The Rise of Social Customer Service
How customer support moved onto Twitter and Facebook between 2008 and 2013, from Comcast's early experiment to a standard part of doing business.
The Archive
2013
Why Short-Form Video Matters for Your Bottom Line
The business case for short-form video in 2013, when Vine's six-second loops and Instagram's new video feature gave brands a cheap, fast way to earn attention.
Common Email Segmentation Mistakes in the Mobile Inbox Era
Why segmentation built for the desktop inbox was breaking down in 2013, as mobile opens climbed past half of all email and Gmail's tabbed inbox landed.
Marketing Personas: What Every Business Needs to Know
Personas aren't free. Before committing the time to build them, here's how to tell whether your business benefits, or whether the exercise will just sit unused.
Building a Remarketing Strategy From Scratch
A hands-on setup guide to remarketing in 2013: tagging your site, segmenting audiences, capping frequency and getting your first campaign live.
Mastering SEO After Hummingbird: A Marketer's Playbook
Hummingbird rewrote Google's entire ranking algorithm, not just a filter on top, so the fix isn't a checklist of tactics but a change to content operations.
A Practical Guide to Content Strategy
Nine content strategy practices that hold up now that Google's Hummingbird update judges pages on whether they answer a whole question, not just a keyword.
Case Study: Winning With Instagram for Business
Instagram passed 100 million monthly users this year with no self-serve ads for small businesses yet. How one boutique built real sales from organic posting.
Visual Content Marketing: What Every Business Needs to Know
A decision framework for weighing visual content marketing in 2013, when Pinterest, Instagram and infographics were reshaping how brands earned attention.
Building a Native Advertising Strategy From Scratch
A step-by-step build guide to native advertising in 2013: picking the right platform, matching editorial voice, handling disclosure and measuring beyond clicks.
Common Responsive Design Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them)
With mobile traffic climbing fast this year, plenty of sites went responsive quickly and discovered that shrinking a desktop layout isn't designing for a phone.
The State of Lead Generation in 2013
Salesforce bought ExactTarget for 2.5 billion dollars this year and Oracle's Eloqua deal was still settling in. Marketing automation became table stakes.
Building a Mobile Web Strategy From Scratch
A step-by-step approach to deciding between responsive design, a separate mobile site or an app, and shipping it based on what worked this year.
Building a Growth Hacking Strategy From Scratch
Growth hacking isn't a bag of tricks, it's a repeatable process. Here's how to build one from a north star metric up through a working experiment pipeline.
Building a Social Customer Service Strategy From Scratch
A step-by-step 2013 guide to setting up support on Twitter and Facebook, from choosing response time targets to training the team that answers.
Short-Form Video: What Every Business Needs to Know
A decision framework for whether a business should adopt short-form video in 2013, grounded in Vine's January launch and early campaigns like Lowe's Fix in Six.
A Practical Guide to Email Segmentation
Sending one email to an entire list is the fastest way to waste it. Here is why splitting a list into meaningful groups lifts opens, revenue and deliverability.
A Practical Guide to Marketing Personas
How a marketing persona is built from real customer research, and why personas sketched out in a single brainstorm rarely survive an actual campaign.
Common Remarketing Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them)
Where remarketing campaigns went wrong in 2013, from creepy over-frequency to sloppy list segmentation, and how to fix each one.
7 SEO Strategies After Hummingbird That Work
Google confirmed in September that it quietly rewrote its entire ranking algorithm a month earlier. Here's what changes for anyone doing SEO.
The State of Content Strategy in 2013
A snapshot of where content strategy stood in early 2013, from the shift away from keyword-stuffed pages to the rise of brand publishing and content teams.
Instagram for Business Trends Shaping 2013
Video, 100 million users and the first real ad deals with major brands: what changed on Instagram this year, and what it means for everyone locked out of paid.
A Practical Guide to Visual Content Marketing
How visual content marketing worked in early 2013: why Pinterest and Instagram rewarded images, and the mechanics of hosting and optimizing them.
Common Native Advertising Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them)
The native advertising mistakes that tripped up brands in 2013, from disguised ads to unmeasured campaigns, and what to do instead.
Case Study: Winning With Responsive Design
Google has recommended responsive design as its preferred mobile approach since last year. What it took one business to migrate off a separate mobile site.