Coconut Bliss's grassroots, customer-focused efforts have enabled the company to establish a nationwide presence in just a few short years, while nurturing an incredibly strong and genuine passion among customers. more

According to Jackie Huba at the Church of the Customer Blog, marketers can learn quite a bit about loyalty marketing from quirky singer Lady Gaga. It seems Lady G is doing a whole lot of things right to build brand loyalty among her followers. Here are Huba's five lessons about ... more

A recent Nielsen study found that global consumption of social media increased 82 percent from Dec. 2008 to Dec. 2009 in the 10 countries surveyed, with users spending an average of 5.5 hours on their sites of choice per month! US and Australian addicts are among the heaviest users of all, spending 6 ... more

Looking to make your brand trendier? Get a load of Trendistic, a clear and simple way to watch the ebb and flow of buzz on Twitter. A visit to the Trendistic homepage gives you a quick glimpse at what keyword is hottest on Twitter right now. In addition to the most current ... more

Before you start soliciting links and becoming active in online communities, it's best to first ensure that your site's content, structure, and design are in peak condition, Virginia Nussey advises in a recent post at the Bruce Clay blog: "Before you can expect a site to develop inbound links, you have ... more

"They say an Internet year is … equivalent to seven normal years," says Kevin Gibbon in a post at SEOptimise—meaning that we can witness seven real-world-years' worth of change in one year online. To help search marketers keep up, Gibbon offers seven ways to stay on top of the competition in the ... more

You're probably familiar with the story of The Little Mermaid. In this classic tale of unrequited love, a girl exchanges her voice for the chance to be close to a prince. It's a parable about finding the right voice amid the melee. Faced with a plentitude of uncertainties about social media, ... more

News flash: LinkedIn still boasts one of the largest, tightest-knit collections of professionals in the social-networking space. And now it wants to be even more useful to marketers. Custom Groups is a new feature at the site that lets users build sponsored collectives. Simply establishing a non-branded LinkedIn group is still ... more

You recently got the skinny on Square, the service that turns your iPhone into a card-swiping device. Here's another quick, easy and secure way to flow payments to your business via mobile (or even social networks): mPayy. Unlike Square, mPayy is more of a user tool than an enterprise one. It ... more

You wouldn't add random people to your email list without their permission—you know better than that—but perhaps you're willing to take liberties with the email addresses of prominent bloggers like Chris Brogan. After all, you might reason, if he likes what he sees, he might forgive the spam you sent—and share the ... more

We all know the adage: It costs far more to get a new customer than to keep one you already have. And in today's economic climate, customer retention has become a precious commodity in its own right. So, how do you keep 'em coming back? In a recent guest post at ... more

"[T]here is altogether too much guessing and not enough proving in email marketing," says Stephanie Miller in a post at the MarketingProfs Daily Fox blog. "With inboxes overflowing, subscriber fatigue growing and competition from social networks increasing, it's no longer enough to broadcast out your best guess as to what ... more

"Looking for a way to punch up your email campaigns and get subscribers more engaged with your site?" Julie Waite asks in a recent post at the Bronto blog. "Product reviews may be the answer," she says. "Implementing product review functionality on your site can help seal the deal and convince ... more

It strikes fear in the hearts of marketers worldwide: the dreaded online consumer complaint that goes viral. What's a good company to do when one angry customer threatens to destroy its image? Is there any way to win her back once she's decided she hates you? Some interesting new research looks ... more

As the goblins and ghouls out there munch away on their Halloween bounty, fond memories arise of one apparition we saw a lot of this season—the Monster Mash JibJab "sendable." The e-card uses facial-recognition technology to seamlessly attach the faces of your friends or family to the body of a monster. ... more

Good news: You don't have to lose sight of your brand's tried-and-true persona to participate in the quest for deeper engagement at the new social sites. Just think of the social-media generation as a silver-dish serving of people who already want to talk to you; you just need to make ... more

You've done a great job of cultivating your email list—and your subscribers have rewarded your efforts with extraordinary loyalty. So far, so good. But Mark Brownlow of Email Marketing Reports says such best-case scenarios come with their own unique set of pitfalls: Becoming complacent. When you don't have to ... more

Ever wonder how great search results end up that way? Well, in a recent post at the User Interface Engineering blog, Jared Spool says there are no shortcuts to search-result success. According to Spool, "There is no way you can produce a great search-results page [on your website] without spending ... more

"Let's imagine it's this afternoon, and I suddenly have cause to fly to West Virginia," writes Peter Hartlaub in a post at The Poop blog. "Airline X has a non-stop flight that will get me there three and a half hours after takeoff. Southwest Airlines also has a flight, but ... more

What makes Twitter so useful is also what makes it difficult to navigate: everyone is spewing what they think, all the time, about anything imaginable. This is good for tracking brand buzz, because when you run a search on Twitter it's like being clairvoyant: the opinions are there, raw and ... more

It's not just the recession; the digital revolution has wreaked havoc on traditional music retailers, who can rarely match online juggernauts like iTunes or eMusic on price or convenience. "As of April," reports Amy Kaufman at The Wrap, "there were 185 record stores in the LA area, down from 259 ... more

"If you're interested in building a flourishing online brand and website that generates links and traffic organically as part of your Internet marketing efforts, it's important to develop an active base of subscribers and fans," says Adam Singer in a recent post at the Online Marketing Blog. Here are a ... more

When your company generates revenue from annual subscriptions or memberships, renewal rates are critical to your bottom line. To keep them high, Winston Bowden recommends email programs that use date-based triggers to send automatic renewal notices. In an article at MarketingProfs, Bowden suggests your renewal campaign might include components such ... more

A question many small businesses face when money is tight is whether to invest in pay-per-click (PPC) search marketing or search engine optimization (SEO). The answer, says Claudia Bruemmer in a recent blog post, is both. "Start a PPC campaign to gain visibility in the search engines and define the ... more

The sun is setting on the tyranny of business cards—that stack of stiffs that seems important as you add to it again and again, but which you never really get the chance to sort through later. Well, hail and farewell!  One application precipitating the demise of these paper dinosaurs is Bump, which pretty much turns ... more