Blog & Resources

Going viral. In the past, the word “viral” would have evoked widespread panic—images of quarantined hospital wings and the fear of imminent death. Today, anyone who knows anything about the digital world knows that “going viral” is the ultimate reward for strategically planned social content.

My, how time flies! The first of those supposedly entitled, unmotivated, lazy, technology-obsessed, video-game-playing upstarts we call “millennials” are now into their mid-thirties. To the surprise of baby boomers and Gen-Xers, the majority of them are growing up to be responsible, hard-working adults who are part of a generational powerhouse that is not to be ignored. The millennials now comprise 25% of the population and are expected to spend $2.45 trillion this year alone. According to a University of Wisconsin study, 85 percent of millennials are either working or in school.

Organic. For most of us this word conjures up thoughts of healthy, chemical-free, hormone-free products promising to improve our health. Lately, however, it’s become the new buzzword in describing a more internal, nurtured approach that allows you to grow your business or nonprofit on your own terms and timeline.

As a business owner, your ultimate goal is to broaden your reach, increase traffic to your website, engage your visitors, and ultimately convert them to customers or donors. But, unless you’re a seasoned inbound marketer, you might not know exactly how to do that. Why waste your precious time and dollars trying to figure out something you don’t fully understand when you can just let the experts do it for you?

The main goal of creating useful, quality content is for it to attract the attention of your target audience. It doesn’t do any good sitting out there in cyberspace if no one is ever going to read it. All of us in the marketing world know how hard it is to rank high enough to earn the coveted first page placement on a search engine. And if you’re not on the first page...I mean, when’s the last time you hit "next" at the bottom of your Google search page?

The best nonprofit organizations develop and execute their marketing strategy with the same level of sophistication and rigor as any for-profit brand. Content marketing is an effective strategy that has been gaining momentum in recent years and can serve as an especially powerful tool for nonprofits and for-profits alike.

Email is not dead. I know; it boggles the mind to think that amongst today’s abundance of apps and social media channels, email continues to be a tried and true tool of successful marketing. That being said, it’s easy for us marketers to get stuck in an email rut. Using the same strategy that worked a year ago, or even six months ago, may not prove to continue to make an impact today.  

According to the Content Marketing Institute, 70% of B2B marketers are creating more content than they did one year ago, even those who say they are least effective (58%) and those without any type of strategy (56%, 2015).

While most businesses are aware that social sharing is important and is something they should be doing, most only understand it as a general concept. Without digging deeper into the values and even motivations of why people share, organizations take a scattered approach, which brings random results. When a business develops a more strategic, thoughtful process, social sharing becomes a powerful tool to grow the business.

We Gen-Xers know that everybody wants to rule the world, and we think we still do. We don’t wanna stop believing and would rather keep partying like it’s 1999. But, news flash: We don’t rule the world anymore! A new generation has barreled in and is demanding its place in the digital landscape.