Content Marketing

Companies are seeing lower success rates on social media and diminishing conversion rates on the web - a trend that has put us all, especially content marketers, in the position to prove the ROI or face severe fiscal cuts. Unfortunately, reporting metrics like “increased impressions” and “better brand awareness” won’t be enough because companies are looking for hard before/after numbers.

Preserving our personal reputations has always been a cultural priority. But what about our professional reputations? Yes, we try to maintain great relationships with former employers, which is essential for furthering a career. However, there is a significant value that exists when you are able to translate your professional experience into thought leadership and thus build your own personal brand.

Social media. Everyone has it, but not everyone is using it correctly. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube exist not only to entertain and connect people to one another, but also to connect people with businesses. With advertising dollars getting smaller, the need for effective, low cost marketing tactics is more important than ever.

Driving traffic to a website is tricky.

Mastering the multitude of strategies that exist to generate said traffic can be even trickier. If you've invested time and resources into developing your SEO strategy and maximizing your social media impact, wouldn't you want to know if your efforts are working for you and not against you?

Customer service is big for me. When a company provides a truly stellar customer experience, I will most likely repeat business with them even if there was an issue that needed improvement. For example, I ordered my wife flowers for her birthday. The company delivered flowers that died two days later. Though I was frustrated, their customer service team was so outstanding that I will order from them again.

For a website to work, buyers need to find it and take action. Visitors become leads, buy products, and subscribe to newsletters. As each stage converts into the next, every conversion should trigger a new series of events. This is where the Thank You page comes into play. 

Creating a website with dazzling effects is only great if someone finds it, needs it and is compelled to take the next step with your company. Here are some quick tips to get boost your traffic, so your website starts working for you. 

1. SEO: Be where your users are looking. 

I love search engine optimization because it’s an easy way to talk with the people who are already interested in what you offer or at least interested enough to do some research on it. This way you’re not working with a completely cold lead. 

Today, Mediacurrent and Acquia are proud to announce that one of the highest profile websites in the world, Weather.com, based in Atlanta, will be joining the Drupal community!  To my knowledge, Weather.com will be the highest traffic Drupal site in existence. Over the last six months, Mediacurrent and Acquia have been shepherding Weather.com’s on-ramping of Drupal via a proof-of-concept and discovery engagement. 

In Saturday’s keynote, Ryan Szrama of Commerce Guys presented the most engaging presentation of my Drupal career. He pointedly avoided another discussion of Drupal Commerce (gasp! see his awesome commerce-related keynote from 2011) and titled Saturday's keynote, "How the GPL Inverted Drupal's Learning Curve." Honestly, this didn’t quite pique my interest, but au contraire!

It’s always interesting to look back over the year and see which blog posts were most popular with our readers. For 2012, the most popular posts were a blend Drupal 7 Module reviews, responsive web design trends, using Maps with Drupal 7, and tips on planning a Drupal site.

Without further ado, here are the top 10 blog posts written in 2012—in order of most viewed: