Social Media Magazine

Weekly Marketing Skinny • November 22, 2014

Posted on the 22 November 2014 by Ana Hoffman @AnaTrafficCafe

Don’t have the time to read all the marketing news, blog posts, announcements, and other content related to SEO/social media/online marketing published each week?

I’ve got you covered.

I sift through trillions (well, hundreds) of online publications to stay on top of marketing news that might affect your online business.

And I package them neatly in bite-sized chunks in my Weekly Marketing Skinnies right here at Traffic Generation Café every Saturday morning.

Between you and me, I have no idea why I bother investing hours of my time weekly reading all these marketing news just to boil them down for you in my Weekly Marketing Skinnies, other than the fact that I know you don’t have the time to keep up with the fast-paced marketing industry on your own, yet you DO need to be in-the-know to remain competitive.

Plus, your enthusiastic comments and social media shares show me just how much you truly appreciate being kept in the marketing loop in just a few minutes per week.

If you appreciate what I do, share this Marketing Skinny:

THANK YOU.

Now grab your cup of coffee and let’s catch up on the marketing news that matter to your business.

Let’s start with the news from Traffic Generation Café.

At TrafficGenerationCafe.com

COMING SOON… Black Marketing Friday: Best Online Marketing Deals of 2014

COMING SOON… Black Marketing Friday: Best Online Marketing Deals of 2014

The biggest sale day of the year is almost here.

Black Friday. November 28.

In this post, I’ll keep you updated on the latest deals on marketing products I love and use at Traffic Generation Café – so I can honestly recommend you use them on your site as well.

Stay tuned.

It’s On: Amazon Introduces Eight Days of Black Friday Deals

It's On: Amazon Introduces Eight Days of Black Friday Deals
Leave it to Amazon to make Black Friday last. Not by a day or two even, but why not stretch one day into eight, right?

Amazon.com announced Black Friday deals would start even earlier this year – Friday, November 21. Yes, that’s yesterday!

They’ll be adding new deals as often as every ten minutes for eight straight days.

Learn more about the deals and how to get to them in my post on LinkedIn.

Why You Should Dump Facebook Marketing (& Focus on This Instead)

Why You Should Dump Facebook Marketing (Focus on This Instead)
Would you be surprised to learn that your FB fans are twice as likely to sign up for your emails than to engage with your page on Facebook?

Forrester Research has published a report called “Social Relationship Strategies That Work” that looks into the relationships between brands and social media, and questions the effectiveness of some social media platforms, particularly Facebook.

Of course, as you remember, in a Friday night blog post last week, Facebook warned brands that “Beginning in January 2015, people will see less of this type of content [promotional page posts] in their News Feeds,” and admitted that brands that post promotional content “will see a significant decrease in distribution.”

So what are marketers to do?

I outlined a few options suggested in the report; you can find them in this LinkedIn post I just published.

58% Americans Have No Opinion on Net Neutrality – But You Should

58% Americans Have No Opinion on Net Neutrality - But You Should
I hate to admit it, but until I decided that ignorance was no excuse and started researching the topic and subsequently writing this post, I didn’t have an opinion on Net Neutrality.

I am not sure if it’s any comfort to learn that I am just one of 58% of Americans who have no opinion on Net Neutrality – because they don’t know enough about it.

The other day, I had trouble with Comcast internet connection, which made me realize just how important internet is in my life – I felt like I was completely stranded without it.

You know what I mean?…

It’s time we learned more about Net Neutrality.

LinkedIn and SoundCloud

Noticed a trend above? Yes, I’ve been spending a lot more time on LinkedIn.

It’s my next ‘do or die’ traffic generation platform I am determined to learn everything about and pass it on to you.

  • Join me on LinkedIn here and watch me ‘do my thing’.
  • Join Sarah Santacroce’ LinkedIn Challenge that will start on December 1 – we’ll learn more about LinkedIn together.

Another project I am simultaneously working on is recording more soundtracks of my posts, posting them to SoundCloud (an online audio distribution platform, yet another traffic generator I am working on), and then adding them to text posts – like I did in Why You Should Dump Facebook LI post mentioned above.

I barely started working on my presence there, so this is building something as ‘from scratch’ as it gets.

Search

Starting this week (after a slew of mobile-(un)friendly tester icons), Google is officially adding a “mobile-friendly” label to their mobile search results.

New in Google search: when you search for certain celebrities or well-known personalities, Google may show links and icons to their social profiles (other than Google+!) within the Google Knowledge graph panel.

Social Media

Twitter enabled users to share and discuss tweets via direct message – you can now send copies of tweets and comment on them out of the public eye.

Twitter launched a WordPress plugin to get you to embed more Vines in your blog posts.

Twitter now indexes every public Tweet since 2006 – about half a trillion public messages.

Facebook Groups now has its own app.

Just in case you were working too much at work, Facebook is rumored to be testing a product called Facebook at Work, designed to let people, well, use Facebook at work.

On a Side Note…

If you find tremendous value in my Weekly Marketing Skinnies, like thousands of other readers of Traffic Generation Café do, you should consider joining them and sign up to receive the weekly notifications of when a fresh Skinny is published.

Plus, you’ll get complimentary access to my “Mommy, Where Does My Traffic Come From?” traffic hacks report and traffic hacks newsletter:

Weekly Marketing Skinny • November 22, 2014

"Ana has a unique insight into running an internet business."
- Yaro Starak, Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

Needless to say, your information is completely safe with me.

See you in your inbox!

Marketing This & That

Apparently, Emojis have joined us on self-hosted WordPress blogs.

This made me mad: Americans pay more for slower Internet. Did you get this: more for slower.

New Google Contributor subscription service will let you pay money to remove ads from certain sites – Google calles it “an experiment in additional ways to fund the web”.

Google Wallet is giving away $200,000 to attract new users – you and a friend can each get $5 when you introduce them to Google Wallet.

Yahoo is going to replace Google as the current Firefox search provider.

Yahoo now lets (select) photographers sell their photos on Flickr.

Microsoft updated the Bing homepage with high-definition backgrounds, image captions, and a new Office Online menu. I must admit, the changes are awesomely helpful and fun.

Now, not only can Skype be used on just about any screen you lay your hands on, but you can also sign in to Skype for Web on Skype.com and be able to connect and start instant messaging directly from your browser.

Amazon is rumored to start a hotel-booking service by January 2015.

Funny Business

Need to flip a coin? Just say OK, Google; flip a coin.

#OKGoogle; heads or tails?

Thank You

To all of you who mentioned Traffic Generation Café in any share or form in the past week, my whole-hearted THANK YOU.

Traffic Generation Café would NOT be what it is today without you.

And I am not the only one who thinks that, by the way.

Take a look at the comment Kurt Frankenberg of Shoestring101.com (one of my favorite blogs, by the way) left on a recent Weekly Marketing Skinny:

Thank You section in Weekly Marketing Skinnies at Traffic Generation Café

Here are just some of the mentions I came across in the past week:

The Blogger’s Bucket List: 20 Must-Reach Milestones on the Path to World Domination – Kevin Duncan at boostblogtraffic.com

Born of and Made for Google Plus – Story of an Infographic – Robert Ryan at robertryan.ie

Enstine Muki, Harleena Singh, Anna Hoffman & 13 Other Bloggers Are M.A.D – Babs at thatcoolblog.com

Have I missed your mention? Let me know in the comments!

Want to see your name here? Mention Traffic Generation Café in your next blog post!

Subscribe to Stay Ahead

I share a lot of marketing news as well as the best posts I read throughout a week on my Google+ profile.

To read them as they come out and stay ahead of your competition, as well as become a social media star and share the best with YOUR followers (you’d be surprised how much it’ll do for your credibility and online presence!), join me there:

You can also subscribe to my G+ feed through your RSS reader of choice; just add the following link like with any normal blog RSS feed: http://tgcafe.it/gplus-feed

To an even better next week,

traffic generation cafe


Back to Featured Articles on Logo Paperblog