Biznology

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When it comes to executing SEO on behalf of a business website, a company essentially has two options. The SEO work can be done in house or outsourced to an SEO firm. No matter who is doing the SEO work, one important thing to keep in mind is that it can’t operate in a silo. Input is needed from everyone within the organization in order to ensure that the SEO campaign addresses every aspect of the business. While small businesses typically do this well, it’s the large organizations that sometimes struggle and find that SEO work is getting lost somewhere in the shuffle.
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Yeah, I know it is a sensationalist headline. Sue me. I am reacting to everyone constantly telling me that social media listening provides “wrong” information. They do. Every technique that purports to provide insights into markets has some kind of error in them because this isn’t an exact science. But to pooh-pooh social media listening on the grounds of inaccuracy is just as dumb as my headline that takes to task all market research. What’s really true is that different research tools have different strengths and weaknesses and we should understand them so that we use the right ones for the right purposes. Read the remainder of this entry »

Diversification (marketing strategy) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One of the fun parts of my job is that I work with very smart people–my clients. One of them told me that they have no interest in figuring out their LinkedIn strategy. It’s not that he doesn’t care about LinkedIn–far from it–but he is voicing something that is critically important in marketing: understanding the difference between tactics and strategy. His point is that if you don’t understand your overall strategy, you’re not ready to think about LinkedIn.  Read the remainder of this entry »

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Content marketing is a valuable part of any business strategy and it comes in many forms. Though the term is overused, its implementation is underutilized. A study by digital marketing company IMN found that 78 percent of companies surveyed placed content marketing as a high or medium-to-high priority but only 52 percent reported a formal content marketing strategy in place for every channel of distribution. What’s more – only 50 percent in industries like financial services, software, banking and insurance said their companies had no content marketing calendar.

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Earlier this week, I saw a piece of data that, if accurate or even half accurate, is something that every Internet marketer should fear in the same way that a kid fears the dentist. “What?” you ask. Well, kids (and many adults for that matter) are scared to death of the dentist. Why is that? It’s because they think they know what the dentist is going to do but they fear what else the dentist could do without the least bit of warning. They could go to see the dentist for a simple cleaning but in that time the dentist could find trouble. Once that trouble is found, it is impossible to measure what will happen, but most kids who have any experience know that it can be extremely unpleasant. You know why. Needles and drills and that smell. Yeah, the smell.

Well, it’s a lot less dramatic but just as painful that in mobile marketing there is something that marketers should truly fear. That is something that is quite possibly unmeasurable. No matter how hard you try you may never get a real number attached to something that occurs all the time in the online world. It’s the sharing of a video, or any message for that matter, without leaving a trail to measure.

Still not clear? Well look at this chart that comes from a study that the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence produced called “Mobile Phone Video Diaries: Understanding Mobile Video Usage“. (The chart was synthesized by eMarketer)

In the breakdown of exactly how such a large percentage of videos are shared, there is the piece of data that says that 44% of those sharing videos are simply sharing that video experience with their own device. They are saying “Hey, dude! Watch this!” or if you are a little older you might say say “Hey honey, did you see this yet?” Either way, as a marketer this should send a chill down your spine.

Why? Well, you can’t measure this kind of reach. Oh sure, you can guess and you could float this in front of some executive at your company who “knows” that everything on the Internet is measurable with a “We believe that there are X% more people seeing this because they are not sharing through social media but they are showing others with their device.” That will be met with the same icy stare that those who are trying to measure the impact of TV get when they talk about eyeballs.

Face it Mr. or Ms. Marketer, you’ve got a problem on your hands. Your promise of content marketing helping your company’s promotional efforts and the ability to measure and track everything that happens in the online space has pretty major hole in its theory.

Oh, and the best part? Video is growing so fast and is becoming so important that those upper level executives may actually be interested in it to the level that makes a marketer’s “I think we can say with a reasonable degree of confidence…” statements hit the board room table like a lead balloon.

Sing along to the tune of the “Bad Boys, Bad Boys” theme music of the TV show Cops: “Marketers. Marketers whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna do when they come for you …. and your video sharing analytics!”

Yeah, it’s enough to make you break out in a cold sweat isn’t it?

Well, I have to go. I have a great video to share with you that has a solution but I just shared it with my buddy over lunch and I don’t feel like taking the time to put it anywhere else since I have been pulled in a hundred other directions since then. Sorry. Oh…and good luck!