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.

Smackdown Part 2: Your Competitors’ Link Strategy & Indexed Content

by aaronstevens in Blog, Homepage Blog, Marketing, SEO on September 01, 2010

Be competitive with your online marketing efforts; even chess players harbor a little animosity for their opponents. You should know who you are up against, what makes them strong, and then work to be even less imperfect than them. In the second part of my Competitive Smackdown Series, I will show you how gauge the amount of content your competitors have indexed and how to analyze their backlinks.

This will help guide your own SEO, since making sure all of your valuable site content is indexed and then increasing the number of quality links to valuable pages on your site should account for most of your search engine optimization efforts. I suggest tracking the data you uncover for each competitor you investigate; a tracking spreadsheet works very nicely for this.

Mobile Marketing Tips: How to Create an Effective Foursquare Special

by lisakeller in Blog, Homepage Blog, Marketing, Social Media on August 18, 2010

Sometimes, there are sad days in mobile marketing. For me, that sad day is when I see a lame foursquare special. I’ve seen these missed mobile marketing opportunities come from both social media mavens and newbies. Bad foursquare marketing can happen to the best of us.

Whether you are new to location based advertising for your business or are A.J. Bomber’s savvy, here are some tips to help you create a stellar special that will make me want to check-in to your place over and over again:

Competitive Smackdown Part 1: Using Google for Competitive Research

by aaronstevens in Blog, Homepage Blog, Marketing, SEO on July 08, 2010

Researching your competition is an unbelievably important step in establishing your site online.  It will help set the basic framework for your internet marketing strategy, and if done effectively will also greatly reduce the resources you invest to increase your website visibility.  Part 1 of our competitive analysis blog post…

How to Rise to the Top

by adamhallas in Blog, Business Development, Marketing on May 19, 2010

To tell the truth, I was kind of nervous, but it was a good nervous. It was gorgeous day as I walked into Araka in Clayton (also for the first time) and was greeted by Jennifer Volk. She was manning the registration booth and then handed my name tag. From this point on I mingled. I went on a recon mission on what to expect at the event.

Grab a milk and your mat – It’s story time

by adamhallas in Business Development, Marketing on March 30, 2010

This is my first post. So take it easy. Like a new born baby deer, I have some shaky legs and my movement is awkward but dang it, I have a purpose. I see that everyone at SES is talking about creating and conveying a story. You are excited about your services. Great!! Now, how to convey that to somebody who is looking at the bottom line…

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.