This week's top story comes to you from Blackberry. After a few failed attempts at bringing our mobile-obsessed society a decent smartphone, Blackberry introduced the Z10 (an all-touch device) and Q10 (a QWERTY keyboard device) phones. The new phones won't reach U.S. shelves until March or April, but that isn't stopping us from weighing the pros and cons of the devices from what we've learned thus far.
See what else or bloggers were buzzing about this last week of January below!
For many companies, this question boils down to a chicken-egg scenario. Do we need marketing first to generate sales, or do we need sales revenues to justify additional marketing? In either case, how well does our marketing budget align with our business goals and market realities? In speaking to prospective clients, we find many consider marketing as a cost center, not a profit center, and as such it receives a lower priority than product development, infrastructure and sales. In our opinion, this is a serious mistake for any size company. Let's break this question down into some key components.
A few of us at the Kuno office recently had a conversation about the worth of a press release distributed over a commercial newswire. As inbound marketers, we had been using press releases as just one of the many ways to build visibility for client websites (as well as our own) and build legitimate backlinks. But did the tactic actually work anymore? Is it still worth the time (several hours) and cost (a few hundred to a few thousand dollars)? And what is the actual ROI? See our conclusions.
Content curation is the process of sorting through the seemingly endless amount of content on the web, selecting what is relevant to your audience and presenting it in a thoughtful, organized manner structured around a specific theme. Curating content is a great way to stock your blog with fresh topics and increase traffic, but as with everything in life, there is a right way and a wrong way to do it. See the do's and don'ts of curating content here.
In addition to content, design and placement, the rollover effect can increase click-through rate on your calls-to-action (CTAs). A CTA usually consists of an image with a link. The "rollover effect" says that when a user "hovers" over the image, there is a change to the image itself. Maybe it's a color, bold effect, lighting or saturation—sometimes it's even a completely different image. Learn how to create the rollover effect on your CTAs here.
In January, digital and social media marketers were buzzing about Nike’s decision to bring all social media marketing efforts in-house. Many in the industry applauded the move, and even more predicted other big brands will pursue similar strategies in the near future. The news rehashed a social media debate that’s nearly as old as social media itself: Should brands/businesses outsource their social media marketing efforts to an agency? Or is it best to keep all social media efforts within the company? Check out three questions agency clients should ask before bringing all social media marketing efforts in house.
Blogs provide a low-cost platform for demonstrating to your audience that you’re an industry thought leader, building your brand, driving qualified traffic to your web site and engaging your prospects in meaningful dialogue. Though it may sound easy, maintaining an active blog requires careful thought, execution, planning and work. Often inspiration comes easily at first, but after a while the creative well runs dry, leaving you scrambling for content ideas. See 10 great sources to inspire when writing blogs here.
That's all for this week! Have a great Sunday, inbound marketers. We'll see you here again tomorrow.
Photo Credit: Forbes
Known as Hawkeye for her near superhuman copy editing abilities, Lisa Gulasy applies her unique experiences in agency and journalism to manage strategy and day-to-day engagement of client social media profiles and assist and researching and writing blogs, press releases and advanced content. Find her on Twitter and LinkedIn.
