Spotlight on IMS New York 2013: Jennifer Wong of HasOffers and 5 Things to Stop Doing in Your Inbound Marketing Efforts

March 20, 2013 by

Jennifer Wong of HasOffers takes a different approach in this Spotlight on IMS as she shares five things that marketers should stop doing in order to make the best use of their time and see better results.

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Key Takeaways:

1. STOP talking about attracting demand.

Focus on attracting demand with the content you publish socially, the content on your website and your SEO efforts. Creating relevant content and being more likeable will help attract customers to your business.

2.  STOP creating content for the sake of creating content.

Understanding buying personas, your target audience, and the relative buying cycle can help you create authentic, exciting content for your audience. Polls, surveys and video are all fun ways to engage your audience.

3. STOP treating SEO, content and social separately.

These three pillars of inbound marketing are great complements to one another, and implementing an integrated strategy will help you leverage each of these tactics and see the best results.

4. STOP obsessing over Fans and Followers.

Rather than focusing on the number people in your social media audience, shift your attention to who your audience is. Doing so will help you find the best ways to engage with them, and ultimately convert them into customers.

5. STOP making decisions based on the wrong metrics.

Marketers have access to tons of key metrics and data to create reports for making decisions on what is and what is not working for your organization. Utilize this data to make better decisions and achieve greater results.

 

The Pulse Network is very excited about the Inbound Marketing Summit. We hope to see you there. Still need to register? It only takes a minute to reserve your spot today.

Check out the rest of our Spotlight on IMS New York series, featuring some of the brightest minds from the IMS Community, as we roll them out over the next few weeks leading up to the show.

Want to continue this conversation? Feel free to Tweet to us @IMS_Conference, @ThePulse, or join in this conversations with Jennifer Wong and the rest of the IMS Community using #IMS13.

Filed Under: Content Marketing 360, IMS New York 2013, The Pulse on Marketing Tagged With: , , , ,

3 Reasons to Embrace Video Marketing in 2013

November 24, 2012 by

We all know that online video is engaging. And we’re learning that video ads can be highly engaging as well. A study by MediaMind found that rich media and video ads make a significantly stronger impression than standard banners. Another recent study on eMedia Vitals (where a version of this post first appeared) shows that video boosts the engagement of mobile ads as well.

With smartphones now in the hands of more than half of US mobile subscribers, it’s easier than ever to capture, share and consume rich media content. Yet advertising effectiveness and consumer demand are just a starting point when it comes to examining why brands – especially B2B organizations looking to reach prospects at the top of the funnel – need to embrace video content.

Looking across some recent studies and our experience creating rich media campaigns here at The Pulse, we’ve come up with three reasons why video should be part of any brand’s content strategy:

1. Audience development. With more distractions and media choices than ever before, many marketers and publishers are focusing their digital media efforts on the best ways to cut through the clutter to reach buyers, influencers and readers. Rich media, including online video, is part of the solution. Researcher Aberdeen Group found that competitive noise in their target market was the top reason successful marketers are adopting rich media. In this video, Aberdeen’s Trip Kucera offers five tips for using rich media in sales and marketing.

Takeaway: Delivering regular, multipart features with branded, embedded video content can boost engagement and increase social sharing. Even better, partnering with an industry personality as a co-host or commentator will enable you to tap their expertise and social graph.

2. SEO. Search engine optimization remains a key foundation for effective content delivery and inbound marketing. Authentic, frequent, engaging content means more visits, shares and links, regardless of how Google evolves its search algorithms. In addition, YouTube claims that video ads drive a 20% increase in traffic to advertiser’s websites, and a 5% increase in searches.

Takeaway:  When you create your video script/rundown, build in keywords with the subject matter expert or host so you’ll have original content that is more relevant to your overall theme and message – and subsequent transcripts and other derivative content will already be keyword optimized.

3. Social engagement. As many organizations struggle to feed their social channels with enough fresh, engaging content, a growing number are discovering that building a scalable ‘content factory’ is easier if you start with video.

For example, at The Pulse we’ve built a process with our production team where a single shoot is divided into a number of distinct segments, and then each segment is produced into a (SEO-rich) video blog, YouTube clip, Facebook post, and podcast. So from one 20-minute interview in our studio, we can turn out 5 segments and 20 pieces (5 segments times 4 formats) of unique social media content, and in just 2 shoots we can create a full-on video e-book or ‘v-book.’

Contact us to learn more about our new v-book offering and using short-form video infographs like this as part of  your content marketing program in 2013!

Filed Under: Content Marketing 360, The Pulse on Marketing Tagged With: , , ,

Making The Most of Your SEO – Blogging

August 16, 2011 by

 

This is Part Four of a Four Part Series in Which Nick Saber, President of The Pulse Network, and Butch Stearns, C.O.O. of The Pulse Network, Discuss How to Get the Most Out of Your Search Engine Optimization Strategy.

Contrary to popular belief, the written word is not dead.

When it comes to SEO, the written word is just as important as ever.  While video content is the content that often engages your audience, words feed the SEO machine and allow your site to be searched.

Blogs are a great place to focus on some of the products and services your company can provide.  They’re also vital to plugging in the keywords you need to be found on search engines.  Whether it’s in the title of a post, or as anchor text in a post, keywords can find a useful home on your blog.

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If you missed any of the previous videos in this series, please check them all out here.

Nick Saber is the President of The Pulse Network.  You can find out more about Nick on his blog and by following him on twitter @NickSaber

 

 

 

 

Nick Saber is the President of The Pulse Network.  You can find out more about Nick on his blog and by following him on twitter @NickSaber

 

 

Filed Under: General Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Making The Most of Your SEO – Building a Site

August 12, 2011 by

 

This is Part One of a Four Part Series in Which Nick Saber, President of The Pulse Network, and Butch Stearns, C.O.O. of The Pulse Network, Discuss How to Get the Most Out of Your Search Engine Optimization Strategy.

Developing a flashy site is key to drawing attention to your products.  But all style and not enough substance can keep your site from popping up in search results.

Illustration By SEOHacker

Search engines are smarter than they’ve ever been.  Gone are the days when you can simply stack your Meta Tags with terms you want to be found in search.  Since Google updated it’s search algorithm earlier this year, the actual words in the landing page of your site are vitally important to SEO.

 

Your landing page and each of your products and services pages needs special attention, and a specific SEO strategy.

 

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In Part 4 of this series, we’ll focus on blogs and how to focus your SEO strategy on blogging.

Nick Saber is the President of The Pulse Network.  You can find out more about Nick on his blog and by following him on twitter @NickSaber
Filed Under: Content, SEO Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Making The Most of Your SEO – Keyword Analysis

August 11, 2011 by

 

This is Part One of a Four Part Series in Which Nick Saber, President of The Pulse Network, and Butch Stearns, C.O.O. of The Pulse Network, Discuss How to Get the Most Out of Your Search Engine Optimization Strategy.

The vast majority of browsers open on a search engine.  According to a report from Online Media Daily, 92% of adult internet users utilize search engines to find information online.

Google Adwords is a Vital Tool For Keyword Analysis

How are these users finding you when they search online?  Understanding the way that people find their way to your website is the first step to building a strong keyword strategy.  Google Analytics allows you to find out how people are finding you, and services such as Google Adwords analyze the content of your site to determine the ways you should want people to find you.

 

The key is taking the list that you should be ranking for, and using that list to your advantage.  So how do you make sure your website lands above the fold on a google search?  We’ll try to help you get started.

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In part three of this series we’ll dive into how to build your website around an SEO strategy.

Nick Saber is the President of The Pulse Network.  You can find out more about Nick on his blog and by following him on twitter @NickSaber
Filed Under: The Pulse on Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Making The Most of Your SEO – An Introduction

August 10, 2011 by

 

This is Part One of a Four Part Series in Which Nick Saber, President of The Pulse Network, and Butch Stearns, C.O.O. of The Pulse Network, Discuss How to Get the Most Out of Your Search Engine Optimization Strategy.

Most companies aren’t thinking about SEO the right way.

Image Credit: seo-tutorial.net

Search Engine Optimization strategies can’t live on an island.  In the past, SEO could be considered an isolated strategy, but as search engines have become more intelligent, we need to update the way we think about driving inbound leads.

It’s more important than ever to bring your social media strategy, your content strategy and your SEO strategy together.  In Februrary of this year, Google changed the game with their release of  “Google Panda”.  SEO used to be about keywords and link-building, but search engines are now thinking like people.  As a result, the impact of popularity of content and volume of discussions on social media have a much larger impact on your website’s SEO.

In order to truly get the most out of your SEO and make sure that your website lands above the fold on a search engine, you must work to combine your strategies into one.

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In Part 2 of this series, we’ll get into the logistics of keyword analysis, and how you can use it to your advantage in building an SEO strategy.

Nick Saber is the President of The Pulse Network.  You can find out more about Nick on his blog and by following him on twitter @NickSaber

Filed Under: General Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Marketing Funnel, Awareness Strategy

August 10, 2011 by

 

This is Part Two of a Five Part Series with Butch Stearns, Chief Operating Officer at The Pulse Network, and Stephen Saber, Chief Executive Officer, as they converse on function of the marketing funnel in business.
 

 

 

In a cluster of ways, an awareness strategy is as easy as getting your message heard.  However this is a issue for many companies and it is just the first step in the sales funnel!  The number one thing any business leader needs to do is create programs that will drive conversations to what you are doing.  The conversations have changed though and that is where companies like HubSpot, which is a “all-in-one marketing software platform for businesses” that helps push out content to different channels, steps in to facilitate messages through different channels such as Youtube and Paper.li.  I give the example of Hubspot’s own blog that has shown that the volume of content pushed out through your channels increases your awareness tenfold.

 

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In Part Three of the Series, we focus in on lead qualification and generation.
 
Get caught up on my entire series on the Sales Funnel, Part One.

 

Stephen Saber is the CEO of The Pulse Network and can be found on his Blog, Twitter, and LinkedIn.  Butch Stearns is the COO of The Pulse Network and can be found on his Blog, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Filed Under: The Pulse on Marketing Tagged With: , , , ,

Merging Social, Content and SEO Strategies – Blogs vs Webpages

August 5, 2011 by

 

This is Part Three of a Four Part Series Featuring Nick Saber, President of the Pulse Network, and Rebecca Slosberg, Account Executive at The Pulse Network, Discussing the Topic of Search Engine Optimization.

Not all websites are created equal.  The content management system that you most likely use to create your blog exists under different rules than an internal website.

CMS such as WordPress, Blogger and Typepad are all designed to help people who aren’t developers create extraordinary content.  They do this by limiting the amount of coding that exists on a website.

The ease of use of content management systems is great for efficient creation, but it causes some changes in the way you should think about SEO.  Your keywords need to find their way into Title tags, which are the first thing Google will read, the content of the blog itself, and in the tags at the bottom of the post.  But beyond keywords, maximizing SEO also revolves around a complicated system of link building.

 

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Miss one of the earlier installments of this series?  You can watch all four videos here.

Filed Under: The Pulse on Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Merging Social, Content and SEO Strategies – Getting Keywords Into Your Site

August 3, 2011 by

 

This is Part Three of a Four Part Series Featuring Nick Saber, President of the Pulse Network, and Rebecca Slosberg, Account Executive at The Pulse Network, Discussing the Topic of Search Engine Optimization.

Most standard search engines recognize only the first 70 characters of the title tag of your site.

If the targeted keywords you want a search engine to find are beyond 70 characters in your title tag, they’re not being recognized.  Using concise marketing messages that contain search keywords are absolutely critical in the title tag on your website.  Despite this, title tags are often an afterthought in the early stages of an SEO strategy.  The folks at Search Engine Watch have a concise explanation of how to get started in the process of developing successful title tags for your website.

But title tags are just one portion of the factors you’ll need to consider in order to truly maximize the SEO of your website.  From meta tags to metadata to product pages, there’s a myriad of places where your targeted keywords can live.

 

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Want to learn more about combing your Social, Content and SEO Strategies?  Be sure to check out the entire series of videos.

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: The Pulse on Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Merging Social, Content and SEO Strategies – Keyword Analysis

August 1, 2011 by
This is Part One of a Four Part Series Featuring Nick Saber, President of the Pulse Network, and Rebecca Slosberg, Account Executive at The Pulse Network Discussing the Topic of Search Engine Optimization.

Understanding keyword analysis, and why it’s important, is the first step to developing a sound SEO strategy.

Finding the words that people are already using to find your website will give you a sense of words that are actually going to convert for you.  One of the best ways to do this is to use Google Analytics to work backwards and understand what search terms people are using to find their way to your site.

Once you know what search terms people are using to find you, you can narrow these down by focusing on terms that yield low competition and low bounce rate.  Bounce rate can be a tough topic to tackle, but Google Support has five easy to understand tips to writing web headlines that can help get you started.

In this video, we discuss why a tool such as Google Adwords is essential to taking the next step in analyzing your keyword.

 

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In the next installment of this series, we’ll focus on applying the targeted keywords to your webpage.

Want to learn more about combing your Social, Content and SEO Strategies?  Be sure to check out the entire series of videos.

 

 

Filed Under: General Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,
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