Inbound Marketing Blog

The vast majority of blog readers don’t leave comments before they leave the blog site. Are you one of them? If so, it might be time to re-think the importance of commenting on blogs. If done correctly, your comments can gain exposure online and increase your network. While your personal blog and social media profiles allow you to share information and express opinions in your own social sphere, commenting on other blogs gives you greater exposure to those involved and interested in your particular niche. This offers an even larger venue to voice your opinion and provide thought leadership.more

If you’ve been through the Mindscape Internet Marketing Academy, you know that it’s important to do your keyword research, filter the list based upon your research, and then start changing your on-page content elements to work in those keywords. However, after doing that, how do you know if you’re really gaining any traction? If you know the keywords you’re targeting, measuring the impact of your efforts is actually quite easy using Google Analytics!more

I’m sure your first instinct is to say, “Heck no…I would never do that!” Are you sure about that? Now, I’m not talking about literally “flying the bird” in the face of your prospects. However, I actually think that would be much better. If you did take such bold action, you’d be doing it intentionally and your message to your prospects would come through loud and clear. I’m talking about working your tail off to understand your buyers, strategically gaining awareness, sharing valuable information to show them you’re worthy of doing business with them, and then taking actions that show them you could care less about them.more

So many times I find myself, as a programmer, diving into a problem with an initial thought of a solution that ends up being way too complex. I don't know if it's programmers in general or just me, but it seems that as I gain more and more coding knowledge and can take on more and more challenging problems, my brain can fall into a complexity trap. Now I have numerous tools (algorithms, patterns, etc.) at my disposal, and at times I tend to attack a problem with one or more of these tools without stepping back, taking a deep breath, and determining which is the simplest way to get something done. These solutions usually work, but the code can become messy and hard to maintain versus the simple way that I failed to see at the beginning.more

Have you Googled yourself yet? Ensuring your online presence is super important, as it should accurately reflect who you are. Whether you’re job searching, networking or trying to work your way into an elite group, it’s a sure thing that someone is going to dig deeper online to discover what you’re all about. To show you an example, I Googled my own name. Here’s how I look to the world: Renee Achterhof – Google Profile Renee Achterhof | Facebook Renee Achterhof | LinkedIn Renee Achterhof, Grand Rapids, MI | My Life Renee Achterhof (RAchterhof) on Twitter Renee Achterhof | Rapid Growth Media Renee Achterhof on the Behance Network Renee Achterhof (shoozer228) on Etsy We don’t necessarily have control over what results show up on which page in Google. That’s why it’s important to see which results do pop up, so that you can refine those pages to the image you hope to convey to those searching for you.more

I’m sure by now everyone has heard of the Panda algorithm update that Google started implementing in late February. Since that time there have been periodic updates to the algorithm, with more on the way. The goal of the Panda update has been to “clean up” the search engine results pages and return more relevant and meaningful results. If you have been involved with article marketing, you know that many of the article sites had become home to some truly horrendous content. I’ve seen countless “articles” that were so bad it looked like someone dropped 250 words in a blender, and then poured them out on a page. Even worse, some of these articles actually showed up at the top of the SERPs.more

I think every business owner has come to a point in their business career when they say to themselves, “Sometimes I think it would be much easier to just go get another job!” Well, if you haven’t, I can assure you I’ve found myself in that position many times, but thankfully it was only a passing thought similar to a gas pain. :) I had a conversation with a business owner a couple weeks ago who was faced with an opportunity to take on a full-time position. He was struggling with the decision to shut down his company and move into the land of employment. As he explained the opportunity to me, I quickly understood the challenge he was facing. He’s amazing at what he does and almost every client he’s worked for gives a glowing review of the value they’ve received throughout their business relationship. His business is doing extremely well and there are no pressing financial disasters or lack of work that would be pushing him in the direction of leaving the world of an entrepreneur.more

Note: This is part one of a series of posts about measuring ROI of Social Media Picture this….. You FINALLY convinced your boss to let you champion that social media marketing effort you’ve been pitching for a year. YAY! You've created an awesome social media strategy, joined Facebook and Twitter (and maybe even YouTube or wherever else your awesome strategy told you to join). You're building your fan base, you're engaging in conversation, and you are in front of your computer every second of every day waiting with baited breath for the next opportunity to respond. Seriously- it is flat out AWESOME! Fast forward 6 months….more

Image Credit: Idea Go If you’ve read my posts about How to Get Started in Email Marketing and How Often to Email Your Customers, you may be thinking: "That’s great information, but how do I build an email list in the first place?" Good question! There are many different list services out there that you can purchase email addresses from, and still I’ve always questioned the success rate. I prefer to build my own lists to ensure that these are people (note: PEOPLE) who have visited the website and either requested information or found it helpful enough to request consistent communications. Building an email list can take time. Here are 8 tips to help you get started with building your list:more

Link building is an extremely important part of search engine optimization and is a critical part of developing an online presence. Unfortunately, it can be a long process and if not done correctly, can result in serious damage to your brand. The good news is that quality link building pays off by helping increase traffic to your site and improve your search engine ranking. Our link building experts collaborated on a list of dos and don’ts to help you get started:more

One of the biggest fears for companies entering the social media world is receiving criticism from users or customers. Often, we hear that they are concerned about what people will say to them, about them, or that they will look bad on social media. Guess what- they are already saying stuff about your brand!! Regardless if feedback is positive or negative, people are talking about your brand. That’s why it is important to monitor these conversations and engage in social media to give your organization a voice. However, determining how to respond when someone is taking about your company on social media can be difficult at first. Start by reviewing the feedback and determining what the tone is. Most comments can be categorized as positive, negative, or offensive. Here is an overview of how to handle each situation:more

Mobile is convenient. Mobile is there with us, no matter where we are or what we do. We don't have to be sitting at home or in the office or in a coffee shop where our laptops are plugged in. Our world is outlet-less, whether we're in a meeting or on the bus or walking downtown. In the past, mobile was the future. It is now the present. So what does your mobile content look like? Is it easily navigational? Is content clear and distinct, or does it get jumbled or lost? Jumbly content is not fun for anyone. So how can you ensure your content is up-to-snuff?more

Can I Just Cut Some Code Already? All I wanted to do was let users share a video link from a web app I was building. I thought it would be easy. And you know what, it probably is. It's probably easier than what I'm going to show you here. But is it simply stated somewhere in Facebook's documentation? Not that I could find. So after piecing together parts of their docs, plowing through search after search and reading a multitude of blog posts, I came up with this solution.more

Contrary to popular belief, the “thrill” of social media has not gone away; if anything, it’s in full swing! I know this because of the increasing amount of questions that we receive from prospects and clients about social media. One of the most common questions I receive from people is how to get more fans/followers. I’ll be honest with you- it’s a question I’ve thought about for a long time. I’ve researched ways to build your fan base, talked to numerous social media folks, and observed what other brands have done trying to get an idea of what the best tactics/strategies are to build a fan base. There are a lot of ideas out there on how to do this, but I still find it difficult to determine exactly what you can really do to build your fan base.more

With Google’s latest Panda update and recent Google Account policy change, search results are becoming more and more customized to user’s individual habits. As a result, it’s becoming a little more difficult to know exactly what your Google search position is. You could be positioning 1 for yourself (c’mon, who doesn’t Google themselves often!?) and position 15 for someone else. As Google starts to merge some Webmaster Tools data into Google Analytics, they are quietly slipping in some cool new parameters that we can track. One the most recent ones that I came across allows us to track the position of the results that showed up for that user! It requires a little bit of set-up but any Ninja who has gone through the Mindscape Internet Marketing Academy will be able to make quick work of this!more

Google Apps for Business is a great solution for companies that want email, calendar and documents hosted in the cloud by Google. Mindscape, where I work, has used Google Apps for Business for a number of years now. It allows me to have aaron [at] mindscapesolutions.com as my email address. What it did not allow in the past was for me to access tools like Google Reader, Checkout, Picasa, and a number of other popular, ancillary services from Google. What I could do, however, was create a second Google account using the same aaron [at] mindscapesolutions.com address. This account had to have a separate password, but as a standard Google Account, I had access to those other Google Services. I wasn’t interested in using my work email to access those other services. So I made it even more complicated. My wife runs her own photography business, www.branderphoto.com. I use aaron [at] branderphoto.com as my personal email. It’s also a Google Apps for Business account. So, when I wanted to access Google Reader, and Checkout and Analytics and Picasa, I had to have a separate aaron [at] branderphoto.com account, with a different password, to access those accounts.more

If you're focused on getting your site to the top of the search engines, you understand the battle we have against spammers (crap sites). Google is constantly trying to further optimize their algorithm to get rid of the spam sites (spam sites, for example, are link sites you'll land on that provide you with no value). If Google always sends users to sites that provide no value, people will stop using them. So it's in Google's best interest to make sure their search results are the best possible. Before, getting to the top of the search engines was a fairly level playing field for spammers (black hat) and real optimizers (white hat). It came down to some basics of optimizing the page to communicate with the search engines and building lots of quality links (I am over simplifying this a bit, but you get what I am saying). Anyone could tell the search engines anything they wanted and the search engine believed them to a certain level. And BIG power lied in the links. Until Panda.more

I had a meeting with a company that doesn’t have a website. Yes, businesses like that do still exist. Even in a day where it seems like you can get a website just about anywhere. They believed that they had to sell online in order to justify the investment in a website. I’m here to tell you there are many, many things a website can do for every business.more

You may have heard that Google+ asked businesses to wait before creating a business profile on the new social network. This is because they are working on some kind of platform or design specific to business use. For those of us frustrated by various businesses use of persona profiles on Facebook, this is great news. It means that Google+ will integrate businesses from the beginning, instead of creating something as an afterthought. Since it looks like it will be a few weeks before we’ll see a business feature in the new platform, I thought it would be fun to share my “wish list” for features I’d like included in this new design. Google- are you listening?!?more

So I finally got into Google+…. YAY! Now what? Here are my thoughts after 24 hours of using this new service. Due to great timing and luck, I FINALLY was able to get in and start using Google +, the newest social media platform from Google. Since I’ve been clamoring for an invite to the exclusive social networking site, you can imagine how excited I am that I actually got in! Now I am the envy of all my peers, also clamoring for an invite, while I get to bask in Google+ elite glory….. I obviously did a lot of research before joining this service so the process of signing up was no surprise to me. When you first start in Google + you are prompted to create “Circles” to organize your friends and contacts. If you are not familiar, the concept of “Circles” is actually pretty cool- Google understands that how we interact with each social circle of our lives can differ greatly. For example, the language and actions you use with your close friends is very different from how you behave in a professional work environment.more