What is digital marketing? Is it just social media marketing? NO! When looking at marketing today, a better way to look at things is to look at the old way of doing things — outbound marketing — and compare that with the new way: inbound marketing.

What is Inbound Marketing?

Inbound Marketing is NOT social media. Social media is one component of Inbound Marketing

How does inbound marketing differ from outbound marketing?

Outbound marketing is “traditional, old-style” marketing. It is:  Read more...

• Flyers
• Sales calls (cold calling — you know, those annoying sales calls that always come at dinnertime!)

Brands are still a bit slow on the social media bandwagon. Some are still wondering why they should join it. A new report from eMarketer gives a good answer. People who follow brands on social media are more likely to buy. According to Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate social friends and followers are more likely to purchase from brands that they are fans of.

More than one-half of Facebook fans said that they are more likely to make a purchase with brands that they are fans of. 67% of Twitter followers reported the same.

 Read more...

I’ve already written about social media ROI before, but this socionomics video further shows the economics of social media. As a recent HubSpot report showed, inbound marketing has a 60% lower cost per lead than traditional, outbound marketing. Companies that have a higher level of social media have higher sales. Gary Vaynerchuk was able to use the Internet and the power of video blogging to turn his father’s Shoppers Discount Liquors to the powerhouse that Wine Library is today.

Just a few stats from the video about how the Internet and digital marketing helps businesses save costs:  Read more...

In today’s social media environment, companies are all scrambling to take part in the inbound marketing revolution. Social networking is an amazing tool that will continue to evolve weekly, monthly and yearly, while the social media gurus rush to be the first to figure out the best way to use the most recent mutations. When they do figure it out, the tools already will have changed, and once again we all will be chasing the next “best thing.” Twitter, as we now know it, will be like today’s film camera that in a few years we will have, but won’t use because we just bought the newest technology.  Read more...

After writing my last post about the ROI – the return on inaction –  of social media, one of the commentators challenged me to actually quantify the social media return on investment. This give and take is one of the challenges and benefits of social media. Companies can’t just stand behind pronouncements – they are challenged and forced to strengthen their claims.

The interesting thing about the question of “What is the ROI of Social Media” is that we can track this in ways that weren’t trackable with traditional marketing. Despite the fact that many people have difficulty giving real numbers to the ROI of social media, it’s actually far EASIER to track than traditional media.  Read more...

Following up on my previous post about the ROI of social media, perhaps it’s worth explaining what social media is.

Social media is not so new. Even the technology is new and major social networks have been on for close to a decade. Facebook only started in 2004. Twitter in 2006. Blogger in 1999 and bought by Google in 2003, and WordPress also was first released in 2003. College seniors that opened up a Facebook profile in 2004 are now your 27- year old workers. Moreover, humans have been social since the first caveman shared pictures on the cave walls.  Read more...

Social Media doesn’t just sell technology (although Dell claims that they’ve made over $1 million in sales due to their Twitter presence), or shoes (although Zappos has also been raking in the big bucks), but it also saves lives and does good.

Whether it’s a religious organization, charity fundraising campaign, or trade group, or promoting democracy, social media does good.

If you’ve been paying attention, social media has been recently saving lives in Haiti and promoting democracy in China and Iran. Ben Parr of Mashable has a new story posted on CNN about the social web.  Read more...