You vote has been counted: A collection of your most useful small business articles

the-best-small-business-content

With so many ways to measure web traffic, page views, and clicks, it’s easy to crowd-source information on a lot of different topics.

I went back through our click statistics to find the most popular articles that I’ve linked to over the last year or so. Most of these were included in our regular “This week in small business” feature of curated content. Think of it as voting by clicking!

If you missed any of these “crowd pleasers” the first time around, here they are again, and they are just as relevant now as they were when we originally featured them.

Social media marketing

3 social marketing tools that come with super powers, by Jim Belosic. Jim discusses three of his favorite tools and each one covered in this article performs an entirely different function. Great curation.

110+ Top Bloggers And Entrepreneurs Share Their Most Successful Social Media Action, by Minuca Elena. As you know from my introduction, I’m a fan of crowd sourcing and this article crowd sources social media marketing strategies, with the “crowd” composed of experts.

Taylor Swift’s Seven Marketing Lessons, by Morgan Chessman. If you can get past the GIF that greets you in this article, you’ll get some solid advice on how you should present yourself in the social media.

Five Small Business Marketing Ideas That Won’t Break the Bank, by Susan Solovic…hey that’s me! This article I wrote for Guidant Financial continues to be popular. The advice is solid and serves both brick-and-mortar and online businesses. (Some non-digital marketing advice here.)

Content Marketing Questions: How To Do Marketing With No Budget? By Michael Brenner. The title of this article is a little misleading. What Michael actually does here is answer some very good and basic questions about content marketing. I’m willing to bet that you’ll find a question you’ve been wanting to ask someone.

Community-powered marketing succeeds where traditional marketing fails, by Jackie Yeaney. Jackie does a great job explaining the differences between push and pull marketing and gives a ton of advice on how to start “pulling” customers in via your marketing.

4 Tips for Small-business Retail Marketing for 2016, by Armando Roggio. Prioritizing is big with Armando and here he shows you four areas where retailers need to prioritize their marketing.

Instagram – When images matter most: 19 Marketing Tips for Success, by Adam Houlahan. Instagram’s importance to marketing is booming and I just read that Buffer is now able to share images to Instagram. These tips will give you a good foundation for getting started.

5 Overlooked Features of Your LinkedIn Marketing Strategy, by, Krystal Overmyer. For B2B marketing, LinkedIn may be your most powerful weapon, yet few really take advantage of it. Krystal’s observations will help.

5 Marketing Technology Trends on the Horizon, by Rohit Roy. No compilation would be complete without a quick glance to the future and a lot of what Rohit says here is already happening.

Alternatives to social media marketing

Take your marketing out of home to cut through the clutter, by Catherine Monson. Catherine makes a strong case for outdoor advertising. It can be cost effective and an excellent way to rise above the online din. I’m a big believer in sometimes walking the “road less traveled by” when it comes to marketing.

Email marketing

41 Lifecycle Emails to Boost Your Email Marketing Campaigns, by Lolly Spindler. If you’re at a loss of words for marketing emails, you need to check this out. It’s organized a lot like the greeting cards at a Hallmark shop, with emails for a wide range of occasions and categories.

Ten ways to freshen-up your email marketing, by Jeff Rajeck. While Lolly Spindler looks at content, Jeff looks at strategies and principles of email marketing.

Online Marketing Basics #6: Introduction to Email Marketing, by the Noupe Editorial Team. Need to go over the fundamentals again (most of us do)? This article will get it done.

Influencer marketing

6 quick steps to jump-start your influencer marketing program, by Blaise Lucey. Influencer marketing – even micro-influencer marketing – is hot right now. These quick steps will get you moving in the right direction.

4 Easy Ways to Brand Yourself as an Industry Expert, by Susan Payton. Rather than finding other influencers to promote your business, how about getting recognized as an influencer yourself? Here are ways to build your personal brand.

Graphics creation

Top Tools to Create Stunning Social Media Graphics, by Rebekah Radice. Rebekah describes seven tools you can use to create excellent graphics for your website and in your social media marketing.