Inbound Industry Report: October 2, 2012
Top marketing news, articles and tips from the last week of September 2012.
Content Marketing
If you’ve ever seen Lost in Translation: 1.) you have good taste in movies; and 2.) you’re aware of the at-times-hilarious confusion Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson’s characters face while in Japan due to language differences.
While this makes for a witty comedy, the last thing you want to do as a brand is create content or messaging across cultures that is language-specific or difficult to understand. Christian Arno (@l24ca) of Content Marketing Institute shares a few steps you can use to target content across national and linguistic borders:
- Maintain a consistent core message worldwide.
- Get the language right by creating separate, localized websites for each target area.
- Utilize a multilingual content management system to simplify the process.
Just as people want to understand your content, they also want it to be written by credible and knowledgeable people. You may remember the term, “AuthorRank,” that began to surface earlier this year. Google now seems ready to implement its mission to prove page quality and authority, and Mike Arnesen (@Mike_Arnesen) helps you get ahead of the game and prepare for AuthorRank with these tips.
Facebook News & Resources
- After scares of a potential hack / bug that made once-private messages public on user Timelines, Facebook says that the messages appearing in the “posted by friends” section are, in fact, old wall postings—not private messages. Engineers investigated the issue after a number of users raised concern, and confirm that there has been no breach of user privacy.
- Anyone else think birthdays on Facebook are fun? All day, you have friends coming out of the woodwork to write on your wall. Now, birthdays just got a little more personal with Facebook bringing back Gifts—a tab either next to the person’s name, or alongside photo and post tags—to buy and send real gifts to your friends. Do you think this is something people will use?
- Relatedly, Mitch Joel (@mitchjoel) offers his take on Facebook consumerism, and how this type of social commerce creates a more direct relationship among Facebook’s community—and helps Facebook monetize its user base.
- If you’re a marketer investing in Facebook campaigns, you’ll want to read this, and likely bookmark it for future reference. Avinash Kaushik (@avinash) offers an incredibly comprehensive, helpful resource for measuring return on Facebook marketing and advertising.
Company Updates
- HootSuite rolled out Conversations, a new internal collaboration tool that allows users to have real-time conversations with anyone in their organizations, within their HootSuite dashboard.
- Two months after her hire, we’re getting some insight into CEO Marissa Mayer’s guiding strategy for Yahoo, focusing most on mobile and personalization of the company across content and ads.
- Thanks to Google’s powerful lobby, California joins Nevada as one of the two states that permit road-testing of Google’s self-driving cars.
- Our friends over at HubSpot are crossing the pond, and heading to Dublin to open its first international office. Currently headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, HubSpot plans to open the European headquarters in January 2013.
- Last week, we mentioned not everyone’s keen on Apple’s iOS6 upgrade, with one of its disappointing features being the home-grown Apple Maps app. Company CEO Tim Cook not only recently apologized for the glitches, but even offered competitive suggestions for alternatives, like Bing and Google maps. (Personally, I haven’t had any issues yet, and the turn-by-turn navigation allows me to ditch yet another tech tool, the GPS. What are your experiences?)
- Recommending your professional connections on LinkedIn just got easier. A new feature called Endorsements allows users to quickly recognize any connections’ skills and expertise with just one click. Here’s what you’ll see on your profile once you get an endorsement:
Stats & Studies
- According to a quarterly report by Bernhart Associates, the outlook for direct marketing jobs has weakened slightly, with 46% of employers planning to add marketing staff over the next three months, compared to 50% six months ago. Still a strong outlook in today’s job market.
- A new Google study says that mobile-friendly sites turn visitors into customers. 67% of mobile users say that when they visit a mobile-friendly site, they’re more likely to buy a site’s product or service.
Bookmark of the Week
Learn the best ways to find valuable content on Twitter, and improve buyer persona research, with these ten useful search tips and tricks—including how to find tweets by location, and how to save searches for future reference.
What articles made your top list last week? We'd like to hear your opinions.
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