and that’s fine if you don’t care about growing your profile. Might be a little late here, but I believe I can provide some value on top of the existing best practices regarding Instagram Stories. I have been posting to Stories almost every single day for the past 6 months and I’ve been told that my…

And the answer isn’t about how to change opinions… In his column for Marketing Week, Mark Ritson laid down a challenge to marketers regarding the UK’s EU membership referendum : Did the illegal 6.4% overspend enable Vote Leave to win the day? Was the additional spend of £449k (and change) critical in convincing enough people to vote…

Videos are the most popular type of content on social media, and every successful marketing strategy needs them. But creating video content alone isn’t enough. You need to put together videos that capture the attention of your audience and encourage them to engage. And in a world where people are consuming content at a rapid…

Every company wants its customers to be successful. Every company wants its customers to have good experiences, accomplish what they’re looking to accomplish, find value in the product or service they’ve purchased, and become long-term, loyal advocates. Companies typically employ a variety of tools and techniques to keep their customers happy and successful. But many…

Public relations. It has long held a reputation as an elusive industry. PR is a bit of an all-encompassing term. It can cover everything from publicity and interviews with key members of the media to experiential events and blogging. On the client side, you may not be privy to what goes into a public relations…

Working as a telemarketer can be one of the most challenging jobs you will ever have. Regardless of the industry, you’re involved in, contacting potential leads over the phone can be intimidating and tiring. However, utilizing a few best practices can help to level the playing field and make the more challenging calls easier to…

Easy Does It: How Sales Enablement Helped A Client Sell More With Less Effort AND Improved Customer Experience By Paul Ferrier Photo by rawpixel on UnsplashBabbitt’s Sports Center had a 21st-century business that was hamstrung by some 20th-century processes. First, some background: Babbitt’s has two very different segments of their business. They have a significant online business…

Keep your room clean, kids. I had the messiest room as a kid. I never made my bed. There were clothes and books and pillows all over the floor. My mother used to joke that it was a minefield. …right before she yelled at me and told me for the umpteenth time to pick it up. Oops.…

Complete SEO execution requires more than simply ensuring that your content is clear, optimized, and engaging to visitors – search engines need attention too. Meta tags are information, hidden within the webpage code, that search engine crawlers use to more accurately understand and index the topic and audience of your content. These tags allow them…

FotografieLink / Pixabay According to Webster’s dictionary, networking is “the cultivation of a productive relationships for employment or business.” The key word is relationship. Unfortunately, the majority of people in the business community don’t seem to understand that important part of the definition. I thought it would be helpful to outline ten tips to help…

We all know “cats people” and “dogs people.” It’s not that one cannot be ‘OK’ with both cats and dogs, but secretly there is usually a preference towards one more than the other. Now let me introduce you to the “Lego people” and “Playmobil people.” In Playmobil, the building blocks are set in a certain…

Employee theft and fraud are one of the most pervasive causes of loss among business owners. They are also highly preventable, and with Ongoing effective leadership, employees will often feel obligated to maintain a level of transparency and honesty that will prevent major internal losses in the future. What Is Employee Theft? Employee theft can…

The Downward Spiral of the Short-Term Thinker Photo by rawpixel on UnsplashWe want to be the best. We want to have the most followers. We want to be successful. But we don’t seem to want to do the work associated with these goals. We are looking for quicker solutions. Faster growth. And early recognition. But for what?…

Social media is packed with noise. Between people talking at or about you, you need a refuge to sort out what you really need to know. On Facebook and LinkedIn, that might be groups. On Twitter, there are lists. These are your own creation. You can have as many as you want. Use them however you…

The world of paid search can be challenging to navigate, even for the folks who have been in the weeds for many years. As you may imagine, our customer-facing teams at WordStream get a plethora of questions from marketers and business owners of varying paid marketing expertise. One question that comes up time and time…

Is the average consumer’s attention span becoming shorter with each passing day, or is it becoming more fragmented? According to Go-Globe, 70% of adults use a second screen while watching TV and smartphone is the most popular second screen (51%), followed by laptop (44%) and desktop (29%). As a matter of fact, Streaming Media Global…

rawpixel / Pixabay Your business needs an email list. If you were to poll a group of online business owners about what they would do differently going back and restarting their business, a typical answer would be “I wish I had started my email list earlier.” I’ve heard it again and again. It doesn’t matter…

Over 90% of media buyers increased their people-based ad buys last year. In addition, the world’s largest advertising agencies are investing billions of dollars in this technology. WPP Group built [m]Platform, Publicis created Spine, Dentsu developed M1, IPG acquired Acxiom, and just last month, Omnicom unveiled its people-based marketing platform, Omni. For the uninitiated, people-based…

The answer is NOT a simple “yes, of course! Let’s all jump on this bandwagon!” Do I need need social media marketing? If we read online forums for business owners, we can see that this is a commonly asked question. It is a good question. We read and hear about social media. We are on…

Be great at telling stories and getting others to tell your stories to build a Goldmine.It’s the dream of small-business owners, especially those with tight budgets: Grow sales without spending a dime on marketing. Jon Ferrara makes those dreams a reality, as he explained to Ivana Taylor and Iva Ignjatovic. The CEO of Nimble, Ferrara…

As you’ll have noticed when you phone call centers, visit the bank, or deal with the government in any capacity, bureaucracy can make organizations slow and frustrating to deal with. Endless forms and complex layers of approval impact a company’s services along with the morale of its employees. It can leave organizations unable to adapt…