Content Strategy, Marketing News and Practical Tips for Agencies

Prepare For The Long Expected (And Dreaded) Penguin Update

May 22, 2013 By Sarah Beth Leave a Comment

Back in March, Matt Cutts warned SEOs to expect a new Penguin algorithm update later this year. Dubbed “Penguin 2.0,” this update is expected to be a massive change for the SEO industry. The original Penguin algorithm was released in April 2012 and caused widespread destruction among the SEO community, as many sites suffered harsh penalties and consequently dropped in the rankings. Barry Schwartz reports that after a year, only 9% of sites that were hit with a Penguin penalty have managed a full recovery. That’s a dangerous algorithm! There are many expectations and theories within the SEO community of what this will mean for SEO campaigns, particularly in relation to link building. Although we are still waiting for this “next generation” of the Penguin algorithm, SEOs can make informed guesses about what it’s going to look like based on past algorithmic updates. … [Read more...]

Filed Under: google, seo Tagged With: google, SEO

Facebook Falling Out of Favor with Teens

May 22, 2013 By Patrick Leave a Comment

Facebook began as an exclusive social network before people really knew what social networks could become. Since then it has grown into a social media behemoth. Since going public a year ago, Facebook has been making a great many changes to its service. The company is becoming more successful at collecting revenue from its users, but news from yesterday shows that teens aren't quite as enthusiastic about Facebook as they used to be. Pew Study Shows Insight into Teens and Facebook Teens are a huge market for traditional advertising and increasingly online advertising. The rise of social media and the internet has made teens more active consumers than they ever have been before. Plenty of businesses and agencies interact with teens on social media like Facebook, Twitter, and others. But these teens and young adults have to grow up with social media – something no generation before … [Read more...]

Filed Under: facebook, news Tagged With: facebook, news

6 Ways to Jumpstart Your Marketing Now

May 22, 2013 By Beans Leave a Comment

Marketing can involve a lot of waiting around: waiting for collaborators to add their touches to ads, waiting for your writers to turn over completed copy, waiting to collect data about your previous efforts. Let’s take a look at some of the ways that businesses can easily add to their marketing strategy in an instant. Expand Your Social Sometimes, it seems like there’s a new way to interact with customers on social networks every other day, yet most businesses tend to stick to the ones we know and love. Stay abreast of new social media revolutions, and create new profiles on some of the smaller networks. Social media is more than Facebook, these days: Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, and countless other platforms see huge numbers of visitors. Just make sure to keep your content relevant to the channel you’re using! Listen to Feedback Spend some time reading reviews, comments on … [Read more...]

Filed Under: business branding, marketing strategy Tagged With: business branding, marketing strategy

Mobile Apps vs. Google: Google Still Comes Out On Top

May 21, 2013 By Sarah Beth Leave a Comment

In the last 5 years, mobile has grown into a highly competitive market that compels businesses that want to thrive to develop elaborate mobile-specific strategies. With more than a billion mobile users, mobile is absolutely pervasive in modern society. A recent article in the New York Times caught my attention due to its surprising suggestion that the rise of mobile and particularly mobile apps poses a danger to the utter dominance of Google. Especially within the SEO community, we all recognize the clout of Google. With around two-thirds of the search market under its control, Google is indisputably the powerhouse to beat. On a global level, Greg Sterling reports that Google’s mobile search market share is at a whopping 95%. Despite these impressive numbers, the mobile market does create a minor threat to Google. Mobile search is certainly a more nuanced species than the … [Read more...]

Filed Under: google, traffic and gadgets Tagged With: google, traffic and gadgets

Anthropologie: Small Business Branding Lessons From a Major Brand

May 21, 2013 By Ben Leave a Comment

Walk through just about any mall in Knoxville, Tennessee, Kalamazoo, Michigan, or Spokane, Washington, and you’ll hardly know you ever moved across the country. Gap. Starbucks. Apple. From the lighting and display to the merchandise and employee uniforms, everything is exactly the same. Herein lies the charm of Anthropologie, a clothing and home goods retailer that has completely turned its back on the mass-experience approach most retailers have chosen. Anthropologie, owned by Urban Outfitters, Inc., isn’t a small company. However, they use many business-branding techniques that can work for small businesses. #1 The cheapest way isn’t always the best way. We all kind of “know” this to be true, but we don’t necessarily believe it if you look at our actions. Cheap advertising, cheap content, cheap site design… it’s all too tempting when you’re a small business … [Read more...]

Filed Under: building your brand, business branding Tagged With: building your brand, business branding

Interview With CrowdCases: How Designers Can Change the World

May 20, 2013 By Ben Leave a Comment

Earlier this month I wrote a blog post about non-profit branding, focusing on charity: water specifically. The post happened to catch the eye of social entrepreneur Dwight Peters. Dwight is the founder of CrowdCases, an innovative, brand new startup that’s changing the world with graphic designers and their art. His business model brings together crowdsourcing, charitable causes, and art in a completely new way… How It Works Every Sunday, CrowdCases selects a social cause and issues a design challenge. Graphic designers have the week to create a design for an iPhone and Samsung Galaxy case highlighting the cause. Once the submissions are in, the winning design is selected, and the designer receives $500. The winning design is available just a few days later as a limited edition iPhone/Samsung Galaxy case, and sold for $34.95, with 20% going directly to the featured non-profit. … [Read more...]

Filed Under: interviews, Kickstarter Tagged With: interviews, Kickstarter

Good Brands Borrow, Great Brands Steal

May 20, 2013 By Daniel Leave a Comment

There have been endless variations on T.S. Eliot’s sentiment, “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.” Though it’s been decades since Eliot penned those words, its underlying truth is still relevant today, especially in marketing. In fact, many brands that copy or find inspiration in their competitor’s ideas see incredible revenue increases year-over-year. For instance, Urban Outfitters has experienced astonishing growth of over 500 percent despite the fact that its founders knew nothing about retail. So how did they succeed? Simple: they analyzed successes in the marketplace to innovate products for collegiate consumers that the competition couldn’t emulate. Similar to repurposing content, brands that copy ideas from competitors are able to take advantage of tactics that have made their market counterparts so competitive. Here are a few of the ways in which major … [Read more...]

Filed Under: branding for business, business branding Tagged With: branding for business, business branding

Get Your Own Content, Bro! How to Stop Content Thieves from Ruining Your Brand

May 17, 2013 By Daniel Leave a Comment

Success! You’ve spent your time and resources to create original and meaningful content as part of your content strategy. For a moment in time, things are going well: your new content is driving swaths of targeted traffic to your site and the daily number of visitors continues to increase. Then BAM – it happens quicker than lightening – someone uploads your content word for word on their site, diminishing its value. You’ve been plagiarized. While syndication is common in the web, when a party posts your content without your permission, they’ve stolen from you and are tarnishing the value of your original content and its SEO value for your site. Remember, unique content is what keeps your site appreciated by consumers, so be sure to protect your content by: Detect stolen content. To stop content scrapers, you must first discover that your content has been stolen in the … [Read more...]

Filed Under: content strategy, content writing management Tagged With: content strategy, Content Writing Management

Google Shows Off Major Changes This Week

May 17, 2013 By Patrick Leave a Comment

Google has kept relatively quiet lately in regards to changes being made to its most popular apps and products. That silence was completely broken during Google's I/O 2013 conference. This year Google has gone all out to explain, present, and show off all of the changes it has made to its most popular products. These are changes that are welcomed by users and should also be welcomed by businesses and agencies. What has changed? Curious about what Google has made changes to? Lots of people are. The changes are sure to attract more users, which is always good for Google. Google Wallet First off, according to Marguerite Reardon at CNET, Google has shifted Google Wallet out of the cell phone payments and into a truer online wallet. One of Google's latest features for Wallet "is the ability to send money to and from Google Wallet via e-mail." This makes sending cash to friends and family … [Read more...]

Filed Under: google, news Tagged With: google, news

Who We Are	What We Do
General Samples	Pricing
What is Insourcing?	Retainer Information
Press Page	Guides
Knowledge Bank	Hire Us

Testimonials