You want what? In less than a week? Give me a break!” — God. Alternate title: “An Act of God Can’t Get You To The 1st Page of Google Any Quicker.” Okay, duck and watch out for stray lightening bolts… Here we go. I blame God… yes, GOD for the misconceptions of time so prevalent in the business word today. Seriously, stay with me here… If God can create the Earth, the wind and sun, the plants and animals, and all we see, feel, and touch in 6 short days, why can’t your marketing team do something about getting you
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This is the industrial age of digital marketing. What’s hot today will soon be yesterday’s cold fish. It seems like just a short 12 months ago, we were working on Vimeo engagement strategies and backing off email campaigns. And now, well, email is back on the table and Vimeo is no more than a greasy skid mark on your iPhone. Digital is fickle at best. But as new tools and new technologies are developed, the opportunities to build customer connections are better than ever. Digital marketing is still marketing. It’s just a variety of new tools that make it different
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It’s tempting. There it is, click it. “Boost Post.” – C’mon, BOOOOOOOST IT… Everyone is doing it. I triple-dog dare you! Or… should you take the leap with bigger Facebook Advertising strategies? Yes, it’s the Facebook Advertising one-click answer – like peer-pressure. In one simple click, you purportedly get a “boost” to your business post; promising more eyes, more action, and more customers. But if you’d paid attention to recent changes on Facebook, you would have witnessed the “Business Management” interface updates as well as the focus put on actual Facebook Advertising through the platform. Considering the abundance of recent
More Marketing News →Is partnering with a digital marketing agency the right choice for you? Call it what you will, Digital Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Search Engine Marketing; unless you have experience in marketing and specifically navigating the digital landscape, do you have the time to do your job AND build / manage an acceptable digital footprint? With the ever-evolving nature of digital marketing, as a partner the right digital marketing agency (web agency, social media marketing company, search engine marketing company, etc.) can focus on emerging trends and technologies where your brand can best be presented and engage the customers you want
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Do you know how to protect your brand on social media? In a recent Lunch-n-Learn for The Clarke County Development Corporation (CCDC), SPOKE Communications was honored to guide a very engaging group through some of the ups and downs of protecting information and the development of business best practices for social media marketing (2nd session in the interactive marketing series for CCDC). The group consisted of independent entrepreneurs looking to find their bearings in the world of social media marketing to financial institutions looking to protect their brands, their employees, and their families from the risks associated with social media.
More Marketing News →Blogs, microblogs, social networks like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, LinkedIn are popping up daily. Their availability to the masses is exciting and fun, even educational and inspirational. Never before has it been easier to share knowledge, express creativity, build personal and business brands, and connect with others in your industry and around the globe. Because these social media channels are still fairly new to most, guidance and best practices are often shorted – to the detriment to the users as well as those within their network. So as a “Public Service” of sorts, I’ve put together a quick, 10.5
More Marketing News →Unfortunately, this is Social Media Marketing for many: Look deeply into my eyes… you are feeling veeeery sleepy… sleeeeepy… deeeeper… deeeeeeeeper… relax and let the social media mystique take you to a happier place. Deeeeper… Dee… Yeah, sometimes I feel like social media has cast some kind of spell over businesses, specifically throughout the marketing departments of some companies. It’s easy to be seduced. It’s easy to be swayed by viral videos, tweets, and blogs with thousands of readers. It’s easy to think that social media can be the magic pill to fix marketing mishaps. But in our passionate pursuit
More Marketing News →Okay, this set of five questions starts with one MAJOR Web marketing discovery question: “How successful is your Web site at accomplishing your marketing goals?” If you don’t know the answer, you need to stop reading now and set proper goals goals. Only through goal-setting and tracking will you know if you have an effective strategy in place. Once you have that established, work through the following five simple questions to gauge the effectiveness of your Web marketing efforts. When your visitors see your site (and your business) as value-added then doing business with you is an opportunity, not a
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I had the honor of heading down to southern Iowa last night to talk to the Entrepreneurship students at South West Iowa Community College (SWiCC). My charge was easy enough; explain the steps I’d taken through entrepreneurship and how branding affected my decisions and the development of my business. But then I thought a bright-eyed group of burgeoning entrepreneurs deserved more than my typical “TRUE Branding 101” spiel. This presentation required a little “from the heart?” A little “I’ve been in your shoes?” Maybe this needed to be a little more personal. Of course, branding for entrepreneurs is paramount. “Without
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Mobile-friendly? What, you say? Yes, over night, the powers at Google changed their algorithms for search to require all sties to be “Mobile-friendly” or be excluded from mobile search. You can read more about their changes here: http://cre8wow.me/1yLU6XM This change is a great advantage to you and all of those that keep their sites current with search compatibility best practices. As Google enacts these changes, sites NOT mobile-friendly will no longer be indexed for mobile search results. Yes, you heard right… NON MOBILE-FRIENDLY SITES WILL NOT SHOW UP IN MOBILE SEARCHES AFTER TODAY! While standard desktop search will not be
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