Since the launch of the Kindle back in 2007, the publishing industry has changed forever. The explosive growth of ebooks has been ongoing and in 2011 digital books outsold print for the first time on Amazon. Although outside of this online marketplace, paperbacks and hardcovers are still outselling their electronic counterparts, this is still a strong indicator of a rapidly growing trend that demands our attention.

Given our modern technology, practically everyone has a smartphone, tablet or other handheld...

2013 was a big year for marketers. Between updates to Google’s algorithms, social services being updated and going public, and new developments in politics, digital marketing changed quite a bit in 2013. Here are some highlights of the past year, as well as predictions for the year ahead.

Job descriptions are concise statements laying out the responsibilities of an employee, his or her role within your organization, standards for measuring effectiveness, and accountability expectations. An interesting tactic that marketers can use when designing a digital presence is to ask the question, “If my online presence was an employee, what would I put in its job description?”

Anyone who has ever been to a garage sale or a flea market can tell you, get there early if you’re looking for the best bargain. Why? Because the professional pickers, those most astute at finding value amidst the clutter, swoop in at the earliest possible moment and take the best deals for themselves. In many ways, the online world works the same way. Early adopters often find themselves richly rewarded for being the first to the market, while latecomers stroll through holding their significant other’s hand and talking about how to fix up the junk that remains.

As the world’s largest online retailer, Amazon takes a lot of criticism from established brick and mortar retailers. From their legendary feuds with book retailers such as Borders and
Barnes and Noble, to the intricate details of state sales tax policy, Amazon and Main Street have been at odds for a very long time. There are some signs, however, that the frosty relationship between Amazon and Main Street may be starting to thaw. Is it possible that the two could soon work together?

One of a digital marketer's primary goals is to increase visitor engagement throughout a site. An often overlooked opportunity for increasing engagement is on a Thank You page. Thank You pages are the landing pages a user first sees after performing an action on a website, like downloading content, subscribing to a newsletter, or making a purchase.

Placement is key in digital marketing. Ask any conversion rate optimization specialist and they’ll tell you that simply moving a button can make a huge difference between a bounce or a conversion. In the content world, a piece of content placed in one spot might get a ton of traffic, while that same piece of content placed elsewhere gets ignored. One innovative placement strategy is to put a company introduction video on thank you pages for users who’ve decided to engage with your content in some way.

Big data marketing can yield big results for digital marketing strategy when marketers focus in on the most insightful data types.

This brief video looks at the concepts of content marketing, as applied in a way we've all seen before - a grocery store magazine. We look at the ways that a successful chain store is able to educate, engage and inform their customers while still meeting their marketing goals. Anyone know where to get some popcorn?

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There has been considerable speculation for some time that Google was preparing another Penguin release designed to drastically change the relationship between link building and search results. That speculation has now been confirmed with the release of Matt Cutt’s video blog yesterday outlining the coming changes of Penguin 2.0.

Cutts promises an eventful summer for webmasters utilizing black hat SEO practices, and a giant step forward in Google’s attempt to reward high quality websites that offer a compelling user experience. Additionally, the...