Industry-Leading Thoughts on Digital Marketing
From reaction to the latest news in the industry to insights learned from his digital marketing practice with clients, and from observations of strategies and executions from others to engaging interviews with the thought leaders in the space, Jason Falls offers useful content for digital marketers of all kinds. Don't miss an article by subscribing to the site's content on Feedly, Flipboard or your RSS reader of choice.
Join the Email List
Scrunch Offers Quick, Easy Influencer Tool for Small Business
Monday we discussed the online-offline balance of influencer identification. One theme there was that an influencer tool for small business only gives you a look at half of the equation. It counts online metrics to deliver a set of recommendations for who might be your influencers. You still need to connect the online recommendations to […]
The Trick to Understanding Influencers
Influence is not an easy thing to understand. Yes, there are dozens of softwares out there with understanding influencers as a claim. They measure how many followers people have. They count the number of likes and comments and such to put a number on someone’s “influence” to convince you they know. But they only give […]
You Don’t Need a Tool to Measure Social Media
The problem of how to measure social media is we’re all convinced you need a tool to do it. This is because the software companies out there who have these tools want you to buy from them. The realization hit me as I stumbled across Agorapulse’s recent post entitled, “What Social Media Measurement Tool Does My […]
The Case Against Conventional Wisdom
You hear a lot of conventional wisdom as a small business owner. It typically comes from people trying to give you advice on how to be successful. This expert or that author tells you what they know to be true, which is the conventional wisdom aggregated in their study of that little sliver of the world. […]
The Easy Way to Measure Twitter for Small Business
How do you measure Twitter for Small Business? Is it the number of followers you have? What about the number of retweets each Tweet gets? Or the reach and impact of that message? Do you even know how to measure those things? If not, don’t feel bad. There are very smart marketers out there who don’t […]
All LinkedIn Does is Deliver Qualified Leads
Every business wants qualified leads. If you don’t use that term, then you want customers lathered up and ready to buy, but they can still be described as a qualified lead. So how do you find qualified leads? Well, you can create content and drive people to it hoping they’ll ask for more information. You […]
How Much Should You Spend on Small Business SEO?
How much money should y0u spend on small business SEO? Super alert reader Emmerey Rose asked this great question in response to our discussion about ranking well in search. The true answer is, unfortunately, it depends. But here’s how I broke down my answer to her that I thought would help all of us: SEO is […]
The Social Media Lesson SXSW Taught Me
Monday of interactive weekend at South-by-Southwest is typically the day the social media and digital marketing crowd wakes up and realizes they aren’t in college anymore and that much alcohol is best used in truck engines. SXSW has been called “Spring Break for Geeks” and though I am not in attendance this year, I can attest, […]
The 2017 Marketing Pricing Guide
NOTE: The 2017 Marketing Pricing Guide and its predecessor from 2015 inspired a full bi-annual effort to offer insights into what marketing costs across a range of disciplines and executional needs. Please see the main Marketing Pricing Guide menu to see updated information from 2017 and 2019 surveys. What does marketing cost? A lot of […]
The Danger of Personal Branding
My friend Mark Schaefer’s new book on personal branding, Known, tells you how to market yourself in today’s digital world. It’s good advice from someone who knows. Mark has become one of the leading voices in the marketing space after spending a career doing the work on the inside at some impressive companies. He now speaks, […]
Use Tiers to Prioritize Small Business Content Marketing
Small business content marketing sounds impressive, but to most people the term doesn’t mean anything. Content is vague. Marketing is ambiguous if it’s not immediately confused with advertising. So how do you define content for your small business and how do you prioritize each type? The first step to understand small business content marketing is […]
What is Social Capital and How Do You Earn It?
I gave feedback on a video this week telling the recent small business workshop attendee I wouldn’t exactly call it “social capital.” Before I step on anyone’s sensitivities, please know the purpose of this post is to explain social capital and how to judge whether or not your social media content provides it. Lacking social capital isn’t […]
Ranking Well in Search is the Top Priority for Your Small Business
The top priority in digital marketing for any small business is ranking well in search. It doesn’t matter how much you love social media, how fun it is to engage customers there, how exciting it is to see your open rates on email newsletters climb and the like. Search engine optimization (SEO) is always priority […]
How To Avoid Spam Filters With Your Small Business Emails
In my Small Business, Smart Marketing Workshops, I tell the audience the strategic point of consumer-facing digital marketing should be to get your prospective customer’s email address. Once you’re invited to their inbox, your chances of converting that customer multiply exponentially. But how can your small business emails avoid spam filters? That question came to […]
Finding Value Relationships for Small Businesses
A friend and business partner recently said to me, “There’s nothing better than doing business with someone with common values.” An interesting and valid perspective, for sure. It’s certainly better than doing business with someone whose values don’t align with your own. Finding value relationships is probably more important in business-to-business or long-lead/long-term relationship businesses. For […]