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New White Paper on B2B Lead Nurturing 2008-02-08 06:49:00 Marketing automation provider Marketo has just released Blind Date to White Wedding: Best Practices for Lead Nurturing that creates B2B relationships, builds trust and increases sales, a white paper on B2B lead nurturing.Using the analogy of dating, the white paper walks readers through the five stages of a B2B sales relationship, including:The Introduction (prospect targeting, brand building, thought leadership and social media);The First Date (videos, demos and case studies);Dating (webinars, references, personalized email messages);The Proposal (personalized phone and email follow-up, ROI analysis); and finallyThe Wedding ("The Deal. The Close. The Win.").The white paper also details some of the tools used throughout the lead nurturing process, such as automated email responders and customized landing pages.If your role involves nurturing B2B sales leads from the interest stage through to the final sale, download this free white paper for ideas on how to make your B2B lead refinemen ...

Best of 2007: Blogging for Business 2008-02-06 05:43:00 Blogs are becoming a hugely popular, almost mainstream tool for indirect business promotion. When used properly, a blog establishes the author—and by extension, the author's company—as a knowledgeable and influential voice within a particular industry or community. Examples abound, from Robert Scoble changing the market's perception of Microsoft to Chris Baggott making ExactTarget one of the leading hosted email services.Journalists, industry analysts, and CEOs are turning to blogs to reach their audiences directly. A business blog can be written solely by the the chief executive, or managed as a group blog, where anyone in the company with unique knowledge, and a bit of writing skill, can contribute.Here are some of the best articles and blog posts from 2007 on effective blog design, writing and promotion.10 blogging tips from 10 bloggers by iMedia ConnectionAfter stating that "Business blogging has passed the tipping point. Today, executives and professionals in the media, mark ... Blogging

Best of 2007: Website Design 2008-02-04 05:47:00 Before embarking on a serious search engine marketing (SEM) program, it's critical that your website is designed to take full advantage of the increased traffic. Landing pages are important of course, but not every SEM visitor will convert immediately—some will want to check out your site to learn more about your company, products and/or services first. Intuitive navigation, relevant visitor-focused content, and SEO all need to be built-in to your site from the outset.With that in mind, here are some of the best articles and blog posts from 2007 on website design considerations and action items.20 Ways to NAVIGATE to Higher Conversions by Internet Search Engine DatabaseWriter Stoney deGeyter details how elements such as the location of navigation bars, site search functionality, contact information, image alt text and clickable links are critical to designing a user-friendly website. "Site wide navigation, including top, bottom and side navigation, should be as user-friendly as poss ... Design

WMC Interviews: Ardath Albee 2008-02-01 05:04:00 Taking a short break from the "Best of 2007" series, I recently had the opportunity to meet with Ardath Albee for an interesting discussion. Ardath is an author, writer of the Marketing Interactions blog, former CEO of a CRM-related software company, and generally fascinating marketing personality. Here's our conversation.WebMarketCentral (WMC): What did you do before Marketing Interactions? What’s your background?Ardath Albee (AA): Before founding Marketing Interactions, I was the president of Einsof, Inc., a marketing performance software company, for 7 years. Funnily enough, my background prior to Einsof is about as non-techie as you can get. I was a turn-around specialist in the hospitality industry for over 15 years, serving some of the most demanding customers in the world.WMC: How and when did you get started in this business?AA: I transitioned into technology to help my sister found and grow Einsof. I immersed myself in learning about technology and found that what remained ...

Best of 2007: Articles and Blog Posts on SEO (Part 2) 2008-01-30 05:55:00 Following up on my last post, there were just too many excellent newsletter articles and blog posts on SEO last year to fit them all into one post, so here are more of the best bits of SEO guidance from 2007.5 Rules of Social Media Optimization (SMO) by Buzz Marketing for TechnologyÜber-blogger and podcaster Paul Dunay provides five unconventional tactics for improving search engine rank, such as adding social bookmark site buttons to web pages, making content portable (e.g. video, audio files and PDFs) and encouraging mashups.Traits of a Great SEO Client: Commitment by Small Business SEMMarchex SEO pro Scott McGee writes about the client side of the SEO relationship, list the traits that help a client work successfully with an outside SEO firm, starting with commitment—the willingness to be fully involved in the entire process.The Alternative Search Engine of the Year, 2007! by Alt Search EnginesBlogger Charles Knight rates the top 10 alternatives to G-Y-M on several factors includ ... Articles

Best of 2007: Articles and Blog Posts on SEO (Part 1) 2008-01-28 06:05:00 SEO is dead? Balderdash! Judging by the number of high-quality articles and blog posts still devoted to the topic (so many I had to split this category into two posts), SEO remains a critical component of online marketing success. It has certainly evolved; SEO is no longer about using clever "tricks" to manipulate search engine results, but rather about crafting relevant and compelling content, writing for searchers, and using best-practice techniques in content emphasis and meta tagging to help search engines find your content.Here are (part one of) some of the best posts and stories devoted to SEO in 2007:20 Hard Core SEO Tips by SEO Theory and Analysis BlogA compelling mix of indispensable (Learn how to write Who, What, Where, When, and Why in 4 paragraphs or less. Why? Because you should never write a press release that starts out with, “John Shlock Smith the Shmuck proudly announces….”) and questionable (Stop using keywords in your URLs. Why? Because if you don’t know ... Articles

Best of 2007: Articles and Blog Posts on Google AdWords 2008-01-24 05:38:00 The last post here presented some of the best articles and blog posts on general search engine marketing practices. This post focuses on interesting observations and helpful advice pertaining specifically to Google AdWords, the largest SEM platform.In Google AdWords, Bidding Wars Are a Thing of the Past: Beat Your Competition with These 4 Tactics by PPC HeroPost demonstrating how tactics such as keyword group optimization, writing relevant ad text, and designing relevant landing pages can save you from over-bidding on keywords.Techniques that Always Work?: Who Uses Dynamic Keyword Insertion? by TraffickBlogger Andrew Goodman provides the how and why of dynamic keyword insertion in AdWords, and why, though it's a powerful technique, it doesn't "always" work.Just a Bit Off Target With Pay-Per-Click by Future NowEven sophisticated, major retailers can make SEM mistakes. This post shows how Target screwed up a PPC campaign, and how it could have been fixed.AdWords Optimization Tips: More ... Articles  Google

Best of 2007: Articles and Blog Posts on SEM 2008-01-22 05:56:00 Search engine marketing (SEM) is one of the fastest-growing categories in all of advertising, because it is both measurable and logical: present your ads when people are searching for what you're selling. A well-crafted search marketing program can provide not only broad brand exposure at a very reasonable cost (with CPMs of $10 or less), but also high-ROI lead generation. As with any other type of advertising, however, a poorly-designed campaign will be a disappointing waste of money.In addition to best practices in search engine marketing, the following articles and blog posts were among the best of 2007 at providing helpful guidance for creating and managing effective search marketing programs.Five Common Paid Search Mistakes That Can Sink Your Campaign by Search Engine GuideBlogger Jennifer Laycock explains how common mistakes such as "ego bidding," writing a single ad for all keywords, and directing all of your traffic to a single landing page can limit the results of a search ma ... Articles

Best of 2007: Blog Posts on Social Media Marketing 2008-01-18 06:07:00 My last post listed several of the best news articles from 2007 on how to effectively use social networking sites for marketing. Here are some of the best blog posts on social networking and social media marketing strategies and tactics.7 Reasons Why Niche Social Media Outlets are Better Than Digg by AjaxNinjaAfter noting that "Digg has an immense amount of traffic and getting landed on the front page will send a tsunami of new readers to your blog or website, but getting onto the front page is incredibly difficult. Getting onto the front page of a smaller, more appropriate niche portal, by contrast, is much easier, quicker, and ultimately you get a better return on your time/traffic ratio in the short run," this post makes the case for targeting smaller sites. Among the complaints about Digg are its excessively broad audience and categories and the site's lack of transparency.34 More Ways to Build Your Own Social Network by TechCrunchAn excellent and detailed review of tools and serv ... Marketing

Best of 2007: News Articles on Social Media Marketing 2008-01-16 05:36:00 Social media (blogs, podcasts, forums) and social networking sites (Digg, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Searchles, etc.) present exciting new possibilities for marketers—but are also a potential minefield that must be navigated carefully to avoid doing more damage than good to your brand.Think about it this way: you walk into a coffee shop and notice one of your best customers sitting at a table with several people you don't know. You walk over to say "hi" and your customer invites you to join them, and introduces you to the others. They are talking about your industry, and you quickly realize that some of those you've just met are potential future customers. How you handle the next step is crucial: immediately launching into a sales pitch is likely to alienate the group. On the other hand, displaying your industry knowledge and providing insightful input to the conversation will make those at the table want to learn more from you.Social media and social networks are simply an online v ... Articles  Marketing

Best of 2007: SEO Keyword Research Tools 2008-01-14 05:59:00 The first step in any SEO effort is determining the right keywords and key phrases to optimize on—making sure the search terms chosen contain the words that your customers and prospects use when looking for a product or service like yours, and that the terms you optimize on actually get a reasonable amount of search activity.Here are some of the best tools for conducting keyword research and building a search phrase list.Keyword ToolsOverture’s Keyword Selection ToolOverture's tool lets you enter a term related to your site and then displays related searches that include your term along with the number of times that term was searched on within the last month.Google Suggest keyword toolType in a word and Google will provide suggested phrases, along with the relative search popularity of each term.Blog Posts About Keyword ToolsTools and Resources for Keyword Research by Daily Blog TipsThis blog posts recommends three keyword research tools: the SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool (whic ...

Off Topic: My Biggest Influencers 2008-01-11 06:25:00 Back to the Best of 2007 series next week. But first, blogger and podcaster extraordinaire Paul Dunay, inspired by Paul Gillin's book The New Influencers: A Marketer's Guide to the New Social Media, tagged me to write about the most important influences in my life, so here goes.1) My mother. Not only one of the wisest people I've ever known, but also one of the smartest. She finished college in three years and became a teacher—back in the days when few women pursued higher education. Going strong at 87, she still reads voraciously. Of the hundreds of things she taught me, one of the most important was to love learning.2) Alan Koepp, my high school guidance counselor. As a somewhat confused young man, I told him I wasn't sure what I'd do after high school. He told me point blank: "With your grades, if you don't go to college, you're an idiot." That—plus a summer spent as a union truck loader—was the kick in the pants I needed to continue my academic pursuits.3) My brother, ...

Best of 2007: SEO Analysis Tools 2008-01-09 05:59:00 Welcome to the first in a series of posts on the best blog posts, articles and websites from 2007 covering various marketing topics. To start off, here is a list of the best tools for analyzing and optimizing SEO efforts.Free SEO ToolsSearch Engine Spider Simulator from the Webconfs SEO ToolsetSpiders and people don't see things the same way. For example, Flash content, Javascript and images are invisible to search engines. See your site through the eyes of a (search engine) spider with this free tool. This tool Simulates a search engine by displaying the contents of a webpage exactly how a search engine would see it. It also displays the hyperlinks that will be followed (crawled) by a search engine when it visits the particular webpage.SEO Analysis Tool from SEO WorkersThis free SEO analysis tool helps analyze and measure the ranking potential of web pages. It not only analyzes meta tags, but also uses the same spider technology as search engines spiders to give you an overall rating ...

The Coming Consolidation in Social Networking 2008-01-07 06:35:00 Social media sites are multiplying like rabbits. A while back, I posted the Alexa rankings for 42 popular Web 2.0 social tagging sites. Later, I wrote about a couple more, and newer sites such as Twitter keep popping up. Wikipedia lists more than 100 social networking sites, and Social Media Trader recently compiled an even more exhaustive list of 115 social news and bookmark sites rated by PageRank, number of inbound links and dollar value of each site.Inevitably, there will be a shakeout and consolidation of this space. As Paul Dunay points out, the explosion of social media sites has spawned its own acronym: YASN (Yet Another Social Network). Over time, virtually all markets consolidate around three major players (for example, Google, Yahoo and MSN in search) plus a few wannabes (e.g. Ask, AOL) and a number of niche sites (Mahalo, TopNetPix). There simply isn't enough traffic to support 100+ social media sites, although "social media" is defining the market a bit too broadly. Two ...

Update on Pageflakes 2008-01-04 06:18:00 There have recently been some interesting new developments with Pageflakes, a pretty cool online tool I've written about before. Pageflakes lets you create a personalized start page on the web, similar to Netvibes, TopNetPix or My Yahoo.First, Pageflakes is working with schools and educational boards to help them organize their class schedules. Teachers can use Pageflakes to let their students see update calendars, exam timelines, research study information, grade trackers, message boards and other resources.Next, Pageflakes has created a series of "open" holiday-themed Pagecasts including pages for Christmas, Valentines Day and the Super Bowl.Finally, and possibly most relevantly, users can create public Pagecasts as well as personalized ones. These include an Ultimate Techie's Guide, a TechCrunch Pagecast, Gadgets & Gizmos, and several marketing-themed Pagecasts.Pageflakes has put together an intriguing web 2.0 tool worth checking out for personal or public use.*****technorati ...