What are the core practices for choosing keywords for your SEO campaigns?  What are the resources we should focus on?  Author expert Matt Bailey shares SEO best practices for keyword research in this OMCP podcast. The OMCP Online Marketing Best … Continue reading →

What are the core practices for video marketing?  How do we optimize for discovery, watch time, and shares?  How do we engage influencers?  Author expert Greg Jarboe shares video marketing best practices in this OMCP podcast.

The OMCP Online Marketing Best Practices Podcast is where top authors and industry leaders share authoritative best practices in online marketing which are covered by the OMCP standard, competencies, and exams.  This is an OMCP pilot program that may continue based on member interest and support.  Stay subscribed to the OMCP newsletter to get new episodes.

Episode #4 covers Content Marketing Video Optimization on YouTube with Greg Jarboe  in 33 minutes. Recorded November 21, 2016.

Download your MP3 of “Content Marketing Video Optimization on YouTube with Greg Jarboe – – Online Marketing Best Practices Podcast from OMCP” here.

Session Transcript

Michael: All right. Welcome back to the OMCP studio, and with us today is Greg Jarboe, publisher, author, columnist, speaker, instructor at Market Motive and at Rutgers University and President of SEO-PR. Greg is a master of video marketing and content marketing practices, teaching these to some of the largest brands in the world. I am your host Michael Stebbins, and today we will be discussing content marketing strategies for video sharing channels. Greg, welcome to the OMCP best practices podcast. Thank you so much for being here.

Greg: Not a problem Michael. I mean, you asked, I came. It’s not a big deal.

Michael: I love it. And boy, you and I have worked together for over a decade and taught together a few times. I’ve seen you at the podium as an authority at industry conferences for years. But in this session, we’re gonna get down to the best practices for video sharing specifically for YouTube. So before we get started for those few who haven’t read your books or attended your classes or heard you speak, tell our audience who you are and what is it that you do?

Greg: Well, so the full name is Gregory Michael Jarboe, but the only one who uses that was my mother. And so, if you use the whole name I know I’m in trouble.

Michael: Get your attention there.

Greg: Yeah, most people just call me Greg Jarboe and I’m the president and co-founder of SEO-PR. We started that company back in 2003. And I write a weekly column for Tubular Insights which is formerly known as real SEO. And the latest post just went up today, it’s called “How brands can make the most out of Christmas video marketing.” I also write for a couple of other blogs. One is the SEM Post and the other one is called INKED. I’m an instructor at the Rutgers Business School executive education program. I’m the video and content marketing faculty chair at Simplilearn. And I recently spoke at VidSummit 2016 in Los Angeles and my presentation was titled ” Schmooze Optimization: How it increases views, improves engagement and boosts earnings.”

Michael: Sometimes a schmooze is what it takes.

Greg: Well, schmoozing hasn’t gone out of fashion. There’s a whole lot of new technology that’s come along but schmoozing actually hasn’t been replaced.

Michael: And a lot of traditional marketing actually applies to today’s marketing and you and Matt Bailey and others are the people who are helping marketers realize that. So in your work, I know you’ve helped countless businesses, set up a strategy for content, video marketing, and you’re considered an authority on the process. Like it or not Greg. So outline the best practices and steps for us and then ...

What are the core practices for video marketing?  How do we optimize for discovery, watch time, and shares?  How do we engage influencers?  Author expert Greg Jarboe shares video marketing best practices in this OMCP podcast. The OMCP Online Marketing Best … Continue reading →

What do we need to know to stay in compliance with email marketing regulations?   What’s the difference between a transactional message and a  message with commercial intent?  What are best practices for maintaining our lists and subscription management?   OMCP’s Michael Stebbins shares best practices in this podcast/article.

The OMCP Online Marketing Best Practices Podcast is where top authors and industry leaders share authoritative best practices in online marketing which are covered by the OMCP standard, competencies, and exams.  This is an OMCP pilot program that may continue based on member interest and support.  Stay subscribed to the OMCP newsletter to see new episodes.

Episode #2 covers Email Marketing Compliance with Regulation with Michael Stebbins in 11.5 minutes.  Recorded October 2016.

Download OMCP Online Marketing Best Practices Podcast MP3 File Here (right click and select ‘save link as’.)

Best Practices

All right, welcome back to the OMCP Studio for the Online Marketing Best Practices Podcast. I’m your host, Michael Stebbins, and today we’ll be covering email marketing best practices for compliance with regulations.

Specifically, this is for sending commercial email to recipients in the U.S., in Canada, and in Europe.

As a professional marketer, it is our responsibility to understand the anti-spam laws in each of the regions where we send email. So in this episode, we’ll look at a few key countries’ relevant laws and highlight what email marketers need to know to comply with them.

United States

The United States has the CAN-SPAM Act. This is called the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003. The CAN-SPAM act covers commercial email messages where the primary purpose is advertising or promotion of a commercial product or service. It’s not going to cover an email between you and your relatives, or private emails. If you’re trying to influence someone to engage for future business, your email falls into the category.

Senders that violate the CAN-SPAM Act can face fines up to $16,000 per message that is in violation, and there have been prosecution of guilty verdict since the act went into place. So, a couple of key areas for CAN-SPAM compliance.

Opt In

First is an opt-in. The CAN-SPAM Act doesn’t require an opt-in. It allows direct marketing email messages to be sent to anyone without permission until the recipient explicitly requests that they stop, usually via an opt-out. While it may not be a good practice to send unsolicited email, it is not specifically prohibited by the CAN-SPAM Act until somebody says stop, and the opt-out needs to be a service or an easy event for the recipient for commercial email in the U.S.

More explicitly, each email message must include an opt-out instructions, and subscribers can’t be required to pay to unsubscribe or to provide information other than their email address, and opt-out preferences. Or, they can’t be required to take any steps other than sending a reply email message or visit a single Internet webpage to opt out of receiving future email from a sender. You’ve got to make it easy, and that means you can’t require a password to unsubscribe. (That’s one of my pet peeves!) The sender must honor the opt-out request within 10 days.

Identity

The CAN-SPAM Act covers identity rules as well. It prohibits falsifying information in the email header. Your from, to, reply to, and routing information, including the originating domain, the email address, have to be accurate and identify the person or business who initiated the message.

And More Bad Practices

What do we need to know to stay in compliance with email marketing regulations?   What’s the difference between a transactional message and a  message with commercial intent?  What are best practices for maintaining our lists and subscription management?   … Continue reading →

What is the value of an SEO link?  When can a link cause more damage than good?  What are some common and alternative ways to get links for SEO? Author expert Debra Mastaler shares best practices with OMCP in this podcast.

The OMCP Online Marketing Best Practices Podcast is where top authors and industry leaders share authoritative best practices in online marketing which are covered by the OMCP standard, competencies, and exams.  This is an OMCP pilot program that may continue based on member interest and support.  Stay subscribed to the OMCP newsletter to get new episodes.

Episode #3 covers SEO Link Building with Debra Mastaler in 47 minutes. Recorded November 15, 2016.

Download your MP3 of “SEO Link Building with Debra Mastaler – – Online Marketing Best Practices Podcast from OMCP” here.

Session Transcript

Michael: All right. Welcome back to the OMCP studio, and with us today is Debra Mastaler, President of Alliance-Link, author, noted columnist, and one of the most recognized authorities on online link building now and over the last decade. Debra is a master of SEO link building, teaching practices to some of the largest brands in the world. I’m your host, Michael Stebbins, and today, we’ll be discussing “Best Practices in SEO Link Building.” Debra, welcome to the OMCP Best Practices Podcast. Thank you so much for being here.

Debra: Well, thanks for having me, Michael. I appreciate it very much and looking forward to our talk today.

Michael: Debra, I know that you’ve been at the podium as the authority at industry conferences for years. I’ve seen you myself, attended your talks, and they’re usually crowded. I am personally excited to discuss the details of link building practices with you. Now, before we get started, for those who haven’t read your columns or heard you speak, tell our audience who are you and what is it that you do?

Debra: Well, I am what’s known as a link building specialist. My specialty, if you will, is promotional and media building. I’ve been doing it since, probably to the public, 2001. I got started in this industry as a directory owner. When my directory started ranking really well, people would come to me and say, “Hey, can you help me rank my site? Can you help me SEO my site?” I had no clue what that was. It was 1999. So I went out and I got a little information. I made some key contacts, most notably Jill Whalen formerly from highrankings.com, and she helped launch my career, if you will. I went public in 2001 with my firm, Alliance-Link, which offers link building training and some promotional outreach services that we do for content. And in 2002, I started at my first SES conference and it’s just gone crazy from there. So I was in the right place at the right time. I’ve watched this industry grow from almost nothing to just blossom, so it’s been quite a ride.

Michael: Well, it’s been great, and again, I’m a big fan and I also know that most of the top SEOs out there really revere your advice and follow you, which you can also, for our listeners, can follow Debra @DebraMastaler on Twitter all together.  

Now, Debra, you’ve helped countless businesses set up link building practices and are considered the authority on the process. You and I agreed to break the processes up into three groups, or the practices up into three groups.

The first was how to establish the value of potential inbound links or even existing inbound links.

And then, the second was steps to find where to get inbound links.

What is the value of an SEO link?  When can a link cause more damage than good?  What are some common and alternative ways to get links for SEO? Author expert Debra Mastaler shares best practices with OMCP in this … Continue reading →

Setting SEO Strategy can be a foggy process, unless we follow these five best practices from author/expert Matt Bailey.  Matt explains how to include stakeholders,  conduct market analysis, apply market and keyword research, perform gap analysis, and implement and measure your SEO strategy.

The OMCP Online Marketing Best Practices Podcast is where top authors and industry leaders share authoritative best practices in online marketing which are covered by the OMCP standard, competencies, and exams.  This is an OMCP pilot program that may continue based on member interest and support.  Stay subscribed to the OMCP newsletter to get new episodes.

Episode #1 covers SEO Strategy Best Practices with Matt Bailey in 34 minutes. Recorded October 26,2016.

Download OMCP Online Marketing Best Practices Podcast MP3 File Here (right click and select ‘save link as’.)

SEO Strategy Best Practices

Michael: Aaaaall right. Welcome back to the OMCP studio and with us today is Matt Bailey, author, educator, and CEO of SiteLogic. Matt is at the forefront of digital marketing best practices training for some of the largest brands in the world. I’m your host, Michael Stebbins, and today we’ll be discussing, “Best practices in establishing SEO strategy.” Matt, welcome to the OMCP Best Practices Podcast, and thank you so much for being here.

Matt: Hey, Mike. Thank you. It is a privilege to be here, and always enjoy talking business with you, among other things. So, thank you so much for the invitation.

Michael: Absolutely. I know this is gonna be really fun, and you and I have definitely worked together for a long time, but I’m personally excited to get into the details of SEO strategy. I know you’ve got the experience here. But before we get started, for those who haven’t read your books, or haven’t heard you speak, tell our audience who you are and what it is that you do.

Matt: Well. Okay. I’ve been in digital marketing now for 20 years. I started honestly, even back before that. In 1984, my father brought home a Commodore 64 computer, and in the same year, the movie “WarGames” came out. If you’re not familiar with that, it’s a Matthew Broderick movie. Well, he uses a computer to go change his grades in the school computer, and I had visions of doing that. And I attempted to get into my school’s computer and change my grades, and this is where I learned the magic of Hollywood because neither did my school maintain digital records, nor were they online. So, that dashed my dreams right away, but it opened up a love of going online and doing things, learning things, and so I can say I’ve been online since ’84. I’ve been marketing online since ’94, and having a whole lot of fun since then.

Michael: And Matt, I know you’ve helped out countless companies. Just before we started live recording, I’ve got to,… I’ve got to bring this up. You told me that you are an, hang on, an accidental beekeeper, I just got to ask…

Matt: Yes.

Michael: Give me the story. What happened?

Matt: Okay. Well, we have a tree next to our deck and there’s a hollow in the tree. And one year we had squirrels and little squirrel babies running around. The next year we had bees. And when we walked out one day, it was kind of like the middle of May, early spring, and there were about 50,000 bees on the side of this tree. So, I call a friend of mine who’s a beekeeper, he lives down the street, and he’s like, “I will be there in an hour.” And so he got his whole outfit on,

The OMCP Online Marketing Best Practices Podcast is where top authors and industry leaders share authoritative best practices in online marketing which are covered by the OMCP standard, competencies, and exams.  This is an OMCP pilot program that may continue based on … Continue reading →

Dennis Yu,  CTO, Blitz Metrics

“There’s been a gap between having a diploma and actually being able to do a job. Employers just want to know, of the many things that they have to get done, that they can rely on one person who’s certified in PPC or SEO or social media marketing. They just want to know that this function can operate without them having to worry, and therefore, a trusted certification like OMCP can be valuable  because it’s backed by not just passing a quiz but having actually done it.”

 

Welcome to ‘Take Ten’, OMCP’s blog/podcast where we spend 10 minutes, more or less, talking to online marketing thought leaders, educators, and career professionals about training and certification with hosts Jane Flint and David Temple.

OMCP: This is Jane Flint. I’m here at the Growth Marketing Conference in San Francisco with Dennis Yu, CTO at Blitz Metrics. Dennis, can you tell our audience a little bit about your own career path and how you developed BlitzMetrics?

Dennis Yu: Well, Jane, I’ve always been a math geek analyst, why do things work, sort of person and numbers have always held more power to me than things that are subjective like paintings and colors and feelings. So when I got into college, I found that I got 800 SAT on the math part, it was fun just to blow other students away with that because with the numerical…if you have algebra where you have four things and you’re trying to solve for the fifth and the answer’s five, then the answer’s five, and there could be many creative ways that you can get to it. And in the world of online marketing, which I stumbled into because I helped build AA.com for American Airlines, and then I ran analytics at Yahoo! and then all the social media stuff, it was like the ultimate math problem, which for some people is the ultimate dentist torture.

And I found that there were simple patterns that you could use to figure out what the answer was. Think about, if I just change analogies, your car is broken and you go to the mechanic, and the mechanic has to look through all the stuff and they take their hammer and they bang one part of the engine and it coughs back up to life.

That’s how I view online marketing. You have a machine and it’s getting more and more complex. How can you figure out the one or two things that will solve a constriction issue, or some kind of leakage, or some kind of issue where if you can just fix this one part of the funnel, other stuff will start to work properly? And that’s what I loved about working at Yahoo! He had a bunch of properties and the challenge, just like House, right? You know House? Where you gotta figure out what’s going on with the patient, what’s causing him to die. Well, the issue was this landing page wasn’t working. The issue was we were buying the wrong keyword. The issue was that we had the bad creative, or it was seasonality, or a competitor lowered their price and that’s why ours wasn’t converting as well, and that was such an amazing challenge. Every day I loved the emergency room aspect of online marketing.

OMCP: So you just presented “Facebook for $1 a day: 7 Awesome Hacks for Startup Founders and Growth Marketers.” Dennis, can you clarify for our audience the differences between social media marketing and growth marketing and how each supports the other?

Dennis Yu: Growth marketing is, how do you take a small dose to get maximum yield? That dose could be anywhere. It could be authority that comes from meeting someone at a conference, from being written up in search engine journals, from being a member of SEMPO, from a strong Facebook page. It could come from anywhere,