Many businesses are trying and failing at social media. Some are succeeding. One of the keys to finding success is in taking on an “always open” mentality. Just like a website should always be on, social media requires constant attention, particularly Facebook. It doesn’t sleep. It doesn’t take weekends off. In fact, some have seen that the weekends are when the real activity happens. For some pages, they’re receiving more interactions on social media during the weekends or late at night than they do during business hours. How can a marketing manager or small business owner be successful on something…

Content speaks for itself. It speaks for a company. It speaks to the people. Most business websites are sorely short on content. Sure, they have sales content and information about the company, but so few today are actually putting out high-quality content about relevant topics that make their websites more of a resource. Today, people want to trust a company before doing business with them and content is the easiest way for them to understand that you know what you’re doing. It’s not just about having information for visitors to see in order to convince them that you’re an expert. It’s also about…

Facebook has been a challenging venue for marketers and advertisers ever since it started really getting popular in 2009. At that time, it was clear that it was the social network to beat and the company started trying to cash in with different types of advertising options. Most of them failed miserably for the same reason that many marketers continue to fail today: people go to Facebook to be entertained, not to be the recipient of ads. Today, it’s getting easier. People are more accepting of ads. A lot of it can be attributed to the way that Facebook has handled their promoted posts. They have done…

If you haven’t been paying attention to America’s favorite sugary beverage, Coca-Cola has come out with its first all-digital marketing campaign, aimed at its teenaged consumers. It consists of games and apps geared toward mobile devices like smartphones and tablets (though desktop users can still access the content). Coke’s vision for this strategy – titled “The AHH Effect” – is that it will stick as a long-term marketing plan for years to come. It’s pretty rare these days to spot a teenager in the wild who isn’t typing away or playing games on their smartphone. And they’re…

Facebook has been a promising venue through which to market a local business ever since it reached a high level of popularity back in 2008. Back then, it was just breaking the hundred million user level and was showing signs that it would be able to be business-friendly in contrast to its rival MySpace. Now, it’s 10 times bigger and commands more time of humans than any other website. The problem is that it’s not the easiest marketing platform to master. Unlike Google, Twitter, and other players that are used on a daily basis, Facebook has algorithms that keep businesses from finding success. Google…

There’s a saying in online marketing that has been around for a while. “Content is king.” The truth is this – before the last year, it really wasn’t. Content has always been important, but it wasn’t until recent updates in Google and Facebook that content took a huge leap from being a portion of search and social marketing to become the actual hub through which search and social marketing flow. Today, marketing starts from content and works its way down versus recent years where content was simply a tool in the marketing strategy. Google, Facebook, Bing, and Twitter are getting smarter every day….

One of the most important lessons you can learn in Facebook marketing for your business is that you can have a much greater impact on your performance online through Facebook by focusing on what’s happening in the real world. Facebook is virtual, but that doesn’t mean it has to focus on the virtual world. Make it real. If your business is out there doing things in the real world, you have plenty of potential Facebook content to post on your page (as well as you other social media pages and profiles). Do you participate in charities and local events? Do you sponsor a little league team? Do you have a monthly…

There are a lot of ways that Hollywood has changed the way we use the internet. On one side, the internet is an incredible well of knowledge and innovation, a place of creativity, inspiration, and easy communication. There is no question that the internet has, for better or for worse, morphed the way we view ourselves and our place in society. Consequentially, it has also changed entertainment, marketing, and networking. Alongside the innovations of the internet and of new technology are the innovators who use these tools and give them purpose. There is no point in having this technology if no…

President Obama’s successful re-election campaign last year was marked with many technological victories. They won most of the many battles on social media, held the attention of the media in a way that almost had the unbiased fabric of journalism tearing away to root for him, and dominated the devices to score major victories through mobile device marketing. From a fund-raising perspective, one of the campaigns most powerful weapons was good ol’ fashioned email marketing and their most powerful subject line may surprise many. “Hey.” That was it. The concepts of “I Need Your Support” or “Help…

In one sentence, the advice that business owners and marketers need to hear is this: “Everything on your Facebook page should be centered around the real world.” No, I don’t mean the reality TV show that launched it all in 1992. When The Real World launched on MTV 27 seasons ago (yes, it’s still going strong in case you weren’t aware), it set in motion a genre of television that many people claim to hate but that still gets millions of viewers every day. Today, the day to day version of “the real world of marketing on Facebook” should take one concept from the original show intro: “…start getting real.”…