Tailoring Your Social Media Campaign
Unlike what some people might believe, social media doesn’t just mean Facebook. It’s true that Facebook commands a great deal of attention from internet users, and dwarfs all other networks in statistics such as visits in a given month and number of users: There are other social networks out there that are gaining popularity every day. The interesting part about this is that in the shadow of Facebook, other social media sites seem to be settling into a niche, and not
Why Your Business Needs a Mobile Friendly Website
If you are a small business owner and you aren’t aware of the crucial importance of having a mobile friendly business website, consider the following facts: According to a Pew Internet study as of February 2012, 46% of all cell phones in the US are smartphones. Gartner Research predicts that by 2013, more people will be accessing the Internet on their mobile phones than those who will be using their desktop PCs. 87% of the world’s population is now using a mobile device. A
Follow Friday: A Twitter Tradition
If you are new to Twitter, you might find it daunting to figure out who you should follow. There are built-in recommendations, but these are usually very popular celebrities or brands that you might have little chance of engaging with. Faced with the challenge of expanding his Twitter network in early 2009, tech entrepreneur Micah Baldwin started Follow Friday, a popular Twitter trend that has endured to this day. The idea behind this is simple, but powerful: recommend people to your
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
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
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
Google vs Bing Translate
In a bilingual setting like Montreal, it is crucial to have all business documentation and web content available in both English and French (it’s also required by law to have the French versions). Tools like Google and Bing Translate might be tempting to use in order to alleviate some of the work involved in translating content. We decided to test each service with a small paragraph of text to see where they are at in their effectiveness: Here’s the text: Un contenu