We’ve heard it, we’ve read it, we’ve even said it: To create and maintain a successful online presence, be friendly, be helpful, and share relevant content. These 10 quick tips make it easy for others to find, use, and distribute your content... and so extend your online influence. more

In a post at Marketing Interactions, Ardath Albee recalls a B2B client who thought her proposed lead-nurturing messages might be too brief. Albee begged to differ. "[I]nundating prospects with more links and choices rather than improving the personalization, value and contagiousness of your email message is not the right answer," she ... more

With one fell swoop, Google's latest algorithm update—dubbed Panda—demoted millions of Web pages. Content farms like Demand Media took a major hit, as did sites with lots of ads and little informational content. "The goal of the Google Panda update involves the filtering of low quality or duplicate pages that ... more

"Would it shock you to learn that 68 percent of customer defections occur because customers perceive 'an attitude of indifference?'" asks Ardath Albee in a recent post at the Marketing Interactions blog. That's what the American Society for Quality has reported, she notes—and it's largely because "marketers are focused on ... more

"White hat search engine optimization (SEO) principles that apply to B2B online marketing also apply to B2C, but B2B is otherwise a different animal," writes Nick Stamoulis in an article at MarketingProfs. In other words, SEO is simply not the same strategy for B2B as it is for B2C. And to ... more

"The iPad 2 is here and Apple apps are hotter than ever," writes Tom Ballew in a post at the B2B Insights Blog. "Now B2B marketers are starting to want their own custom apps and are making room for these gems in their budgets." How about you? Have you jumped ... more

"On one of my recent trips on the Content Revolution Tour with the great Ann Handley of Marketing Profs," writes Becki Dilworth at the Bridgeline blog, "I found myself hanging out with Ann in a seemingly unexpected place: The Mall." And as they browsed the content offered by retailers, they found ... more

Fully nine in ten (90%) female bloggers say they are somewhat or very interested to partner with brands on campaigns, provided they are compensated, but 58% have never been approached by a brand or agency to do so, according to a new survey from BlogFrog and the Social Studies Group. more

"Trigger emails have thrust their way into the online marketing consciousness with a confident swagger and the promise of a brighter future for all," writes Mark Brownlow at Email Marketing Reports. "The positive press has its justification: trigger emails seem to solve the main challenges faced by the modern email ... more

Content is the fuel of social interaction on the Web: Nearly one-quarter (23%) of all social media messages and one-half (47%) of industry-specific social messages contain links to content, according to a new study by AOL and Nielsen. more

Do you optimize all of your online content? Before you say yes, here's a question: When was the last time a press release received your SEO treatment? "All communications, including press releases, can be 'tagged' with key words to receive priority placement in organic searches and therefore drive users to your ... more

There are lots of ways to build your B2B content-marketing strategy. You can write to different buyer types, target stages of a buyer's journey—the list goes on. "We've seen all of these approaches and more," says Doug Kessler in a post at the Velocity B2B Marketing Blog. "But I'd like to ... more

Lisa Keller of The Loud Few liked what she saw in the "Q4 2010 North America Email Trend and Benchmark Results" from EEC and Epsilon. "Our average Click Through Rate (32.01%) and average Open Rate (40.99%) for our monthly tLF newsletters were far beyond the Business Products and Services General ... more

In a recent Search Agents post, Mary Hayes reports that Forrester Research forecasts "marketing spend on mobile display ads and search will surpass $1 billion in 2011." She advises marketers that, if they haven't already done so, now is the time to jump on the mobile bandwagon. But Hayes also ... more

In a video interview with Web Marketing Today, Bryan Eisenberg offers a 7-minute primer on what he terms the Five Rs of search engine marketing. "I really wanted to demystify [the five core principles], especially for a lot of small and midsize businesses," he explains. "They hear so much conflicting ... more

Spending on custom content published via digital channels—such as video, mobile, and Web—reached an all-time high of $12.5 billion in 2010, up from $12.1 billion in 2009, according to a new study by the Custom Content Council and ContentWise. more

"If you bought a nice car two decades ago, would you expect it to still run well if you put in minimal maintenance?" asks Josh Nason in an article at MarketingProfs. "What about that house you bought two years ago? Lots of work, right?" Well, your email marketing program requires upkeep ... more

Just as fixing technical issues at your website is an important part of search engine optimization, notes Joost de Valk in a recent post at the Yoast blog, so, too, is optimizing your site's overall structure. Site structure helps search engines understand your site's "topic" and more easily find and index ... more

"Most B2B marketers have embraced the notion that they are also 'publishers,'" says Ann Handley in a recent article at MarketingProfs. "In other words, they understand that in addition to being in the business of selling whatever they sell—shovels or software—they also need to be producing content as a cornerstone ... more

Nearly one-half of marketing executives (48%) now use content curation—the process of continually finding, organizing, and sharing relevant online content that caters to a specific audience—according to a survey from HiveFire. more

Did your marketing team slow down a bit during the dark days of January/February? If so, they probably weren't alone. Once peak marketing seasons ebb, "many companies stop their marketing activities with the rationale that they will spend on marketing during the next busy season," according to a Promo Direct ... more

A recent edition of "Which Test Won" recounts an A/B test in which DIYthemes, a template system for WordPress, invited visitors to sign up for email newsletters. Version A used the headline "Get Email Updates (it's free!)," and used social proof messaging to encourage registration: "Join 14,752 others and get ... more

Is duplicate content causing indexing issues for your site? In a recent post at the State of Search blog, Nichola Stott describes how multiple instances of similar pages, especially at the product level, are a common problem for larger sites. According to Stott, duplicate content doesn't necessarily mean that an exact ... more

It was an innocent mistake that had dramatic—and costly—consequences. Employees of Canadian copywriting company Webcopyplus believed that Web images without copyright notices were in the public domain. And, operating on that assumption, they used Google Images to source an unmarked scenic photo for a client's travel blog. Soon after publication, however, ... more

"Although content marketing is a widespread practice across industries and company sizes, B2B marketers recognize the need to improve the effectiveness of their efforts," Roy Young notes in a recent MarketingProfs article. Young offers key insights for B2B marketers from the new MarketingProfs report, What Works in 2011: Content Marketing, ... more