With this week’s announcement that Yahoo will purchase Tumblr for $1.1 billion, it may be a good time for brands to reevaluate how they can leverage the image-driven platform to reach their targets. If the marriage of the two companies is successful, then it’s likely that Tumblr will have the infrastructure to begin to expand their ad packages which until now have been largely experimental and focused on formats that meld nicely with the social/blogging site’s own aesthetic. For brands that have their eye on millennials — a group with which Tumblr has been highly successful — and that are savvy content builders, now is a great time to explore any new outreach opportunities using Tumblr that may have been back-burnered. And there’s certainly no shortage of opportunities. The latest numbers show that there are over 100 million blogs hosted on the site, generating 89 million new posts daily.  Users… read more

“We need more people talking about us!” As a CMO, or PR director, how many times has someone at the top come to you and said those exact words? Did you immediately start to feel the heat? When an organization decides it needs PR representation or that their current PR strategy needs an overhaul, it usually starts with a desire to create more buzz. And many times, this desire is motivated by a positive article in the local news about a competitor, or a look at another company’s thousands of seemingly engaged Twitter followers eagerly and happily interacting with their brand online. THE GOAL Simply creating buzz should not be the end goal for ramping up PR efforts. In the past, the end goal of public relations for brands may have been limited to raising brand awareness, but as the digital age has caused a  major shift in how we… read more

The Marketing Zen Group, an award-winning digital marketing and PR company based in Dallas, is looking for talented go-getters interested in gaining valuable, first-hand experience working with a top digital agency. Check out our full list of available internships below to learn more. And if you’re not sure which one would be a fit, send us your resume along with a cover letter telling us why you’d be a great addition to our team. Our internships are unpaid, but highly-competitive and can be used for college credit. And we’re more than happy to provide letters of recommendations for your good work upon completion. And did we mention our internships are virtual? You’ll work from home….in your PJs if you’d like! Content Writer & Community Engagement Intern  (SEO Dept.) Are you a creative, resourceful, error-free writer? Are you able to work with a steep learning curve and take independent initiative? Are… read more

A recent industry forecast by global management consulting firm McKinsey and Company aptly points out that “Digital marketing is about to reach more challenging territory”.  The basis for this assertion is not surprising. Consumers are in power. Our current digital age places them squarely in the driver’s seat when it comes to how they receive marketing messages. Taking that a step further, we are barreling toward a place where consumers are not only determining “how” messages are received, but “what” messages they’ll receive. We’re talking about on-demand marketing that in the words of McKinsey and Company’s London director, Peter Dahlström, “cuts through the noise with pinpoint delivery.” As digital technology advances, and smarter, more sophisticated devices are at the finger tips of the average consumer, McKinsey and Company predicts four areas of demand that marketers will need to satisfy: Now:   Consumers will want to interact anywhere at any time. Can… read more

When Facebook launched its new ad-targeting solution Facebook Partner Categories a few weeks ago, we’re pretty sure we heard a loud, collective, “Wooooohoooo” from every small business owner using Facebook ads to market their business. And they have every right to be happy beyond measure because Partner Categories, for small fries, are the great equalizer. In case you missed the announcement, Facebook Partner Categories allow brands on the social network to get ads in front of targeted users based on their activity across the Web, through desktop and/or mobile, plus their offline purchases and tendencies. Previously, targeting was based on users’ Facebook activity. Moreover, all of this is powered by data provided by market research heavyweights Datalogix, Epsilon, Acxiom and Blue Kai. Partner Categories are a gold mine for advertisers because it provides significantly more detail about where to place ads and the users they should target.  Advertisers who target… read more

Ever wonder why some organizations seem to have no problem at all building and engaging their online communities when your company spends a great deal of time working to get more fans, to no avail?  Does it seem like no matter what you post, tumbleweeds blow across your page.  Very few, if any “likes” or comments are happening, with the exception of the one super fan you can always count on (read: your mom) who “likes” everything you post (because she loves you). You’re not alone. Many companies struggle to find the sweet spot in content creation. But if you listen closely, your audience is telling you what they want to hear. Deliver it, and you’ll see your online community start to take shape. First understand what moves your audience If you don’t have a deep understanding of who your audience is then you’ll have a difficult time figuring out… read more

Guest post by Troy Boileau, a SEO & Inbound Marketing Consultant at Powered by Search, a  Toronto SEO agency. A couple of weeks ago, Kelsey Lehnertz and Marketing Zen helped me and Powered by Search out with an awesome, practical post on which 3 tools SEO experts would use if they couldn’t use any other tool. Out of that one project this one flourished: SEO Poetry! I pitched a couple of extremely excited friends and partners from other companies in the niche: Could you pretty please write me a Haiku or a Limerick about SEO? Though I was excited about the idea (compliments of one of my colleagues, Marc Nashaat, thanks Marc!) I still hadn’t expected the great result. It was fun seeing the poems come in or who the poem-writing was delegated to and imagining how that process went; Hey, Powered by Search wants a Haiku! Who’s our company poet? Laura… read more

Each year, HubSpot releases an annual report on the state of inbound marketing.  Their findings are widely used by marketers around the world to set strategy, tweak methodologies and create new tactics.  HubSpot enlists the help of a broad marketing community to help gather insights and share the lessons they’ve learned. The research they have compiled in this year’s report — their 5th annual — uncovered several interesting and surprising facts about inbound marketing. Here are excerpts highlighting the ones we found most interesting: Inbound marketing has achieved a majority market share The majority of marketers have embraced inbound strategies. In 2013, 60% of companies have adopted some element of the inbound methodology into their overall strategy. Amid rapid growth, some marketers still struggle to define “inbound marketing” According to our survey results, the industry still suffers from some educational gaps. While the rapid growth we have witnessed to date… read more

As content marketing continues on its meteoric rise as the go-to audience building strategy for top brands, companies and other business organizations, leaders in the field are highly sought after additions to business entities looking to connect with their targets in a meaningful, non-sales-y way. So what is it that great content marketers possess that traditional marketers may lack? Here’s a glimpse into the mind of a content marketer — the differences may astound you. Rock star content marketers are sponges Content marketing is part science and part art. Crafting compelling marketing messages may be something we can learn in a classroom or on the job, but drawing from a number of sources, using varying mediums and curating that information so that it tells one compelling story requires an “eyes-wide-open” personality type. Great content marketers are constantly soaking in information that impacts their story no matter the source. It could… read more

Many of us remember the morning of September 11, 2001 vividly.  Depending on where you live,  you may have been driving in to the office and hearing  cryptic reports coming out of New York City about some kind of plane crash. But it didn’t take long for it to become clear that something really bad was happening as we all scrambled to get as much information as we could. News sites were overrun; many of them were simply crashing altogether. At times, several minutes went by with no new or updated information. So we waited. Fast forward to yesterday. Breaking news alerts start popping up: Explosions heard near the Boston Marathon finish line. But initially, there’s not much more information available. And much like during 9/11 several news sites weren’t loading including Bostonglobe.com. Next stop: Twitter — arguably the best source for breaking news. The dissemination of news through the… read more