We've been hearing )and talking( a lot about curation and how helpful it can be for companies. As you all know, I'm sure, great content is one sure thing in today's marketing arena; it takes the front seat to anything and everything else. When you do a search, what are you using? Content. When you .

It's amazing; with the vastness of the Information Highway, there are still potholes to fill. An article on finding your online customer base is one of them. In the SERPs, you get answers like, "add a credit card" or "accept checks online". Completely useless, so I won't even get into that. Hopefully this article will provide a better answer. You can start a Facebook Fan page, a Twitter account, a Quora account, and wait for your customer base to find you.

We've been talking a lot about SEO and social media around Level343, lately. Partly because it's what we do, and partly because there's always room for learning better strategies for higher returns. But, what are the returns? You read on all these blogs and articles how social media returns are XYZ. SEO returns are ABC. SEO mixed with social media brings A-Z. Yet, have you ever noticed how the experts seldom agree with each other ?

Organic )echo: organic, organic, organic (' It's magical. It's mystical' it's damn hard to explain, is what it is. I think that's why, when you search for "what is organic SEO content", you don't get much back. Oh, yeah, except for that article we wrote that one time . Organic Search In search engine optimization, organic means not paid . Paid search and organic search are polar opposites. You don't pay for ads. You don't pay for links.

Obviously, you want your online business to succeed instead of flop. Like most business efforts, you have to learn what to do - very few people succeed by jumping in with both feet. What usually happens is they jump in, find out the water is over their heads and they've forgotten how to swim. Instead, learn how to swim before you jump; the waters of online marketing and online business are really deep. Here are a few swimming lessons,

Stark, raving mad and angry enough to do some damage. That was me after having what started out as a quick, pleasant Q & A. This article about social media ROI is what resulted from the conversation, after my editor took out all the cuss words and indecent language not fit for general consumption. Oh yes, the topic was "How do you measure your social media ROI?" Tip of the Day: Social network automation is not the same as measuring social media ROI.

I'll willingly admit that I'm not always the first to hear of a new term. My first reaction to "have you heard of [insert your term here]" is to go on a researching expedition. Eventually, I'll talk about it on Facebook, Twitter, and sometimes the SEO forums I hang out in. Now, DAO - Digital Asset Optimization - wasn't what I'd call a "familiar" term, yet I've seen it around a lot lately. In fact, when someone mentioned "DAO",

The fact that people use SEO copywriting services really isn't earth shattering news. How each business uses those services and/or tools is really up to the business owner. What it boils down to is how these services affect your business. Do you know where your next dollar is coming from? Have you been blogging and networking, only to see you're still in the same place you were a year ago? Have you spent hundreds of dollars and tons of hours, only to see minimal ROI?

When I went into marketing/communications in the 80's, things were simpler. I spoke 5 languages, which pushed me into this field. What else could I do, be a translator? Not on your life. Not when I could be creative, come up with quantitative studies and research why / how people buy. It seemed simple, right? You have a product and you have to figure out a way to sell said product. You had magazine ad space, TV commercials, newspapers' every day, everywhere you looked,

5 seconds. That's all you have to reach out a grab someone's attention as he or she scans through email for eye-catching headlines. 50 characters. That's all the space you have for to create a credible, tantalizing, valuable, appealing, relevant, descriptive, interesting headline for a high open rate. Doesn't sound like too much to ask' I mean, 50 characters is plenty of room. Granted, it's 15 less than you're allowed to see for titles on Google's SERPs,

Marketing may sound boring to some, I mean' who cares about facts, figures, data and trends. It's a business, however, much like any other business - except maybe more cutthroat in today's online presence. Marketing plans are at the front-line of a very competitive war. Only, in this war no one gets to surrender. In a world of hostile takeovers, buyouts, plain mismanagement and potential anti-trust issues, there are no survivors. If you're not eating,

Image by Rebekah May It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory. - W. Edwards Deming It's safe to say the way search engines work is changing; but then, it's been safe to say that since the first engine rolled out. Is SEO changing, though? Think about it: Since people first started using the Web to advertise their business, they've been hiring other people to figure out how to make sure their business gets visibility. Search ranking, and thus, SEO,

Out there in the big wide world of search engines and sites, you have ads and you have search results. Your website is getting traffic from both. The search results go to your Home page, while the ads go to your Products page. Both pages are landing pages; the visitor "landed" on them from wherever they clicked. Consider the Landing Page A landing page is extremely important, especially those for ads. You're spending money on those ads,

I've known for years that being social is about the people you're engaging. This is especially true for social tools like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace )although MySpace is' well, we won't go there, but it probably doesn't amount to much anymore(, etc. Even the definition of "social" includes the word "interaction". -And, how can you be truly successful in business without building some kind of relationship with someone ?

If you pay attention at all, it's easy to see how the economic crisis has reached into our everyday lives. Businesses with an online presence are going through a consumption crisis. Faced with current, real issues and future, theoretical issues, business owners and consumers are taking two distinct attitudes: no consumption or over consumption. Save it all or spend it all. Interestingly enough, much of the compulsive consumption is happening online. With affiliate marketing,

Image credit: Why Choose When You Can Have Both ? by an untrained eye Working in today's niche markets, we all want to know if there's a magic bullet. Is there a way to influence your buyers, clients, fans and/or Twitter followers to do what you want them to do? With so many tools to use, decisions have to be made about which shortcuts to take. However, several studies resulted in somewhat unusual findings on what persuades people to act.