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5 Marketing Tools to Make Your Business Soar

Marketing tools to boost your online influence

There’s no substitute for a good marketing campaign. After all, it’s what makes your business stand out from the crowd.

A recent survey showed that most companies spend 20 hours on marketing per week. How do you know if you’re using this time wisely? Having the right data is the best way to evaluate your marketing strategies.

Here are five tools that will boost your productivity and effectively measure your online impact.

1) Moz

Moz offers a complete set of tools to synchronize all your marketing campaigns. From traffic stats to social media shares, Moz tracks the data you need to get the right customers.

Moz not only provides top-notch analytics tools but also offers actionable advice on how you can improve your marketing. One of its best-known features is Open Site Explorer, which tracks inbound links to your website. This is essential information for any marketer because it can help you build connections with key influencers.

Ever wondered who’s talking about your business? Moz’s Mentions tool scours RSS feeds and URLs to find out where your brand appears on the web. Moz also features an on-page ranker that helps optimize your content, allowing you to rank higher for a specific keyword.

2) Passpack

Chances are, you use multiple passwords to run your business. Since 2006, Passpack has been making it easy to remember passwords by storing them all in one application.

Once you’ve installed Passpack in your browser, you can securely log in to any website with just a click of a button. The type of data you can save is diverse, from email passwords to log-in credentials for online banking. With Passpack, you can safely share your passwords with anyone in your network, including employees and family members.

Passpack offers different subscription plans to suit your business needs. While its free account allows you to save up to 100 passwords, purchasing a subscription gives you more passwords, shared users, and disposable log-ins.

3) Klout

Klout provides an ideal way to measure your marketing reach and grow your influence. The company has a stellar track record and has run campaigns for some of the most influential brands in the world.

Once you sign up for Klout, you can link your social media profiles, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, and Instagram. Klout will then give you a “score” based on your social media activity.

Klout digs deep, looking beyond superficial statistics such as your Twitter follower count. It tracks how often users actually pay attention to what you post. For example, your Klout score will increase when you receive comments, retweets, and likes on your content. The built-in reporting tool makes it easy to track your activity on a daily basis, so you can easily tweak your marketing efforts.

4) Raven

Like Moz, Raven combines multiple pieces of software in one easy-to-use package. With dozens of available tools, Raven streamlines the work so you don’t need to spend hours doing marketing research on your own.

Raven focuses on five different categories: social media, content marketing, reporting, PPC, and SEO. One of its most useful tools is the Site Auditor, which crawls your website to figure out which SEO issues need improvement. Raven can also check search engine rankings for keywords, improve backlinks, and monitor your brand on social media.

Raven’s content marketing tools help push your content out quickly across multiple platforms. Using its metrics, you can discover which content is most profitable and keep tabs on the topics that industry leaders are talking about.

5) MailChimp

Smart businesses know the power of email marketing. With MailChimp, you can build your subscriber list and send more great content to the clients who matter most.

If you don’t already have a subscriber list, MailChimp helps you create a sign-up form. Once your list is ready to go, you can begin a new email marketing campaign using the service’s customizable templates. Your emails can be plain text, graphics rich, or pulled from an RSS feed. MailChimp lets you target specific subscribers with your emails so that clients receive only the most relevant information.

After your marketing campaign has launched, you can track it using MailChimp’s analytics tools. Here you’ll learn helpful information, such as how many subscribers actually open your emails. MailChimp can also recommend the best time to send marketing emails based on the activity level of your subscribers.

If you have fewer than 2,000 subscribers, you can use MailChimp for free. However, there are more advanced features, such as automated emails, that are restricted to the paid versions.

Marketing tools put your business on the map

It’s a common refrain in the marketing world that content is king. However, not all content has a built-in audience.

To get the exposure you want, you’ll need to share your message on multiple platforms and connect with the top experts in your industry. Having the right tools is the key to building your online brand and growing your business.

Editing Jobs

A guide to the different types of editing jobs

Just as there are different types of engineers, doctors, or teachers, there are also different kinds of editors and editing jobs. Typically, when you think about editors, you think about the publishing industry. However, editing jobs can be found in many other fields as well, such as the broadcasting, film, educational, scientific, and medical fields. Editing jobs can be found everywhere! Editors can be generalists who deal with a wide variety of subjects or specialists who deal with very specific subjects. They can work alone or in collaboration with others, such as writers, publishers, or project managers.

Editing is a very rewarding, yet demanding, career. When undertaking editing jobs, you will rely on your innate love of language and reading, attention to detail, overwhelming urge to improve communication, strong organizational skills, and your abilities to work under pressure and meet deadlines.

Types of editing jobs

The following are examples and brief explanations of some of the different kinds of editing jobs that are available.

Editorial assistant: This might be the first editing job that you get in the field of editing. An editorial assistant does what other editors won’t or don’t have time to do and supports the editorial staff. The work includes editing copy, proofreading, checking for accuracy, researching, and liaising with others. The actual amount of editing will vary according to the industry and employer, but this type of position eventually leads to bigger and better editing jobs.

Copy editor: This editing job involves checking text for spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors, ensuring smooth syntax, and applying style. Copyediting is rules-based and very mechanical. Copy editors are employed by organizations such as newspapers, magazines, publishing companies, public relations firms, and advertising agencies.

Managing editor: A managing editor is a senior member of an editorial team who is in charge of day-to-day operations. This editing job consists of many responsibilities, ranging from making daily decisions that affect the entire editorial team, such as scheduling, adjusting deadlines, and enforcing editorial policies and procedures, to editing content.

Editor-in-chief (or executive editor): This is the top editing job. The role of an editor-in-chief is all-encompassing and includes such responsibilities as setting editorial tone, direction, and policies; strategic planning; budgeting; and representing the employing organization in the public realm. An editor-in-chief is ultimately responsible for the final product put out by the employing organization.

Senior editor: Managing teams of editors is the main task associated with this editing job. A senior editor oversees content creation, ensures that style rules are followed and quality standards are met, sets deadlines, ensures editing is completed in a timely and effective manner, edits, and is responsible for ensuring overall consistency and accuracy.

Technical editor: A technical editor has very specific knowledge and edits very specific documents of a more complex nature, such as clinical protocols and manuals. This editing job necessitates collaborating with researchers and subject matter experts to ensure accuracy.

These are just some of the editing jobs that are available. There are also editing jobs—such as video editor, film editor, photo editor, and sound editor—that require more specific skills. So, if you are interested in becoming an editor, do a bit of research to find out exactly what it takes!

To brush up on your editing skills, check out our online editing training course. This comprehensive online course features interactive exercises and self-tests to help you expand the knowledge you already have, and it may even teach you a trick or two about editing to help you land that coveted editing job.

7 Movies Every Marketer Should Watch

Marketing is an all-pervasive but little-understood sector of the world economy. As with any other aspect of human existence, however, it has not been overlooked by the film industry. Whether you are an eager marketing student or a jaded marketing exec, the cinema can bring you a fresh perspective on the tasks you face in your chosen career. Whether for education, inspiration, or just entertainment, these seven films will help you reassess your approach to marketing.

Every Home Should Have One

This Britcom from 1970 explores the moral dilemmas faced by advertising executives. Teddy Brown, a marketing executive, is tasked with creating an advertising campaign for frozen porridge. Brown decides to use sex to sell his mundane product, which runs him into trouble with moral campaigners, including his wife. The film appeared at the turning point between the Swinging Sixties and the aimless Seventies, and it highlights the care marketers should take in detecting society’s moral compass.

Europe After The Rain

This 1978 documentary focuses on the Dada and Surrealist movements. You will recognize the struggle between original thinkers when creating something new. Another point of interest from these movements is their influence on modern perception, irony, and humor, three crucial aspects regularly used in contemporary advertising. Inspiration and guidance may arise from the most unexpected corners of the counterculture—yesterday’s avant-garde is today’s mainstream.

The Ad and the Ego

This film takes a scholarly approach toward advertising, marketing, consumerism, and globalization. After a rundown of the evolution of advertising, invited academics expound on the interaction among the advertising industry, society, culture, and product development. The movie highlights the resistance of the general public toward being sold something. This explains why counterculture concepts were co-opted by marketers to blindside the resistant consumer.

The Joneses

This gently comedic drama centers on an ideal family following a move to a suburban house. The members of the family soon inspire friends and neighbors to copy their purchases and pursuits before the much-admired Joneses are revealed to be a localized marketing campaign. The movie applies the marketing concept of celebrity endorsements to average neighbors.

Jobs

No one in the current era has had as much as success in the design-to-sale process as Steve Jobs. This film is a biography of the recently deceased genius and follows his departure from and eventual return to Apple.

Winnebago Man

An artless promotional video by a Winnebago salesman goes viral on the Internet, making him a success. This is a true story and an early example of how content marketing can promote products for free.

Glengarry Glen Ross

A real estate agency owner pits his sales team against one another by creating a competition on sales turnover—the first and second place earn a prize, the third-place salesman gets the sack. Is this a winning formula for goal setting? Probably not. But you knew we had to include it here!