Amazon Acquires Goodreads: Boon or Bust for Small Publishers? + MORE

They may not be talked about much, but forums are a driving force in true social media success. Social Media Explorer has experienced the prevalence of forums first hand. When we begin working with a client we create a Conversation Report, which uncovers research on where online conversations are happening around their brand, competitors and industry…

Recently, Dr. Bharat P. Bhatta of Sogn og Fjordane University College in Norway, laid out a modest proposal in the Journal of Review and Pricing Management: Airlines should charge overweight passengers more for their plane tickets than thin passengers. The result of this move would allow carriers to save money on fuel, which could mean […

Native advertising is all the rage these days. Companies like BuzzFeed and ShareThrough have based their business models on the notion that in-stream, organic-like content will save the day and finally allow everyone to retire those tired and underperforming banner ads to a nice tropical island far, far away…

Goodreads is a social network devoted exclusively to the literary arts. They have 16 million members and a book rating and reviewing system that can’t be beat. In addition, there are genre specific social groups, groups for writers and hundreds of daily book giveaways. “Over just the past 90 days, members have added more than four books per second to the “want to read” shelves on Goodreads…

  

As UI designers, we’re always interested in learning, reading user research, understanding best practices and keeping up to date on all the latest approaches and tactics for building websites and applications.
One of the most exciting concepts we’ve started to apply to our thinking is the mobile-first approach, famously pioneered by designer Luke Wroblewski on his blog and then in his subsequent book…

The Age of Content Strategy
It’s the age of “content strategy” and “content marketing.” Wherever you turn, more and more often, that’s something you’ll hear. In truth, content has been a core part of online marketing ever since the earliest days of search engine optimization. With recent Google algorithm updates, however, such as Panda and Penguin, a solid content strategy has become even more important…

I think too many marketers look at social influence as if it’s some kind of new phenomena. I don’t believe it is. In the early days of television, we used the newscaster or the actor to pitch items to the audience. The three networks owned the audience and there was trust and authority established… so the commercial advertising industry was born…

Content marketing is all the rage, though brands still struggle to attract the right audience, engage readers and convert them to buyers. Simply publishing content is no guarantee anyone is going to see it – or that they’d even want to, if quantity is currently trumping quality.
Great content isn’t great until it’s discovered, consumed and shared, says Lee Odden, our CEO at TopRank Online Marketing and SES New York speaker…

Zack T. asks, “How do I get readers to my blogs?”Related Articles
Now Embed Email Videos with YouTube URLWhy Your Small Business Needs a BlogEmail Marketing Tips: How to Make Groupon Work for Your Company

Traditionally, direct response focuses on benefits: Pile on the benefits, and you can convince anyone to do anything.
But that’s not exactly true.
Benefits make features more relevant to your buyers, translating “it does this” to “it does this for YOU.” But without solid proof, these promises more likely to set off your visitors’ BS alarm than drive action…

An infographic about landing page optimization (LPO) is the focus of this post, walking through the LPO process and then applying a test hypothesis to an example case study.

The Landing Page Optimization Process
Landing page optimization is all about making your pages perform better by hypothesizing how the context of use could be improved with regard to how your visitors are experiencing your landing page – a landing page being a standalone page with a single goal and a single call-to-action (CTA)…

Here’s our daily recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on Marketing Land and other places across the web. From Marketing Land: Email Is Top Activity On Smartphones, Ahead Of Web Browsing & Facebook [Study] Email is the most common activity that U.S. adults do on…

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article…

Thursday is guest post day here at Duct Tape Marketing and today’s guest is MaryAnn Bekkedahl. – Enjoy!
Do you ever wonder how we functioned before email? At work, at home, or on the go, a vast majority of us can’t go 30 minutes without sending, receiving or reviewing our emails (I’m guilty of checking through the night, too)…

Good friend and fellow tool finder, Kevin Mullett recently put up a great presentation with a slew of online tools for search and social media. I’m actually going through the list to make sure we introduce some of these tools on the Marketing Tech Blog (some of them were in yesterday’s SEO Tools list!)…