I unapologetically love Christmas.  The sights, smells, sounds. Time with friends and family. Giving gifts carefully chosen. Parties and celebrations. Good food. A momentary reprieve from the pressures of work that almost everyone honors, even clients in other countries. Less email!  A reminder to pause and consider the gifts in my own life. Near the top of the list of the many things I love about Christmas is the music. Everywhere you go songs that range from the fun loving songs of Santa and his reindeer, to the deep wonder of O Holy Night, the sounds of the season are a source of both joy and peace for me.

Throughout 2013, as part of our Inbound Marketing strategy, we have been blogging and creating downloadable content in ebooks, not just for our clients, but for our own agency. You can find out how blogging has affected us this year here at the Bubble by reading our blog, but here is a little snapshot into our world through the eyes of our faithful office dog, Backup. Backup really does think we all are here to work for her, to open the door so she can come in or out, as well as throw her toys or chase her around the office. So, with that in mind, I wrote an Inbound Marketing version of the traditional poem The Night Before Christmas. Enjoy!

Twitter is a great social networking site to be on as a business, especially when it comes to finding leads and building relationships. This blog will highlight five lead generation techniques that can be used on Twitter to help enhance your business.

Santa’s busiest day of the year is almost upon us, but what do you think Santa is doing with the other 364 days of the year? He has elves for making the toys and gifts, and Mrs. Claus takes care of the meal preparation so Santa is all about learning the rest of the year. He is looking for valuable information that he can pass on to his friends and neighbors. Recently a small business owner asked Santa the question “why blog” and he had to research a good answer. Since then he has signed up for our blog and he is deeply interested in internet marketing.

People are always asking us what makes a good website? But what they should be asking is what are the recent changes made by Google and how will they affect us in 2014?

As tears welled up in my eyes after watching Apple’s latest television commercial, I realized just how powerful advertising can be. Not only was its spot well filmed and paired with heart-warming music, it touched on a very current topic in society: Does cell phone use cause teens to become introverted and unattached from reality? Apple shows with this tear jerker that its products actually bring families closer together. 

It occurs to me that understanding how to add keywords to a webiste as part of your internet marketing strategy is similar to Christmas stockings. 

Christmas was a very important holiday in my house, and although I grew up in a low income family, my mom put a lot of thought and energy into making sure Christmas was special. Each of us kids hung up our stockings and on Christmas morning, our stockings were stuffed full. Stockings were a big deal and we could always unload them before mom and dad were up. Presents had to wait for the whole family so we would take our time going through our stockings until the whole family was awake.

I'm not sure who writes marketing content for JetBlue but I want to meet them! I am regularly impressed by their ability to be creative and weave in meaningful content while doing so.

Below is an email I got from them today built on "Twas the Night Before Christmas" and while I know many will rework this for their marketing, I think JetBlue has done it well. Note the links in this email that each highlight one of the benefits of traveling with JetBlue. It's a great example of what can be done. You can bet this took a bit more time than the average email, but it serves to delight and inform. You can't ask for more in marketing than that!

Without further ado, JetBlue's Christmas email:

You better watch out

You better not cry

You better not pout I’m telling you why

Google bots are crawling around

It’s making a list and checking it twice

Gonna find out who’s naughty or nice

Google bots are crawling around

It sees you when you’re blogging

It knows you want to rank

It knows if links are bad or good

So be good for goodness sake!

Happy Monday to everyone.  I wanted to pass along this blog from Search Engine Land that talks about all the changes in SEO especially around link building.  I want you to understand and be kept up to date with all the changes.  If you have been talking with me at all in the last 6 months you have probably heard me talk about link building and how it has changed.  Many of the people who come to us looking for help have heard or even invested a lot of time and money in link building strategies because they helped people rank better in Google.