Photo by Jakob Owens on UnsplashDisruption is just another day for Sid Hassim. His group, Social Media United Nations, prides itself on hating “the same old, same old. It’s about moving forward and making this medium better.” Hassim co-founded Digital Media Strategist. He also is a blogger and freelance writer as he and his social media friends…

The element of truth that most people refuse to use to succeed I’d like to start this piece with a wide message for all: individual failure is an essential part of the proverbial “overnight success”. We all must listen and accept failure as a part of a greater calling. Here’s a little documentation of what my…

One of the major pitfalls of outsourcing is overexcitement. Once you realize that you don’t have to do everything yourself, it can be awfully tempting to start delegating work just as quickly as you can. I totally get it! When you’ve been single-handedly juggling every business task for ages, outsourcing looks like the light at…

Facebook posts with images have 2.3 times more engagement than posts without images. The power of visual content is undisputed. However, the efficient production of high-quality digital content is full of pitfalls since it often involves different experts at every stage of the process. The collaboration of designers, copywriters and project managers mostly result in…

Writing is an art form. There is no doubt that the ability to string words together in a way that is precise, engaging, and meaningful requires serious skill. Thousands of people try to start writing professionally every year, but few are able to turn it into a full-time career. If you want to improve your…

PatternPictures / Pixabay Our customers (and us) live in worlds characterized by information overload, rapidly changing circumstances, increasing demands, rising management expectations, scarcer resources, increasing scale, disruption, distraction, and complexity. It’s impossible to avoid feeling overwhelmed, unbalanced, and distracted. Getting things done, getting the support and resources to move forward is increasingly difficult. They must…

Online engagement works as well for businesses as it does for individuals. Entrepreneur or not, success rides on being active and available. Christopher Tompkins endorses that approach. He is CEO of The Go! Agency, which helps businesses to grow online. He is also the author of “The Go Method,” an in-depth look at social media…

Marketing is getting smarter every year with advances in artificial intelligence and data collection. By using even basic principles from what established players are doing with predictive analytics, you can see noticeable increases in ROI. Most people assume you have to be as big as Microsoft or Google to use any significant data analysis, but that’s…

Guessing games may be great for parties, but they’re not necessarily the best way to run your nonprofit inbound marketing efforts. Yet that’s what many marketers do when they create only a single version of a campaign, email or donation page. If you’re trying to decide which copy, design, or CTA will get the most…

One of the biggest challenges for many sales people is getting a seat at the table with the person that matters the most. The economic buyer. The person with budget and discretionary spending authority to make decisions quickly. It’s not one of the biggest challenges because these people are awful human beings who don’t want…

How long do you spend writing the titles of your web content? Do you spend longer on the text than you do on the heading? Similarly, how much time do you spend on the subject line of an email? When I ask these questions in masterclasses, I get met with the same answer: “no idea,…

There are a lot of different ways that people will ask the question posed in the headline to this post. What is your marketing ROI? What is your marketing contribution? How efficient is your marketing spend? And depending on who you are, and what your company norms are, you may answer the question in a…

The Power of Engagement on Instagram Photo by rawpixel on UnsplashPeople all over the world have been asking how to grow their following on Instagram and they get some responses like “just go and spam as many accounts as you can” and they end up getting disappointed when they see that they need to do much…

How many times have you written a blog post and were sure that it would get a lot of shares, likes and comments, but ended up getting not even a single share? I don’t know about you, but I have experienced that feeling many times. It hurts a lot. All those wasted time and effort, wasted for nothing.…

Customer relationship management (CRM) has seen quite the evolution over the last several years. For a long time, companies and brands utilized multiple disparate tools to attract and retain customers, and often without any real cohesive strategy around that goal. As CRM mega platforms like Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics 365 emerged, CRM became more of…

StockSnap / Pixabay If you’re anything like me, you spend a good portion of each day arguing with yourself. Not out loud—at least not unless the argument is particularly heated!—just inside your own head. “Should I post that photo to Insta now or later?” “Don’t just wing it. Look up your optimum posting times, you…

Bru-nO / Pixabay Tripp Phillips entered The Shark Tank with his dad and sister to pitch his patented product, Le-Glue. The twelve-year-old developed the product with his dad to solve a major frustration he had with his favorite toy. When building with interlocking bricks, Tripp found that it was very easy to accidentally drop and…

As I revealed in my very first blog this year, thinking digital first is your number one priority for your marketing. The good news is that there are some great tools out there to help you. Understanding SERPS, how they work, and how you can exploit that can take you a long way. SERPs (Search…

Intercom #TheNextChapterIntercom announces its next chapter and the whole world holds his breath, in order to hear carefully what the Unicorn in customer engagement has to share with the rest of us! Not a few hours ago Intercom finally announced what’s #TheNextChapter. If you are a fan, customer or just into SaaS you must have watched…

Not that long ago, image SEO was one of the easiest ways to get traffic to your site. But in 2013, Google added the “view image” button and the clicks to websites plummeted. Since then, most people left image SEO practice in the backburner hoping that their SEO plugins would do the work for them. In…

In the children’s fairy tale, the Tortoise and the Hare, slow and steady wins the race. But in today’s online world, we are an impatient society. We want immediate response to our requests. We get frustrated when we have to wait for anything, especially for websites to load. If your website speed does not meet…

Clker-Free-Vector-Images / Pixabay Conversational Marketing is the foundation of the next sales evolution, and it can supercharge your sales operations like marketing that’s suddenly powered by jet fuel. As the origins of customer service bots make way for today’s sophisticated tech and seamless bot-to-human prospect handoffs, there’s never been a better time to modernize your…

Getting your content published or linked to in major publications or niche blogs is a huge PR win for your business. This kind of exposure will get you in front of new audiences and help spread the word about your expertise. If done well, they’ll refer a healthy stream of traffic to your site, too.…

Marketing is expensive and no easy task for a small business owner, but you cannot neglect the fact that marketing is also one of the most important building blocks for your business. You’ve got a great idea and when it’s time to find customers for your business, reaching out to the right people with your…