Internet Marketing

Earlier this year I wrote that any digital marketer must know how to write a blog post in HTML. I caught a little flak for that. I earned it. I should’ve been clearer: There are four HTML elements every digital marketer should know. If you know them, you can write a post using the code… Read More

Internet Marketing

Nothing gets taken out of context more than web content. Except maybe innocent remarks by public figures. Search engines pull bits and pieces from your page. People cut-and-paste. Aggregators grab headlines. We all tend to ignore the lack of context and write like we always have: We assume readers will see all our stuff together.… Read More

Internet Marketing

From businesses ready to go to market with a new product or service, to companies with a longstanding history but little digital presence, business owners, investors, CEOs, and marketing managers are always looking for quick wins when it comes to getting started with their digital marketing initiatives. Quick-result potential initiatives provide marketers the ability to… Read More

Internet Marketing

As a child from a small, rural town, I was fascinated by skyscrapers. My family would often drive through Chicago and I would gawk at the monoliths and later, brag that I had seen the World’s Tallest Building. I maintain this fascination today as evidenced by my favorite Wikipedia page about the tallest buildings in… Read More

Internet Marketing

It’s more important than ever for all small businesses to have a strong presence online. Regardless of industry, customers are online all day long, whether it be on their desktop at work, phone on a bus, or tablet at home on the couch. Representing your business well digitally is easier said than done. Getting found… Read More

Internet Marketing

This post will be very hard to read on a small screen. I show screen caps of Zapier steps. Sorry about that. “I can’t keep track of it all.” I hear (and say) this a lot. Marketers get drowned in data, posts, notes, texts, images and video. The only way to survive the experience is… Read More

Internet Marketing

Thinking about experimenting with the Google Display Network (GDN)? This could mean a variety of different things, but most commonly, this means showing banner ads on site that are a part of the GDN. The GDN isn’t exclusively for banner ads. Ad formats vary from text ads to video ads, animated banners, and ads on… Read More

Internet Marketing

In marketing, high return on investment isn’t always a good thing. You can increase ROI by narrowing your audience: Focus on people you know will convert. Spend less and less per conversion. Voila. That’s expensive, flawed reasoning. It restricts access to your marketing world: Let’s do the math: 1,000 customers $100 revenue/customer $10 cost/sale $100,000… Read More

Internet Marketing

For most small- and medium-sized businesses, competing online against the big players can be daunting. How are you supposed to match their seemingly infinite marketing budgets when you may just have a few thousand dollars a month to work with? If this sounds familiar, don’t despair. There is still a lot you can do without… Read More

Internet Marketing

Someday, you’re going to fire your digital marketing agency. We’ll get boring. You’ll find a younger, sexier marketing agency. It’s not you. It’s us. When that happens, most agencies are pretty smart. They know a friendly exit shows integrity and builds reputation. So they provide an easy transition, delivering creative, PPC accounts and all the… Read More

Internet Marketing

TL;DR: Storytelling isn’t what digital marketers do. The audience creates the stories. We build the maps they use. We’re worldbuilders. Storytelling is a great word, but a poor metaphor for what we, the marketers, do. Before you scroll down and start swearing at me in the comments: I love marketing storytelling. Storytelling is fantastic. It’s… Read More

Internet Marketing

A man goes to into the doctor’s office and says it hurts no matter where he touches his body. The doctor looks at him noting that he doesn’t appear to have any full body trauma. Skeptically, the doctor says “Impossible.” The man says to the doctor, “No. I’m not making this up. It hurts really… Read More

Internet Marketing

Note: If you don’t know what D&D (Dungeons and Dragons) is, you should probably leave. Avoid eye contact with this blog post. Step away slowly but do not run. Click the back button. For a DM (Dungeon Master—see the warning above), marketing’s a pretty good gig. You get to write. You get to do nerdy… Read More

Internet Marketing

Great content is all about a great idea. It’s also about the production quality. I can’t give much advice about video or audio, but I write a lot. These are my favorite little tweaks to improve content quality, reader happiness, and performance. All these tips assume that you can edit your own content but not… Read More

Internet Marketing

Digital marketing is a mish-mash of marketing knowledge and little snippets of nerdy know-how. It’s a mess. You need to nail both categories, and the one that I see most often jam up would-be marketers is the nerdy stuff. Without it, you can’t execute. There isn’t some exclusive “oh-look-at-me-I’m-a-digital marketer” club. If you can’t check… Read More