By Ian Cleary, {grow} Contributing Columnist. It is not difficult to drive traffic to your site but what’s the point if visitors don’t stay around and read your blog post, sign up to your email list or buy your product or service? We’re all familiar with the following saying: “Traffic is Vanity, Conversion is Sanity!” ” Well, maybe you’re not familiar with that saying because I just made it up.  But it does make sense! Let’s look at five great social media tools to ensure you attract a relevant audience to your blog posts. Action: Set up Google Author.  MORE >>

Dan Zarella and Hubspot gave the “what is your social media audience worth” pot a good stir last week. It doesn’t matter if you like Hubspot’s formula or not (at least not for this article). One day many businesses will put a value on their social media audience, if it is in the form of monthly impact to their business or the average value of an audience member. Then what? How do you use the value of a like, follower, circler, or similar to improve the value of your marketing and your business? Share your view in the comments below or with me on Twitter (@wittlake). MORE >>

by Jesse Noyes | Tweet this Today’s guest post comes from Richard Hill , VP & Practice Lead, Marketing Automation at Eloqua agency partner Quarry Integrated Communications , and co-author of “The Savvy Marketer’s Guide to Responsive Web Design”. You’ve seen the stats. Smart phones are everywhere. Tablets are seeing rocket ship growth and aren’t coming back to earth. Buyers have gone mobile. Meanwhile, B2B marketers are far behind. But here’s the thing. If you have a website, it’s already mobile, whether you know it or not. People are visiting your sites through mobile devices every day. MORE >>

In part one o f this series, I discussed how content in an online community has to answer the “So What?” question for members. My approach is to go beyond simplistic editorial calendars and, instead, focus on the content’s value to members using “Level of Analysis” and “Member Impact” as a way to define content categories with online communities. The chart from part 1 is repeated here for reference (click to enlarge): The third dimension of this chart defines the categories or types of content – the diagonal bands moving from the lower left to the upper right. That is a missed opportunity. MORE >>

As I enjoyed a mega-popular Kebab restaurant on my street, I wondered about the “secret” of their success. Certainly one factor is the kebab itself — a delicious jungle of salad, meat, and fresh herb sauce that melted like Angel cream on your tongue. Mmmmmm. The other aspect of their success, and frankly the more interesting part for us, is their Facebook presence. The young owner has built an impressive online audience. The fan page attracted thousands of fans from around the country who post pictures and stories about their Kebab experience. Wowzee. frowned. Lesson learned. Like or. MORE >>