With all the talk of Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and other social media, it's easy to start feeling like perhaps older protocols like email are on the way out in terms of marketing power. While it's certainly true that methods of online communication have changed and evolved dramatically over the past few years, it's important to remember that email has some benefits that other marketing methods don't have, and as such shouldn't be ignored as an essential component of your online marketing strategy.
Google is continually coming out with new tools to help you with your marketing efforts, and to reward those who have good content and sound expertise with higher rankings in its search engine. One of the more recent and most misunderstood elements of Google's ranking algorithm is Author Rank, which ostensibly allows authors to associate things they write online with a relevant Google profile.
For many years, it seemed like LinkedIn cruised along without making many changes. As a result, many people, both on a personal and business level, set their accounts up and then left them to stagnate. Over the past year, however, LinkedIn has made a lot of improvements to the site, so if you haven't updated your profile in a while, now is a great time.
By now you've probably noticed that mobile browsing is the next big thing, and in fact even now mobile computing is of the most popular ways to access the internet. This means that every business owner at some point needs to have a site that is mobile-friendly and optimized accordingly. It may seem like a mammoth task, but if you keep a few things in mind as you're developing your ideas, you can make the entire process a lot easier.
When you're trying to market your business online, the goal is to create a web presence that is popular and far-reaching, with regular site traffic and a community of engaged social media followers. Of course, this can be easier said than done, especially when it comes to creating awareness beyond your company's existing circle of contacts. Guest posting is an effective way to quickly build your presence, as well as boosting brand recognition, and it's pretty easy to get started, even if your blog or site is new.
Even just a few years ago, it was unusual to see people browsing the web on a phone or mobile device. Tablets hadn't really become popular yet, and smartphone browsers weren't quite up to the task. These days, the technology for truly mobile browsing is catching up with user needs; what is still lagging, however, is web design.
In the days when a company website was the only aspect of a business' online presence, controlling brand consistency was pretty simple. With everything all in one place, you only had one shot at getting your audience's attention, but once you had it, there was only one set of branding you had to manage.
In the traditional, offline marketing models, often things were compartmentalized and kept completely separate. Your newspaper ads probably had little to do with your mailing list, except that the overall goal was to bring more business in. These days, the online marketing model is a little bit different, with every aspect contributing to the overall goal of gathering an audience so that everyone can join in on the conversation, in the expectation that some of those audience members will become and remain customers.
In a report released this week, global consumer insight giant Experian Marketing Services revealed statistics on how consumers in various markets spend their online time. The report shows that in 2012, the average American spent more than a quarter of every online hour on social networking sites. By contrast, only five minutes was spent shopping, and nine minutes was spent on entertainment sites.
You may be thinking that you don't have any need for blogging, or that the time it takes to write a post would outweigh any potential reward. Although there are certainly many ways to blog, a little can go a long way, and if you play your cards right, you'll see that even a small amount of blogging effort can yield some great search engine results.
