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Whatever Happened to the QR Code?

Can QR codes contribute to the success of your internet marketing campaign? Depending on who you ask you’ll get contradicting answers. So, how would you know whether or not to include QR codes as part of your internet marketing strategy?

QR Codes and Smartphones: A Disconnect in User Engagement

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QR codes started in an automotive company in Japan. It was labeled on car parts and once scanned, you’d receive details about the car. QR codes were adopted in internet marketing mainly because a QR code can store a lot of information that can easily be presented to consumers. With QR codes marketers can lead consumers to the company’s website, sign-up page, or sales page, among others.

All it takes is a smartphone with a QR code reader to move consumers from an offline to online experience. And who doesn’t own a smartphone? According to CRTC Communications Monitoring Report in 2013 over 27.9 million Canadians are mobile phone subscribers and the number has since grown. This year, 55% of Canadians own smartphones, which means more than half of the population can easily access your web content given that they would want to.

But apparently QR codes failed to catch on while the smartphone market continuously grew. So how are QR codes doing as an internet marketing tactic? Marketing charts collated data regarding QR codes, which includes research on how many marketers plan to use QR codes in their campaign and how many consumers are actually scanning code.

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Content: Does It Really Need A TimeStamp?

You know that joke about beer expiration dates? Beer always gets consumed so time-stamping them with expiration dates is useless. But is it the same for content marketing?

At the core of any successful inbound strategy is content. Your content  is indispensable, be it local Toronto content marketing or country-wide, every detail of your content marketing counts. Even something as seemingly trivial as timestamping.

While timestamps aren’t quite the same expiry dates, they do share similar nuances.

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Time-stamping

Timestamps are the dates indicated in published content. It’s actually optional but most websites and company blogs add it as a default.  The argument for timestamps on websites with breaking news is obvious, but what about other sites and blog posts that are using a different approach to content marketing.

One of the hallmarks of great content is timeliness. However, while ‘timely’ news and content needs to be recent, evergreen content, on other hand, probably doesn’t.  

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5 Ways to Revive Your Old Content

Content is king, but what if the king is aged? Fresh, high quality content is always a must, but should your old content never see the light of day again when their time in the spotlight is over?

From the ashes of old content can rise fresh, relevant, high quality, and even timely new content for your inbound marketing – you just have to know how:
5-way-revive-old-content-Fruition-Interactive-Toronto

Re-link for Relevant Link Juice

Internal cross-linking is a plus (well, unless you do it too much), so always keep an eye out for ways to link to your old, relevant, high quality content from new ones. This way, you help boost your own Pagerank by lending the old piece of content part of the link juice the new content will develop, which is a snowball process that helps bolster overall website visibility.

Repurpose for a Different Use

Old content can be recycled through repurposing: simply take the thesis message of an old piece of content and use it with a different marketing message, or in conjunction with a new, relevant subject matter. For instance, you have a blog post that talks about old events in inbound marketing Toronto conventions, you may want to repurpose them for new events. If you’ve covered Panda 3.0 before, you have a lot of chances to repurpose content for the Panda 4.0 update that’s currently trending, hitching on keyword ranking with comparatively little effort.
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Infographics: A Great Tool for Generating Leads…If You Know What You’re Doing

The infographic is a misunderstood creature. On the one hand, its viral potential is huge – it’s a data-packed, visually appealing representation of information. On the other hand, few know how to leverage its viral potential and ROI.

Ask content marketing firms in Toronto or anywhere else, and they’ll say infographics are ideal tools in their repertoire, but only the best agencies know exactly how to make the most of them.

Infographics As a Lead Generation Tool

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6 Tips On Making Your Content Search Engine Friendly

Optimizing your content for search engines is a vital piece of the SEO puzzle. Content, whether from your blog or web pages consists of text and images that are crawled by the search engines, catalogued and later evaluated. Through a series of algorithms, they use that evaluation information to rank web pages from most to least relevant. Your company’s goal of course,  is to get your content ranked number one! Here are some content marketing tips on how to  accomplish that:

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3 Ways Online Content Marketing Can Do More to Increase Sales

Regardless of how popular a particular trend becomes, if you can’t leverage it to bolster your bottom-line, it’s simply not worth the investment. Take content marketing for instance.

Businesses understand that content marketing is a potentially powerful strategic digital advertising investment because of how it builds audience connections – what they don’t understand is exactly how it impacts their bottom-line. It would be disastrous to invest in an all-out content creation and development strategy without guaranteed returns. How content influences sales would differ from business to business, but to give you an idea of what to expect, here are three ways online content can do more to increase your sales:
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How to Create Awesome Content

What is one of the most effective ways to keep visitors returning to your website? Fresh content. Yet, why is web so full of stale and outdated content? The main reason is the –mistaken- idea that producing awesome content requires some magical and unobtainable formula. Not so. You can create website marketing pieces that resonate with readers, and accomplishes your purpose, by understanding how the content marketing process works. Consider these steps to crafting first-rate content.

Know your reader

One imperative for content creation is making a composite customer, or “persona”. That persona will serve to remind you who you’re targeting, in a tangible way. You’ll learn what their interests are, about their buying cycle, and what motivates them. There are online templates available to assist in shaping a persona. By asking questions about who the targeted reader is, how they live, and what they desire in life, a persona is fashioned. Understanding their narrative helps you produce content that is appealing and meaningful to them. Remember that your persona represents your target customer.
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Content Marketing: What It Really Means and Why You Need It

Content Marketing : What It Really Means and Why You Need ItWhile the digital advertising industry is always abuzz with best practices, hottest trends, and catchphrases, it unfortunately lacks direction. For instance, everyone knows content marketing is an awesome strategy, but ask business owners or marketers what it really is and why you need it and only a few will be able to give definitive answers.
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Five reasons why you should “like” your competitors on social media

Are you following your competitors on Facebook or Twitter?

Researching marketing performance and strategies includes keeping an eye on competition, and social media has made that a bit easier for you by simply liking or following your competitor’s pages or accounts. Their efforts into social media are also part of their overall inbound marketing efforts, pulling in traffic and potential leads from a highly engaged audience already leaning towards a purchase.


Here are five reasons why it’s important to “like” your competitors: [Read more…]

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3 inbound marketing techniques you might not have tried yet

Getting tired of the same old content marketing techniques?

Here are three methods gaining ground in today’s online marketplace — ideas that you may not have considered before. Each leverages online trends and takes advantage of engaged audiences who enjoy interactivity or sharing. We’ve laid out the pros and cons, plus possible use scenarios.

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