Inbound Industry Report: September 26, 2012
Top marketing news, articles and tips from the third week of September 2012.
SEO
Does anyone else feel like life’s moving quickly lately? (If you need some perspective, our next Inbound Industry Report will have ‘October’ in the headline).
When things seem to speed up, it’s important to stop and take it all in because changes, sure enough, are ahead. Julianne Staino (@JulianneStaino) thinks you can apply the same mindset in the SEO world. Ranking factors, tactics and strategies change so fast and frequently that we must stop and assess what’s still applicable. For example:
- Directory Links—Be selective; don’t submit to every directory site. And, build one natural link for every two directory links.
- Meta Keywords—This on-page factor got so spammy that Google stopped considering it as a ranking factor several years ago.
- Exact Match Domains (EMDs)—Only use if it makes sense to you, your brand, company or product.
- Keyword Density—Stop counting words, and just write.
Social & Content Marketing
To tap into the true potential of social media and content marketing, many industry pros are looking inward, focusing on the power of training all employees—across departments and skill sets—to get involved with social and content efforts. By doing so, companies aim to grow reach and build brand more than the marketing department can do alone.
To insource and do it well, there are a few rules to live by, noted by Jay Baer (@jaybaer):
- Put guidelines into place; they’ll foster participation, not impede it.
- Don’t make participation a requirement. People who love either content or social will want to join in the effort; lack of enthusiasm will show through externally.
- Make your group diverse. There are a number of different roles to fill.
- Create a group of tier-one champions who will help showcase results and convince others to participate later.
- Provide one-on-one, confidential support for those who have questions. Robust training is key to success.
And, remember: there’s more to content marketing than simply content going in, with links and social shares coming out—content is “the glue that holds your funnel together.” Take these tips from Kieran Flanagan (@searchbrat) and put together a top of the funnel (TOFU) campaign to drive goals across the sales cycle, and remember that links and shares are supporting metrics, not key performance indicators (KPIs).
Company News
- The latest Twitter updates are all visual this time around. If you have an iPhone or Android, download the latest Twitter app to experience photo streams for profiles of recently shared images. You can also enhance your profile by adding a header photo, which is similar to Facebook’s cover photos. Lastly, the new, rebuilt Twitter app for iPads makes for an easier, more beautiful user experience.
- Google AdWords is hopping on the update train, making changes to its budget options. Now, you can establish a single daily budget that’s shared by multiple campaigns in an AdWords account.
- Last week, we mentioned the rollout of Apple’s iOS 6 update. If you haven’t upgraded quite yet, here are a few housekeeping items you might want to take care of first to avoid any roadblocks. The good news is you don’t have to get the iPhone 5 to access all of iOS 6’s features. Some of the key updates include: the Do Not Disturb feature, Apple’s own Maps app that replaces Google Maps, WiFi-free FaceTime, major Facebook integrations, and panoramic pictures, which I took advantage of this weekend on a hike. (Though, not everyone is loving the upgrade.)
- Salesforce unveiled the Marketing Cloud at DreamForce, “the cloud computing industry event of the year" that brought together marketers, sales folks and tech geeks alike. Available now for customers, Marketing Cloud is a comprehensive suite for social marketing includes six key social features: listening, content, engagement, advertising, workflow and automation, and measurement.
Stats & Studies
Does the size of a social media following matter? According to a new survey by Vocus (@vocus) and Duct Tape Marketing (@ducttape), the majority (40%) of SMBs prefer audience quality over quantity, seeking connections who regularly engage.
Bookmark of the Week
GoDaddy’s outage earlier this month drew much attention to the fact that “even the world’s biggest hosting companies lack world-class DNS infrastructure.” Yottaa (@yottaa) explains exactly what happened with the breach, and how you can prevent becoming a victim of like outages in the future through a series of webinars, sharing the slides for free.
What articles made your top list last week? We'd like to hear your opinions.
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