Maybe it’s due to depression from the season’s shorter days, but we saw a slew of oopsies in folk's online marketing over the last week. Read on to learn from others’ mistakes rather than making your own.

We talk a lot about social media marketing and the way that marketers should work to create and maintain effective campaigns. This holiday season, let’s switch the lens to the buyer. What research are consumers doing across social media to investigate products before they buy? How can you take the decision making process of customers surrounding their purchasing and translate that into a successful social media marketing campaign? The secret to a fruitful holiday season for your business is tracing back the patterns that customers make before they buy and updating your social media strategy accordingly.

DNN Summit is returning to Denver, Colorado this February and Sprocket’s own Don Gingold and James Nagy will be among the selected speakers presenting on a variety of topics at this great conference! DNN Summit 2018 runs from February 6th – 10th at the Embassy Suites in Downtown Denver. The conference is one day longer than last year to provide visitors even more knowledge on a broad range of topics from DNN to .NET Core to Marketing / SEO, Administration and everything in between. Don and James will be each be presenting a full 60 minute session at the DNN Summit!

In honor of the season, we’d like to share a couple of social media horror stories. What scares folks most about tales of terror is imagining that it could happen to YOU! Which it could. So read on to discover frights that you should try to avoid. 

Visual content is a proven way to bring in readers, followers and customers. The right kind of visual content can inspire someone to click on an article, buy a product, or do more research into your company. While there are millions of stock options out there –original content will always be the best choice. Why? It’s unique. It’s one of a kind. It’s a brand new experience to viewers.

It was only a few months ago that we showed you how to clean up ugly link previews when sharing community events and news. If you’ve tried these techniques lately, you know they don’t work any longer. Here’s why – and what you can do about it.

Content marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) both have the opportunity to be intertwined with one another. SEO is when you optimize your web pages in a way that they become more visible to people who are searching for keywords associated with your business, products, or services on search engines. When we consider content marketing in terms of SEO, we are talking about utilizing your blog posts to make them most relevant to search engines and to your customers.

Have you lately read news reports stating that on October 1 websites without an SSL certificate will be labeled “Not Secure?” You may be wondering what this means to you, both as a business manager and as a consumer.

Your company may have some great testimonials and feedback. These are perfect (and free!) advertisements for your business. The question is –how do you effectively incorporate those reviews into a social media strategy that will help you to grow your customer base? In every part of marketing, audience is imperative to your success. You have to define your target audience before you can put together any sort of social strategy –reviews and testimonials included.

The term “content calendar” shows up in marketing blog posts everywhere, but very few people we know actually use one. To finish the year strong, why not give it a whirl for a few months? We’ll get you started!