Taking another step toward monetization, Foursquare is testing paid promotions with some New York City-based merchants, according to Advertising Age. Until now, the location-driven social network has made paid promotions available only to national brands. This marks the first time Foursquare is generating revenue from small businesses. The small-business promotions enable these local merchants to […]

LivingSocial posted a $50 million net loss in the first quarter of 2013, according to a filing from Amazon, which owns 29 percent of the No. 2 daily-deals company. This might be taken as bad news if it weren’t for the fact that Q1 2013 was actually an improvement of affairs for LivingSocial: revenue grew […]

Wishpond, a company that helps run social campaigns, recently published an infographic offering an up-to-date look at social media marketing today. Here are some of the 17 statistics included in the infographic: –

Marketers have big plans for the major social media platforms this year, but daily-deals sites and geo-location services are falling by the wayside. These are some of the main findings from Social Media Examiner’s “2013 Social Media Marketing Industry Report: How Marketers Are Using Social Media to Grow Their Businesses.” We already covered the other […]

According to a recent report from location-based mobile advertising firm Verve Mobile, about 7 in 10 mobile campaigns from quick-service restaurants (QSR) and casual-dining brands used location-based targeting. These campaigns performed two times better than mobile campaigns that didn’t leverage location targeting. According to Verve’s report, “State of the Market: Location Powered Mobile Advertising,” which […]

If your business wants to dip its toe in the Facebook ad pool for the first time ever, it’s important to get a grasp of the types of Facebook Ads (right column, paired with news, social actions) and Sponsored Stories (in the News Feed, on the right side of the home page) that are available. […]

Lead generation in the education vertical is in a state of flux today, as schools wean themselves off of older tactics, tidy up their online activities and focus more keenly on quality over quantity. Despite the fraud, over-shared leads and reputational concerns afflicting the vertical, schools are still ramping up their spending. The “2013 EDU […]

Skyword, a content marketing agency, uses a simple infographic to answer an important question: What are the keys to successful content marketing? According to the company, there are just three words you need to remember when it comes to figuring out how to do content marketing well, each starting with “s”: searchable, snackable and shareable. […]

If marketers aren’t careful, they might be tricked into thinking that their business needs to be on every major social media platform out there. But they need discerning eyes and ears when they read articles and studies telling them about the usefulness and growing popularity of these channels. “Social media is a tool that everyone […]

In Rand Fishkin’s announcement of the retirement of SEOmoz and the unveiling Moz, he included a comparison diagram that got some attention. It contrasts “interruption” marketing (i.e., outbound marketing) and inbound marketing, and illustrates what Moz is trying to do: shift marketers from interruption to inbound marketing by equipping them with software. As cleanly as […]