Brian Carrol says, “We have more digital marketing channels than ever before, but it’s become even harder to connect with customers. In my role as chief evangelist for MECLABS Institute, MarketingSherpa’s parent company, I get to talk to marketers and thought leaders daily.One thing’s become clear, that there is a growing divide between those who are fully engaged with digital marketing and those who are still figuring out the fundamentals. When I read the report by Kristin Zhivago, President of Cloud Potential, on “revenue road blocks,” I wanted to see what she’s discovered... [...]

Rohan Ayyar says, “Content, or social media? Deciding where to put your investment—of money, time, and effort—isn’t easy. And the ROI of both is notoriously difficult to measure.Moreover, social media and content marketing are often presented as the same thing, which muddies the matter even more.So how do you decide where to put your efforts? And once you decide, how do you go about it?What’s the Difference and Why?At first glance, content marketing and social media seem to overlap so much that it sounds like a distinction without a difference. If I do a tweet storm or... [...]

Larry Kim says, “What is the most important ranking factor? Ask 1,000 SEOs, and you’ll get a wide variety of answers.Getting links and creating great content would definitely be two of the more popular answers, and for good reason. After all, that’s what Google says are the two most important ranking factors.But there’s one other factor you can — and should be — focusing on. It’s something that could double your traffic. Yet so many people are overlooking it.Your organic click-through rate”.5 brilliant headline hacks for crazy high organic click-through ratesMarketing... [...]

Jennifer Johnson says, “Trying to go viral? It seems like everyone is these days. That’s because having a post take off can benefit your brand’s reputation tremendously — just look at how the blue and black dress (or was it white and gold?) affected BuzzFeed’s traffic.While the success of a viral post often hinges on chance, my team at Alexa set out to uncover some of the common characteristics of viral content to help others inform their content strategies.In doing so, we examined four “viral” posts using our competitive intelligence tool to analyze website... [...]

Duncan Jones says, “I’ve recently been studying what a customer-obsessed operating model means for Purchasing functions and the software they use. I’ve concluded that Purchasing needs to transform its approach to visibility and control, due to the tradical impact that Mobility has on procure-to-pay (P2P) processes. I’ve been warning ePurchasing software companies for years about the potential impact of Mobility, but while a few visionaries have heard and acted on the message, most are lagging behind. That may be OK while their customers – mostly Finance and Procurement professionals... [...]

Kelly Exeter says, “Halfway through the writing course, our instructor — not known for being one to sugar-coat — threw out a challenge:“Send me a favorite piece of your writing and I’ll critique it; I’ll tell you whether or not it’s any good. The only catch is, I’ll be critiquing it in front of the entire class.”A surprising number of us (bristling with hope and hubris I suppose) took up the offer. The ensuing session was, to date, the most illuminating experience I’ve had as a writer.The key message we all took away?Not that we needed to self-edit more tightly or have... [...]

Andrew Chrysostom says, “It’s been a busy month at Facebook, and that’s before it got accused of censoring certain political views.Let’s look at some of the biggest changes recently.Since the F8 conference in April, Facebook has been rolling out tweaks to its products on a weekly basis.Obviously this means that brands will have to adjust their content strategies, but where should they be focusing?Audience Network rolls out on desktopThe launch of Facebook’s Audience Network increased the reach of its native advertising by redistributing it to third-party apps, but now the... [...]

Bridget Randolph says, “Mobile search as a topic has changed a lot over the past few years. When I first started looking at this, back in 2012, there was already a lot of discussion happening around the topic of mobile. And back then, the big question everyone was asking was, “what should my mobile strategy be?”Even then, things were shifting. At one of my early conference presentations on the topic, I made the point that we should stop thinking about a “mobile strategy” as different from our web strategy, because mobile technology was becoming simply another way to access the Internet.... [...]

Ginny Marvin says, “With the news that over half of the trillions of Google searches happen on mobile, Google announced Tuesday that it will soon change the way advertisers set bids for targeting ads by device type in AdWords. Other coming changes announced at Googler Performance Summit in San Francisco include an update to Google text ads on all devices and responsive mobile display ads that can access native mobile ad inventory on the Google Display Network.The change in bidding is significant in that it accomplishes two things: 1. Untethers desktop and tablet bids; and 2. Allows advertisers... [...]

Ayaz Nanji says, “Which types of information do B2B technology buyers value most at different stages of the purchase funnel? Do buyers of different ages prefer different content formats and sales approaches?To find out, Arketi surveyed 262 business technology buyers from three generations: Baby Boomer (31% of respondents), Generation X (30%), and Millennial (30%). Respondents were polled on how much they use different types of information while undertaking enterprise technology purchases of $10,000 or more.Below, key findings from the report on the most used information types at the top... [...]