Partner Views Blog

Readers of this blog will know that I am a HubSpot Partner and I offer the platform as one of my solutions. This does not mean that all of my customers use HubSpot nor does it mean that I think every online business should use HubSpot. Part of my job is to help my customers analyze their situation and find the solution that will be right for them. That solution may be HubSpot or it may be Google Ad Words or a WordPress website. There are a number of blogs that have addressed this question and several have gone into a feature by feature comparison. I am not going to go into that much detail here but I’ll give you the links to those blogs below.

In the January 21, 2013 issue of The New Yorker financial reporter James Surowiecki writes about the sunk-cost effect. In the article Surowiecki uses the example of New York Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez. The Jets extended Shanchez’s contract and will pay him $8.25 million next year even though he has thrown more career interceptions than touchdowns. The Jets bet big on Sanchez and against all evidence they are hoping that their investment will pay off if they keep at it. This not only happens in sports it happens in big and small businesses all the time. You have invested, or sunk, a lot of time and money into a project and even though it is not getting results you continue to invest. I often see this with online businesses who have a new website that is not getting the results they need but will not give it up because they have invested so much in it. The article quotes Hal Arkes, a psychologist at Ohio State University, “Abandoning a project that you’ve invested a lot in feels like you’ve wasted everything, and waste is something we’re told to avoid”.

In a recent blog I presented a number of social media marketing stats taken from Neilson’s Social Media Report 2012. One stood out on a subject that is just starting to attract attention:

This blog will be short because it’s Friday and I know you will want to spend all your time testing out your mobile website. One of the best tools for testing your website is Google’s How to GOMO Test Your Site tool. It could not be simpler to use. Just put your URL in and press the “test” button, choose your business category and answer a few simple questions about the site. In a few seconds you will get an analysis based on the 10 best practices I covered in my last blog.

In my last blog I gave some statistics for why your business should have web pages optimized for mobile. When you are building your web page you need to pay attention to some best practices for mobile web sites otherwise your customers will have a poor experience and probably abandon your site.

2013 should be time to take the plunge and optimize your web site for mobile, especially if you sell products online, you have information that people want to access through their mobile device or if you have any type of local business. It is not that you are preparing for the next phase of internet marketing; your customers are already there. Consider these statistics from Google:

The end of the year is the time we traditionally look back, reflect and start to plan for the next. One of the problems with online and social media marketing is everything moves so fast it is hard to keep up and know what is useful information. One of my main sources for trends and useful information is Nielsen.com with their frequent studies and reports. Their State of the Media: The Social Media Report 2012 is no exception. The study not only gives a great snapshot of the past year but shows the way for future trends. For example while access to social media via PCs remains strong it has flattened out a bit and access via mobile web (smartphones) has shot up 82% and the use of mobile apps has shot up 85%. My takeaway on that is not to abandon my website but to make it more accessible to mobile phones and to find ways to engage people using mobile sites.

It’s been a hectic month at Image Media Partners and we have not kept up our end of the bargain for providing you information and news about online, social media and inbound marketing news. As a special gift here is a little bon mot of an infographic from the SEO Company illustrating the 2012 social media year in review. Enjoy. 

Guy Kawasaki is quoted as saying, “If you have more money than brains, you should focus on outbound marketing. If you have more brains than money, you should focus on inbound marketing.” It often seems many large, traditional companies have continued to spend heavily on traditional or outbound marketing while smaller, leaner companies have embraced inbound marketing or as it is sometimes called, content marketing. Many smaller, cash strapped businesses are often hesitant to try inbound marketing because the “big boys” are not doing it. Well, according to Brandon Gutman in Forbes online blog, MarketShare, that is all changing. Check out 5 Big Brands Confirm That Content Marketing Is The Key To Your Consumer. Read the article for all the details and links, but I’ll summarize it here. (I have blogged a bit about Inbound Marketing and you can learn more about our Inbound Marketing Services here.)

Well, maybe the Director of the CIA is a bad example but it does show that managing an online profile and a professional reputation is very difficult in this new world of online social media and the digital global village. Many people bemoan the fact that your personal life can be so easily exposed and what many consider private conversations can be so public. It is true and in spite of warnings for at least the past 20 years to not put anything in an email that you would not want your Mother to read on the front page of the New York Times many people do just that and are shocked when their private emails end up on the front page of the New York Times. Not only is it fairly easy to find salacious tidbits and scandalous gossip online, with Facebook and Twitter the news spreads faster, is distorted quicker and travels further than at any time in history. No wonder many are reluctant to get involved, especially if your reputation is important to your business or career. Many people I talk to balk when I say that because of their business they have to get involved with social media and need to maintain a good online profile. “No way,” they say to me, “did you see the ‘Social Network?’ Nothing is private anymore.” Perhaps we should put this into perspective.