February 8, 2014: Chris Brogan is an oft-quoted author and digital marketing expert who’s been counseling brands and businesses about how to distinguish themselves online for many years. As part of our continuing series of interviews with online marketing experts, we wanted to catch up with Chris to discuss personal branding, social media, and community building, and are grateful that Chris was able to set aside some time to talk with us.

Google offers a wide range of programs for individuals and organizations as part of its set of trainings and tools. The benefits of a firm becoming a Google Certified Partner are many: one can display the official “Google Certified Partner” banner, and be officially listed on Google’s Partner Pages.

Google offers a wide range of programs for individuals and organizations as part of its set of trainings and tools. The benefits of a firm becoming a Google Certified Partner are many: one can display the official “Google Certified Partner” banner, and be officially listed on Google’s Partner Pages.

The vast majority of online ads — 82 percent of them — are ignored, according to a February 2014 study by Goo Technologies, a Swedish graphics development firm. Unsurprisingly, banner ads were found to be the worst online performers (73 percent ignored), followed by social ads (62 percent ignored), and search ads (59 percent ignored).

On February 19, Yahoo’s Jay Rossiter and Adam Cahan announced Gemini, a “unified marketplace for mobile search and native advertising.”. Rossiter wrote: “with Yahoo Gemini, advertisers get the performance and ease of search, combined with the scale and creativity of native advertising. By bringing the two together, advertisers can now buy, manage and optimize their mobile search and native ad spend in one place — driving greater performance and higher impact for their businesses and brands.”.

This month, Facebook is rolling out a major redesign of their home page and news feed. A revised newsfeed was rolled out one year ago, and it seems that according to a recent MarketingLand article, Facebook users like things just the way they are. There seems to be a tension between serving Facebook’s user base and its advertisers, although it’s been argued that Facebook’s advertisers have been getting the raw end of the stick as of late.

It’s been a tough month for crypto-currencies. We’ve had the Mt. Gox meltdown, the recent FBI auction of Bitcoins, the public outing of Dorian Nakamoto — who may or may not have invented Bitcoin — and a lot of wacky commentary on whether crypto-currencies such as Bitcoin are worth less than the paper they’re not printed on.

Saint Patrick’s Day is here , so the Luck of the Irish is on our minds. But as As Obi-Wan Kenobi tells Han Solo in Star Wars, luck, at least as a discrete phenomenon, may not exist. While we may not have the Force or a Four Leaf Clover to grant us fair fortune, we do have the ability to make our content lucky – to endow it with certain properties that increase its chance – its “luck” – of being noticed, shared, and remembered.

The recent purchase of Oculus VR by Facebook is a textbook example of how to alienate one’s dedicated brand advocates. Originally a small tech startup and hobby project, Oculus had a two-year rocket ride that made the company both a VC darling and scrappy Internet underdog. In the wake of Facebook’s acquisition, however, much of Oculus’ original brand equity is now in ruins, to the point that many of the original Oculus backers have expressed opinions suggesting they feel “used.”.

April 30, 2014: Here we go again! Back by popular demand, here’s Part 3 in our Lame Marketing Phrases series. Enclosed is another fresh batch of stale phrases to amaze your co-workers, roll your eyes at, and cite during meetings when these phrases inevitably come up. You might even say: “If Didit pointed this one out in a humor article, sir, it must be lame.”.

How Google Plus, Author Rel, Youtube, and Hangouts Can Strengthen Your PR Efforts. April 22, 2014: There’s been a lot of talk about public relations and SEO. Searchenginewatch quotes Mike Cherenson, former chair and CEO of the Public Relations Society of America on the importance of SEO for the PR discipline.

May 7, 2014: I’m a nerd, as well as a social media professional, so I’m accustomed to carping, sniping, whining, and flaming. as well as sickened — when I read an article titled Black Milk Clothing Illustrates How Not To Use Social Media over on Buzzfeed.com. To summarize this messy kerfuffle, representatives from Black Milk Clothing posted an image which depicted female fans of the brand in an unfavorable, unabashedly sexist way.

May 21, 2014: Every business with a social media presence wants to create content that’s widely shared. Each year, big brands spend millions of dollars on “viral marketing” experts whose jobs are to create edgy, viral campaigns, the vast majority of which flop instead of share. The truth is that there’s no “secret” to creating sharable content.

May 20, 2014: Those working with Google Adwords know how hard it can be to write engaging PPC ad copy, given the limited characters available in Google text ads. In the first part of a two-piece series on PPC copywriting, Didit’s Adam Steinberg shares 7 tips that will increase your ad’s chances of being noticed and appreciated for its relevancy:

Ah, memes. Social media lets anyone create a clever catchphrase, idea, or image and endow it with the potential to become viral, spreading across social networks like wildfire. Anyone who can create a clever graphic or create a provocative hashtag can now have this/her brilliant idea take the social media world by storm, creating recognition and boosting the brand.

Avoid these 5 mistakes to make your mobile marketing more effective. Here are 5 of the most common mistakes web site owners make with when dealing with multiple devices, and how you can fix them. Mistake 1: Using only desktop pages. We wish that this problem wasn’t as distressingly common as it is, but far too many website owners don’t want to bother with the added time and expense of developing either an adaptive design for their web pages or a separate mobile-optimized site.