Work is not supposed to be something we endure so we can get a paycheck to pay for fulfillment in life. Work is supposed to be part of that fulfillment. Finding a job that allows you to achieve happiness more than 50% of the time takes a while to find. Many people don’t ever find it because they remain lost in understanding the gifts and abilities they have to contribute.

I was recently in a meeting where our client brought up the idea of adding a short video to her blog posts. With a slight – possibly reluctant – smirk on her face she asked us what we thought of this idea. Like each of our clients, she wants her business to get found online by potential customers. We’ve been helping with this process by creating a holistic inbound marketing strategy, part of which includes blogging, organic SEO services, downloadable eBooks, and email campaigns. I smiled at our client and said I thought it was a great idea, something worth trying at least, for many good reasons that I just happen to come across in the recent article below.

You can’t ignore social media any more if you want your business to reach modern consumers. One of the common questions businesses have when hiring or evaluating their social media agency is “what exactly should be measured?" Is it more than just setting up a profile and seeing if anything happens? We would say yes, and it is essential to track the effectiveness of your social media accounts through measuring these 5 things:

We love inbound marketing! Woo! Wait, we love outbound marketing! Oh no, can we love both, inbound and outbound marketing? If we love outbound marketing are we cheating on inbound?

Have you checked your email yet today? Let me guess there were about a dozen or so spam emails that you didn’t want to have anything to do with. But why not? I am sure there were a few of those emails that could have been helpful, so where did these companies go wrong?

Most businesses understand the benefits of email marketing but know little about personalization of those emails, which is interesting because emails that are personalized generate 6 times higher transaction rates than those emails sent that aren’t personalized. Do I have your attention now? Let’s dive in and take a closer look.

Did you know that 122,500,453,020 emails are sent every hour? (MarketingProfs 2014). This number alone should tell you that email is not dead; it’s in fact very much alive. There are actual people or an email marketing agency behind these emails – whether it’s your competitor creating and sending them or your potential and current customers opening and reading them. With so much content flooding inboxes these days you need all the help you can get in order for the emails from your small business to get noticed. Here are a few tips you can start doing today.

You may have heard some of the changes that Facebook was making to its algorithm and how content will be displayed to users back in April. Today Facebook has announced even more changes to its video algorithm. For every business that is on Facebook, visibility is key. If you are a company with a social media presence, how much your posts show up may be impacted. Depending on the extent of your social media marketing and user base, these changes could impact your marketing reach quite a bit.

Here is a summary of the recent changes for publishers and the even more recently announced changes to Facebook videos:

Do you want to be able to schedule and manage all of your social media accounts from one location? You’re in luck! There are tools that allow for you to manage everything from one platform instead of moving back and forth between Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. Ultimately this will save you SO much time and money!

If you are trying to get your business to rank on Google, you probably know that there is no magic button to push or process that will propel you straight to the coveted position #1. You also likely know that you can’t pay to show up in organic results on Google like pay per click ads.

So, somewhere in between “no magic button” and “coveted position #1” has to be some skill, best practices, and things that are likely to work well right? Yes. We often say on our site that there is no magic way to instantly get results on Google. We also say that if you apply best practices based on what we know to work well, you are more likely to rank high on Google. We’ve seen it happen over and over again. So, what SEO tips and tricks will Google love?

What is the vision for your online marketing strategy? Do you even have one for your business? Or do you just know that you should have one if you want to reach your target audience online? One key component of an online marketing strategy is search engine optimization (SEO). If you’re thinking that it sounds expensive, hold that thought. You have affordable SEO opportunities to help your business get found online, but you must also have the right expectations.