What are /r/marketing's favorite Products & Services?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

1. Everything by Frank Kern
2. Jeff Walker Product Launch Formula
3. Jon Loomer's blog
4. Influence Robert Caldini
5. Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
6. Ca$hvertising
7. Ogvily on advertising
8. Scientific Advertising
9. Books by Perry Marshall
10. Anything by Seth Godin

1.Everything by Frank Kern 2.Jeff Walker Product Launch Formula 3.Jon Loomer's blog 4.Influence Robert Caldini 5.Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely 6.Ca$hvertising 7.Ogvily on advertising 8.Scientific Advertising 9. Books by Perry Marshall Anything by Seth Godin

So, this could be a blatant brag...but since it's open source and totally free I assume it's ok answer here. :)

I'm the founder of Mautic (Mautic is a full-on marketing automation platform just like Marketo, Eloqua, Pardot, Hubspot or Infusionsoft...but it's both downloadable or SaaS and completely opensource.) While we're a younger community - we've exploded on the scene and been getting tons of publicity (featured by betalist within a week of launching our beta, got discovered by Product Hunt within 4 days of launching and we trended for the day in the Top 10, and we were asked to attend Collision Conference as part of their elite START program).

I know it's a big commitment and we're in this for the long-haul. We understand the amount of energy that it will take and respect those that have already "drank the koolaid" - we're all about our community and we want to see you successful! We've got lots of great feedback from people and lots of people switching over from their previous paltforms. And a very active community both in the forums and in our public Slack chat (https://www.mautic.org/slack)

Definitely take a look and see if it's got what you need and reach out to people in the community if you get stuck or have questions - we would love to have you!

> Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that he make every word tell.

> — "Elementary Principles of Composition", The Elements of Style

Don't try to write something that "sounds good". Know what you want to say and say that as plainly possible. It feels like you're trying to give a technically correct definition that will cover all the bases, but it would be better to interpret the question as, "What does marketing mean to you personally? What do you think is the most important part of marketing?" This isn't an exam question that you get right or wrong. This question is designed so that they can learn something about you, and a chance for you to distinguish yourself from other applicants.

I would scrap the whole first paragraph, it doesn't really say anything. Just start, "Marketing is about building a relationship with your customers."

These should keep you busy for a while!

Influence by Cialdini (all about the psychology of why people say yes to things)

On Advertising by Ogilvy (a classic and a fun read)

My Life in Advertising and Scientific Advertising by Claude C. Hopkins (he's the father of modern advertising and it's really interesting to read about his thought processes- the man was an absolute genius)

Save the Cat by Blake Snyder (It's about writing screenplays- which means that other marketers probably aren't reading it which will give you an edge because telling a compelling story is the key to effective marketing)

The Lean Startup by Eric Reis (even if you're not in the startup world it's still very handy for a marketer to read)

1. Buy The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E. B. White.

2. Memorize it.

This sub tends to focus on internet skills, and much of marketing is just that. But communicating clearly will always be an enormous part of marketing, and especially in PR, as I'm sure you've learned.

The book is a compendium of tips and common mistakes to avoid. (Though many are a bit dated; adding -ize to the end of a word is obnoxious, yes, but it's unavoidable in marketing.) The biggest lesson I learned from reading the book is how to think about writing: Be concise, be clear, and be direct.

Depends on how big you team and budget are, but if you're looking for something more deadline-oriented (for prioritization), it's worth checking out Asana

Free... A shared calendar (gmail/outlook) and file-sharing system (gdocs/dropbox) are always helpful!

To do something intentionally to show you have no respect for someone or something.

Cambridge Dictionary

The Phrase Finder

This is pretty critical. There was a book written about this called Free: The future of a radical price.

https://www.amazon.com/Free-Future-Radical-Chris-Anderson/dp/1401322905

The whole book could probably fit in a single chapter but it's an interesting read.

People stop thinking when you say Free. There's no cognitive cost to making the choice to act if it's "free."

Totally agree. Come on guys, is there really ANYTHING more that REALLY needs to be said about landing pages, SEO, CTRs, social media, and blogging? I think we're pretty much covered - there isn't a single topic in digital that hasn't been beaten to death. If you recently did a campaign in your company that yielded great results, I think most of us in the sub would be happy to read about your problem, solution, execution and results in detail (if you'd be willing to share). But otherwise, we really don't need another article titled "10 Ways to Blow Your Conversion Rates off the Roof! #4 will Blow You Away!". I feel that growth hackers have taken away the beauty in marketing in many ways.

I personally feel this sub is way too focused on digital. There's more to life than just sitting in front of a screen. What about offline? Billboards, TV, brand activation/experience, sampling etc. Marketing Research, the changing consumer landscape etc. Just because the internet is prominent in 2015 doesn't mean all other marketing strategies and platforms become irrelevant.

I think personal experience articles are great too. If you've been an executive at a large company I'd love to hear about your experiences throughout your years and some key takeaways about life and work in general. I recently came across an article on Linkedin from the Brand Manager of Cathay Pacific sharing about the key lessons he learned from meeting the founder of CP and it was a great read. (It's here if you are interested, and I am in no way affiliated with Cathay: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/3-things-i-learned-from-meeting-founder-cathay-pacific-dennis-owen) - Personal experiences are truly unique, CTR is calculated the same no matter how you look at it.

Okay, done ranting. Feel free to disagree.

Note: By no means a complete list, but this is a handful of books I've read in the last year that had tremendous impact on my own thinking.

Tested Advertising Methods, by Claude Hopkins

Scientific Advertising, by Claude Hopkins

Smartcuts, by Shane Snow

Growth Hacker Marketing, by Ryan Holiday

Ogilvy on Advertising, by David Ogilvy

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, by Robert Cialdini

Made to Stick, by Chip and Dan Heath

The Thank You Economy, by Gary Vaynerchuk

Sendy + Amazon SES. Beats any full service be requires set up of a Sendy server but has nearly all the bells and whistles of a full service email house at 1/100th the cost. Badass. Can't be beat.

http://sendy.co/

Marketing is essentially applied psychology -- exploiting/utilizing human behavior to achieve a goal (e.g. sales, leads, etc.).

<em>Predictably Irrational</em> by Dan Ariely demonstrates multiple ways that people don't behave rationally when making everyday decisions.

For example, people are more willing to purchase an item that has Free Shipping, even if the total price paid is about the same as an item that charges for separate shipping & handling. Also, people will drive 15 minutes out of their way to save $15 on the purchase of a fancy pen ($20 marked down to $5), but wouldn't drive 15 minutes out of their way to save $15 on the purchase of a $10,000 car (it's the same savings, but relativity matters when humans are making decisions).

The book is entertaining and easy to read -- it's similar to books like Freakonomics.

Where to start? There is lots of thing you can do for SEO, starting with "on-page" optimization. Too much detail to write in a comment here (would be a really long comment).

But this is a great starting guide you can reference (from Moz, one of the SEO leaders): https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo

Also you can reference this blog post I put together myself with a bunch of different free tools that can help you with managing/optimizing some of your efforts: http://www.brand-lounge.nrdigitalbranding.com/2015/02/free-online-marketing-tools-for-small-business.html

Congrats on recognizing a weakness. That takes courage!

Read the following:

• Zero to One
• The Innovators Dillema
• The Cluetrain Manifesto
• Hooked
• Blue Ocean Strategy
• Paul Graham's Essays

Then, go out and learn by doing. The easiest way would be to join a non-profit org of some sort that needs some help. They won't expect as much as a paying full time job and you'll be able to learn a lot in a short amount of time.

Once you've got a little bit of a base established, specialize. You'll have better luck finding a higher paying gig if you have deep subject matter expertise in one area. You'll know what you enjoy most once you've tried a few things - maybe it's social media, maybe PR, maybe it's copywriting or growth hacking. Just find something that resonates with you and read every thing you can get your hands on about it. I personally recommend something that is not traditional or else you'll be competing against the old guys with 20+ years of experience.

Pour your heart into what you do and continue to be humble. Soon you'll be the expert in something and you'll be paid well for it.

Good luck!

1) Get rid of the newsletter popup. There's an argument to be made that there's a place for these. They don't belong on your product page.

2) Rewrite the copy. I don't care about you and your wife or why you decided to create this grill. I care about what the grill can do for me. I see a list of features - almost no benefits. Nobody gives a shit about features. Everyone cares about benefits.

3) Get rid of your rotating value props on the main site. This tells the customer you don't really know why they should buy from you. Pick one message and stick with it. Throw the rest into bullet points or subheaders if you want.

4) Your site is slow. Run it through something like https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/ and fix your speed issues.

This is all I noticed before I got so annoyed with your newsletter popup I bounced. Hope this helps - seems like a good product :)

In house marketer here who also wears lots of hats. I tend to structure my days in chunks of what needs to get done i.e. hour of Adwords optimization, hour of scheduling social media etc. I also give myself an SEO day where I focus solely on SEO as best I can (usually a Wednesday but thats irrelevant). I use Trello (Project Management) to structure my week and keep a sense of priority. It is Free and very simple to use!

https://www.airbnb.com/ My daughter and her husband bought a cheap condo in the Philippines and put it on this website it immediately got booked for all open dates, they found a cheap management company to manage it and "wala" istant profit.

Right, it's not going to happen with PR but anywhere else you syndicate the content (multiple corporate sites, guest blogging, etc) you should use rel=canonical

Looks like Moz just addressed this in a Whiteboard Friday post: https://moz.com/blog/guest-blogging-content-licensing-without-duplicate-content-issues-whiteboard-friday

Advertise it on ProductHunt. I'd encourage you to first poke around and understand the community a bit. In fact, you might have to build up a certain amount of 'points' (or whatever it's referred to) in order to submit your product.

Agreed. The advice in the actual post is good, but the deck is all fluff... Where's all the supporting evidence?

These decks are far better. Front and Airbnb are my favourites.

It all depends on what exactly do you expect from a social listening platform. The characteristics vary from one tool to another. The ones you mentioned are all enterprise-level solutions with quite high pricing points. Recommend having a look at https://brand24.com if you're into something more affordable (full disclosure I work there).

Lot's of amazing choices available. Based on the details above I'd say:

Influence by Robert Cialdini

Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath

Purple Cow by Seth Godin

Inbox me if you want to go deeper on specific verticals within marketing.

I think I read about quite a few of these recently, in a book named Predictably Irrational... and I can't remember any of it. The book was written by Dan Ariely - I actually just looked this up because I also had forgotten the book name and its author. Anyway, I want to see the list complete and use it, therefore hopefully others will help you. I'll monitor the thread. Good luck!

Although its an old book, Dale Carnegie's "How To Win Friends and Influence People" is a great guide on how to interact with people in a positive way. The core principles that I've learned in this book have been applied to my marketing and PR career on many occasions. Being able to develop and nurture positive relationships is integral to success in just about any field.

Best option: your primary goal should be to get any marketing or even inside sales job at a good brand. Once there, you will want to show off your skills as much as you can by asking people in positions similar to what you want to do if you can help them with anything.

Second best option: get a job in a smaller, lesser known brand, but where you will do all of the marketing so you can try your hand in a bunch of different stuff and learn about all of it, then pick what you want to do.

Source: I have done both of these before and it's worked out for me quite well.

Also, if you are really good at writing, and you have a marketing topic you feel you can write well about - hit me up and I can get your content on my agency's blog, and give you byline credit so you can show off your work to potential employers. Will give me a fresh perspective to share, and will give you some tangible experience and a way to show off your knowledge and writing skill.

Step one - how many leads do you need? Make it a numbers game. How many deals do you have to close to meet your salary goals? How many showings do you need to close a deal? How many leads do you need to generate a showing? I'm not sure I got the terminology right, but you see where I'm going. Step one is understanding what your funnel needs to look like - what is your ideal pipeline? Ex. I need to close 10 deals a month to pay my bills, to close 10 deals I need 25 showings, to get 25 showings I need 100 leads.

Great - now you've got visibility into your sales funnel. Now you can start to understand what marketing tactics could help you to generate 100 leads. Where are you lacking leads? Awareness, Consideration, Engagement? (very high-level terms). Within each of these stages, you can identify the tactics required to build the flow of leads. You want to have a consistent pipeline. So not only do you need to know your sales pipeline, you need to know your marketing pipeline.

Some of your tactics aren't working - so at a very high level: make plan. work plan. change plan. You get zero appointments? Change your plan!

https://moz.com/ is a good resource for SEO.

Your website looks good; keep the blogs going! And also don't be afraid to spend a little bit on product listing ads inside amazon. I have had much better success with amazons ads than google.

Edit: You can maybe come up with new and unique recipes using your spices as source material for blogs.

>I'm not into Excel

Sorry, but based on your list of requirements a spreadsheet sounds like the right tool for this. You may find Google Sheets to be easier to use, and you can hook it up to Google Analytics and other data sources to pull in online sourcing automatically.

You don't need a certification to be a good marketer; you need results.

That being said, I think all marketers should read these books:

• Influence
• Purple Cow
• 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing
• Getting Everything You Can Out of All You've Got
• Trust Me I'm Lying
• Predictably Irrational

For social media-based books, you can read anything by Gary Vaynerchuk.

Check out Zero to One by Peter Thiel. Not a "how to" book, but a great read, especially for young people. He pushes entrepreneurs to strive for bigger goals and solve bigger problems.

EDIT: *For those who don't know him, Peter Thiel is a massively successful investor and entrepreneur. He formed the original PayPal team among other impressive accomplishments in business/technology.

We're hosted on Amazon EC2 servers. That means any account sending emails from Mailblast gets 62,000 emails for free per month from Amazon.

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/ses/the-amazon-ses-free-tier/

I'm with you. I clicked through to the below link for more information on 'Native Advertising', and I'm even more perplexed. Is there not an easier way of saying this?

"Native advertising refers to a specific mode of monetization that aims to augment user experience by providing value through relevant content delivered in-stream."

http://mashable.com/2012/12/13/infographic-native-advertising/

You know what that sounds like to me? Advertising with a complicated name.

Well the good news is you have a lot of room for improvement. I'm not really even sure how to start giving you advice because there is so much you could be doing. I would ditch hibu and find someone else. How much do you currently pay hibu? Do a search for hibu reviews, you could do way better. http://www.consumeraffairs.com/misc/yellow_book.html

Seems you have claimed your google my business which is good. And you selected only one category which imo is good. I would add some pictures.

You website went live around June 2013? Also good. I would add "tire shop" to both your title and h1 on your homepage. I would also add your address on the footer of every page. title:Tire & Automotive Service Center Harrisonburg, VA - A& A Tires

h1:Dependable Tire Shop & Service Center

I would submit your business to this service: https://moz.com/local

Really a full book would be needed to explain everything, but this should get you a good start.

I am not 100% sure if this fits your needs, but I highly recommend Airtable. It is a simple relational database, but it does the job well and has a very small learning curve. I use it alongside dropbox and googledrive to run my department.

As a marketer, you often have to work with designers and it helps to know to speak their language and what you can expect from them.

Some more books that are an easy interesting read and will give you an edge over the mediocre people who only have marketing degrees: Nudge by Thaler and Sunstein, Youtility by Baer, Predictably Irrational by Ariely, Thinking Fast and Slow by Kahneman, Unmarketing by Stratten.

You want to become a student of how and why people make decisions. That, in combination with tactical approaches taught by HubSpot and Marketo, for example, will make you a formidable marketer.

If you have B2B marketing in your sights, you also want to start reading papers and watching webinars on account based marketing. That's an area that'll explode over the next few years.

I think a big factor in how well you're going to be able to use psychology is whether the product/service you're selling is high involvement or low involvement. Low involvement products you can start playing with things like mere-exposure, priming, and anchoring but it gets much more tricky with high involvement products. I just want to make sure you've read books like Predictably Irrational, Paradox of Choice, and Nudge, as well as looked at some of the psych studies by Ariely, Kahnemann, Schwartz, and all of the TED Talks available.

Unfortunately I can't answer your three main questions fully. The company I work for on the side is still in the infantile stages, and basic awareness generation is all I'm worried about right now. We do have an overarching brand that we're keeping in mind, but I'm afraid we're just too young to really push it hard.

I have a similar background to you, BS in Psychology and MS in Marketing. I work for a $6B company as my main job, and luckily I have seen elements of psychology being used. It's not completely lost!

• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion – Robert B. Cialdini

• The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing – Al Ries & Jack Trout

• Made to Stick – Chip and Dan Heath

• Contagious: Why Things Catch On - Jonah Berger

The Paradox of Choice - Barry Schwarz

Predictably Irrational - Dan Ariely

Thinking in Systems: A Primer - Donella H. Meadows

The Power of Habit - Charles Duhig

Getting to Yes - William Ury

Data, data, data.

Unless you are going to go into pure traditional marketing like classic advertising, you are going to need to know how to use data.

No one cares about your ideas or creative unless you can back up the results with data. Also online it is much more common to try every channel with a small budget, juggle the data, then put the pedal to the floor on what works (for the moment).

There is a great two part course on Coursera going over the theory and practice of data analysis for marketers part of a huge digital marketing certification. From there you can take certifications on things like Google Analytics which is a must have for digital marketers.

Alexa will give you some hints of Discord demographics. In short, I'd say that if women are part of your target audience, Discord is probably not the best platform. http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/discordapp.com

https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo?utm_campaign=sitelinks&amp;utm_source=google&amp;utm_medium=cpc&amp;gclid=Cj0KCQjww4OMBhCUARIsAILndv7iJZ0vFeNsBJVEwgl2EsyAwXbM-PYzKbhA8KZfUWczwOPJSmmaE_kaAjHvEALw_wcB

Enjoy

All of the things you said are more or less lead generation. You could say you are a Lead Generation Manager, or specialist, or anything. I typed in "lead generation jobs" on Indeed so you can sift through which ones you think make you sound the best :)

Let us know what you pick!

- Jack

After a bit of investigation it would seem that distractions such as Instagram links has minimal effect on changing impulsive purchase behaviour - Source - https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Do-Distractions-and-Interruptions-Mitigate-Online-Brooks-Califf/8ab1a5aa0bc190987155e6e2f80b6d511a6d46e6

Canonical Links will be your best friend. They were specifically created by Google to be used in cases of duplicate content.

I suggest duplicating the content exactly and then attribute the article to whoever wrote it. Say where it originally appeared using a canonical link.

That way everybody will be happy. You will have more content to share with your clients and the writer will receive attribution, some free publicity and their article’s SEO will be left unaffected.

Similar to what u/mikeytag said, if you invest it in FB, start small.

Also, check this out: https://moz.com/blog/facebook-funnel-that-converts-whiteboard-friday

When I got engaged, my (now) wife and I kept getting a plethora of FB ads for this one wedding photography company. They had "steps" depending on our interaction with the ads i.e. if we clicked one and didnt email them after 2 days. they showed us more ads w/different creatives and messaging, etc.

We ended up going with them as our photographer and we are SO glad we did! She loved the pictures they had as samples, I loved their marketing strategy!

i'd be wary of an online course. not saying not to try it out, especially if it's affordable for you. but you may want to also chat with someone who has PR experience. i'd be happy to chat with you and give you some directional feedback - I've been doing PR for early stage and growth stage tech companies for 14 years -- pm me or holler at me on linkedin if you'd like some feedback on how you might roll out PR on your own: https://www.linkedin.com/in/natehermes

Some tools I've tried that have been really great are HubSpot's integrated dashboard which is really an all-in-one inbound marketing tool that allows you to create and track campaigns.

Also Moz has a ton of great resources and Moz Pro allows you to track up to 300 keywords, giving recommendations on how to improve your search rank. I'm using their free trial right now and am fairly impressed.

I work for a company called SpyFu which is a tool for SEO's/PPC's. I'm the lead designer here, not a marketer but I can give you two good resources. We direct all customers to internetmarketingninjas.com. Alternatively, you could pick anyone from this list https://moz.com/rand/recommended-list-seo-consultants/.

Scrolling through that, I recognize or know just about everyone on that list and would feel comfortable recommending my mom to any of them. I liked the suggestion to find a contractor and not an agency. We have one of the best CRO's in the business and he's a lone wolf.

Disclaimer: I work at Drip. But if you want lead scoring, A/B testing, segmentation, and integrations with other apps, I think Drip is your choice. Our UI is easier than MailChimp and Campaign Monitor--and we have 90% of the features of Marketo or Infusionsoft, without the crazy pricing and clunky UI.

I also wrote a guide specifically about this called "10 Questions You Must Ask Before Choosing Email Marketing Software." Let me know if you want the PDF and I'll DM it to you.

Best two are Optimizely (https://www.optimizely.com/) and Visual Website Optimizer (https://vwo.com/). You can split your your traffic and drive users to two totally different pages using just one url.

I f*cked up, it was Honeywell's distributed heating systems in the homes and businesses which is the case study. Of especial note to those organisations in hospitality who require heating maintenance. Again via Salesforce.

http://www.salesforce.com/customers/stories/honeywell.jsp

The gist of it is:

• Honeywell has intelligent units which can communicate back-to-base

• If there is an error or outage, this is flagged as a ticket within a system

• The customer services team rank / manage and distribute options to a first Service tier, which can either be a distributor or a local contractor

• Contractor then goes in and services the unit, logging everything through a custom app

• If issues are experienced during services, the app can be hooked up to the device camera so a remote tech can diagnose and inform of service options.

What's interesting about this method is that it's people-free, the devices handle their own outages and the servicing happens without an intervention. I guess where I thought this could be applicable is in the TV part but there's going to have to be an account manager or site manager for nearly each of the hotels or regions. Agree pretty much with /u/sendmorewhisky above.

And here's the Terms of Service (it's like a contract) you'll have to discard to follow their advice in #3.

>Stay away from contracts

>You're hiring a marketing company, not signing up for cable. Any company worth its salt won’t worry about keeping you around. Plus, a company that has you locked into a contract isn’t going to be as diligent about impressing you with their results.

Their "marketing" is spamming copies of this all over Reddit forums. So in a way, anyone could DIY and screw themselves up real well.

It was challenging enough digging out the address or citation. I gave up on the phone number.

It takes skills to be a victim of your own advice. I love how this self contradicts. Love it.

Flat Design is everywhere these days.

Lots of free design elements available here https://www.flaticon.com

But yes it's hard to have a large and broadly applicable set entirely from free offerings.

Getting to be common knowledge, but https://unsplash.com/grid is awesome as well. Using government images can also be worthwhile.

Edit: ha, now that I look at it - Slidehop stole the images from unsplash. So, go right to the source.

Take the position and learn to code in your free time. There are tons of options and they're better than bootcamps. Check out https://edabit.com and http://jsforcats.com to start. Full disclosure: I created edabit, but it's completely free.

Absolutely. Check the traffic analysis using tools like Compete and Quantcast (it's way up):

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/yelp.com/

http://www.quantcast.com/yelp.com

The buzz for any service dies down as tech/startup/marketing blogs/news outlets find it less innovative, but mainstream adoption continues well past the "buzz" fading.

Were you aware that Norton lists your link as a scam?

https://safeweb.norton.com/report/show_mobile?url=theunittakeover.com

Even if it wasn't, whoever told you that trying to advertise on reddit (without even paying for it and supporting the site) is a good idea was lying to you.

A quick tip for file organization is to use numbers, uppercase or other pre-fixes to keep the "standard" directories at the top of every sub-folder.

Example for Web Project

01_Supplied

• ./Assets - Logos, word docs, etc

• ./SOW - Documents, other CYAs

02_Planning

• ./Discovery - Questionnaires, personas, etc

• ./Sitemap

03_Design

• ./Assets

• ./Comps

• ./Wireframes

• ./Layouts

04_Development

• ./Assets - Misc. files needed in dev

• ./Vendors - Licenses, plugins, etc

Then anything else will just fall in line after that.

To the Cloud!

So above is great for a small agency or team (a PM + designer + developer). Any larger team most likely has turned to the cloud for syncing their active projects (Google, Dropbox, Box, or OneDrive).

I am definitely biased (see username), but we offer a great solution for agencies needing to manage project assets with teams: marketing collaboration

Whatever you end up using, consistency and standardization of your client and project directories will make it easier to keep your team in sync more than any cloud program can. Remember: Garbage in, garbage out

I would love a header at the top that scrolls me to sections I'm interested in reading. It also looks like your Google Analytics tag isn't in there properly but I would love to see data on how far your readers scroll through the page with event tracking. The video loaded well but if you're planning on using Adwords, you're going to get shredded by your page speed for load times and your quality score is going to take a huge hit. Here is a readout of what you can change to help improve.

Well, a quick run of the passage thru Hemingway App indicates it's pretty wordy and overly complex. It's probably so complex that, unless someone is sure they want to work with you, they may just not read it and exit your site.

For more, see the Fleisch-Kincaid readability formula.. It's a formula that assesses the readability of a sentence. On the web, people tend to skim rather than read thoroughly, which makes readability pretty important.

Hi /u/Shamgoth - because of Instagram terms of service, there's no tool to help you schedule to Instagram.

I'd be thrilled if you tried out Socialdraft (disclosure - that one's mine). Our photos feature has an awesome Instagram search and it lets you re-share content to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. We're responsive, so you can use it from your computer, smart phone or tablet.

It does a few other things, but if you go here http://socialdraft.com/demo/ and watch the "Photos" video it will walk you through the general idea.

Ping me if you have q's...and if it is not what you're looking for, I'd love to hear what would make this a more useful to you.

***I use Iconosquare for analytics ;)

Any particular field of internet marketing you have in mind? I have 20 some-odd folders of articles based on the type of marketing :P.

Also, you should check out http://DoSocial.com as a great tool for quickly adding to your Twitter/RSS feed and http://quuu.co if you'd like others to curate great articles for you.

Neat. I built a similar free service last week: F5Bot. It only monitors social media such as Reddit and Hacker News, though.

Your service sounds good. Will you make a way for users to configure their own accounts? Do you have any plans to monetize it, or are you going to keep it free?

Where all does it monitor?

The only book you'll ever need to explain all of this is, "Thinking, Fast and Slow." It's a summation (in depth) of behavioral economics and psychology that exploits the fundamental issue with humans who like to think of themselves as rational but are anything but.

So, first thing is first, don't watch or listen to anything Gary Vee says or does. He's a huckster of the highest order and often changes his advice depending on which way the wind is blowing.

That said, if you want to learn about branding, the best books I can recommend are by Edward Bernays and Dale Carnegie. They're both written before the 1950s, and both How to Win Friends and Crystalizing Public Opinion & Propaganda will set you on the right path.

You can try my book (I'll send you a free copy as a .pdf if you DM Me) but I also recommend "Known" by Mark Schaefer if you're looking for something more recent.

You also can't go wrong with "Confessions of an Advertising Man" by Ogilvy and Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath.

Graduated with a degree in creative writing several years ago, now working in a senior analytics-centric role. Here's some answers:

> I have a couple questions however:

Hey, you have 6 questions here! ;) Sharpen your attention to detail.

> How can I become better at my job as a marketing writer?

Read Zinsser's On Writing Well, if you haven't already. Look for a good mentor; preferably an editor.

> When applying for a job in a marketing position, will employers expect samples from me?

Yes. Even if you have samples, many employers will also ask you to complete a writing test.

> How can I demonstrate authorship of certain pieces my university has me working on to prove to future employers that I'm actually doing work? Is it like clips from newspapers?

Do you have a byline? Hopefully these articles are also online (you can feature them on your LinkedIn profile).

> What other marketing related professions can my experience translate into? Is "marketing writer" even a thing at other companies?

I don't live in the US, but here's some options:

• Ad agencies - copywriters

• Tech - technical writers (aka those who write the documentation for new updates/patches)

• In-house - whoever's in charge of writing the company blog post, emails, social media, etc.

> What are some industry-standard skills I should be working on right now?

• Learn a bit of code (basic HTML/CSS). While you're not expected to make a website from scratch, it helps if you know how to format a blog post manually.

• Be familiar with different CMS/platforms (start with Wordpress).

I've actually been on &quot;Self-Learning MBA&quot; journey to do exactly the same. I've read over 40+ books so far, and I've compiled a list of best books to avoid redundancy

They are also categorized. So you can pick one from each section if you want

Entrepreneurship:

The Lean Startup - Eric Reiss

The Four Steps to Epiphany - Steven Blank

Running Lean - Ash Maurya

Zero to One - Peter Thiel

Ready Fire Aim - Michael Masterson

Will It Fly - Pat Flyn

&nbsp;

Marketing:

Traction - Gabriel Weinberg

Permission Marketing - Seth Godin

The Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell

The Long Tail - Chris Andersen

Free - The Future Of A Radical Price — Chris Andersen

&nbsp;

Finance:

Venture Deals - Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson

Financial Intelligence for Entrepreneurs - Karen Berman

How to Read a Financial Report - John A Tracy

Naked Statistics - Charles Wheelan

&nbsp;

Sales:

How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie

Spin selling- Neil Rackham

​The Psychology of Influence - Robert B. Cialdini

Pitch Anything - Oren Klaff

The Psychology of Selling - Brian Tracy

&nbsp;

&nbsp;

You can find a formatted list here: SkipMBA Courses &amp; Reading List (Contains links to courses) <--- It also contains 20 Free Online courses that you can couple with the books you pick up.

&nbsp;

Hope this helps! Good luck on your journey man :)

• Made to Stick by the Heath Brothers
• Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
• Art of Seduction by Robert Greene
• Trust Me I'm Lying by Ryan Holiday
• The Score Takes Care of Itself by Bill Walsh

I like "Positioning" by Al Ries, "Smarter Faster Better" by Charles Duhigg, and "The Copywriters Handbook" by Robert Bly.

If you're interested in some great business related reading outside marketing, try "The Phoenix Project" by Gene Kim

But I feel your pain, there is a sea of shit information, most of it being blatant seminar/book pushing. "Let me show you how to become a great marketer" turns into "Let me do your marketing / buy this book / video series / seminar."

Two books I enjoyed were 'Growth Hacker' and 'The Lean Startup'

Show Me, Don't Tell Me - is another good one as far as stories and communication go

'See What I mean' is another good title. its focused on pitching ideas, products - but i found those principles apply to marketing in general and I carry them with me everywhere

My list:

• “Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age” by Dr. Duncan J. Watts

• “The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less” by Dr. Barry Schwartz

• “Contagious: Why Things Catch On” by Dr. Jonah Berger

• “Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind” by Al Ries and Dr. Philip Kotler

• “Made To Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die” by Dr. Chip Heath and Dan Heath

• “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” Dr. Robert Cialdini

• “Comedy Writing Secrets”: By Melvin Helitzer and Dr. Mark Shatz

• “Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach To Web Usability” by Steve Krug

• “How To Win Friends & Influence People” by Dale Carnegie

• “On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft” by Stephen King

• “Why We Buy: The Science Of Shopping” by Paco Underhill

SN: Some are not marketing books but has some good point that helps on marketing and copywriting.

Made to Stick - Chip and Dan Heath.
BrandWashed - Martin Lindstrom (this book is amazing).
Whatever You Think Think the Opposite - Paul Arden,
Purple Cow - Seth Godin.
Small is The New Big - Seth Godin (or pretty much anything from Seth Godin).
Branding Only Works on Cattle - Jonathan Salem Baskin.
Trust Agents - Julien Smith & Chris Brogan.
The Now Revolution - Jay Baer & Amber Naslund.

1. It depends what your existing marketing knowledge is. You can use Coursera to take free or paid courses in Marketing or a specific domain. You can get a University certificate or just take the courses for the info.

2. I think it depends on the size of the company. The company I work at is smaller (about 50 people) so I manage all of the marketing (designing communication materials, upgrades to intranet, website updates, SEO, content marketing, analytics tracking). I've worked at larger companies though of 4,000+ people where their is a dedicated Marketing Specialist (or team) for each program or service that the company provides.

3. Generally, Marketing Specialists are supposed to drive qualified leads to the sales people who then guide the prospective clients through the final steps of the sales process. However not every business has salespeople and not every business has marketing specialists.

There is a really great two-part Marketing Analytics course on Coursera right now from a data guy from Google. Part of a huge digital marketing certification. You don't need to pay for the course, just do the lessons and the projects.

After that you can take certifications in anything, like an official Google Analytics certification.

Here is a good place to start.

Running contest via Facebook is a great idea, although they do have a bunch of rules and regulations that you have to follow. Second step after reading the promotions guideline is to contact a third party vendor that specializes in Facebook Promotions and contests - i'm sure they'll try to sell you on their services but at least you'll get a better understanding on what is legal or not.

hope this helps

I watched by streaming online, so I haven't seen all of the commercials yet because they looped the same 5-6 ads every break instead of streaming the ones you all saw. After the brainwashing, I now use Speed Stick deodorant, bought the new Samsung Galaxy almost immediately, and am waiting on credit approval towards a new Toyota. I probably won't be streaming it next year unless they take better advantage of the marketing opportunity and air ACTUAL commercials

I did however see the Oreo tweet (while posting all of my #handleit moments). After reading the article on buzzfeed: (http://www.buzzfeed.com/rachelysanders/how-oreo-got-that-twitter-ad-up-so-fast) and seeing the stats posted by /u/pepdek I think they win overall

Check out Taco Bell, they seem to do a really good job.

Snapchat's 'Crazy Engaged' Users Can't Resist a Message From Taco Bell

Why Taco Bell Went Loco for Snapchat

>obviously QR codes are the way to go in this situation

Obviously.

>but are there any other solutions that i may be over looking?

Text-2-Vote, SMS Polling, shows like Dancing With the Stars uses phone numbers to register voting.

You may want to consider mobile ad networks - however, this can be expensive. There's also a lot of pre-launch and "organic" work you can do to help generate buzz for the app. I recently wrote a Beginner's Guide to Mobile App Marketing with some actionable recommendations. Feel free to take a look! https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/beginners-guide-mobile-app-marketing-mike-plata

eg for SEO read the moz guide, and make an effort to comprehend as much as possible. you want to be able to talk semi-intelligently about the terms that crop up in the headers.

for entry level roles this is sometimes learned interview-to-interview. we don't expect people to know much in the screener but if you make it to interview 3 and you clearly don't know what you're talking about, you're out

Ok, I've been looking for something just like this for a while now. I know exactly how you feel.

What if you make a customized spice? You ever see - often in gourmet delis - those plastic canisters of breadcrumbs or BBQ rub? Make a homemade spice (you could literally make 10lbs of this at once) and put into a cool little container you can find on alibaba for pennies. "Custom steak seasoning". "Our secret chicken spice". Whatever it is, make it so that it traps the smell and really hits the nose when people open it. You only need a pinch of seasoning to really make a difference in most cases. You could do this - seriously - for less than 25 cents per order.

Alternatively, you could find an up-and-coming brand that has some cool stuff and reach out to them for free samples to include with your orders (like Essence of Emril). It helps them spread the word, and bolsters your offering.

Plastic bags from alibaba

Fill them with awesome spices and come up with unique names. Come up with something great and make people feel like they're getting something awesome for free!

edit: words

Im not sure about specifically online branding. I recently read The Brand Gap. Its a very short book and will only take about a day to read but is full of some really great quotes and visuals. It talks about how to create and maintain a brand, what a brand is, and where companies go wrong.

This guide taught me everything I know about SEO around 5 years back. They update it all the time though. If you complete this, I promise you will know all you need to do local SEO. Feel free to comment here or DM me with specific questions. Moz is huge btw - no affiliation whatsoever.

https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo

Beginners guide to SEO (there's probably a bit on PPC on this site as well): https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo

Email does work - you need a clean list and something good to say. You can communicate with a prospect directly, on an ongoing basis.

PPC - not my forte but look into remarketing. If you have a large prospect list (database of emails) I believe you can upload this list into Adwords and target them directly using paid ads

My team and I generated $600K in sales in the last 90 days (I led marketing and biz dev) - just giving you a reason to listen

TLDR; Develop an insatiable curiosity (learn a lot), take the best/most valuable actions, and acquire customers! (make tons of money/sales solves problems)

>"the more you learn the more you earn" -Warren Buffett ($86B net worth)

yes, this is an oversimplified platitude, but it's true.

Due to his old, Buffett recently reduced his daily reading from 800 pages to 500. lol.

>"You need to turn over every rock and open every door to learn your industry. This process never ends." -Mark Cuban ($4B net worth)

if you want to have an average career, in any field, stop learning.

if you want to have an exceptional career and life for that matter, learn insatiably.

note - Einstein would study tangential fields related to physics in order to spark breakthroughs/build a more robust understanding

But learning without implementation will result in 0. Learn and implement.

I could go on, but I'll spare you. /end rant

Resources:

&gt; foundation: relationship with God (if you're open to that), meditation, 8+ hours of sleep, good diet and exercise for focus, mindset and physical/mental health

&gt; Digital marketing: digitalmarketer.com / Ryan Deiss

&gt; SEO: moz.com

&gt; Great business books:

The E-Myth Revisited

Made in America

Areas of study:

Some of the physical sciences, some of the social sciences and some of the formal sciences.

&#x200B;

good luck newb, you got this

Since you deleted your last reply I couldn’t post this so I will put it here for you to do some research:

It was a very famous update to Google’s algorithm, codenamed Penguin. It even has its own Wikipedia page...

Check out Moz’s article and scroll down to Link Schemes - https://moz.com/learn/seo/google-penguin

This is a little different, a subtle but important difference for Svbtle itself, for Tumblr, and for WordPress. These are on subdomains. So it would be, yes, there are lots of people who are using WordPress, although that's very customizable. But you could imagine that if I got randstshirts.wordpress.com or randstshirts.tumblr.com or randstshirt.svbtle.com, that doesn't have the same ranking ability. That subdomain means that Google considers it separately from the main domain. So you're not going to inherit the ranking benefit on those. It's really Medium and LinkedIn where that happens

https://moz.com/blog/use-hosted-blog-platforms-seo-content-distribution

Technically, that may be against FTC regulations. However, the qualification may be payment for "positive" reviews...

This is good thread from Moz, it's about five years old now, but there is some good information:

https://moz.com/community/q/offering-incentives-for-google-reviews

Mmmmm...might have to disagree with you on that.

Social TV will be a $250 billion business by 2017. Look at what's coming out with TVs right now.

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/12/report-social-tv-market-to-be-worth-256-44bn-by-2017-europe-taking-largest-share-now/

Adam Grant a professor at Wharton has a great post exploring this same principle in a bit more depth:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20131007120010-69244073-what-makes-malcolm-gladwell-fascinating

There's a sociologist named Murray Davis who wrote a paper on this topic that provides some interesting classifications to think about when trying to create your own surprise.

Let me try to explain you from basic how you can select your best Niches in Affiliate marketing.

There are the 3 main core markets namely : -> Health -> Wealth -> Relationship.

Now mainly all types of core markets have other sub-markets and niches.

Let say for example - Health - It has sub-market called as Nutrition and again Nutrition has its own niches like Diet Plan, Weight Loss etc.

So we can put in this way

Health - Nutrition - Dietplan/weightloss

Similarly, Wealth has many such sub-markets like the Internet, Finance, real estate, Online Advertising etc..

Relationship has also some core market and niches like Dating, Love, Divorce, B'days etc some other like Dogs, Pets etc,

So each niche falls under the 3 core markets and as per my experience, the Health & Wealth is the best affiliate markets to earn money through it.

So this way you can find best niche.

You can also refer to this link to find many categories and select the best niche in which you are passionate about - https://web.archive.org/web/20170201124825/http://www.dmoz.org/

We have been straight up destroying it with Growth Driven Design (aka CRO) for manufacturing companies. It is a very specific audience. No one comes to a valve company website for fun and day dreaming - so converting more visitors leads to more good leads. Here's a GDD case study from our head developers personal website. Bananas conversion jumps. Install HotJar on your own site to start testing. It's free :-)

You can try this to avoid your site being penalized.

On your own site. You want to encourage links from quality testimonial-grade Web sites and avoid links coming to your site from unethical sites, such as sites involved in link farms or other types of spam. They can seriously harm your search engine rankings by association. Now, you can’t actively stop someone from linking to you. However, you can avoid requesting links from these sites, and if you have been linked to by a link farm, you can send them a note asking them to please remove the link. The best links come from sites that strongly relate to your industry or to what your Web page is about and that operate ethically.

· On other sites. The search engines generally do a good job combating link farms, but if you find that another site participating in a link farm is still ranking, you can report the site(s) as spam. Never, ever link back to a link farm page. As a willing participant, you are subject to a penalty.

Hope this may be of good help

https://moz.com/blog/whiteboard-friday-link-farming

A/B testing can become an investment in the status quo. Just because it hasn't for one company doesn't mean it can't for others.

Out of the cesspool and into the sewer: A/B testing trap.

Don't Fall Into the Trap of A/B Testing Minutiae Just because not everybody gets caught in the trap doesn't mean the trap isn't there.

At what point do you get someone from outside the status quo (we don't have a groupthink problem here -- we're a startup!) to beat the control? All bets off. Anything goes. Which innovator has a bounty in place and process for upsetting the applecart?

For PR-related SEO activities, you can actually use the Moz toolbar/extension (https://moz.com/tools/seo-toolbar). It will supply you with various metrics, and it should have a DA over at least 20.

You can also combine that with ahrefs and Majestic SEO to find the TF and CF which are also good indicators.

Another vote for Longtail Pro. I wouldn't use Google's Keyword Planner as it works great for ads but not for search. You may want to read this Moz Article.

Read the Moz Beginners Guide to SEO completely and then follow SEO blogs.

IMO SEO these days is mostly a waste of time/resources, instead I tend to recommend that clients focus on providing value to their customers through content and partnerships with other businesses and industry websites.

Follow inbound.org for useful advice on this.

https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo/how-search-engines-operate

Is the place to start, Moz is the Mecca for beginner SEO's. Some forums also have invaluable information that you won't find lying around in blogs, find them and they're your golden nuggets (:

Google Ad Planner

You can view demographics of specific sites, or define the demographic you'd like to target and find sites that match it.

On a different angle, Yahoo! Clues.

It provides demographics data for search keywords.