Persuasive Picks for week of 11/5/12

MarketingProfs‘ Molly Glover Gallatin illustrates how to tie the kind of rich, actionable customer intelligence you can glean from social media into five overarching marketing decisions in Five Marketing Decisions Social Media Should Be Shaping.

The term “content marketing” includes two intimidating words that can be difficult to hear lately, due to the increased amount of content being shared on social networks by just about everyone. Viral Traffic Specialist and Content Creator Amanda Ryan posts 5 Content Marketing Tips That Will Give Your Business a Competitive Edge on Business2Community.

Just because online marketing is a digital medium does not mean it has to be cold and impersonal; rather, as marketing continues its rapid shift online, businesses must learn to personalize their digital assets in order to stay competitive. Strategic Marketing Consultant and SocialMediaToday contributor Chris Horton provides 3 Simple Ways to Connect with Your Target Audience.

An emerging social media trend is creating fresh ways for companies to engage with customers. With the rise of the visual, social web, clever brand ambassadors and marketers are breathing new life into contest marketing. Evan Vogel explains that the visual web is giving digital contests a major shot in the arm in How visuals are reviving digital contest on iMediaConnection.

Persuasive Picks for week of 10/15/12

The key to being a good consultant of any kind is to ask the right questions, writes Michael Teitelbaum in a recent post at Marketing Trenches, and provides a list of 5 Questions Marketers Need to Ask Prospective Clients to get to the heart of a prospect’s challenges and aspirations - via MarketingProfs.

Visual networks are now changing the rules of engagement and agencies and brands need to find the best ways to measure and understand their customers cultures. Laurent Francois of SocialMediaToday explains How Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr are Blasting Social Media Monitoring tools because there’s a fantastic bias supposing that people express themselves only through words, sentences and syntax.

LinkedIn has rapidly become the number one B2B social networking tool with over 175 million users from around the globe. So why would someone in your target audience choose to do business with you in LinkedIn? Online Marketing veteran and ClickZ contributor Jasmine Sandler says it’s not as easy as one-two-three, but provides some helpful tips on Creating Solid Business Relationships Through LinkedIn.

First impressions matter! Blog readers generally pay attention to the title and the first two paragraphs of any given post, and then decide whether to read the rest. Lydia Di Francesco gives content marketing tips to bring more attention to your posts in 6 Easy Ways To Write Headlines That Get More Clicks on Business2Community.

Persuasive Picks for week of 6/11/12

Facebook Engagement is a critical issue for social marketers, not only because consumer interaction has become a cornerstone of the new marketing landscape, but also because Facebook Engagement is critically tied to brand visibility on the platform. Morgan J. Arnold at SocialMediaToday examines how the type of Facebook Post – Photos, Videos, Statuses, Questions and Links – impacts engagement in Optimizing Facebook Engagement – Text, Links, Photos or Videos?

Consumer brand interactions have come a long way in the past couple years. The social web has turned into a consumer’s playground to talk about or interact with brands. People search for the best deals, assess product reviews, share the positive or negative insights with their social spheres of influence, and find locations — whether online or brick and mortar — to purchase a product. iMediaConnection contributor Nicole Rawski explains that every brand can benefit from understanding online engagement in her latest post How to really measure engagement.

10 Social Media Tips From a Top Media Agency - Whether your company is just getting its social sea legs or excelling in the digital world, there is a niche and opportunity for every brand on social media. While Facebook and Twitter are the building blocks that a brand should start with in the social sphere, your level of understanding impacts your brand’s ability to perform on social media. Mashable’s Christine Erickson spoke with a one of the top media agencies in the world to provide helpful tips for brands at any level.

With a predominantly female audience, Pinterest is a popular place to share photos for wedding planning, home redecorating, recipes, vacation destinations, and books. However, despite popular belief, your business doesn’t need to be product-based in order take advantage of the benefits that Pinterest offers. Stephanie Chandler shows Forbes readers how to get started in Pinterest Power: How to Use the Third Largest Social Media Site to Promote Your Business.

Persuasive Picks for week of 6/4/12

Go ahead and throw out everything you used to know about SEO, such as link building, keyword-rich content, internal links, and tracking results on SERPs. It’s time to start over. MarketingProfs‘ Aaron Dunn writes that in a little over a year, Google has rendered 10 years of SEO dogma mostly useless in The New Google Search: Six Changes That Rocked the SEO World.

Everyone knows Pinterest is one of the fastest growing sites of all time, shooting up to No. 3 among social networking sites in less than two years. Bonnie Kintzer, CEO, Women’s Marketing Inc. and iMediaConnection contributor, explains that it’s also the first design-focused site to reach mainstream working women with children in large numbers - the sweet spot of many brands and retailers in 7 reasons why Pinterest is unique for marketers.

You’re a small business with very limited resources (time, money, and employees), so how on earth can you incorporate a social media strategy into what you’re already doing - especially when there are so many avenues out there to cover? Liana Evans provides some helpful tips to get the most out of Social Media on a Small Business Budget on ClickZ.

Social Media Marketing success is based almost entirely on how well you engage your customers. James Meyer would like to qualify that by “almost” reasoning that if your efforts are not supporting a quality brand, product or service, you could do most everything perfectly and still not get great results. On SocialMediaToday he provides a number of great tools that create visibility and allow you to monitor your effectiveness in Measuring Engagement Levels in Social Media