The Wrong Way to Get Facebook Likes
Simply put, the wrong way to get Facebook likes is by buying them. This normally involves paying a shady marketing company to acquire likes for you by exploiting a vast network of fake Facebook accounts. These accounts do not represent real people, don’t read your content, and don’t engage your brand. This is a short-term gain in likes, but it’s ultimately a dead-end. Furthermore, the end of the road for this type of activity just got a lot closer. Facebook recently
Facebook ads are becoming even more targeted
Facebook ads might not serve the same immediate solution type of needs that Google Ads do, but their strength lies in their ability to target certain groups of users or demographics, as opposed to the more SEO services based PPC Google Ads. Now, some recent reports are stating that Facebook has given access to a new ad customization feature to a select few users. This new feature allows the creator of the ad to use lists of contact information such
Responsive Web Design
In the world of print design, media specifications are static. The designer knows the size of the page, how colours will look, how things will be laid out, and can work safely within these parameters when crafting their work. The world of web design is historically a bit trickier than that, since it is more difficult to anticipate the specifications of the end user’s display such as screen size, browser type, operating system, and so on. With the development of
How Google Autocomplete Affects Your Business
Have you ever paid any serious attention to Google’s Autocomplete function? That’s the built in algorithm that suggests additional keywords as you begin to type a search into the box. Picture this: you begin to type in the name of a company that you want product or service information on, and the Autocomplete function adds the words ‘scam’ or ‘complaint’ to your search terms. Of course, if you are a potential client doing shopping research online, you are going to
Community Marketing: A Revolution
We’ve talked about the rise of inbound marketing as the standard in online marketing today, how it is superior to traditional marketing in many ways, and how many companies are using its strategies as part of their marketing campaigns. Now some commentators are going as far as to say that traditional marketing such as advertising, branding and corporate communications is entirely dead. The main evidence that they point to takes the form of studies on customer behaviour. Potential customers are bypassing
The Mobile Coupon Mania
With location-based mobile apps like Foursquare, smartphone users can "check-in" to establishments or events they visit and share this information with friends. It's a bit of a social game, with badges and achievements (such as mayorships) providing incentives to use the app and show off your places of interest. Businesses can also use foursquare to provide special offers and rewards to their clientele, such as free stuff for those that visit the most often. It turns out that perhaps unsurprisingly
Don’t Market: Engage
A recent trend in marketing popularized by Scott Stratten, author of the book UNmarketing, involves moving away from the traditional concept of marketing itself. Following from the idea of inbound (or non-interruption) marketing, this new un-marketing approach is all about conversing with an audience, sharing content and interacting with people within the context of a brand or company. Quite often, the brand or company itself could be only loosely associated with any given interaction. In this way, the focus shifts
Google vs. Facebook Ads
When it comes to choosing a platform for PPC ads, two options immediately come to mind. One the one hand there is the obvious choice of the standard Google AdWords, text-based ads that appear on the very top of search engine results related to their keywords. On the other are Facebook ads, which contain a small picture and pop up beside pages as users interact with that social network. The question is then, which is better suited to your online marketing
Conflict-Free Tech Minerals
You’ve probably heard of the expressions ‘blood diamond’ or ‘conflict diamond’ used to refer to those stones that come from war-torn areas of Africa and fund warlords and their exploits. A new expression related to this is emerging in the tech world: ‘conflict minerals.’ Certain minerals like tin, tungsten and gold are in high demand in the tech industry, as they are vital in the construction of everything from motherboards to iPhones. Just like diamonds, these minerals can often come
The Smartest Use of Your Time and Money in Digital Marketing
When it comes to marketing your business online, there exists a bewildering amount of services, sites, strategies and software that can help get you results. From lead-generation services to coupon distribution to social media marketing, never before has there been so much available for a small business owner looking to give their company an efficient marketing boost. The following graph nicely illustrates all the options that are commonly used to this end, sorted by the relative ratios of time