The main problems targeted are keeping the pipeline full of marketing-qualified leads and automating the process of nurturing demand not yet ready to buy. 7) Lead nurturing — automates follow up communication, is drip or event-triggered, and allows marketing to educate, persuade, and accelerate buyers as they move through the purchase process to the point where they become “sales ready.” m gearing up to write a market overview about this space, so hearing from you early in the process will help to shape that research. I’m sure I forgot a few. Feel free to chime in if I did. MORE >>

Julie Shumaker writes that “Setting realistic goals, measuring the right thing, and establishing a baseline&# are all key parts of the process. title tags, and viewing SEO as a one-time process rather than an ongoing discipline. Rand Fishkin extols the virtues of and details the process for using the cannonical rel parameter to resolve duplicate content issues with less technical muss and fuss than implementing a 301 redirect. Digg this! Which factors are really most important in search engine rankings? How do search engines treat different forms of keywords? MORE >>

How are consumers and b2b decision makers using social media in their buying processes? 70% of bloggers are organically talking about brands on their blog, and 38% of them post brand or product reviews. At its current rate, Twitter will process almost 10 billion tweets in 2010. Social Marketing Lifts Organic Conversions by MarketingSherpa. ** 5 Stars. According to MarketingSherpa research, marketers working in social media report an average 27% conversion rate for organic search traffic, while those not using social media reported a 17% rate. last year (2009). MORE >>

If 2009 was the year many marketers puzzled over, poked at and pondered incorporating social media into their marketing mix, 2010 was the year of diving in. According to a HubSpot study, 71% of marketers viewed Twitter as a useful marketing tool last year, up from just 39% in 2009. Liza Hausman explains how feeds, traditional search and social network search can work together and steps through “four ‘musts’ of on-site social optimization&# for organizations. She shows how to identify and emulate organizations that are “truly social.&#. MORE >>

In 2009 and 2010, we saw microblogs and tumblelogs such as Posterous and Tumblr gain in prominence and universality. Unlike traditional platforms such as WordPress and Blogger, microblogs simplify and expedite the process of sharing ideas, experiences via text as well as other forms of rich media. By discovering, organizing, and sharing relevant and interesting content from around the Web through their social streams of choice, curators invest in the integrity of their network as well as their relationships. If drinking from the glass, it is then half empty. startups. MORE >>