Sunday, 25 November 2012

Email Marketing Solutions

A fun blog to sort through for tips on email marketing.

Some of the categories include: 
·         Best Practices
·         Blogging
·         Compliance
·         Conferences and Events
·         Cool Tricks
·         Cost Savings
·         Customer Loyalty
·         Deliverability
·         Dynamic Content


Boomerang Email Marketing Tips

Rating 8/10

Social Media Marketing - Blog

Social media tips from the global head of social media at Ford.

This is his personal blog, where he shares his perspectives on social media - the convergence of marketing, advertising and PR on the Web - for marketers, agencies, the enterprise and the individual.

Social Media Marketing

Rating 9/10 - really interesting to read

Seoptimer Blog

Great information on SEO. A neat blog to follow for unique information on SEO. Something to follow in your spare time.

Seoptimer Blog

Rating - 8/10

The Beginers Guide to SEO

New to SEO? Need to polish up your knowledge? The Beginner's Guide to SEO provides comprehensive information you need to get on the road to professional quality SEO. SEO is the practice of improving and promoting a web site in order to increase the number of visitors the site receives from search engines. There are many aspects to SEO, from the words on your page to the way other sites link to you on the web. Sometimes SEO is simply a matter of making sure your site is structured in a way that search engines understand.


Rating 8/10 - great information but a little confusing

Web Design Elements - Best Practices

A fantastic website that references all of the best practices for building a better website!

This overview features a hand-picked and organized selection of the most useful and popular Smashing Magazine’s articles featuring various building blocks of a website and published here over all the years.

Quick Overview
  • Call to Action Buttons
  • Image Caption Design
  • Breadcrumbs Design
  • The Holy Search Box
  • “Read More” And “Continue Reading” Links
  • Shopping Carts Gallery
  • Progress Trackers
  • Building An Effective ‘Coming Soon’ Page
  • Designing “Coming Soon” Pages
  • Maps In Modern Web Design
  • Pricing Tables
  • Search Results Design
  • Block Quotes and Pull Quotes
  • Date Stamps And Calendars
  • Case Studies in Design Portfolios
  • “Meet the Team” Pages
  • “About me”-Pages
  • Effective Maintenance Pages
  • Defensive Web Design
  • 404 Error Pages, One More Time
  • 404 Error Pages: Reloaded
  • Wanted: Your 404 Error Pages

Rating - Fantastic! 10/10

Saturday, 24 November 2012

Content Strategy and Storytelling

Here you will find posts featuring some of the best articles related to content strategy and storytelling which have been published on Smashing Magazine over all the years.
Have an issue? Need help? This site will solve almost any issue when it comes to creating great content.

Examples:

  • Content Meaning
  • Content: A Blessing, A Bubble, A Burden
  • When A Thousand Words Is Worth A Picture
  • How To Improve Your Branding With Your Content
  • 10 Ways To Put Your Content In Front Of More People

  • Content strategy

    Rating - 8/10

    Content Marketing 101

    A simple blog on content marketing.

    Provides you with different links to help build your content strategic plan:
    ·         The 10-Step Content Marketing Checklist

    Content Marketing 101 - Scribe

    Rating - 8/10

    Dragon Search Marketing - a digital marketing company

    This whole website is amazing! It is full of different posts from online marketing experts that post using everyday english, which helps to understand online marketing.

    The website can help with the following online marketing services:

    ·         Social media
    ·         Strategic planning
    ·         Account optimization
    ·         Audience building
    ·         Engagement
    ·         Blogging – writing consulting
    ·         Display advertising
    ·         Retargeting
    ·         Campaign maintenance
    ·         PPC consulting and training
    ·         SEO on-site optimization
    ·         Consulting and training
    ·         Link building
    ·         Press release optimization

    Dragon Search Marketing

    Rating - 10/10

    Social Media Optimization - Wikipedia

    Social media optimization (abbreviated as SMO) refers to the use of a number of social media outlets and communities to generate publicity to increase the awareness of a product, brand or event. Types of social media involved include RSS feeds, social news and bookmarking sites, as well as social networking sites, such as Twitter, and video and blogging sites. SMO is similar to search engine optimization in that the goal is to generate traffic and awareness for a website. In general, social media optimization refers to optimizing a website and its content in terms of sharing across social media and networking sites.


    Rating 8/10

    What's your social media strategy? - video

    A quick video on the stats of social media. This movie is very interesting to watch. It provides you with a lot of stats that you would have never imagined.

    What's your social media strategy?

    Rating - 8/10

    Check your Quality Score - google

    What is Quality Score and why does it matter?
    Learn why your keyword Quality Score is key to getting your ads in front of customers. Find out what a Quality Score is, how it's calculated, where it's located, and how to improve it. This site will walk you through different steps and ways to check your company's quality score.
      

    SEM Audit Tool

    Best practices for auditing a SEO account.

    This is the first post in a 7 part series covering a set of best practices and the logic behind auditing a SEM account—how, why, and when it’s appropriate to evaluate your current efforts.

    Each post in this series will focus on one unique SEM optimization best practice. These include:
    1. Match Type
    2. Top Terms
    3. Organization
    4. Relevance
    5. Quality Score
    6. Scalability
    7. Measuring Success
    Check back for posts on the rest of the best practices.

    Pretty unique tool. If you have the time to do a SEO audit it would be well worth it.

    SEO Audit Tool


    6/10 as not all the steps were posted.

    Monday, 19 November 2012

    SEO Audit Tool

    Great Tool!

    Type in your URL and it produces a SEO audit report. Free!

    SEO Audit Tool

    Very Helpful! 9/10

    How To: Conduct a website content audit

    A website that gives you a content audit process. Very useful when creating a E-Marketing Audit.

    Website content audit

    Rating 8/10

    What is Content Strategy and Why Do You Need One?

    Great video on building a content strategy! Provides the basic information about content strategy and lists the top steps to building a great strategy. It is fun to watch and leaves images in your head surrounding your own content strategy. A video for someone who is just learning about content strategy.

    What is Content Strategy?

    Rating 8/10

    Content Strategy Applied - YouTube

    18 content strategists were interviewed at a conference held in London in January of 2011. This video showcases each of their top tips for content strategy! A unique way to see what people have to say about content strategy - better than reading a tip list!

    18 Content Strategy Tips - youtube

    Rating 8/10

    Email Marketing - Wikipedia

     Email marketing is directly marketing a commercial message to a group of people using email. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. It usually involves using email to send ads, request business, or solicit sales or donations, and is meant to build loyalty, trust, or brand awareness. Email marketing can be done to either cold lists or current customer database. Broadly, the term is usually used to refer to:

    ·      Sending email messages with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a merchant with its current or previous customers, to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business,
    ·      Sending email messages with the purpose of acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to purchase something immediately,
    ·      Adding advertisements to email messages sent by other companies to their customers


    Rating 6/10

    Email Marketing Best Parctices - YouTube

    A quick video that talks about the dos and don'ts of email marketing. Mentions a few tips that should be avoided and then lists the best practices of email marketing. After each best practice it mentions a few tricks to help you get started. A great video to watch for a quick refresher when working on your next email marketing campaign.  Also fun to watch!

    Email Marketing - YouTube

    Rating 10/10


    Email Marketing Tips - Blog

    This blog has tips and tricks for creating a better email marketing campaign. The blog is very user friendly and has a simple layout. Blog includes: Tip lists, email templates, and lots of information on growing your email followers. Also includes basic marketing tips such as “how to upsell!” Includes a few fun posts such as “what our pets teach us about marketing relationships!”


    Rating 8/10

    Sunday, 18 November 2012

    Wikipedia Definition - SEM

    Search engine marketing (SEM) is a form of internet marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) through optimization (both on-page and off-page) as well as through advertising (paid placements, contextual advertising, and paid inclusions). Depending on the context, SEM can be an umbrella term for various means of marketing a website including search engine optimization (SEO), which adjusts or rewrites website content to achieve a higher ranking in search engine results pages, or it may contrast with pay per click (PPC), focusing on only paid components.


    Rating 10/10

    Daily Blog Tips - Bible (20 SEO terms)

    This website was a homebase for finding links on my social media tips and tricks. It was produced by Daniel Scocco. He shares everything he has learned about writing blogs over the course of 7 years.

    For example: 20 SEO Terms You Should Know

    Rating - 10/10

    Wikipedia Definition - SEO

    Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine's "natural" or un-paid ("organic") search results. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine's users. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search, academic search, news search and industry-specific vertical search engines.

    SEO Defined

    Rating 5/10

    SEO Book - (Book)

    AMAZING!

    This is a FREE training website. It has different modules that teach you everything:
    ·         keyword selection
    ·         domain names
    ·         on page optimization
    ·         copywriting, blogging
    ·         site architecture
    ·         usability
    ·         analytics
    ·         PPC advertising
    ·         public relations
    ·         viral marketing
    ·         link building


    This book has a public tools section that allows you to do EVERYTHING!
    ·         Keyword Suggestion Tool
    ·         Keyword List Generator
    ·         Keyword List Cleaner
    ·         Robots.txt Tools
    ·         Meta Tag Generator
    ·         Server Header Checker
    ·         Link Suggestion Tool
    ·         Spider Test Tool
    ·         Keyword Density Analyzer
    ·         Page Comparison Tool
    ·         Ad Group Generator
    ·         Keyword Wrapper


    SEO Book

    Rating 10/10

    SEO - Code of Ethics

    A simple website lisiting the SEO Code of Ethics. Great resource to make sure you protect yourself and your company.

    SEO Code of Ethics

    Rating 8/10

    The Definitive Guide to Social Marketing (Purple Book)

    A fabulous book!

    03 Introduction
    04 part one: Why does my Business Need Social Marketing?
    07 part two: Laying the Foundation
    22 part three: peer-to-peer social sharing
    27 part four: b2b social media channels and tactics
    62 part five: tools for social marketing success
    66 part six: incorporating social marketing into every stage of your funnel
    70 part seven: the roi of social
    78 25 must -know social media experts

    This eBook helps your build a social media plan from the ground up. From creating your social media marketing guidlines to defining the different social media channels and what they should be used for to the top social media experts. A bible for creating a social media marketing plan.
    The Definitive Guide to Social Marketing

    Rating 10/10

    Monday, 12 November 2012

    Content Strategy - Effective Copywrite

    The goal of a “regular” text is to inform or entertain. The goal of Web copy is to get people to do something—to sign up, make a purchase, or something similar. This website explains how to create good web copy. This website breaks down the steps to writing web copy:

    1.    Research: customer, product and competition.
    2.    Outline and guideposts.
    3.    Draft copy.
    4.    Conversion boost.
    5.    Revise, rearrange.
    6.    Test.
    This website is useful when needing a kick to get your creative juices flowing: 8/10

    Effective Website Copywrite - By Smashing Magazine