A fellow member of the LinkedIn Social Media Marketing group posed a great question which he in turn took from Tom Raftery’s blog. Tom’s question was:
 
“Looking back at Social Media, we have had a significant advance (a ‘this year’s big thing’) every year since 2004. 

In 2004 – blogs started to really take off 

In 2005 – [...]

Consumer – or User - generated content (CGC / UGC) is becoming more and more important to the success of online retailers, and to businesses who rely on their website to drive brand exposure and generate contacts.
 
What is Consumer Generated Content?
 
It is content that users (or consumers) write and submit online and can be:
 
·         Product [...]

SEO Success Stories
 
(Actually, this has a PPC Success Story after the SEO success story below. I hope you find them both enlightening and a boost if you ever have the same problems I do J.)
 
It can be infinitely frustrating dealing with clients who only want consultative SEO. In other words, they want a full site [...]

I was doing some research last week on online adspend… the gap between paid and display has grown increasingly over the last few months. The Wall Street Journal  issued a release just after Q2 stating that US spend on internet advertising grew 20% during that quarter, and that the gap between flashy display ads and [...]

 
I got a call a few weeks ago from an exceptionally talented woman I used to work with at a pretty big agency. She is a super hot account manager, and she had been getting some queries from clients through her team indicating interest in SEM services. She called me.
 
The gist of the call was [...]

I have blathered about keyword research a lot in previous posts, SO I’m going to use this post to illustrate how keyword research can help you to effectively develop your website information architecture (IA).
 

Yes, branding is important.
Yes, your users are more important, and the usability and logical structure of your site is vital.
Yes, [...]

SEO continues to be called a ‘waste of time’, ‘evil’, a ‘waste of money’ and worse all over the net, and by numerous different sites. I know I’m not the only SEO proponent banging my head against the proverbial wall.
 
Heck, if SEO is such a waste of time, perhaps the purveyors of these gems of [...]

There is so much misunderstanding of these two terms, how they relate to each other, and which to target. I’m going to try to diffuse that dichotomy. 
 
It’s not a case of the chicken-before-the-egg or vice versa. They are two completely different disciplines, though each can benefit from the other much as SEO and paid search [...]

I realize that spying on the competition may not seem to be of great importance when taken as a stand-alone SEO concept without understanding what you can actually glean from doing so, or knowing what insights the available tools can offer.
 
This post will try to demystify the issue.
 
Why Spying on the Online Competition Can Benefit [...]

Google apparently started blocking ranking software like WebCEO and WPB a few days ago. The subsequent horrified outcry followed by hard-line rebuttals of ‘sooo old hat’ and worse was really interesting to watch and read.
 
At the risk of putting myself in the firing line, I’m going to try to put my point across in defense of [...]