If your website is not optimized to place highly on key search terms related to your business, then you are missing opportunities with your business. Public Relations: Previously, PR was seen mainly as a way to increase brand awareness for a company, with minimal connections to how it truly impacted a business. I originally started my career in public relations before moving into the marketing function. Throughout the years, there are several skills that  I’lve picked up that have been essential to my role. Here Pay-per-click programs: PPC programs are a science. MORE >>

Consequently, social platforms now grant businesses the ability to accomplish this with ease. I had an interesting conversation with someone a few weeks ago about the definition of social media and social media marketing. think it’s important to explore the definitions to ensure that we’re on the same page. posted this question to my different social networks and here are couple of responses that came back: I would define social media and social marketing, as an attempt to connect with a niche portion of the population, which utilizes digital channels of communication. MORE >>

The challenge for folks like you and me is determine which of these new analysts have the insight and business acumen to emerge as industry influencers. The landscape has drastically changed for analyst relations over the past few years. When I first started PR, there were just a handful of analyst firms with a few independent firms. In the end, you knew if you had briefings with Yankee Group, Gartner, Forrester, Jupiter and Meta Group, you had your bases covered. And for the company seeking to launch with a bang, Chris Shipley and the DEMO conference was the standard. Conclusion. MORE >>

When used well, LinkedIn is a powerful business networking community and tool. While Facebook is for family and friends; hence why I maintain a private profile, to me LinkedIn, it’s about business networking. personally am more apt to accept a LinkedIn invitation to connect than Facebook. However, there are some pet peeves I have about LinkedIn. Here are my top 5 don’ts, in no particular order: Sending generic invitations to connect : I’ve received dozens of invitations to connect via LinkedIn. One mistake is not customizing the canned invitation. Be bold. MORE >>

For B2B Businesses I think you have to strike a balance. During Web 20 I had a very interesting conversation with John Welsh of UMB Live. He mentioned (and has a post ) that he blocks anyone not directly related to social media and his direct interests from following his tweets. This is in direct contrast to the recent CNN and Ashton Kutcher race to 1 Million followers. For John, this enables him to know exactly who everyone is and provides a higher quality community. While this makes sense I’m not sure about blocking everyone. What is you goal? but will keep everyone else. MORE >>