Clues for Ranking with Google Caffeine
Source: http://www.revenews.com/ctmoore/clues-for-ranking-with-google-caffeine/
Google offered a public preview of Caffeine back in August 2009, and marketers were given a few important clues as to how to adjust their SEO strategy in preparation for the full Caffeine roll-out. First, frequent content production and social media participation seem crucial to the Caffeine algorithm. In fact, this is reflected in how Caffeine indexes and stores results more quickly. This makes Caffeine seem designed to deal with how the web has evolved from a being a more passive medium to a more interactive and social one.

Leading Brands And Being First In The Mind
Source: http://www.brandingstrategyinsider.com
Being first is worth nothing. Being first in the mind is worth everything. This is the essence of creating a brand. In our investigation of brands, very few leading brands were literally ever first. Usually there were a few mis-starts before someone figured out how to get into the consumer's mind.

5 Ways to Rock Customer Review Sites
Source: http://www.ducttapemarketing.com
There's been a fair amount of coverage recently about the ins and outs, good and evil, usefulness and rudeness of customer rating and reviews sites. No matter how you feel about these social recommendation sites, if you own a small business of any kind, it's time to get serious about figuring out and playing the game.

The Tale Of Customer Support On Twitter
Source: http://www.twitip.com
Many of us have read the story on how Comcast used Twitter to become a front runner of good customer support on Twitter. Frank Eliason which is the manager behind @comcastcares is probably the most recognized customer service manager here in the US. He has proved that costumer support can be done on Twitter, and done the right way you can turn a bad apple into a shining star. We also can use Twitter to provide good customer support for our personal brand.

Find the Biggest, Baddest, Smartest, Devil's Advocate to Challenge Your Ideas
Source: http://blog.asmartbear.com
It's not just about testing the mettle of your ideas, it also forces you to refine and clarify your marketing messages, your target customer profile, and your feature set. When you're being grilled there's no room for being generic about how you're different from the competition, no leniency for not knowing exactly what customer pain you solve, and no clemency for wavering on your company values and what compromises you're willing to make.

Google Unleashes Click-To-Call Mobile Search Ads
Source: http://www.mediapost.com
The two-step process to show a click-to-call business phone number in ads on mobile devices with full Internet browsers requires AdWords advertisers to set up a local extension to add a business phone number and check that you chose to show the ad. From there, customers can click to call the business from the ad. If your campaigns are already set up this way, the phone numbers will display automatically. Google will charge the same for click-to-call ads as the cost for a click to visit the business's Web site.

The Ultimate Conversion Optimization Reading List
Source: http://www.bryaneisenberg.com
A good conversion consultant should know all the tactical issues but also be well grounded in buyer psychology, persuasion, social psychology and dynamics, sales (online and offline) strategy, and the nature of advertising and media.

Get Ahead of the Location Game
Source: http://www.openforum.com
You might have already seen some hints of what local will do for you by using Google Local, but rest assured that this is just the tip of the iceberg. If you realize that more and more people are using smartphones, and that more and more people are searching for your business while mobile, you're going to have to shift some attention into how you show up in the location-aware world.

Google Search Is Getting More Social
Source: http://googleblog.blogspot.com
Late last year we released the Social Search experiment to make search more personal with relevant web content from your friends and online contacts. We were excited by the number of people who chose to try it out, and now Social Search is available to everyone in beta on google.com.

The Way I Work: Paul English of Kayak
Source: http://www.inc.com
The engineers and I handle customer support. When I tell people that, they look at me like I'm smoking crack. If you make the engineers answer e-mails and phone calls from the customers, the second or third time they get the same question, they'll actually stop what they're doing and fix the code. Then we don't have those questions anymore.

Could Your Blog be Ruining Your Business?
Source: http://www.copyblogger.com
Many of you began blogging to get more business. I'm sorry to tell you that many of you are doing the exact opposite. Your blog isn't getting you more business - it's actually sending business away.

Why Small Business is Fed Up with Government
Source: http://smallbiztrends.com
Small business owners are not fed up with the government because they don't get handouts. They are fed up with the special relationship between politicians, big business and big banks. It's hard enough to grow a small business. Swimming upstream against the constant deluge of advantages, handouts, bailouts, special loan programs and preferential treatment given to big businesses is the real rub.

What's the ROI of Everything?
Source: http://www.justinkownacki.com
Many smart (and opinionated) people believe that "community building," "brand management," "increased awareness" and other intangible benefits of marketing are useless, or at least that they're incidental byproducts of marketing's real purpose: sales, sales, sales. If something can't be measured in ROI, it's a waste of time, and since so much of what we now call "social media" is ethereal, the validity of the entire field must be called into question.

Why Marketers Don't Need to Care About the iPad
Source: http://www.searchengineguide.com
It's hard to look up without reading about the iPad. I am sure that it is a wonderful device. And I know nothing about it that you can't read and see in al the usual places. But if you are wondering what you need to know about it for your business, the answer is probably "nothing." And that is a good thing.

Customers Are Buying Less. Sales Are Down. What Can I Do?
Source: http://www.davekahle.com
Work on two parallel paths: If all the key decision makers and influencers in your current accounts don't know you, then work hard to create those relationships. At the same time, look outside your group of current customers, and create relationships with prospects. In other words, work diligently, methodically and systematically at creating new relationships and thereby, new customers.

How To Write Better Tweets
Source: http://smallbiztrends.com
Combining a call to action with useful information all inside 140 characters is something that takes practice. The same way journalists had to learn to use the new medium of blogging, tweeting is a new skill that must be mastered.

Find Your Inner Jared: A Marketing Must for Any Company
Source: http://www.revenews.com
You have a Jared you just need to find him. Ask your customers to share their stories, it helps increase their sense of affinity to your brand by tying their story to yours. Get real stories from real people. It works in the online world just as well as the offline world.

AT&T To Launch Yelp Competitor
Source: http://www.forbes.com
AT&T latched on early to the local search and advertising market, first with the Yellow Pages, then with an online version, YellowPages.com. These days, with everyone from Google to Yelp chasing the same business, AT&T is striking back with a new social recommendations site called buzz.com.

4 Online Invoicing Resources
Source: http://www.readwriteweb.com
These days there is no shortage of online tools to help with financing and invoices, so we thought we would take the opportunity to point out a few tools to help you get your work done quickly and efficiently.

Kiss Your Phone Leads Goodbye
Source: http://blog.searchenginewatch.com
Delaying your first-dial response time from 5 to just 30 minutes decreases your chances of qualifying the lead by 21 times! Even delaying the first-dial from 5 minutes to 10 will cut your lead qualification percentage by a factor of four.

How to Attract More Qualified Leads to You Business With SlideShare.net
Source: http://www.krishnade.com
I thought it might be helpful to share some thoughts on how you can use your presentation on Slideshare.net to attract more leads into your business. Here is a short video explaining options you might want to explore.

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