This is a guest post by Corey Northcutt, who manages a Chicago-based SEO and content marketing agency called Northcutt. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter at @northcuttSEO, and read his SEO blog. There’s no question that building great inbound links to your site is hard work. While many site owners resort to spamming blog comment sections to get their backlinks, that’s neither necessary, nor effective for your SEO efforts. But link building doesn’t need to be as tough as most people make it. Get Your Blog On. 1) Maintain a steady blog. 2) Set up an RSS feed for your blog. MORE >>

Photo credit: Steve Woolf. In the social media age we desperately want to have our cake and eat it too. In fact, we would love to have everyone else’s cake as well but when it comes to the consequences, we scatter like cockroaches when the lights come on. We see all the time how people try to distance themselves from people and things so that they can have the perception of more freedom. ” Well, that may look nice and it might read OK but there could not be any bigger lie that is told in the social media world. Why am I writing about this? Let’s face it. MORE >>

Earlier this week, Klout announced its own version of brand pages -- Brand "Squads." Klout calls these pages a "way of giving influencers a place to be recognized and have a direct impact on the brands they care about most.". And while influencers get excited for their potential to be recognized by top brands, social media marketers also have plenty of reasons to be excited for this cool new tool. This post will break down all the new features Klout Brand Squads will provide, and why they matter to marketers. 1) Brand Influencers. You also have the ability to see the top 100 influencers. MORE >>

If a prospect visited a typical B2B website , I would bet that company would have no way of knowing if they would ever become a customer, or even who they were. You’ve got to have something more than just an online presence, you need engagement. You Can’t Qualify Leads Unless Prospects Engage With You. Just like actors going on stage to perform a pantomime need an audience to respond and engage with them, without it, there would be no point. So when a prospects comes to your website they need to be given the opportunity to engage. So what happens before then ? Are you using them ? MORE >>

In his weekly B2B marketing show, Jeff Ogden, President of Find New Customer s shares a key marketing lesson using wit and humor. We hope you’ll tune in each week for a new Laugh and Learn show as well as our  Mad Marketing TV show. And our newest show, Marketing Made Simple , premiers on May 1st. In this show, he illustrates the importance of selecting words carefully. In B2B marketing, the words you chose mean the difference between huge success and abject failure. This touching story show how selecting the right words can make a huge difference in results. What do you think? MORE >>