Connecting with your community is the best way to encourage real change for your neighbors and beyond. Whether you have ample resources or are looking for ways to enact change in small ways, consider these ideas for helping out and rising up.

Volunteer Your Time, Effort, or Cash

Spending time, effort, and money (if you can) is an excellent way to begin making a change in your neighborhood. From volunteering with different groups to developing resources on your own, there are plenty of ways to get started. Or, you can always write a check to your favorite organization to make a monetary impact.

• Find local committees for causes you’re passionate about and join up.
• Explore volunteer opportunities in your state through California Volunteers.
• Donate cash to a cause (and document the details for a charitable contribution deduction on your taxes).

Share the Love (and Your Stuff)

Sharing your gently used belongings is one way to help lift your community up, especially if you donate unwanted items to homeless or women’s shelters, children’s organizations, or not-for-profit thrift stores.

• Choose a national organization that is active in your community and drop off your clothing items.
• Give your furniture and household items new life by gifting them to a Habitat for Humanity ReStore in your area.
• Crowdfund entrepreneurs and families all over the globe through a microloan program like Kiva; donors’ small loans add up (and you get your cash back later).
  

Grow Your Own Impact

What if your community has a stark lack of volunteer opportunities? Or maybe you want to reach farther than your neighborhood or city. Digging a little deeper to grow your own effort for change might be the perfect move.

• Embrace entrepreneurship by starting a nonprofit agency and filing as an LLC with a local or global reach. You’ll also need to seek out the best LLC registered agent to act on behalf of your company when dealing with the state.
• Explore the definitions and parameters of public charities, foundations, and other nonprofits before jumping in to ensure you follow the rules.
• Put together fun virtual events to attract attention to your efforts.
• Investigate guidelines in your state regarding nonprofits operating as Limited Liability Corporations.
  
  

Effecting change can start with the smallest of actions – whether you volunteer, donate, or launch your own nonprofit organization, progress is the key. Getting involved with causes you care about expands your horizons, builds your brand and does good for the people around you – it’s a win-win.

Before starting this article, I hopped over to Google Trends to take a quick pulse as to what users have been searching for in the field of digital marketing in the last 90 days.
Sure enough, it is the  perennial fine tuning of 'SEO', also known as Search Engine Optimization.

Keeping up with Google Trends — What is the use of Google Trends

Google Trends is a global online tool by Google that helps you visualize and analyze trends in people's search behaviur within Google Search, Google News, Google Images, Google Shopping and YouTube. It is a powerful tool when it comes to reviewing the success of your brands' SEO strategy.

Subscribe to a Google Trends alert to get email updates on topics and searches in your region.
Become an Expert in Google Trend Lessons

The World of SEO is dynamic and ever changing.
Here are the must know stats of SEO that will help you fine tune SEO strategy, increase website traffic, and boost conversions.

The 8 Must Know SEO Tweaks for Your Content Creation as you Move On to 2021

6. Include Human Friendly Keywords in Your URL

A good URL structure provides both users and search engines an idea of what the destination page is all about. 
According to Google: 
"A site's URL structure should be as simple as possible. Consider organizing your content so that URLs are constructed logically and in a manner that is most intelligible to humans (when possible, readable words rather than long ID numbers)."

7. Lay out a Strategy in Building Backlinks

Backlinks are links from third party sources that point to your website, in comparison to internal links that exist between two pages within your website.

Google doesn't care how interesting your content is – it cares about how interesting other people think your content is. And Google measures that primarily through links to your website, or backlinks. Backlinks are one of the most important factors in how search engines figure out how high they should rank your content.

8. Publish Long Form Content

When a search query is typed into Google, the search engine crawls websites for content that will help solve that user's query. Web pages that have a longer time spent on site than others suggest to Google that browsers found that information important enough to stay on that page.

As a result, Google is more likely to suggest that page above others. Research dictates that long-form articles (posts with 3000+ words) get 3x more traffic, 4x more shares, and 3.5x more backlinks than articles of average length (901-1200 words).
An example of long form content.

According to Hubspot, here are 8 ways of writing long form contact

On-page SEO is all about using keywords and content to explain a topic that searchers enjoy reading. However, it's also a way to let search engines know the purpose of the page and what it's about. 

This technique includes optimization of content by adding keywords to a few places that create a good user experience for the reader, which also happens to make it an easy-to-crawl page for a search engine. For this very reason, on-page SEO still holds a lot of klout in the eyes of inbound marketers. Heck, even Matt Cutts, the face of Google’s search algorithm, said that content is how they are able to rank sites without any extra contextual information. 

Take a deep dive with these articles:

Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide: Official documentation from Google that helps new marketers and webmasters alike.
Google-friendly sites: More official documentation on building Google-friendly websites.
Page Speed Insights
On-page ranking factors from Moz
Google’s ranking factors
The Short Cutts: Brief summaries of Matt Cutts' Webmaster Videos for Google

Who are the Influencers of the 21st Century?

In our digital social media world, social content creators who are perceived as experts in their niches — to promote your brand or product. These people have put the time and effort to engage groups of followers on social media. These people are trusted by their tribe.  They are known simply as “social media influencers.”

As you know by now, Influencers are specialists in their niches. These individuals have influence over an audience you might be trying to reach, and can be helpful marketing to those buyers. So, how do you find them.

Yes, you can spend hours scrolling through social feeds, researching an influencer’s content and following, and then crafting an email that you hope gets noticed, or you can use technology to find influencers: influencer search engines and different apps.

Followerwonk
This tool from Moz allows you to search for relevant influencers on Twitter based on keywords and location. It’s a great first tool to use when building your list of potential influencers to engage and partner with.

Hootsuite
Hootsuite search streams can help you discover influencers by monitoring conversations relevant to your industry across multiple channels.

Right Relevance Pro
This app can search out top content shared by influencers based on topic and location. Use it to identify thought leaders and discover potential influencer partnerships based on the quality of the content they share.

Fourstarzz Influencer Recommendation Engine
This app provides custom influencer recommendations. It helps predict estimated reach, engagements, and other campaign results.

Buzzstream and Buzzsumo
These tools offer products to find influencers in fields like tech, communications, retail, and more, as well asmanage influencer campaigns.

PeerIndex
As a tool that specializes in social analytics and influence, this will help to determine what constitutes important content and who is delivering that content across Twitter handles, specifically.

Google Blog Search
For companies searching specifically for bloggers with a large following, this tool is a great place to search for the leading bloggers within your industry.

Next Steps

Before getting started, outline your strategy in a more targeted and detailed manner. Depending on the industry and size of your business, some examples of influencer marketing goals might be: 1. Increase brand awareness, 2. Precipitate brand engagement, Generate Leads, 3. Promote Sales, 4. Promote New Product, 5. Drive Traffic to Your Website,
6. Increase Social Media Following, 7. Improve Customer Loyalty

Marketing has gone tremendous disruption over the last decade. Here are some ideas that have demonstrated stupendous staying power in the field of this ever changing landscape.

Crowdsourcing “A central principle animating crowdsourcing is that the group contains more knowledge than individuals,”  Coined by Jeff Howe in a 2006 Wired magazine article The Rise of Crowdsourcing, the idea is to leverage collective intelligence to create something of value. Good examples are: IdeaExchange from Salesforce, MyStarbucksIdea.com and IdeaStorm.com from Dell.

Customer Reviews "Suddenly, everything is about the product and its ability to meet expectations, not just how you market it." Alejandro Camino, VP Marketing and Communications at Softtek. People's perception of products and services are impacted by customer reviews and ratings. Sellers Beware!

Diversification Dividend "Marketing has become a LEGO blocks game." Luis García de la Fuente, CEO FactoríaDeClientes.com A single marketing campaign can contain a viral video, live webinar, inforgaphic, social media interaction, email promotion and behaviorally targeted advertising. Diversification is the secret to brand nourishment!  Read more.

Experiential Marketing Experiences are emotional, personal and tangible!  Offer in-depth experiences that stimulates people’s senses. Do it and your brand will triumph.
Read more

Gamification “Games and research into human psychology have taught us that people are happier when they earn something, rather than when it is given to them,” Darren Steele, the strategic director of Mindspace. Now, you know the popularity of Safeway Club Card.

Mashup An abstraction that helps people see new connections between seemingly disparate concepts. All the rave about Skyline Windscape is nothing more than a mashup between oxygen and displays. How you trap oxygen within the folds of fabric. The result: A marvelous air powered exhibit system, another industry first.

Mobile First is all the rave now. With half of U.S. mobile consumers owning smartphones,“Now is the best time to start leveraging mobile marketing, because it’s still relatively new in the eyes of both marketers and consumers,” Marketing in the Moment...     Read more

Offline Links Propagates Inbound Links/Leads  We know that Inbound links expands your brand horizon, generates direct/indirect traffic and helps optimize your search engine rankings. However, did you know that  Offline is the New Online Link Building Strategy . Our online inbound leads went up by 22% by focusing on the trade show event #CES 2014

Product Placement You, the marketers are the creators of valuable content and can place product information in your blog posts, ebooks, webinars, videos and presentations, while generally appealing, include information about what your company does and how that might benefit the prospect. Here is my attempt at it.

Prosumer Integral part of web 3.0 culture, Prosumers are the result of cross pollination between consumers and producers in the online media landscape. "Common consumers who were predicted to each become active to help personally improve or design the goods and services of the marketplace" Dave chaffrey, CEO and co-founder, Smart Insights. Read more, on how you to transform your clients into brand ambassadors.

Personalization "Being able to directly talk to a need is magical." Hope Neiman, Chief Marketing Officer at EMN8. Dynamic content is the outcome of such desire to personalize content– provide prospective customers a seamless, near intuitive path down the sales funnel—one that would recognize each potential buyer as an individual and adapt to his or her needs.

Segmentation allows organizations to target a prospect or a customer with the most relevant messages to her needs and preferences. According to eMarketer, 39% of marketers who practice list segmentation see better open rates and 28% see lower opt-out and unsubscribe rates. “Successful Direct Marketing pros will alter their tactics to overcome inbox clutter and increase relevancy.” Forrester Research Vice President and Principal Analyst David Daniels. Do it, and your prospects will love the marketing delights that you send them over.

Transparency "Information is so much more valuable if people are opting to share it with you.“ Cameron Chapman. Transparency is the social currency of our digital age. It encourages your audiences to become active participants in this new cultural revolution. A must read: Radical Openness: Four Unexpected Principles for Success

Visual Content “Less text please, more graphics – we’d rather see it than read it.”  Iris Shoor, the co-founder and VP  Product Marketing at Takipi.  Visual storytelling as a means of spreading a marketing message is crucial to your brand existence.
Read more.

Virality "Viral marketing is an idea that spreads--and an idea that while it is spreading actually helps market your business or cause." SETH GODIN, Marketing Author & Speaker. “Being viral isn’t the hard part,” observes Godin. “The hard part is making that viral element actually produce something of value, not just entertainment for the client or your boss.”

“What is in it for me?” It is the value proposition that propels people to take action. Why will anyone choose to engage with your brand? Check out these Facebook ads with good value proposition.

Wireless "We’ll look back and see that wireless, not the Internet, made the greatest change." Richard K. Marketing Sociologist… A definite game changer indeed. An increasing result of this is Geotargeting is a method of marketing in which you deliver a message based on the location of your audience... in case you were wondering why
Lowes and Walmart are wired up with the wireless technology.... Read more

Want to know more?
Read about 83 other ideas that will make you a prolific marketer!

With changes in Google algorithm, that supports educational content like blog posts and videos instead of simple website urls, it is no surprise that Expedia Lost 25% Of Their Search Visibility In Google Possibly Over Unnatural Links. 
Organic wins 94% of the time versus paid search result. For the marketers out there, create content that connects with your audience and compels them to interact with your brand.
Related Article: Google Hummingbird Demands Mobile-First Content

The days of interruptive marketing are but a distant memory and the Internet has permanently changed the way we interact and exchange information. Today, 8 out of 10 people identify themselves as blog readers, and 23% of all time spent online is spent on social media sites, sharing content. To take advantage of this new buyer behaviour, cultivate an active online presence.

HubSpot’s research shows that 75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results.  Now, more than ever, it is vital to continue creating compelling, educational content that people love and share.

Did you Know?

Microsoft Research reports that people spend only 10 seconds on your homepage before leaving if they don’t immediately connect with your marketing messages.
61% of B2B marketers rate webinars as the most effective content-marketing tactic. Webinars are great educational offers for that middle-of-the-funnel prospect who has started the research phase of his or her buyer journey and is now getting into the consideration phase, looking for more information.

80% of business decision-makers prefer to get company information in a series of articles versus in an advertisement. The bottom line: We don’t want to be sold to, we want to be educated, and articles deliver the kind of information your prospects are seeking in order to make smart, well-informed decisions.
Related Article: Content marketing is about optimizing the dialogue between a company and its customers for profitable outcomes

60% of the population are visual learners and articles with images get 94% more views over those without an image.
Related Article:  How Live Talks Become Visual Content
B2B companies that blog, generate 67% more leads per month than those that don’t. If you have an active blog, you have a better chance of making a connection with your website visitors.

Image credit: http://adsoftheworld.com/

Helpful article:
Read more about inbound marketing that works!

Customized content for each consumer will be growing trend for 2014 and beyond. You now have technology in place to capture the range of customer behavior in your emails, on your website, in your mobile app, at your physical locations, "even on your customers’ morning runs — and attribute them to individuals." Technology has now made the quantum leap that  captures these cross-channel, cross-device customer behaviors, it’s up to you, marketers to weave an engaging story.

Bryan Brown, Vice President of Product Development, Silverpop specifies 3 Key Tactics that encourages customers experience.

Pick a channel you’ve never individualized before and add an element of personalization.
Or, add more customized content to an existing channel to make it more helpful, fun and/or engaging.

Look for creative ways to use customer behaviors to drive cross-channel interactions.
Maybe a mobile app interaction is reflected on the website. Or an in-store exchange drives an SMS. Or a retweet leads to an email.

Make real time your mantra. Whether it’s a contact who just abandoned a shopping cart, exited your store after a test drive or posted a product review, the timeliness of your response can make a difference. Configure your business rules and automated programs to make it happen.
Read more about the 7 Key Marketing Trends for 2014 - and Tactics for Thriving in the New Year
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