Beyond The Cocktail Party: Making Social Media Work for Your Business

by Erin Steinbruegge in Blog, Business Development, Design, Homepage Vlog, Marketing, SEO, Social Media, Vlog on September 02, 2010

A couple of weeks ago I was invited to speak at the first ISES STL “learning lunch” of 2010. The topic of the presentation was how event planners can leverage social media for business, a topic ISES had identified as a growing interest amongst their members. ISES noted that many of their members were currently utilizing Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube or Twitter for their business; but felt that they needed some insight into how to build a marketing strategy around social media, and they were hungry for some social network-specific tips as well.

Your Business Needs Social Media. No More Excuses…

by Erin Steinbruegge in Blog, Social Media on April 08, 2010

Social Media is perhaps one of the most rapidly-evolving and exciting technologies to hit the online space in years. What began as a way for people to stay in touch with each other has evolved into a network of real relationships, meaningful communication, and strategic alliances, all of which present an abundance of opportunities to businesses of all sizes.

However, the ever-evolving landscape of social media and the fact that it creates broad-reaching exposure and vulnerability has resulted in many businesses feeling confused and timid about incorporating social media into their marketing strategy. They often get hung up cycling through a list of objections which can ultimately lead to a wealth of missed opportunities. Because we never like to see businesses miss out on great marketing opportunities, we’re dedicating this issue of our newsletter to overcoming the top 3 social media objections:

Pimp Your Search With Advanced Operators

by Erin Steinbruegge in Marketing, SEO, Social Media on March 26, 2010

For those of you who haven’t geeked out your Googling lately, advanced search operators are phrases that you add into your search query that have special meaning to the search engine during a search. These aren’t just for Google – All of the major search engines offer advanced search operators, but since you’re already Googling, let’s check out some ways you can pimp out your search.

Effective Marketing Strategy: Push and Pull

by Erin Steinbruegge in Blog, Homepage Blog, Marketing on March 10, 2010

In order to build an effective online marketing strategy for your business, it’s important to understand the theory behind what we call “push” and “pull” strategies, and how they can be utilized together to drive optimal results.

Let’s use a hypothetical example to illustrate this concept:

Suppose it’s February and you’ve invented the world’s greatest stadium noisemakers. Called “The Loudinator”, these things put Thundersticks and Bam Bams to shame. You’ve just invested a lot of money into producing your line of MLB specific Loudinators, and you’ve built an e-commerce website that is ready to handle sales. Now you just need to generate awareness of your product before MLB Opening Day.

Push strategy involves any marketing strategy that “pushes” its way in front of users without the user initiating the request. Push marketing is great for generating brand awareness, promoting a new product or service, or delivering a time-sensitive message.

PPC Questions – Does Anyone Click Those Ads?

by Erin Steinbruegge in Blog, PPC on March 08, 2010

I talk with a lot of clients about search engine marketing strategy, particularly the benefits of developing an online marketing plan that incorporates both Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising. Most business owners who are new to SEO or PPC strategy ask similar questions, and typically these questions relate to the “how’s” of the strategy and the type of results that can be expected. This particular post is dedicated to a question that I surprisingly hear quite frequently in regards to PPC advertising…

Here We Come!

by Erin Steinbruegge in General on February 24, 2010

So here it is, our first blog post. We’ll keep this one short and sweet – just a basic introduction to The Loud Few and what our goals are for this website. When Robin and I began initial discussions of what TheLoudFew.com would look like, and what sort of functionality we thought was vital to our success, we both agreed on one thing…