Tonight is the night you will undoubtedly hear “Trick or Treat!”

I was recently thinking about the phrases we use like “Trick or Treat?!” Who really ever expects to be “tricked” anymore on Halloween night? Most people expect to give out a “treat.” It’s these phrases we use without thinking that make me want to know where they originated. I am kind of a nerd that way. I love to know the history of things we humans do. So I dug a little deeper and this is what I found about Halloween. Then I'll do a trick of my own and relate it to being an email marketing consultant!

Is your business on Facebook? It should be! Facebook is a great social media platform to gain leads for your business due to its personal and conversational nature. This blog will highlight four lead generation techniques that can be used on Facebook to help enhance your business.

First off, let’s go over a few interesting facts that may help to convince you even more that Facebook is an important part of your social media internet marketing strategy in order to gain leads:

1.  Blog at least twice a week

Why? Because blogging is good for business. 

Not infrequently I am reminded of how lawyers must feel. Jokes about their sleazy tactics and money grubbing ways degrade the entire profession. That lawyer who truly cares about his client and what is right and wrong must feel pretty discouraged and alone in the world.

Today will be a humorous but great learning experience. We will be viewing 3 landing pages that almost got the title as “Best Landing Pages” but turned out to be the “Best Landing Pages – Gone Wrong!”

The hit TV show The Walking Dead definitely knows a thing or two about why social media is an important aspect in your internet marketing strategy. They have created a revolution in television; engaging their viewers so that the show becomes more than a TV show – it’s a social activity. How have they done this, you ask?

Warning: This is one of those witty holiday blogs that mixes reality with unrealistic characters or story telling. Enjoy. 

I was sitting at my desk, coffee in hand, while "Son of a Preacher Man" by Dusty Springfield was playing on Pandora, when a random and spontaneous thought came to me. Why blog if you're a member of Ghostbusters? In the 1984 film, Bill Murray and his bumbling ghost detectives needed business, and luckily they stumbled upon a case. But that was just one or two cases, if they were a real business how would they get more customers? It’s not like ghost detective is a common profession and a widely sought service.

So I played this little scenario out in my head and devised a complete blogging plan that would have helped the Ghostbusters get even more business and help more people. Who knows, it might give you a few tips for your internet marketing strategy and help you answer the question, why blog?

Psst...So, you have a website.

Psst...I heard you have increased traffic to your website over the course of the year. Awesome!

Hummmm....You have sales people with phones lined up to take all the calls that you anticipated, but the leads aren’t pouring in.

Well there are a few 'secrets' you can use to help increase website conversion and turn leads into customers...because isn’t that the end goal of a business website: to get you more customers?

In thinking about what makes a good website, one reality that needs to be taken into account is how different people see and interact with visual data in their world. While it is more complex than this, to keep things simple let’s talk about “word people” versus “picture people.”

Have you ever been asked the question, “what do you do?” only to begin answering and soon notice the person sitting across from you tuned out a long time ago? Judging from the slow, yet excessive head nods accompanied by one too many “uh-huhs” you realize you’ve lost them. You might be asking a similar yet more specific question like, “what does and inbound marketer actually DO?”

Every small business wants its website to be on the front page of Google.  Don’t you? 

The challenge is that the world of SEO (search engine optimization) has been changing a lot over the last two years and most of those changes are not even known by the general population. This means that as a business owner you need to beware of SEO services for small business and big business alike.  What you don’t know can really hurt you.

If you want to rank well in Google, and by that I mean you show up near the front page of Google, you need to understand at least 3 things when evaluating a company you want to work with for SEO services.

Yes, social media has its place not only in your internet marketing, but in your big picture marketing strategy (brand messaging) as well!

If you are a small business or a local non-profit, promoting your brand, your small business services, or a local event is definitely where social media can help amplify your efforts and turn up the volume.

Here are 8 key elements that are important to include in your small business social media strategy:

Effective Wednesday, October 15, 2013, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act passed a new rule that states any company that sends SMS marketing messages (texts to your cell phone) without prior written consent from recipients could potentially face fines of up to $1,500 per text.

Welcome to today’s blog! This blog is specifically designed for an email marketing consultant looking for email marketing software that will create rich looking emails while providing the ability to send out thousands of emails a week to customers and leads.

Have you noticed something different while scrolling through your Pinterest lately? Like a pin from someone or a company who you don’t follow? Well, if you haven’t heard, that’s because Pinterest recently rolled out its first paid advertisements, “promoted pins.”

Have you ever tried to write a blog offering internet marketing tips when your head feels like a balloon, your ears feel like you have earmuffs on, and you’re so stuffed up you’re having to breathe through your mouth and make sure you know where the closest box of tissue is? That’s exactly how I feel today and writing is not coming easy. Which got me thinking about content curation - a phrase you might have heard or read about recently, and something we’ve been learning a lot about ourselves and will be adding into our internet marketing strategy. Starting today.

There is no one right strategy for marketing online.  Common sense will tell you that, even if you don’t know anything about the internet. But - and here it is - there are only a few small differences between most of the successful internet marketing strategies.  If you want to take advantage of the power and the cost effectiveness of internet marketing then you need a great strategy, and unless you’re one of the experts arguing over the little things then I will say this to you:

Interns are great! Who doesn’t love free labor and the ability to influence a young professional’s path in the working world? The problem with interns, however, is that they’re not traditional employees and only around for a short period of time. Some businesses get so caught up in having extra hands on deck that they give them the wrong kind of responsibilities.

Link building services can be a mess sometimes. Trying to scourer the web for quality links without falling into black hat schemes or trying to acquire bogus links can be a challenge.

So many people out there are looking for the quick, cheap and easy fix. Most small business owners understand that in their industry the quick, cheap fix doesn’t always end up as the easy fix. It usually means going back and doing the job again, purchasing better quality or even in the long run, losing business. In essence, the job takes longer, costs more money and is harder on everyone.

As the ongoing “keyword not provided” issue is getting a lot of attention and Google is withholding more and more information from marketers, you might be asking if it makes sense to even think about how to add keywords to a website. Will keywords continue to be useful moving forward? Will we have any shot at knowing what is working and what isn’t as we head into 2014 and try to sort out what online marketing looks like?

Ever regretted a picture you uploaded to Facebook? Or a tweet you tweeted on Twitter?

Well, you’re not the only one and California legislators have taken note. Under Bill 568, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and similar social media platforms will soon be legally required to remove content or information posted by the user, if they request them to do so.

Before you get really excited, there’s a catch here. That magic digital “eraser button” is only available for minors. Dang it, right? I guess adults will have to remain responsible with their online posting.

It comes as no surprise that Google has released yet another algorithm update. This time it’s named after a more dynamic species, the Hummingbird, and rightfully so, because its aim is to provide you, as the searcher, more dynamic results.

Here’s the big question many small business owners are asking, why is social media important to their internet marketing strategy? Most people think that social media is a place where all the crazy teenagers post party pictures, tell people their problems or gossip about ex-boyfriends for attention. Yes, this is true, but have you thought about what social media could do for you as an adult businessman or woman? Have you thought about how many of your customers are on social media accounts like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn? Have you decided that since you’re not techie enough that you’re going to stay out of the online social sphere?

It seems that October is a little more frightful than expected, as most of you may have heard Google has made a major algorithm update called, “The Hummingbird Upate.” However Google didn’t stop there. It has also admitted to blocking 100% of search query data in Google Analytics, meaning you will no longer see exactly what keywords brought visitors to your site. What does this all mean for your website and general SEO services for small business? For small businesses paying for SEO services there is no need to worry, as long as your SEO agency is performing services with Google’s advice in mind:

Yep, and here’s a few numbers to show it...

“If we could just get more customers, all our problems would be solved!”

Well...although most business owners understand more customers don’t solve all your problems, getting more customers for your business is what brings in the revenue, keeps your doors open, your people employed and your business growing.

So, what lead generation techniques are the most effective? 

If you're reading this then you are probably wondering what did Google do again. 

Well it took away a major piece of reporting from all of us in regards to how you evaluate your company's effectiveness in the Google Search. You and I can no longer see what keywords people are coming to our site from. Whether you are a small business or large one or somewhere in between this impacts you. If you are monitoring these things on your company website then you rely on this data to make informed decisions and adjust your SEO strategy.  If you aren't monitoring these things then you need to. Google is the most important source of traffic in any succesful online strategy for any size business.