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Archive for December, 2009

Two billion candy canes, about $214 million worth, were purchased this holiday season by consumers with a sweet tooth.  Here are some fun facts to help you celebrate the sugary day of December 26. 

1. The original candy cane did not have stripes.  Before the red stripe was introduced, a candy cane was simply a white, mint-flavored stick.

2.  Decorating the tree with candy canes became fashionable during the 1850s when a resident of Ohio,  August Imgard, hung them on a Christmas tree to augment his homemade decorations.

3. Some Christians believe the candy cane has a symbolic meaning with the “J” shape representing Jesus’s initial, and the red/white stripes representing Christ’s purity and blood.  Others view the candy as the shape of a shepherd’s hook. 

4. The modern candy cane was invented by Bob McCormack of Atlanta.  He started the curved candy trend sometime in the early 1920’s with handmade versions.  As the original candy cane maker in the United States, Bob’s Candies manufactured about two million each day in 2009.

5. The mass-produced version of the candy cane made the scene in the 1950s when Bob’s (see #3 above) brother-in-law figured out how to cut, pull, twist and package the confection in a factory setting.   

6. Candy canes are made with sugar, corn syrup, and starch – a super-solid sugar rush.  

7. Candy canes were once considered “medicine”.  The soothing peppermint and sugar combo was used as a pacifier for children. Other flavors – including anise and cinnamon – were used by apothecaries to help soothe and calm their patients (probably the parents of the kids that needed a pacifier).

And, if on this day after Christmas, you are looking for ways to creatively use your leftover candy canes, here’s a video to give you some helpful tips.  

 

Your Marketing Takeaways:

• Every product has something interesting to say about it. Even an innocuous product like candy canes has its own special day, Facebook application, Twitter tweets, YouTube videos, and a history.
• Using metrics or specific data points such as number sold, revenue generated, introduction of, or timeline/history, any company can create content that will resonate with its customers and prospects. You would be amazed at the number of statistics you can pull together once different angles are considered.  And, some of them can be fun!
• Finally, once you have utilized this information for your own marketing efforts, the content will be picked up over and over again by others in your industry, creating the thought leadership every CEO looks for!  

 What type of “sweet” data points can you find in your business?   

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401. 

That’s the number of blog articles that we’ve shared with you this year on Inbound Marketing blog. We’ve covered a lot of topics and created a ton of original content. It’s been a whole lot of fun, but now it’s time to highlight the best of the best.

If you took a peek at our Top Inbound Marketing Webinars of 2009, you might notice this topic just keeps popping up.

Yep, that’s right. Five out of our top ten blog posts this year were on the topic of social media. Three of those 5 contained hard-to-find Twitter data that many businesses use to make informed decisions, while the remaining 2 featured tactical information how businesses can use and monitor their social media presence. As we enter 2010, one can look at this data and certainly understand why so many companies are planning to incorporate social media into their marketing mix next year.

Top 10 Inbound Marketing Blog Posts of 2009

1.)  Groundbreaking New Personality Grader Makes Marketing Less Manic (@ DanZarrella)

2.)  Baby Got Leads (Posted by @Pamelump but the entire @HubSpot team can take the credit for this awesome viral video)

3.)  7 Tips for Effective Calls to Action (@DanZarrella)

4.) Study Shows Small Businesses Who Blog Get 55% More Traffic (@RickBurnes)

5.) How to Monitor Your Social Media Presence in 10 Minutes a Day (@Repcor)

6.) Announcing the June State of the Twittersphere Report (@DanZarrella)

7.) Free EBook:  How to Use Facebook For Business (@EllieEille)

8.) Best Way to Build a Twitter Account: Step By Step (@DanZarrella)

9.) Is 22 Tweets-Per-Day The Optimum? (@DanZarrella)

10.) Is PR Dead? (@BHalligan)

 photo by StreetFly_JZ

 

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Webinar: Always Be Testing: 10 Tips For Increasing Your Lead Conversion Rate

Learn how to convert website visitors into leads with calls to action and landing pages Download the free webinar to for tips on testing, measuring, and analyzing your marketing programs to improve your lead conversion rate.

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Posted by great scott!

Welcome back to our second installment of this very special WhiteBEARD Friday! Last week Rand Fishclause discussed how the new school way to get links is to give back to webmasters. That’s right, you’ve gotta give a little to get a little.  This week, in the spirit of Searchmas©, we’re giving you 12 examples of sites that exemplify this new model.

From video hosting, to awards, to social profiles, and many more, we hope you’ll come away with some great ideas about what you can do to provide outward value to the linkerati and get a whole lotta link love back in return.

SEOmoz Whitebeard Friday – 12 Link Strategies of Searchmas from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

From all of us here at SEOmoz, thanks for joining us every week for our 2009 season of Whiteboard Friday, and for being part of one of the most vibrant, fun, and talented communities on the web. Your participation and readership really means the world to us, and we can’t wait to share 2010 with you. Until then, happy holidays

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NOTE FROM THE PRODUCERS: We are doing a special Holiday episode live today Wednesday, December 23rd at 4:00pm ET. Check out the show at www.hubspot.tv.

Episode #71 – December 18, 2009
(Episode Length: 24 minutes, 41 seconds)

Intro

• How to interact on Twitter: @mvolpe, @karenrubin and @amcafee with www.HubSpot.tv in your tweet.
• Subscribe in iTunes: http://itunes.hubspot.tv/
• New day and time for HubSpot TV next week: December 23rd, 4PM

Special Guest: Andrew McAfee

• @amcafee
  
• http://andrewmcafee.org
• Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for Your Organization’s Toughest Challenges

Doing It Right

• A GPS Experiment Busts Street Thieves
• “What
  would happen if a furniture company left 24 designer chairs, many
  equipped with GPS tracking technology, on the streets of New York?”
• “Blu
  Dot, a furniture maker based in Minneapolis, found out with its “Real
  Good Experiment,” which it developed with branding firm Mono. The
  experiment was equal parts marketing campaign for the chairs, which
  retail for $129, and research into the recession-friendly phenomenon of
  “curb mining” — the practice of nabbing household items left on street
  corners.”
• “All told, Blu Dot believes the experiment
  generated nearly 60 million Web impressions, including blogs and
  Twitter posts. Unique visitors to its site tripled in the first few
  days of the experiment.”
• “There was some concern it wouldn’t
  make an impression beyond “design hipsters,” but Blu Dot found it was
  getting attention from the tech community, including Fast Company and a
  security blog.”

Headlines

Carnival Titanics Their Marketing

• Carnival Cruise Lines Releases a Restrictive New Social Media Policy for Travel Agents.
• “Carnival
  Cruise Line is introducing a new social media policy in 2010 that
  prohibits partners from using any Carnival trademark or intellectual
  property on social media websites including Facebook, Twitter, Linked
  in – without prior written approval.”
• Marketing Takeaway: You can’t control your brand, and doing so limits your exposure.

Twitter Encourages Contribution

• 5 Business Benefits of Twitter’s New Feature ‘Contributors’ (Launching Soon!)
• “Twitter
  will be releasing a new feature called “Contributors,” which allows
  multiple users to contribute to a single company Twitter account.
  (Woohoo!)”
• Marketing Takeaway: Make sure you have both individual and company Twitter accounts!

Big Brands Playing Small

• Pepsi turns ad focus online
• “Pepsi’s
  Super Bowl streak is over after a 23-year run. Ads for the drinks won’t
  appear in next year’s Super Bowl on CBS. Instead, the company plans to
  shift ad dollars to a new marketing effort that’s mostly online.”
• “Shipper
  FedEx also said Thursday it will not advertise again in the Super Bowl
  due to costs, the same reason the company gave for sitting it out last
  time around.”
•  Big brands turn to small blog houses for big results
• “Chris
  Heuer and his wife Kristy, run the Social Media Club. They wanted to
  find a way to save money on hotels in Paris. They found a house for
  rent, which cost something around 5,000 Euros, and they got several
  sponsors, largely PayPal, to pick up most of the costs for the house,
  which they branded “the Social Media Club House.”"
• “What did
  PayPal get? Mentions on our blogs and Twitter accounts, but a private
  dinner where they got to know us away from the hustle and bustle of
  their show floor exhibit.”
• Marketing Takeaway: Small is the new big. Richer relationships with fewer people trumps interruption advertising to millions.

Marketing Tip of the Week: Leverage Enterprise 2.0 thinking in your business.

Closing

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When your funnel is full of qualified leads for your sales team, aren’t you full of joy?

This is the last video of our #marketingcarol series. Enjoy it, and may your marketing be prosperous in 2010!

Tweet this Jolly Marketing Carol!

 

Lyrics

Joy to the world! Our Funnel’s Full.
Let sales! Receive! Their leads!
We’re marketing only inbound. Our website will always get found.
Search Engine Optimizing
We’re tweeting and blog writing
Our traffic, we’re nurturing
And converting

Video Credits

Producers: @repcor and @shaxxon
HubSpot Singers: Common Sound

 

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