Blogging is not easy, especially for B2B companies.  Blogging provides a way to market new ideas, products, services, etc. The blog on your site is merely a container for the full articles that you provide links to in your email marketing.  

If you think writting your blog is hard, getting subscribers is even harder.  Here are 3 tips to help increase the number of people that sign-up for your email that contains links to your full blog articles.

Here are some eye-popping marketing stats for the growth of Internet Marketing and Mobile Marketing in 2012.  These stats come from a recent usage report done by eMarketer. 

The amount of money spent on advertising online is way below the usage of online.  Mobile advertising is just a blip right now compared to the amount of time people use their smart phones.  The two media channels where companies spend way more than the usage is in TV and Print.  Companies are spending 75% more on Print advertising than the usage of that channel.

Do you have a business; have you ever wondered what's going to happen or what are the changes in the coming years? Often times, people have their own predictions when it comes to business but it is foreseen that major social media strategies will have an effect in businesses this year.

There are companies who had already started to adopt these social media tactics but this year  expect to see mass adoption of these phenomenal strategies by small, medium or large businesses.

Local marketing includes several different Internet and mobile marketing tactics.  This article summarizes the list of local marketing initiatives.  People in general want to belong to something and want to be treated special.  Local marketing gives that customer the idea that your brand is part of the community vs. being a “chain.”  People today associate the word “chain” with national or the opposite of being local.

Google has made it officially known that they will be using their +1 button to influence search results within their search engine.  This move puts Google’s search engine into the social networking era.  This will surely create a bunch of blackhat tactics within Google’s social network to help elevate websites within Google’s search engine.

This information has been confirmed within an email from Google to Wired.com.  The email said that Google will study the clicks on +1 buttons as a signal that influences the ranking and appearance of websites in search results.  The purpose of any ranking signal is to improve overall search quality. For +1’s and other social ranking signals, as with any new ranking signal, we’ll be starting carefully and learning how those signals are related to quality.  Google also said in the email that +1 search integration will be just one of 200 signals that they use to determine the rank of a website.

Watching video online is becoming more popular in the US, particularly among rural audiences: 71% of online adults now use video-sharing sites such as YouTube and Vimeo, up 5 percentage point (PPs) from the 66% who did so a year earlier, according to a new report by Pew Research.

The use of video-sharing sites on any given day has also jumped 5 PPs, from 23% of online Americans in May 2010, to 28% in May 2011.

Consider the following facts:

• Hispanic moms are one of the fastest growing demographics online.
• Eighty-two percent of mid- and high-acculturated Latino moms are online.
• Virtually 100 percent of Hispanic moms online are engaged in social networking.
• Eighty-four percent of Hispanic moms are on Facebook.
• Their presence in MySpace is 40 percent higher than white moms (29 percent reach).

Moms are buying more than just household products.  They control 65% of all computer and technology purchases and 75% of all car-buying decisions and more than 7 million moms are running business out of their home.

This year Facebook introduced Sponsored Stories, a series of new ad types. I think these are a whole new paradigm for advertising -- truly social marketing.

Sponsored stories are designed to let a Facebook user's friends discover the brands they like. Currently, when a friend likes a page, checks in somewhere or interacts with an application, a news feed entry is generated and their friends may or may not see it. With sponsored stories, brands can use the Facebook ads system to create their stories and determine who to target and how much to pay.  See how it works below.

• Give Mom what she wants. Provide special offers and discounts to mom and encourage her to share your coupons and ideas with her friends.  Also create ways for her to contribute like uploading photos, product reviews, comments, etc.

• Be a resource. Provide useful information that saves her time and money.  This can be simple advice, how-to-vides, news, recipes, etc.  Most of this information is good to add to your email-marketing program or Facebook.

Is there any difference between a Facebook Profile or a Facebook Page?  Definitely.  When Facebook started there were only profiles.  Profiles are meant for people, which is how Facebook started. 

When companies started seeing an opportunity to interact with their customers through Facebook they created a company profile.  Once Facebook saw this happening they started introducing the concept of a page.  Pages were used for groups and now companies.

If that isn't enough, it also boosts the reputations of your individual staff members, creates a friendly public-facing corporate persona, helps you build industry connections, and increases your likelihood of press mentions.

Here are 10 tips to help you get started:

To make sure you're sending each group the right message, it's important to first determine who's exactly who.

Here are some tips to help identify your Brand Loyalists:

They open at least 80 percent of the messages you send. Brand loyalists keep an eye peeled for what you have to say, so when you show up in the inbox they're curious enough to open and at least skim your message, even if they're not in the market to buy or respond right then and there.

Following is a list of Pros and Cons to social marketing:

The same motivators that work for direct marketing also work for social media. Our marketing channels and tools have changed, but the people who use them haven't. We are still moved to action by emotion, direction, and urgency. Adding calls to action consistently increased clicks, engagement, and sharing by up to 60%.

To test, I posted two content-sharing tweets one week apart. It is impossible to create a perfect A/B split test in social media. Day of the week and time of day are key factors in audience participation, so the test kept them consistent.

The first tweet included the title and link. The second include title, link, and call to action. The tweet with the call to action consistently outperformed the one without.