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The social media landscape over the last year or so has changed dramatically. Companies that were once skeptical about tools such as blogs are now blogging or considering starting one. Unfortunately, many companies that do so still have little idea of how to grow their blog into an integral part of their marketing efforts. Here are eight easy steps you can take to grow your blog's readership.

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Each year, we ask decision-makers at a group of 100 leading brands: "At pitch, what are the specific reasons for choosing one agency over another?" In the latest results, "good chemistry" ranked as the leading factor. Here's a full list of the top 20 factors.

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UCLA Professor Albert Mehrabian is best known for his 7%-38%-55% Rule. It states that 55% of communication is attributable to non-verbal behaviors like body language and facial expressions; 38% of communication is attributable to voice, including volume, tone, pitch, cadence, and quality; and only 7% of communication is attributable to the words used. Yet companies continue to pile on the Web text in the hope that search engines will index it and someone might actually read it... even though many Web site visitors merely scan for headlines, bulleted points, and captions.

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Over one-third of employers have eliminated a candidate because of "digital dirt"—information about you online that is either unflattering or inconsistent with the image you would like to portray. Digital dirt could be preventing you from getting interviews and ultimately landing your ideal job. So if you have digital dirt, it's time to clean up your act. Here's the three-step process.

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What if you never had to look for a job again? Try a job search role reversal: Instead of seeking out jobs, have them come to you. That's the future of career management—and for savvy careerists, the future is now.

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Landing pages have become the Omega-3s of Web marketing: if you're not using them and optimizing them ad infinitum, you're squandering your online ad dollars. Or so the landing page optimization crowd would have you believe. In the spirit of probing the pros and cons of this popular post-click marketing format—and, okay, doing a little tongue-in-cheek myth busting—we offer our take of the top 5 best and worst things about landing pages, in contrast to multi-page landing paths.

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Many Web sites offer a resource library for visitors—an area filled with articles covering relevant topics to the industry with which the site is connected. The articles may cover how to do something, or they may define an aspect of the industry, but they do not usually directly sell the company's products or services. While it's true that a resource library, on the surface, exists to benefit site visitors, it doesn't end there; it also provides benefits that can have a direct impact on any business.

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An effective online content strategy, artfully executed, drives action. Organizations that use online content well have a clearly defined goal—to sell products, generate leads, or get people to join a community, vote, or donate money—and they deploy a content strategy that directly contributes to reaching that goal.

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A use case, often created for product development, is commonly used to capture functional requirements. A use case provides one or more scenarios for how a solution/system/product/service achieves a specific business goal. From this perspective, then, another way to think about a use case is as a usage scenario. With a little modification, a use case can be transformed into an extraordinary sales-enablement tool.

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How rare is it to see a senior marketer from any professional service firm—even one as prominent as BearingPoint—leading a series of cutting-edge conversations that do not appear to be directed at just his internal colleagues? We checked in with Paul Dunay and learned the extent to which he has intentionally begun to "do things differently" and how positively it has benefited BearingPoint. Here is his story.

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Everyone has heard the common complaint that America is becoming less literate, but the onus for this alleged circumstance is nearly always placed on the reader (or, rather, non-reader) instead of where it often belongs: the writer. Many professional writers seem to have lost the ability to write clear, comprehensible copy that instantly communicates its point. That's especially worrisome in advertising, which depends on quick communication for its effectiveness.

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The ladder is the most enduring metaphor for career advancement, yet it is no longer constructive to think of your career progression as climbing a ladder. In today's dynamic knowledge economy, this sporadic, effortful approach to career management isn't the most effective. Instead, you have to kick over the ladder and view your career climb as a ramp.

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Picture three email campaigns. The first is poorly written, with broken links. The second has a fancy design, but it renders so badly that half the recipients can't see the offer. The third has great content and great design—but gets not-so-great results. Our third entrant—by all accounts the creative "winner"—in fact loses, because all three emails came from the same company and hit the inbox on the same day. There's a message here.

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In the old days, marketers could use hype and exaggeration to get noticed and people would simply accept it. Not anymore. Today, if you want consumers to pay attention, you had better be truthful. And if you want them to fondly remember your brand, you'd better be emotional.

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PR success isn't mysterious. It comes down to a mix of old-fashioned research, savvy trend-watching and good people skills. It is the age-old talent of telling a good story. That's really the essential difference between PR and advertising. Here's the "secret recipe" for telling your business story through public relations.

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In 1994, Philips launched "EarthLight," an energy-efficient compact fluorescent light bulb with a clumsy shape that was incompatible with most conventional lamps; it had a confusing package—and a $15 price tag compared with 75 cents for the incandescent bulbs. Sales languished.

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Professional success today requires that you change the way you think about your career—by treating career management as an ongoing activity. Creating your personal brand helps you do so—with the ultimate goal of distinguishing yourself. But before you start working on building your brand, you need to adopt a new mindset—the "Career Distinction" mindset.

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We often complain that we have too few success stories or lack examples in specific verticals, or in specific geographies, or find that the customers' quotes are bland and lack specific metrics of success. Even worse, all success stories age. Those that are a few years old may cease to be relevant—they were based on old releases of the software or situations that no longer match current customer needs. How can we accelerate the collection and use of relevant and useful success stories? Here are four ways.

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Do your marketing and sales communications perpetuate the head-to-head competitive bakeoff? Or does it equip and enable your sales people to participate earlier and more effectively in the customer buying cycle? There is an easy way to tell.

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New postal rates were implemented last month. But the rate hike is not just a normal increase across the board. Instead, there is a tangle of new regulations that will affect how mail is classified and how rates are applied. Direct marketers: take note.