7 Digital Marketing Blogs You Should Be Reading

Digital marketing has become a necessity in today’s fast paced, nose-to-phone society, and no one needs data or numbers to prove that more people are relying on the internet today than at any point in the last decade. But unlike its real world brethren, the pool of digital marketing success is turbulent, unforgiving, and pulls many so far under water that they forget how to swim. There is no longer any space for amateurs or the ill-informed, especially now that Google has drastically modified the way it delivers ads to consumers. This means that small businesses will need to start building a little muscle to brave the rapids themselves.

The only way to combat digital marketing ignorance is an active desire to learn as much about this turbulent world as possible. Slowly sinking a toe in to test the temperature of the water is the first step, and involves lots of research. But don’t just go reading the first website or book that claims its digital marketing knowledge is up to snuff; learn from these big fish instead.

The Big Fish Digital Marketing Bloggers

Blogs are the new world library in which sharing and retrieving well researched and informative articles is quicker and simpler than grabbing a Readers’ Digest in line at the grocery store. They’re convenient, mobile, and definitely beat memorizing the Dewey Decimal System.

The Moz Blog – Started as a small SEO company in 2004 by Rand and his mother Gillian Fishkin, Moz is responsible for some if the first scalable digital marketing data mining. With the introduction of Mozscape, Moz single handedly changed the way marketers approach their target audiences online. You won’t find a better group of people to field advice on digital marketing anywhere on the web.

The Marketing Insight – Owned and operated by digital marketing specialist Suttida Yang, The Marketing Insight was created in response to a desperate need for small businesses to understand the digital marketing world. The eternal optimist, Suttida prides herself on providing all business owners with a comprehensive understanding of marketing awareness, engagement, and general sales techniques.

Buffer – A social media management company founded by Joel and Leo in 2010 as a way to help businesses master the social media game, Buffer has created a solid resource of happy and impressively dedicated experts in the fields of online marketing management and digital employment. Their unique blog provides readers with a direct scope into the worlds of social media, business management, and digital engineering.

Content Marketing Institute – Founded in 2007, The Content Marketing Institute was forged with the sole intent of teaching businesses a better way to brand themselves online. According to their website “CMI will not stop until the need for content marketing education no longer exists.”

Marketing Profs – Founded by marketing doctor Allen Weiss in 2000, Marketing Profs is a unique conglomeration of professors and professionals in the fields of publishing, technology, academia, and marketing. Their chief goal is creating a learning environment geared towards improving the marketing strategies of all businesses, everywhere.

The Daily Egg – This content marketing blog for Crazy Egg, the heat map software that visually tracks website traffic, is a daily blog dedicated to the improvement of digital marketing, web managing, and design. Each blog entry is rich with tips and tricks for everything from infographics and copywriting to branding and analytics, and of course the occasional egg joke.

HubSpot Blogs – Founded in 2006 by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah on the “Inbound Marketing Theory,” HubSpot believes that the time of cold calling and trade shows is over, and the day of content marketing has come. Operating on this belief, HubSpot provides its readers with a diverse range of content marketing advice through its three blog trains: Marketing, Sales, and Agency.

These are just a small number of blogs providing rich content to its readers. What blogs do you enjoy reading about? Let us know in the comments section!

Essential Marketing Analytics Tools for Small Businesses

Just about every business out there is beginning to recognize the importance of online marketing. Whether they are building a website, creating social media accounts, or maintaining a viable email list, every business is moving into the digital marketplace. Once they show up, however, many tend to fizzle out. This generally comes from a lack of understanding of the digital world, a poor marketing plan, and no idea how to make improvements or read data. This is where marketing analytics come into play.

What’s the point of having a website or a social media account if no steps are taken to measure its effectiveness? Without knowing who is visiting a business’s page, where they are coming from, or how long they stay, it’s difficult to determine if the time and money being spent is even worth it. Luckily, there are plenty of digital marketing analytics tools available all around the web to help combat the confusing world of marketing data analysis.

Keeping Track of Your Website and Its Effectiveness

Nearly every business with an online presence has its own website at the very least, but just having a website isn’t enough. It is important for every business owner to fully understand the performance of their website. This includes tracking audience engagement, data on demographics, topics and pages that are viewed and used the most, and how people are finding the web site in the first place. Luckily there is an incredible resource through Google called Google Analytics that will track all of this information free of charge.

Once a website’s traffic and engagement is being tracked, it is easy to move into search engine optimization (SEO) analysis. Tracking key word rankings, the number and quality of back links (links from one page to another), and general SEO effectiveness are all types of data that need to be sifted through and analyzed as often as possible. This is where Google steps up again with Google Web Master Tools. Designed to make website and SEO analytics free and easy to use, Web Master Tools is a great resource for any small business on the web.

Analyzing Your Social Media Presence

Social media is easily the most expansive and complicated form of marketing online, and encompasses so much more than most realize. Including websites, apps, games, shares, and links across multiple platforms and companies, social media has become a wild beast that few have been able to tame. Luckily for the small business owner, companies like Scoop.It, Quintly, Cyfe and a few others have all stepped into the ring with lassos in hand.

Scoop.It and Buffer – Provided free with the option to upgrade, were both designed to measure social media views, visitors, comments, and daily shares across multiple social sites. Scoop.It also provides product guides, case studies, demos, and FAQ’s to its 1.2 million users, and is fully integrated with Google Analytics. Both websites will also help manage social media posts through their useful tools, and help compare average and daily hits on each post.

Followerwonk and Quintly – Created by Moz, Followerwonk is a comprehensive resource for tracking posts on Twitter, while Quincy provides the same service for Facebook. Both provide clean and easy to use interfaces and graphic representation for analyzing posts, likes/ favorites and shares/retweets. Followerwonk also provides its users with popular hashtags and optimal times for tweeting content, and is a statistics based open information application. This means that businesses aren’t limited to their own information, but can research the competition as well. Quintly, on the other hand, limits its users to 3 Facebook pages per free account, with more available with a paid subscription, and is ideal for small businesses.

Cyfe and Addvocate+Trap!t – Both of these websites follow content sharing across multiple social networks, and each one has a unique method for sorting its data. Cyfe leans more towards full internet presence and includes data for websites outside the normal social media channels, while Addvocate+Trap!t (two companies that recently teamed up into one super squad) provides comparative data between channels to help small businesses determine which works best for them. Both are free, easy to use, and incredibly reliable.

Making the Most for the Small Business

Generally speaking, most small businesses do not have the time or money to invest in a large scale digital marketing plan. These services tend to be costly and require a serious commitment to creating an expansive digital presence. Luckily, companies like Google and Buffer have stepped up to help the little guy build his online portfolio and get up to speed with the big players. Using these resources will allow any small business to improve both their website usability and social media effectiveness.

Small Business Digital Marketing Trends for 2016

Small business owners know the importance of focusing on business growth and customer retention.

The role that marketing plays when it comes to fostering growth and retention is crucial. For instance, 75 percent of small businesses believe that Internet marketing is ‘effective’ or ‘very’ effective at attracting new customers and in 2015 alone 37 percent planned to increase their Internet marketing spend. Further, the image below depicts the channels that small businesses deems as most effective:

With all of this in mind, here are five small business digital marketing trends you should be aware of for 2016:

1) Mobile Payments Will Grow

With options such as Apple Pay, Square, Google Wallet, and even social commerce, you need to ensure your website is responsive and adaptable. Almost 60 percent of consumers say they use their smartphone to make payments if they know they’ll receive incentive of using it. Leverage this to your advantage by ‘being where your customers are’ when they’re looking for you.

2) Google is Investing More in Local Search

Ensuring you invest in SEO, especially local SEO will help your chances of being found when a customer is searching for you. Google Headquarters is putting a lot of attention on local searches. The company recently added local searches to its Search Quality Ratings Guidelines and says local knowledge graph results will soon be editable.

To take advantage make sure you’ve listed your business with Google, are encouraging positive reviews, your website is optimized to your specific location and you’re pushing out relevant content.

3) Email Automation and Marketing

Sending out monthly emails that are both informational and promotional are nothing new. However, not all small businesses have implemented this practice consistently. With tools like Drip, Sendloop, Gumroad, and Knowtify – utilizing email automation will only increase your chances of selling more, while also giving more to your raving fans.

4) The Look of Search Engines is Changing

Know that Facebook is already working on tests for its own search engine, Twitter is being indexed by Google, and Pinterest has expanded its algorithm by incorporating ‘guided searches.’ As a result, now is the time for small businesses to make sure they have a strong presence on social media with positive reviews from customers.

88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.

(Source: BrightLocal)

5) Increased Advertising Investment

This year companies are predicted to spend $10 billion or more in all areas of digital marketing than compared to 2015. Small businesses, too, should be thinking about how much they need to budget toward paid avenues such as PPC, retargeting, video advertisements, etc. Doing so will help your chances of generating more awareness, which fosters sales.