Have you ever felt that your marketing strategy was beginning to take on some unhealthy habits or perhaps fattening up in all the wrong places? Perhaps it's been awhile since you took a long hard look at your strategy and looked at it for what it should be, an ever evolving and improving means of communicating with your customers. Keeping pace with quickly changing Internet marketing trends can be exhausting, and frankly overwhelming. However,

If you're old enough to remember the classic movie, Cool Hand Luke, there's a moment when a rebellious prisoner played by a young Paul Newman refuses to "go along" with prison rules despite some grueling punishment. The warden, played by Strother Martin, made the famous observation about a lack of communication. The failure to communicate is probably the most important cause of failure with client and internet marketing consultant relationships.

Top 250 Internet Retailers Social networking for retailers makes sense right? Make your brand visible where your consumers are spending the most time. This infographic from Campalyst shares information on one of the things that helps makes retailers successful online, a social presence.

Photo Credit: Geoff Livingston - Flickr [Note from Lee: The growing trend towards integration of marketing and communications disciplines has brought a tremendous demand for guidance and insight. I'm happy to say that my friends Geoff Livingston and Gini Dietrich have published a new book about just that. We rarely publish guest posts but the message of integration and optimization in this book blend perfectly with our core messages here.

At TopRank Online Marketing, we are fortunate to provide consulting to quite a few innovative B2B companies that serve other marketers. A great example of that is PRWeb and parent company, Vocus, both long standing clients . In late 2011 Vocus welcomed Jason Jue as Chief Marketing Officer. As Vocus & PRWeb's Account Manager at TopRank,

Release Your Internal Marketing Warrior In March of this year I made a decision: I wanted to get healthier. The problem I have always faced is that I didn't see the point of exercise, just for the sake of exercise. Treadmills and stationary bicycles never did much for me, but I was looking for a way to regain some focus and start down a healthier path. About a month ago I spoke with my good friend Ali who had recently started a training program to become a yoga instructor.

Are you optimizing your conference experience? TopRank receives a lot of value from having me speak at conferences but you don't have to be a speaker to realize a positive return from events. Small, large online or offline, there are numerous ways to optimize and maximize your return on conference involvment both in the short and long term. If your company is considering whether to send you to events because of uncertain return or benefits, show them the following list.

Actionable Social Analytics This recent infographic by awareness takes a dive into social analytics. In an era where virtually every brand is online, it is essential that action is being taken off of the data we are collecting from social networks. This infographic provides not only some of the Key Performance Indicators )KPI( that your company should be tracking, but how to calculate these numbers as well.

When you have a business that relies on attracting new business online the sheer volume of options can be confusing. Should offline advertising efforts transfer to online? Maybe email marketing? What about SEO or the hot topic, social media? So much focus is placed on tactics and channels, that a lot of misplaced digital marketing budget gets wasted or spent inefficiently. To bring some clarity to the myriad online marketing options available,

If you've been involved with marketing on the web for 10 years or more, could you have imagined what the web looks like today back in 2002? Considering the changes over the past year between Google, Facebook, Pinterest and Mobile, looking ahead just 12 months can be a challenge. The state of constant change requires an adaptable approach. One that involves a cyclical process of planning, implementation, scale and refinement. During that process of continuous optimization ,

Marketing Deja Vu Getting You Down? At some time or another we have all experienced that eerie sense of familiarity where we've "been there" or "done that" before. Whether it is an actual memory or simply a "brain fart", deja vu is an interesting experience. Let's assume for a second that deja vu is real.

While I've bene in Belgium the past week for the fine Fusion Marketing Experience , I decided to take a day trip to Paris yesterday since it was only 2 hours away by train. As you may know, I do a bit of traveling. The quality of the experience, memories and the stories you get to tell after visiting other countries are usually the most meaningful. Sure "stuff" is fun to get, but how often do you think "I met too many cool people" vs.

Content Marketing World, We Found A Home This recent video from Content Marketing Institute Founder Joe Pulizzi, provides some background into how Content Marketing World came to be. If you are big or small brand, B2B, B2C, or virtually any organization that creates content this conference is for you. Scheduled this year for Sept 4-6 in Columbus, Content Marketing World is now the largest content marketing conference in the world.

The new book on internet marketing we've recently published, " Optimize ", has been very well received and I've been doing a number of interviews and speaking engagements )as you do( around it. One of the most common questions I hear concerns the challenges of implementing an integrated "optimized and socialized content marketing" approach within an organization. This is a reasonable question, because while it makes sense that content,

Email continues to be one of the most effective online marketing tactics but many companies struggle to establish benchmarks or successfully improve performance. How many people are receiving, reading and acting on email messages? Those are all key questions to improve email marketing performance. Email open rates can vary depending on the target industry and enad even the job function of the prospects. Testing to improve email marketing performance is essential,

Link Building for Business Blogs Doesn't Need to Be Risky As a key component of a hub and spoke online marketing strategy, blogs can be very effective for social media network engagement, online PR, customer service, and as search engine optimization assets. While there are numerous cases studies of business blogs )I like to think Online Marketing Blog is one( providing tremendous value,

Mighty Trends in Mobile Marketing Every day we see mobile being used more and more for online shopping, local searches, email, social networking. And that is just scratching the surface. This infographic from CultureLabel.com provides insight into the astounding use of mobile for Internet searches, as well as why mobile friendly marketing should be an essential part of your online marketing strategy. Highlights include: 87% of the world's population have mobile phones 300,

How Can You Become A Better Influencer? Tip: You'll attract more bees with honey than you will with vinegar! Last week Lee Odden shared a post on attracting the attention of influencers online. Whether we're talking about influencers with mass appeal, or those that have a closer and more personal relationship with their followers, each person presents an opportunity to learn and grow. That got me thinking,

In the search engine marketing world, effective online marketing comes down to surfacing keyword opportunities that reflect a demand for solutions )products/services(. Content about those products is created and optimized to attract search traffic for popular and relevant keywords. Niche products often suffer from a universe of keywords that have low popularity counts and that creates a challenge. Because in the world of a SEO, accountability starts with driving more organic,

That's Old News! [Infographic] This new infographic from Schools.com dives into social media and how it is quickly replacing traditional journalism as a widely used news source. Highlights: Facebook makes up 59.5% of news consumed online Since 2009, traffic to news sites from social media has increased by 57% "5 Ways Businesses Are Using Facebook Timelines" New Facebook changes are opening the doors to even greater creativity for brands.