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The Secrets to Successful Multilingual Social Media

posted on September 25, 2011

Love it or hate it, social media has changed the way we interact, advertise and engage with our target markets. Even the chances that you made it to this article through social media are high – a recent study found almost 9 in 10 businesses use social media for marketing purposes.

And why not? It’s free, it’s effective and you can reach people all over the world in a few simple clicks.

But to truly reach global markets, you need to speak their language, and there are a few essential tricks you need to know to make it in the heady world of multilingual social media.

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Google+: It’s A Matter of Trust

posted on September 21, 2011

This post was written prior to yesterday’s announcement regarding Google+ being open to everyone. Whether this changes Mike’s outlook remains to be seen :-) .

I was in Denmark (among other places) the last couple of weeks and I had a chance to sit down with an old friend from IBM, who once wrote a comment on one of my blog posts that reminded me of something that I sometimes forget. Trust is relative. Trusting someone to answer a question isn’t the same as trusting him to watch your two-year-old. In marketing, we talk a lot about gaining customer trust, but it isn’t a blanket thing. For some purchases (buying a car), we need a lot of trust and for others (buying a coffee), not so much.

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Top Ten Takeaways From the Inbound Marketing Summit

posted on September 19, 2011

The best marketing conferences combine education, inspiration and entertainment with plenty of face time and networking. At the recent Inbound Marketing Summit 2011, the consensus of the nearly 800 attendees scored it highly on all counts.

Drawn from conversations with fellow attendees, plus a few days to mull over the flood of ideas, this list of the Top 10 takeaways reflects the mix of strategic concepts and actionable ideas featured at the summit.

1. Jump off the competitive treadmill – If your company disappeared today, would your customers truly be lost, or could they just switch? Harvard Business School’s Youngme Moon explored how being meaningfully different cultivates irreplaceability and brand loyalty. To get there, we need to go beyond analyzing competitors and markets, blaze new paths and take risks. This is a scary proposition – but it’s a vital factor in some of the biggest successes in business.

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SEO: There Is No Secret Ingredient

posted on August 28, 2011

When Google announced their latest algorithm update codename “Panda” the jokes came out of the woodwork to tease the name. But the reality was that this update impacted the SERPs big time. A lot of major sites suffered traffic loss due to their rankings falling. When that happened a lot of SEOs were scrambling to figure out what happened and what they could do as a “work around” to get their respect pride rankings back. What amazed me as I watched all this unfold were the number of SEOs asking on Twitter if anyone had found a solution to the Panda update. The reality is, the solution was right in front of them, they just didn’t see it.

A Lesson in Kung Fu

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Panda Schmanda – It’s Still SEO

posted on August 14, 2011

From time to time we will be running posts by some “friends of Marketing Pilgrim”. How do you become a friend? Just like in the real world, it’s pretty simple in that you just need to get to know us. We’re harmless :-) .

“I know, it’s only SEO, but I like it.” – with apologies to The Rolling Stones

Much of the buzz in the SEO world of late has been about the recent updates to the Google Algorithm called “Panda.” A great many have reported their sites took a hit on the SERPs, while an equal, or perhaps greater number of others applauded the changes because it benefited them in some way. Although I haven’t yet studied it fully, my own observations tell me that most of the sites scraping content off the websites I’m responsible for have all but disappeared. Panda must have dried up their revenue stream because they’ve been very quiet for several months now.

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Top 15 Highlights From SEOmoz 2011 Ranking Factors

posted on June 27, 2011

Last week, SEOMoz hosted a Search Ranking Factors webinar or #mozinar (to you Twitter folks out there) that highlighted the latest and greatest in what plays into search results. Search marketing presents huge opportunity for businesses. In fact, for many local and small businesses their success often relies on appearing in the SERPs. If you happened to miss the webinar, here are the top 15 things to consider when doing SEO.

  1. Correlation Isn’t Causation – We all knew that this was coming. If you follow SEOMoz heavily this is one of the most commonly used phrases but for good reason. The illustration pointed out that although their study may bring about correlations between variables it isn’t meant to suggest that they cause one another.

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Into The Minds of Link Builders

posted on February 24, 2011

This isn’t a hidden fact; link building is the missing piece of most online marketing plans. Onsite SEO and content are just part of the game, but there is no part of code you can change that will have an impact on ranking like good, strong, focused links to your site’s pages. Naturally, link building is the one thing we all hate doing. Most SEOs, when you mention link building, will either groan and put their headphones back on, or just cry. But it is a necessary part of SEO.