Lauren Orsini says, “Never underestimate the miniscule, $35 Raspberry Pi. Although it’s marketed as an experimental machine aimed at helping you learn to code, there’s nothing entry-level about its capabilities. In a pinch, you can even use your Raspberry Pi as a Web server. You can host a simple site or store files in the cloud so you can access them at any time—no monthly hosting fees, limited templates, or other barriers to your creativity. Why do you need a server? The trend has been against running your own hardware and instead storing files and running programs in what’s called... [...]

Ayaz Nanji says, “Nearly three-quarters (73%) of advertising and marketing executives in the United States say their organizations plan to maintain their current staffing levels in the second half of 2014, according to a recent report from The Creative Group. Some 12% plan to expand their teams in 2H14, and 12% foresee hiring freezes, the survey of 200 marketing executives and 200 advertising executives found. Only 3% of respondents say they will have to reduce the size of their staffs before the end of the year. Midsize ad agencies (50-99 employees) expect the most hiring activity, with... [...]

Matt Asay says, “The machines have taken over; the future of the Internet of Things is already here. Across a dizzying array of applications, machines are generating copious quantities of data, most of it being pushed to the cloud for storage, processing and analysis. As Amazon CTO Werner Vogels told attendees at the MongoDB World conference, however, we may not always like the consequences of the Big Data that we’re producing. Big Data? Big Deal Data today is very big, but not because it resides on mammoth mainframes or resides on huge, centralized databases. Nor is it big because any... [...]

Martin Beck says, “Social media analytics firm Socialbakers today weighed into the Facebook organic reachdebate with some counterintuitive data. Analyst Phillip Ross wrote: The conversation that seems to be dominating the Facebook marketing community is all about how algorithmic changes to Facebook’s News Feed are hurting organic reach. Our numbers say the opposite; brands have never had a better opportunity to have their best content placed in front of so many people. Let’s be clear. There’s no denying that organic reach is down on Facebook Pages overall. Facebook has confirmed... [...]

Jason Nelson says, “Want to improve the performance of your AdWords search ads? In this article, we’ll provide useful tips and information to do just that. You’ll learn how you can set up, group, and create different versions of your ads; optimize your ad text and keyword selection; and improve your bidding strategy, location targeting, and ad extensions. Google AdWords is a relatively complex advertising interface. It’s less than intuitive for the average user, with dozens of options perplexing for the inexperienced. To make it easier on small business owners to get their... [...]

Melih Oztalay says, “In “Using LinkedIn Company Pages for your Local Business,” my article last week, I explained how to create and update a LinkedIn company page, which is the first step to using LinkedIn’s sponsored updates and other advertising services. As I noted in “Using LinkedIn to Attract Consumers, Prospects,” LinkedIn is the world’s largest business network with roughly 300 million members in more than 200 countries. LinkedIn’s overall audience is small compared to Google. But, unlike Google, it allows businesses to achieve precise targeting, including industry,... [...]

Brian Massey says, “In medieval London, pirates were often punished by chaining them to a wall near the Thames River (you pronounce it “ˈriv-ər”) at low tide. For most rivers, this wouldn’t be a problem. The pirate would simply get wet. However, the Thames, being an estuary, rises 15 feet, 20 feet or more at high tide. These pirates didn’t just get wet. They got dead. You might say that the judges of London used the tides for their work, but the pirates lived and died by these tides”. Ride The Tides Of Your Website To Make More Money With A/B Split Testing Marketing Land  [...]

Ayaz Nanji says, “Several industries passed the email “mobile tipping point” in 2013, with more than half of all sent marketing emails in the vertical opened by consumers on smartphones or tablets, according to a recent report from Knotice. The open rates of emails sent by the consumer services, hospitality, and financial services industries all rose past 50% in the second half of 2013, the analysis of 1 billion emails sent by companies in 11 industry segments last year found. Overall, the number of emails opened on a mobile device (smartphone or tablet) rose to 48% by the... [...]

Kunle Campbell says, “Many businesses on Facebook are concerned about declining organic reach — i.e., the number of people that content reaches on Facebook. On average, companies’ organic reach on Facebook has fallen by 50 percent. Facebook received such an unprecedented number of questions about this issue that it issued an announcement explaining what is happening. Ogilvy data from March this year showed organic reach for brands on Facebook hovering between 2 and 6 percent. It’s making some businesses question whether Facebook is still a viable marketing channel”. Why Organic Reach... [...]

Pamella Neely says, “Transactional emails are so important, yet so boring. Too many transactional emails go ignored by marketers, while we focus our time and energy on attracting attention to promotional emails. It’s ironic that these same “boring” transactional emails end up being the ones our customers pay the most attention to. Transactional emails have click-through rates almost six times higher than promotional emails. Their open rates often exceed 100 percent (because they are often opened more than once)”. 8 Ways to Spice Up Transactional Emails Web Marketing Today  [...]