Did you know it’s National Boss’s Day? We sent our two amazing head honchos to Hawaii! Well – kind of. They actually told us they had the opportunity to visit Hawaii and they were seizing that opportunity, so we sent them with our blessings – and that’s kind of the same thing. And you know what? They deserve it! Aloha! So in honor of National Boss’s Day, I asked our staff what they love most about Michael and Kathryn. Their words say it so much better than I ever could. Read what they said below!

You’ve probably heard of Pokémon Go -- it would be hard to miss news of this popular new social app. In fact, you’ve probably noticed a strange trend recently of people walking with a sense of purpose all around you while glued to their smartphones. I have seen this in my own neighborhood, where suddenly neighbors I’ve never even seen before are out walking and staring at their phones, almost like they're in a trance.

If you’re not familiar with Pokémon Go, it's basically an app for your smartphone that allows you to “see” Pokémon in the real world (your local streets based on your location), capture them, and train them to battle against other people’s Pokémon.

Pokémon Go and Your Marketing

So how does this relate to small business marketing? Clearly this game is the craze of the moment, but in my opinion it is always good to watch trends and see what people are interested in, especially with the rapid speed of technological change.

In a recent Adweek article, Tod Loofbourrow and Eva Barbier give us 5 things to learn from the success of Pokémon go:

You've probably heard of Snapchat -- that all of the "young kids" are using it. If you haven't heard of it, in simple terms it's a photo and video sharing service where the pictures and videos disappear within seconds of being viewed. You can also message friends with a text message type of format, although the platform is much more photo and video focused. What you may not know is that some consider Snapchat to be an important up and coming marketing platform. 

The word “hipster” has developed an interesting stigma. Let’s be real here, those flannel wearing, craft IPA and coffee loving, bearded, vintage Canon owners have awesome Instagram feeds.   

It’s okay to admit it; we’ve all been there before -- we find ourselves stalking someone’s Instagram feed and feeling slightly upset and jealous of how perfectly simple it is. Yeah, story of my life. 

We’ve all seen them at one point or another: freakishly symmetrical birds-eye-view coffee cups with perfect espresso crema or beautifully crafted latte art, under saturated succulents, and many, many peonies.

You may be wondering to yourself what exactly a “persona” is and how is it a secret weapon? It is critical to be aware of your prospects' personas along their buyer’s journey with your company. As an inbound marketing company, you will see someone go from a stranger, to a lead, to a customer, all the way through to a promoter and the persona comes into play every step of the way.

Creating the Persona 

To put it simply, personas are representations of ideal customers you create to help your team develop focused content formation and nurturing strategies. To create personas, you will use information you already have about your target market or current customers. There are several aspects you need to consider to make a comprehensive persona. Here are some questions you can begin with followed by examples:

Ever heard of Dos Equis beer? You probably have, and there’s a good chance that it is due to the wildly successful commercials featuring the “most interesting man in the world”. This character, played by actor Jonathan Goldsmith will officially be retired soon. The popularity of these commercials, and the ensuing brand awareness of Dos Equis have made this campaign one of the most successful of recent advertising memory. With famous lines such as “When in Rome, they do as he does” and “If opportunity knocks, and he’s not home, opportunity waits” it was hard to miss the humor of these commercials.

We've all heard that timeless cliché statement “time is money”. If you’ve ever tried to manage the social media for your own small business, you begin to understand that this statement actually holds pretty true.

In the olden days of the internet – we’re talking just 5 to 10 years ago – it was seen as rather risky to buy traffic to your website. It was kind of like if you paid someone to be your friend – it isn’t really an authentic or trustworthy thing to do. But, things change. As the search engines became smarter and more sophisticated, marketers found new ways of staying friendly with them. Buying traffic to your website is not a new strategy, but it’s an improved strategy.

Updated February 24, 2016

Everyone has experienced a time on Facebook when hitting the "Like" button didn't feel quite right. When your friend posts that "Fido lived a good life and he's now in a better place" you don't want to "Like" the post because then if feels like you're "Liking" that Fido has passed. However, you don't want to just comment "Sorry for your loss" like every other person. What's a Facebook user to do?

Announcing Facebook "Reactions," available to users everywhere who want to empathize. Check out how the new "Like" button works in this article excerpt from TechCrunch.

Updated: February 15, 2016

Inbound marketing is, simply put, quite popular these days. If you have any doubt about that just look at HubSpot, a leader in inbound marketing. Founded in 2006, it went public last year, is valued at over 1 billion dollars and has over 15,000 customers. That goes to show the popularity of this approach to marketing. If you are unfamiliar with the definition, read about inbound marketing on our blog. You don’t want to miss out on this massive internet marketing shift.

While all of this is fascinating, we know you really clicked to see our recommendations on blogs, so here are the top 7 inbound marketing blogs we recommend you keep up with: