8 Rules for Effective Content

Creating great content is an amazing way to fuel your search engine marketing and social media efforts. That is, assuming you're creating content that is worth someone's time.

On social networks, the brands that create effective content become the conversation. This content is talked about, shared, "liked" and socially bookmarked. These are the social indicators that search engines are starting to pay attention to in order to rank relevant search results. That's right. Search and social are getting in bed together!

While nobody is quite certain what exactly is going on under the covers (you're curious, admit it), brands need to focus on creating effective content.

Read Full Entry

No Comments

The Death of Good Creative.

What's going on in the creative world? Where has good creative gone? Why does everything look the same?   Why do some things look like a kindergartener with a box of crayons banged it out?  Isn't there an original idea out there? Someone? Anyone?

You know you've seen what I'm talking about. Think about the last time you flipped through some magazine ads, or watched a TV commercial. You've all witnessed the slow death of good creative: Ads that don't make sense, make you think way too hard, have too much crap in them, make your stomach weak or the biggest bust of all, ads that leave you with no idea who the advertiser is, or what they do!

Read Full Entry

3 Comments

Top 5 Tenets for Effective Brand Building

Like many agencies, clients come to us with a desire to "build their brand." But what does this really mean, and how do you do this effectively? It's more than just getting the word out. Creating a brand strategy is an almost-scientific endeavor, carefully engineered based on a strong foundation and then creatively executed to produce solid results.

Here are some important things to consider while embarking on a rebranding.

Read Full Entry

1 Comment

Marketer or Mentor: Wouldn’t it Be Great to Be Both?

We don't often think of ourselves as mentors. Perhaps the word sounds a bit more "high brow" than we give ourselves credit for. Isn't it our responsibility to pass on our knowledge to others who are less informed? At what point does transferring guidance and advice become true mentoring and we can consider ourselves mentors, and our subjects, protégés?

According to Merriam Webster, mentoring is "a process for the informal transmission of knowledge, social capital and the psychosocial support perceived by the recipient as relevant to work, career or professional development."

Hmmm, sounds like marketing to me.

Read Full Entry

4 Comments

Are Robots Taking Over the Internet?

More than half of all internet traffic generated is not from humans. No, it's not from aliens, either. It's from robots, or rather from automated systems-many of which are malicious.

According to ZDNet, only about 49% of any site activity is from human beings. The rest is from automated systems. Here's a breakdown.

Read Full Entry

2 Comments