Time to kick back and catch up on the latest great reading from Sigma and around the web !
How will 2014 be different from 2013? Numbers indicate the economy is improving at a rapidly expanding rate; the housing market is continuing its upward trend; the unemployment rate is falling. But what does 2014 hold for YOUR business? Let’s take a look at some possibilities.
A client said to me last week, “We’re trying to keep it simple, so we started using one form for all of our landing pages — but that doesn’t work, does it?” No, it doesn’t. . . but that begs the question of how many forms you actually need, and how to know when to use which form. Let’s take a look at how to develop a strategy for form creation, naming conventions, and multiple uses for a single form.
Measuring marketing effectiveness has always been a challenge. According to the
Unica State of Marketing 2013 report, nearly 60% of respondents listed “measurement, analysis and learning” as their top IT bottleneck, whereas last year, they overwhelmingly viewed “IT support of marketing needs” at the top. Additionally, more than 60% identified “turning data into action” as their top organizational issue.
[This post originally appearred on HubSpot’s blog on December 27, 2013.] There are hundreds of new top-level domains coming available in 2014. As a marketer, it’s imperative to know how these new entities will impact your web presence. For the past 20 years, there have been about 280 top-level domains. All that has started to change in 2013, with the pending release of over 1300 more top-level domains.
Creating quality content for your inbound marketing campaigns is a daily challenge. We always bump up against lack of time, resources and writing skills that hinder our ability to create the content we’d like. To make life a little easier, here are 10 content hacks for software company blogging. See if one or more of these gives you some new ideas.
Whether you know it or not, your data is under attack. Do you use Gmail, or Live.com, or another web-based email service? Don’t you think hackers are trying to beat down the doors to that service right now? Do you use any cloud-based services? How about surfing the internet? Do you use social media? We all work in a wide variety of internet-based apps and services. All of these are targets for attacks where your data could be compromised, or shared with a competitor, or simply disappear altogether!
…and Some of our Favorites From Around the Web!
4 Types of Content Every Site Needs
Content is a nebulous topic, it’s hazy, vague, ill-defined. Working as a content strategist I’m often asked similarly nebulous questions. For example – ’what sort of content should we create?’ I’m a firm believer that content should be goal-driven. By this, I mean that what you create should be driven by what you want to achieve. What do folks ultimately want to achieve?
With Google getting better and better at recognizing the true relevancy of pages, we can’t stay focused on keywords. In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains how focusing on the right topics and being relevant to the right people can drive more valuable traffic than simply ranking for keywords.
15 Ways Marketing Automation Can Maximize Your Content’s ROI
By Paul Roetzer published January 9, 2014. In order to realize your performance potential, and maximize your content marketing return on investment (ROI), you’re going to need the right marketing technology. Marketing automation has the ability to expand the value and impact of your content, capture lead intelligence, improve lead-to-sale conversion rates, drive repeat purchasing, and enhance the overall customer experience.
This post originally appeared on Inbound Insiders, a new section of Inbound Hub. To read more content like this, subscribe to the Inbound Insiders section. Another change in Google’s algorithm means another change in strategy for all of us inbound marketers.
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