This is a guest post by Brad Shorr. Check out his earlier posts on How to Hire Your Social Media Marketing Partner and How to Hire Your SEO Partner . It's very difficult for small and mid-size firms to select the right interactive marketing agency " as evidenced by how often agencies get fired, and how frequently client-agency relationships subsist at a low level of productivity and mutual satisfaction.

This is a guest post by Anita Campbell. When my company, Small Business Trends, LLC, first purchased BizSugar in the summer of 2009, the best way I could describe it was as a miniature version of Digg, except that BizSugar focused soley on sharing information geared toward small and mid-sized businesses. This is still true. But as BizSugar has grown over the last couple of years, it's also become a small business networking site where business owners can discuss issues,

This is a guest post by David Rodnitzky. Having the best prices and largest selection of products means nothing on the Internet if you don't back it up with incredible customer service . Treat customers badly and you will be out of business - period! Bad customer service will get you banned from major advertising networks, skewered in organic results, and ridiculed on social networks. Here are the top ways consumers can crush your business online.

This is a guest post by Brad Shorr. Want more? See How to Hire Your SEO Partner from November. After taking the social media plunge, companies quickly discover that it is vastly more complicated and time-consuming than they thought. The normal response is, HELP! But companies must avoid a panicky response, because hiring a social media marketing )SMM( partner requires careful study. As I'll run down in a minute,

It's my birthday and I have some great news! In January of 2011, I said that I'd make our Internet Marketing Posts of 2011 subscriber only . And I did . Many loyal readers have checked in on the newsletter throughout 2011 to get both evergreen content , the content that typically embraces these monthly updates, in addition to something completely new, monthly digital trends - the stuff you use for presentations and proposals,

This last year Google brought a large number of algorithm changes to the table. Although these changes helped increase traffic and rankings to many large corporations such as YouTube and eBay, it hurt a large majority of small businesses. According to Search Engine Land , some domains saw a 94% loss in visibility, and others were left picking up the pieces after they lost 80% of their keyword positions. Consider this graph by Sistrix , created to describe where mahalo.

This is a guest post from James Bentham. SMS, really? As most brands and organizations now have a mobile optimized version of their website, the focus is now on encouraging users to travel to your site and interact with the brand itself in order to push increased revenue. Experienced marketers will tell you that customers are much more likely to respond to campaigns that engage them on a personal level.

This is a guest post by Harrison Jones . Onsite optimization of websites is the most important factor in ranking better in search engine results. You can build all the links you want, but if your website isn't optimized, Googlebot won't be able to crawl the site properly. Over the past several years, Google and Bing have released guidelines for webmasters to make websites more crawlable.

This is a guest post by Brad Schorr. Hiring an SEO specialist is one of the most important decisions you will make in your pursuit of online marketing success. It is also one of the most perplexing. There are two enormous issues with search engine optimization that hinder your ability to zero in on the right partner: Rapidly changing, constantly evolving rules.

This is a guest post by Andy Havard. Internet marketing strategies vary depending on the nature of the blog, brand, or business and alter with accordance to their physical and digital size and their particular niche. When it comes to marketing any organization, product, or service on the web,

This is a guest post by Amanda DiSilvestro. Many current CEOs and business owners often have more to worry about than the 50 ways social media can drive traffic to a website or the 100 ways to help improve a website's page ranking. In other words, they have more to worry about than trying to keep up with the latest and greatest marketing tactics. However, CEOs and business owners do have to worry about hiring new employees. As early as seven years ago,

This is a guest post by Lucy Hunt. In the past, maintaining consistent branding was a much less complex exercise than it is today. Before the explosion of everything digital, sustaining branding consistency used to be a relatively straightforward task which involved one-way communication with little or no feedback from consumers via a handful of separate channels.

This is a guest post by Preston Ehrler . As a business owner, do I really have time to blog? I'm a business owner too, and I realize that we are already pressed to our limits for time. We are responsible for everything, including finding new business, working with our existing customers, interfacing with suppliers, running our books, and infinitely more.

A few years ago, a colleague of mine was given a tremendous responsibility to oversee the social media department at a prestigious well known NYC-based public relations firm. Less than a year later, she was sent packing up her desk, a casualty of a company that jumped into that shiny toy syndrome that people call social media. As more companies jump into social media, they, too,

This is a guest post by Julian Rockwoord, a product manager at Signal . For small businesses, marketing often takes a back seat to day-to-day operations. They acknowledge that marketing is important; yet there are only so many hours in the day. Compounding the challenge: Consumer use of emerging technologies is moving faster than a typical business owner can keep up with. That's why at Signal ,

This is a guest post by Shannon Evans Suetos . Social media, like many things in life, is about relationships. If you don't build a great relationship )online or offline(, you won't accomplish much. That said, how is social media like dating? You can apply "proper dating etiquette" to just about every aspect of social media. Don't Just Talk About Yourself Ever been on a first date and realize you couldn't get one word in? I think most of us have.

This is a guest post by Amy Porterfield . Selling yourself is hard. But it's next to impossible to thrive in a world that's hyper-engaged if you refuse to bust out of your shell and, well"brag a little. That's right: brag. Bragging is a way to prove you know your stuff. As a good friend of mine says, "If you don't brag with specificity, authenticity and passion, no one will ever know what a true rock star you are.

This is a guest post by Amanda DiSilvestro. Sometimes when I think of Facebook, I can't help but think addiction. Coffee and cigarettes I can quit, but for some reason Facebook has a hold on me, and after doing some research, I have found that I am not the only one. According to a Nielsen study, in 2010 the amount of time the average person spends on Facebook was about 14 minutes per day, or seven hours per month. Even more astonishing,

I hit inbox zero for the sixth or seventh time this week in not one but two email accounts which feed in 13 email addresses total. Once an impossibility, it's now an everyday occurrence. In fact, it's now a true mindset. Because I've streamlined this process so well, I figure other people would benefit from my tips to make inbox zero a true reality. This is especially important as web users have the expectation of fast replies in our fast paced social media world.

This is a guest post by Lior Levin . LinkedIn has enjoyed explosive growth since its debut in 2003. The real question is whether or not you're making the most of your LinkedIn efforts and networking in general? LinkedIn is so much more than social networking for businesses and business people - it can totally change how you run your business as a whole. Here's some of our favorite tips to get the most out of your LinkedIn experience: Be Professional Remember,