Social Internet Marketing

Last week I sat down with Amy Bartner, engagement and utilty manager at The Indianapolis Star and indystar.com, to talk about social media and the day-to-day tactics that make it successful.

As we all know, the changing ways that people receive and consume news have necessitated a shift in how news media reach their audiences. The traditional method of assembling a team of reporters and photographers to publish a newspaper once, perhaps twice, daily became unsustainable, as the Internet and social media began to offer real-time updates from an infinite number of (sometimes dubious, but always...

In recent years, the explosion of social media has left savvy Internet-goers with choices far beyond Facebook. If you're just about tweeted out, one strong option to consider for promoting your small business is Instagram. With roughly 100 million users, it's a viable method for getting the word out about your organization. Unlike other social media giants, Instagram doesn't focus on a full website; it's mainly available via smartphone app - and if your target audience is smartphone savvy, then you should be too. Follow these tips to help get your Instagramming efforts kickstarted today:

1....

Success in most digital marketing channels can be proven by the numbers. As much as some marketers and communicators don't like to spend their time drowning in math, any truly successful social media program will have the numbers to prove it.

In his new whitepaper The Mathematics of Social Marketing, Jason Falls says that many companies have turned social media marketing into a thriving source of web traffic and revenue, while others still don't fully understand how to leverage the world of social media and business.

According to the report, 45% of small business CEOs do not consider social...

My colleages and I have dispensed a lot of deliverability tips on this blog throughout the years. But wouldn't it be nice to have the most useful nuggets of delivery-related wisdom compiled for easy reference? Well, your wish is our command.

Over the next few posts, we will, ahem, "deliver" the top ten tips to get your email campaigns to subscribers' inboxes in today's email ecosystem Let's start it off with the first two tips ...

Tip #1 - Subscriber Engagement Is Critical to Email Success
In years past, permission was seen as the key to having mail accepted. But we know things are changing. As...

That is a familiar image, isn't it? The well-traveled, world-weary suitcase, littered with stickers from places visited from Alaska to Zimbabwe. The trusty suitcase that is lugged from state to state and country to country: it may be battered and bruised, but it serves its owner well as they globe-trot across the world.

I used to be envious of the owners of those suitcases. That image motivated me to have my own beat-up, decorated travel companion to visit far off places with.

I have been living outside of America for almost nine years now. I lived in Sydney, Australia for just under five years...

The first thing most aspiring marketers learn is the importance of identifying and subsequently engaging those beautiful people called “the audience” no matter where they live online. This lesson gains wholehearted acceptance from everyone in the marketing world. However, the execution becomes complicated, and soon we all learn that feeding something like a blog everyday just simply isn’t enough.

We must put ourselves on the customer's online path.

Think goals first, campaigns second and tactics third.

What’s the goal? Always start there. That’s what the university lecturer taught you a long time...

It’s amazing to think that just a little over two decades ago, consumers had only two options to communicate across long distances: telephone and mail. In today’s mobile, post-PC world, consumers have countless ways to communicate with each other.

They have similar options when it comes to communicating with brands. The question is, how do consumers determine the proper channel for their communication needs? The decision appears to boil down to six factors:

CONTENT: Is this a marketing message?
As we document throughout the Channel Preference Survey, consumers are much more selective about the...

Content marketing, likely because of the term, is often viewed as a function of the marketing department. However, some of the best content marketing is produced by the president or CEO of a business.

The president of a company understands the business and product fully and has the end in mind in all activities. The end is serving customers. For those of you scared of the word “sales,” you actually have to make one to have a customer.

This doesn’t mean that content marketing is reserved for the president or CEO. What this means is that content marketers, their prospective customers, and their...

(Warning: Sarcasm ahead)

Sometimes it’s just too easy. The power to communicate through email, mobile and social is all right there waiting for someone to start flooding the world with information. So you strike out into the world with your content and expect great results.

Using email for monthly news, SMS for quick bites of information and social media for event announcements might seem like a good idea, but you can easily end up with a bunch of disconnected content aimed at way too many targets. At this point, you're just sitting and back hoping for results without a specific goal in mind.

Misu...

As I write this, 93% of UK online consumers are email subscribers and 40% of these subscribers are opening, reading and responding to email on their mobile phones or tablets. If you think these statistics suggest UK consumers prefer email above all channels for receiving offers and information from brands, you are absolutely correct!

A new report from eMarketer confirms why more marketing budget is flowing to permission-based email and why email has become “The Linchpin” of integrated digital marketing strategies.

Among the key findings in the report are these:

• Econsultancy and Adestra’s Email...

This week, Flipboard announced a new version of its application for iPads and iPhones for creating social magazines. It's a very cool product that now has over 50 million users. I watched a demo of the product and recommend you consider creating one of these for your brand, particularly if you are an online retailer that lends itself to a magazine-style format with high quality images and videos.

Here's how it works:

1. Start searching the internet for images using the new content search feature. Any type of content can be included.
2. Select images and "flip it"  into your magazine....

March Madness is only getting madder. The proliferation of social media is driving teams, schools, media, fans, and even mascots to the internet to interact with their fellow basketball loyalists. For those loyalists, the first two days of the NCAA tournament are like a 48-hour Christmas morning. 64 teams, 32 games, upsets, and emerging storylines make this round incredibly exciting on the hardwood and on Twitter.

ExactTarget is headquartered in the Hoosier heartland, so you know we love our basketball. Last week we helped you prepare for the tournament with hashtags, handles and Klout. Now,...

Whether you're an email, mobile, or social media marketer, there's a new piece of research from Motorola that you'll want to get your hands on ASAP. Their 4th Annual Media Engagement Barometer is billed as "a snapshot of the way that people around the world are interacting with media," and whether viewed on its own or in combination with another longitudinal survey like The Future of the Internet from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, the breadth of results are pretty impressive.

Upon perusing the report however, my attention immediately focused on page 49 in which Motorola shared...

In the digital industry, it’s easy to talk about the fall of traditional advertising. While these sources certainly aren’t disappearing forever as many like to suggest, they are most certainly evolving. The Associated Press has long been linked with the print industry. The nonprofit news agency that has worked to fill newspapers is now adapting to the new digital world. In an ironic twist, this longtime print powerhouse is now asking: Are You Adapting?

This video points to the 2012 London Olympics as the tipping point in the sporting world’s digital evolution. We may not have noticed it while...

Who do you think are the most engaged Twitter users in EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa)? Would you have guessed our passionate friends in France, Spain, or Italy? I did.

According to a large global study from GlobalWebIndex, that surveyed over 152,000 Internet users, the Middle East has the world’s most engaged Twitter audiences. In Saudi Arabia, 51% of internet users surveyed were active Twitter users, putting it in first place worldwide. The United Arab Emirates ranked third, with 34% of internet users actively using the social network.

eMarketer writes, "GlobalWebIndex defines “active...

So you're stuck? Staring at your bracket, you've scribbled, scratched, erased and re-filled your bracket multiple times. Not sure what to do? Let us help. 

They say teams are only as good on the court as they are off the court. Typically, this saying refers to the classroom. In today's digital era, though, perhaps that should apply to the internet. More specifically, maybe the saying should go, "A team is only as good as its social media marketing."  

Either way, we wanted to know how the teams stacked up on Klout. Yesterday we simply gave you the handles and hashtags for each team. Now let's...

Everything was going fine. You had set up your email marketing campaigns properly, all of your subscribers were double opt-in, you were sending emails on the right frequency, and your content was exactly what you had promised.

As far as you knew, people loved this stuff.....

But then, out of the blue, Gmail and the other ISPs started blocking your emails! But why? Why? Because those subscribers aren't interacting with your email anymore. They've become disinterested. They've become what are now known as 'the un-engaged.'

Just sending email to your subscribers isn't good enough

Just sending email...

I am proud to announce the next version of Conversations with ExactTarget. Today's interview is with Mark Schaefer, one of the most acclaimed and accomplished marketing consultants in America with a special emphasis in social media marketing. A few of his recent accomplishments include:

• Forbes magazine “Power 50″ social media influencers of the world
• AdAge magazine “Power 150″ marketing blogger
• TweetSmarter 2011 Twitter User of the year
• Peer-elected 2011 B2B Twitter User of the Year
• B2B Magazine (UK) social media book of the year: Tao of Twitter
• Author of two best-selling marketing books
• Seven...

When it comes to the job search, social media has almost become self-destructive. With younger and younger generations adapting to technology and social media faster and faster, digital footprints are being created at younger and younger ages.

Last weekend, ExactTarget had the opportunity to sponsor and attend the 2013 Doster Leadership Conference, a student-run event which connects 100 top student leaders from the Krannert School of Management (Purdue University) with corporate representatives for a weekend-long leadership conference in Indianapolis.

The event's hosts had the foresight to...

For the past three years, our SUBSCRIBERS, FANS, & FOLLOWERS research series has taken an in-depth look at consumer preferences as they relate to email, mobile, and social channels. This time, however, we decided to turn the tables—to look in the mirror at our marketing peers. Are there channels that marketers use disproportionately more or less than consumers? Are we more permissive with technology in our own homes? Are we less concerned about the privacy implications of marketing today? Have all our years as early adopters—internet explorers, if you will—impeded our ability to relate to...