First of all, please wish TopRank's Online Marketing Blog a Happy 7th Birthday! It was 7 years ago today that I started this blog as an experiment to document industry news and develop my writing skills. With the help of many different people, it's turned into quite a bit more than that. THANK YOU for reading, sharing and contributing your insights. They are all very much appreciated and help fuel the continued publishing of this blog after thousands of posts: 2,

A recent comment on Online Marketing Blog in response to advice on Content Marketing Optimization states: "Why not write less and give more to gain credibility ' reach the audience and the rest will follow?" It makes sense to create great content that people will interact with and share, growing visibility over time naturally. But that's a superficial and often naive approach to content marketing.

"Why should we have a blog?" It's a reasonable question. Nevermind the fact that millions of businesses are blogging and multiples of those millions of customers are reading said blogs. In fact, 23% of the primary Fortune 500 corporations have an external corporate blog. Blogs as a content management system make it very easy for content publishers within a company to surface informative,

Advertising is Dead. SEO is Dead. The list of provocative linkbait goes on and on but savvy practitioners realize that few things just die out. They change. Like advertising. Traditional ad dollars are most certainly moving to digital and as companies look for more ways to take advantage of technology to better connect with customers, social media is becoming the new internet. Advertising as part of the social experience vs.

As consumer use of and time spent on social media sites increases , the opportunities for effective advertising become more attractive to companies in search of customers to connect with. We've given the advice that to grow a social network , a company should participate and engage with communities of interest. That's still great advice, just as it is to consider different advertising options within relevant social channels to create awareness,

Hub & Spoke Content & Social Media Publishing While there's plenty of great Search Engine Optimization advice being published daily on blogs and industry websites, there's not as much from a content marketer's perspective. Having been in the SEO game for over 10 years, I know there's a tendency to give recommendations that focus on web pages, code, links and what those things mean specific to search engines.

When you search Google for "social media consultant" there are about 10,600,000 search results. Yeah, really. Go check and come back. That's more than two times as many search results for "marketing consultant" or "pr consultant" )about 4m each(. Those industries have been around a lot longer, yet the hype has attracted even more content focused on social media.

While traveling recently in New Zealand and a short stay in Sydney, Australia I shot a few videos offering social media marketing tips. Check them out below and you can also view many other tips videos and interviews we've done with search and social media marketing experts on the TopRank Online Marketing YouTube Channel . Tips on Social Media ROI from Sydney Australia near the famous Opera House & Sydney Harbour Bridge. Sorry about the wind, it messed with the audio a bit.

Photo credit: timtak via Flickr Is the social web ready for embedded ecommerce functionality yet? Social Commerce is a very hot topic right now with numerous blog posts , articles and even a few events focused on ecommerce and social media.

Demystifying better social media marketing often starts with doing a better job of connecting with customers. But how can you connect with customers if you don't know who they are? Do you know who your customers are? Do you know what they search for and talk about on social networks? What influences them to buy or to recommend things to others?

As I've been able to travel and meet marketers all over the U.S. and in other countries, I am always interested in learning how companies are viewing the value of their social media efforts. Marketing investments should be predicated by more than chasing the competition, satisfying an someone's ego or acting solely on a gut feeling. A good handle on goals, resources and target audience help determine strategy and tactics as well as how outcomes are measured.

We've established the value of content marketing here through many different posts. Most of the focus has been on creating value from content at the top of the funnel in a buying cycle. That's where a lot of marketing dollars are focused and it's an area of focus for the consulting offered by many online marketing agencies. Content is the source of why search engines exist and therefore, essential for any discussion of SEO .