How To Increase Twitter Engagement By 324% – This infographic from Quicksprout has an absolute wealth of statistics and tips on how to generate a better ROI on Twitter – implement some of these suggestions into your strategy and watch those engagement rates climb. MediaBistro
62% Of Marketers Say Local Search Is Getting Harder – Read the opinions of hundreds of search agencies, consultants and business owners who logged in during a recent InsideLocal webinar. Search Engine Land
14 Stats to Inform Your 2014 Social Marketing Strategy – While no single industry statistic should stand alone in informing future plans and strategies, a broader snapshot of social network trends, social consumer behaviors and brand social media results can help reveal the big picture of social as we head into 2014. Social Media Today
33% of Paid-Search Clicks Coming From Mobile Devices – Mobile devices drove consumers to spend more time online while on the go. Paid search marketers worldwide allocated 34.4% to mobile devices in 2013, with phones capturing 17.7% and tablets receiving 16.7% — up from 20.5% in 2012. More than one in three global paid-search clicks originated from mobile devices during the 2013 early shopping season. The biggest driver was from tablets, where clicks rose from 8.7% of total clicks in 2012 to 16.3% in 2013. MediaPost
Report: Digital Ad Spending to Approach $10 Billion This Year – Based on the preceding news item, this comes as no surprise, but the figures are huge. Ad spending across all devices will grow 15.7% to $42.6 billion. In 2014, eMarketer projects total spending on desktop ads will increase by just 0.4%, while mobile ad spending will grow another 56% to nearly $15 billion. – BtoB
12 (of the) Best Content Marketing Infographics of 2013 – Discover the best practices for creating effective infographics and helpful infographic design tools and resources. Webbiquity
Six Pinterest Tools for Your Blog – Check out these six Pinterest tools to make the most of your site’s visual content. SpinSucks
B-to-B Digital Ad Revenue Up 25% in First Half – According to American Business Media’s most recent Business Information Network (BIN) Report, total B2B media and information company revenue increased 4.4% in the first half of the year to reach $13.11 billion, led by a 24.8% increase in digital advertising revenue. B2B
Twitter Pushes Promoted Account Ads Into Timelines, Rolls Out Conversion Tracking Tool – As Twitter closes its most important year to date, the company is rapidly adding features in a concerted effort to boost revenues and compete with Facebook and Google for advertising dollars. Promoted accounts, one of Twitter’s few ad products currently available, are now coming to the timeline via the company’s iOS and Android apps. ClickZ
Yahoo Slips Behind Google, Facebook and Microsoft In Online Ad Share – According to eMarketer, Yahoo!, long the country’s second-largest ad seller, will cede share of net U.S. digital ad revenues to Facebook and Microsoft. AdAge
Only 12% of Businesses Take an Integrated Approach to All Marketing Activities – The inability to integrate marketing campaigns is at least partly due to the failure to utilize relevant technologies. Less than a fifth of respondents (19%) said that they are currently using multichannel campaign management technology, though more than half (55%) are planning to begin using it in the next 18 months. eConsultancy
5 Biggest Social Media Lessons of 2013 – We still have a ways to go in understanding and applying social media to the business world, but there was no shortage of lessons to glean from 2013. Mashable
Hit By Panda and Confused About Low-Quality Content? – Getting hit by Google Panda can be confusing for many webmasters. But one important Google Analytics report can help Panda victims get on the right track and quickly. This post includes detailed instructions for creating and exporting the report. Search Engine Watch
Facebook Page Insights Now Include Real-Time Data – Facebook introduced two updates to its page insights aimed at giving page administrators a much clearer picture of both the present and the past. MediaBistro/All Facebook
The Shape of Things to Come: Google in 2014 – How will Google evolve after the acquisition of Wavii, Behav.io, PostRank, Grapple, and machine learning and neural computing technologies? Gianluca Fiorelli paints a picture of Google in 2014, based on entity search, semantic, and über-personalization, covering how Google’s recent acquisitions will interact with one another in order to shape our search experience. Read this informative and definitive post. Moz
Twitter Alerts Gains New Features, Rolls Out to Additional Countries – Twitter’s Alert feature is becoming much more robust. Launched back in September, the goal of Twitter Alerts is to provide pertinent information in times of crisis. MarketingLand
Top 20 YouTube & Video Marketing Stories the Year – YouTube dominated the video marketing headlines again this year, but Vine and Facebook made waves, as well. These were the 20 biggest stories in 2013. ClickZ
Visual Search May Offer Deeper mCommerce Engagement – Recent advancements in the area of visual search are setting the stage for a major shift in how people interact with the world around them and how those selling can better interact with those buying. Visual search technology is entering real viability at a critical time for an industry undergoing a tremendous amount of upheaval. Mobile Commerce Daily
Real-Time Marketing: The Agility to Leverage ‘Now’ – [SlideShare] Digital channels are ‘on’ 24/7, a fact that’s as true for brands as it is for traditional media. Organizations struggle to keep up, not to mention remain relevant. All marketing organizations must now consider to what degree they will function in real time. New research from Industry Analyst Rebecca Lieb defines real time marketing (RTM), identifies the six RTM business scenarios, addresses the benefits, challenges on how to execute and best practices of RTM. She outlines how companies can move into real-time readiness. Rebecca Lieb, Altimeter
Report: Email Volume Rises 13% in Q3 – A study by Experian revealed a rise in open rates when a brand’s name was included in the subject line of transactional emails, such as shipping and order confirmations, order cancellations and return confirmations. What are you doing to make your email stand out? BtoB
From the Online Marketing Community
On Why a Transition From Optimizing for Search Engines to Optimizing for Customers is Essential David Black said, Thankfully the days of posts with illiterate titles based solely on the top results from a quick Google keywords search may soon be over.
It’s always possible to write articles or build web pages that customers want to see whilst using simple SEO techniques to help people find them. Really good content will get pushed around with social media and result in good SERPS.
Derek Miller said, Really good article Lee and a lot of valid points. If companies do not make the change to focus on customers they will be left behind their competitors that do. Thanks for sharing.
Eva said, Great Insight. I think one of the problems firms face is they are too focused in what they do rather than what customers need. The regular meetings revolve around what happened rather than “how can we help you achieve your strategic objectives?”. Add to that marketing being separate to the account manager people and you end up with SEO stuffed content in danger of falling into the “no one cares” about category. I believe research is critical is answering this debate, yet many companies are reluctant to ask their customers the critical questions. I would love to know if others have experience this.
What’s Your Take?
Will 2014 be the year more businesses take an integrated approach to marketing? Will you be optimizing for the customer journey?
Wishing you all a very happy New Year! Thanks for reading.
