquare app is now meant to be used as a location discovery tool, its Swarm app is all about being social. You can use it to see where your friends are, let them know where you are by checking in, and chat or plan to meet up at a specific location some time later. Since launching Swarm, Foursquare has introduced some new features that turn interaction into games so that users have the opportunity to earn prizes.  

Kik

Kik is a free instant messaging app that's very popular with teens and young adults. Users can chat with each other one-on-one or in groups by using Kik usernames (instead of phone numbers). In addition to text-based messages, users can also send photos, animated GIFs, and videos to their friends. Although it's most useful for chatting with people you already know, Kik also gives users the opportunity to meet and chat with new people based on similar interests. And similar to Snapchat snapcosnap co snapusers can easily scan other users' Kik codes to add them easily.

Yik Yak

Yik Yak is another social network that's big with the younger crowd. It's a location-based anonymous social sharing app that allows users to read short updates posted from people around their area. As you might imagine, it's very popular around high schools and on school campuses–so much so that it's gotten some kids into serious trouble in some cases. Because it's all anonymous, there's no friend adding with Yik Yak. All users make anonymous posts and then other users can upvote or downvote your post and reply anonymously.

Shots

Shots is another photo and video sharing social network that young kids love to use. The social network is largely centered around taking selfies, but users can also take VHS-style videos and one-on-one chatting. Many users have praised the app for being one of the only apps that doesn't include likes and comments on posts, which helps take the pressure off of users who get anxious about how their posts are received by friends and followers. It's sort of like a simplified version of Instagram.

Medium

Medium is perhaps the best social network for readers and writers. It's sort of like a blogging platform similar to Tumblr, but features a very minimal look to keep the emphasis on content that's shared there. Users can publish their own stories and format them just the way they want with photos, videos and GIFs to support their storytelling. All content is driven by the community of users who recommend stories they like, which show up in the feeds of users who follow them. Users can also follow individual tags as a way to subscribe to content focused on topics of interest. 

Tinder

Tinder is a popular location-based dating app that matches you up with people in your area. Users can set up a brief profile that mainly highlights their photo, and then anyone who's matched up to them can anonymously swipe right to like their profile or left to pass on it as a match. If some who liked a profile likes theirs back, then it's a match, and the two users can start chatting privately with each other through the app. Tinder is completely free, but there are premium features that allow users to connect with people in other locations, undo certain swipes and get more "Super Likes" to let another user know they're extra special. 

Periscope

Periscope is all about live web video broadcasting from your mobile device. It's a Twitter-owned app that's had its fair share of rivalry against another competing broadcasting app called Meerkat. Anyone who starts a new broadcast can send instant notifications to people so they can tune in to start interacting by leaving comments and hearts. Broadcasters have the option to allow replays for users who missed out, and they can also host private broadcasts for specific users. Anyone who just wants to watch something can open up the app and browse through all sorts of broadcasts that are currently being hosted live

WhatsApp

Currently the most popular instant messaging provider worldwide, WhatsApp is a cross-platform app that uses your internet connection or data plan to send and receive messages. Users can send messages to individuals or groups using text, photos, videos and even voice messages. Unlike Kik and other popular messaging apps, WhatsApp uses your phone number rather than usernames or pins (despite being an alternative to SMS). Users can allow WhatsApp to connect to their phone's address book so that their contacts can be seamlessly transferred to the app. The app also offers a few customizable features like profiles, wallpapers and notification sounds.

Slack

Slack is a popular communication platform for teams that need to collaborate closely with one another. It's basically a social network for the workplace. Team members can take advantage of real-time messaging, integration with other popular services like Dropbox and Trello, deep search for files and other information, configurable notifications and so much more. It's meant to keep everyone in the loop about what's going on at work or with a particular collaborative project and is super helpful for teams that include members working from different locations.

Musical.ly

Musical.ly is a social networking app for sharing short music videos. The app shares a lot of similarities with Instagram and Vine, allowing users to record short videos, edit them, post them to their profiles, follow other users and see what's trending. The idea is to select a music track either from the built-in music tab or from your own iTunes library to record yourself dancing and lip syncing to it. The more creative you can get with your own personal lip syncing stile and editing skills, the more likely you'll see it trend on the platform. There's also a duet feature that allows two users to both of their own videos that used the same music track into one video.

Peach

Peach only debuted in early 2016, so it's unclear whether this app is really going to catch on or not. It certainly made a ripple in the news when it launched, but with so many other social networks out there already, it wouldn't be surprising to see this one struggle to make its mark. Peach gives users a very simple way to share posts with friends using photos, looping videos, text-based messages, links, GIFs, the weather, your location and more. There are also other little fun features for users to enjoy, like playing a game of "Peachball" or drawing doodles. Time will only tell whether this will be one to gain any traction among the bigger social networks.

Blab

Similar to Periscope, Blab is another live streaming social network where users can enjoy watching interviews, talk shows, debates, workshops and more. The platform is currently in beta, but it's already growing to become a major player in the world of web broadcasting and streaming. One interesting feature Blab has that Periscope doesn't is the ability to launch a live broadcast with up to four people talking all at once in a split screen. Viewers can also interact by leaving comments or stream something to watch later by tuning in to the replay.

Chuck Reynolds
Contributor

MarketHive

Some Of The Top Social Networking Sites People Are Using