In a week dominated by news surrounding a violent weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia, 40 percent of Americans approve of the way Donald Trump is handling his job as President, according to the latest SurveyMonkey Tracking poll. For the full week, from Friday August 11 through Thursday August 17, Trump’s overall approval rating dropped a point, while 58 percent disapprove, a point higher than the previous week. These latest results match the average for SurveyMonkey’s tracking over the past four weeks, in which Trump’s approval rating has varied … [Read more...]

I wrote my first blog post two summers ago. And I wish I could erase it from the internet. Reading it is like looking at my middle school Facebook pictures -- it’s almost too cringe-inducing. Maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on myself, though. I had just finished my freshman year of college, and the last paper I wrote was about the Odyssey. I didn’t know what I was doing. But after completing several content marketing internships and taking classes like business writing, electronic journalism, and creative writing, I’ve learned how to write for … [Read more...]

(Image: Copyright, Marvel) Sometimes, the most powerful solution to a problem is a combination of solutions. Think of the world of superheroes; the Avenger or the Hulk or Wonder Woman each has a special set of skills – extraordinary ones, to be sure.  But every hero has a kryptonite, a weakness or vulnerability that can bring even the strongest champion to the brink of destruction. When these archetypal characters get together, however, as in the popular Avengers movies, their power to fight and win is magnified many times over. They make up for each … [Read more...]

When potential customers are researching you online, they're getting to know you by way of the content of your website. Understandably, many of them might be skeptical or hesitant to trust you right away. To prove the value of what you have to offer, why not let your happy customers do the talking? Your testimonial page serves as a platform to show off how others have benefited from your product or service, making it a powerful tool for establishing trust and encouraging potential buyers to take action. Plus, having a testimonial page serves as yet another indexed … [Read more...]

Picture this: it’s the end of the month, and some poor soul at your agency needs to put together the monthly marketing report for each client. He or she embarks on this mind-numbing journey by logging into every digital marketing service you use, copying the key data points, and entering them into your clunky marketing KPI spreadsheet. For other metrics that are too complicated to duplicate in a spreadsheet, they cut and paste graphs from different software into powerpoint, and try to craft a cohesive story even though each graph's format is different. … [Read more...]

A simple question: would you rather have a bigger AdWords ad or a smaller AdWords ad for the same cost? Of course the answer is obvious -- when it comes to advertising bigger is always better. So how can you go about making your Google AdWords ads bigger for the same (or maybe even a lower) cost? This is where ad extensions come in. In this article, we’ll review why these extensions are important, and how you can start incorporating them into your Google AdWords strategy. What is a Google AdWords Ad Extension? A Google AdWords ad extension is piece of … [Read more...]

Ed Ross, the founder of survey software firm Quantime, died suddenly and unexpectedly in the early hours of Wednesday, August, 9. He was 73. Ed was born in New York City in 1944. He was brought up in the Bronx where he attended the Bronx High School of Science, before studying Mathematics at Harvard.  In 1964, he came to the UK, where he worked in several computing posts at the University of London. A year later, he joined the Gallup Poll to design and write a computer system for analyzing data. He went on to design and write several analysis … [Read more...]

Keep it simple, stupid. We don't mean to offend you -- this is just an example of a great slogan that also bears the truth of the power of succinctness in advertising. It's incredibly difficult to be succinct, and it's especially difficult to express a complex emotional concept in just a couple of words -- which is exactly what a slogan does. That's why we have a lot of respect for the brands that have done it right. The ones that have figured out how to convey their value proposition to their buyer persona in just one, short sentence -- and a quippy one, at that. … [Read more...]

When inbound marketing was on the rise in 2006, search engines were the primary way readers discovered new content. In 2017, this still holds true. Social, video, and messaging apps now occupy a fair share of the content landscape -- but with over 3.5 billion searches per day on Google alone, search is a channel marketers still can't afford to ignore. Over the last ten years or so, it feels like we've figured out a pretty standard content formula: publish a large volume of content to target long-tail keywords, and convert that organic traffic into leads via … [Read more...]

A treat for business. Local shops and restaurants in the path of the eclipse should expect a large influx of customers on Monday.The total solar eclipse starting Monday morning is making Americans very curious. Three out of every 4 intend to watch it, and 1 in 5 will actually travel to view it from a better location. Many people (57%) report being interested in getting more information about space, astronomy, or science thanks to this unique phenomenon. And more than half (52%) say they are very or extremely interested in the eclipse. These are some of the highlights … [Read more...]