“Sentiment Analytics”. At first glance, this phrase seems like a fancy term for dating and marriage advice. However, it is actually a marketing term, and a pretty important one at that. Sentiment analytics refers to a phenomenon that has sharpened with the rise of social media marketing; namely, the role of consumer emotion in the lead conversion process. By now, you’ve probably realized that social media has given your consumers a fairly substantial voice- they can directly comment on your posts and products and, with one simple click, they can share those posts and comments with several hundred friends and [...]

LinkedIn is an incredible resource for business that is often underutilized.  Today’s Friday infographic explains how you can best use this online tool to enhance your personal and business presence. LinkedIn members are sharing insights and knowledge in more than one million LinkedIn Groups.  It’s the ideal place to learn about new trends in the business world and to share your knowledge with others. Has your business benefited from interaction on LinkedIn? Tell us about it in the comments below!   *graphic credit: JeffBullas.com Follow this blog

Before attending OttoPilot’s Pinterest webinar, Jackie Monticup thought that Pinterest did not have a lot to offer her business, MagicTricks.com. However, after our own Pinterest wizard, Alexandra, shared her thoughts, Jackie began to see Pinterest in a different light. A few days after our webinar, Jackie had set up MagicTricks.com Pinterest board, creating 13 boards with unique categories like Optical Illusions, Magical Weddings, and Antique Magic. Launched on April 16, her page has grown a steady number of followers. However, where she’s seen the greatest amount of benefit is through people repinning and liking her posts. One pin from several [...]

The techie world was abuzz yesterday after the latest Google rollout. With very little fanfare and one random reference to the Loch Ness Monster, Google introduced Google Drive, its new storage and sharing platform. Google Drive lets you store, search, and share all of your files, including larger image and video files. Once uploaded, you can search these files by keyword, type, or owner, even files that you scanned from hard copy. Its not an entirely new concept; programs like Dropbox and SkyDrive also offer vast online storage options. However, Google Drive’s seamless integration with other Google services and its [...]

At our agency we’re fortunate to advise many companies (large and small) who are in the beginning stages of bringing on a digital marketing agency. The industry is relatively new and there are many iterations of what agencies do. As a result, it’s hard for hiring companies to even know what questions they should be asking.   There are a lot of articles out there about what you should ask the agencies to compare them to each other, but this seems premature.   If you don’t know what you want, how can you assess whether an agency is right or [...]

Back in the pre-Internet days, if you wanted your small business to be found, you would list it in the local phonebook. Neglecting to do so would not only be lazy, it would be detrimental to your business. Today, failure to list your business in a wide variety of local search websites is tantamount to that same detrimental neglect. There are many sites vying to be the local phonebook of the web, and you would be foolish not to list your business on each and every one of them. Working off of Hubspot’s very thorough local search listing, we have [...]

It’s Friday again! It comes around once a week (thank you Captain Obvious) and that also means that it’s Infographic Day!   Today’s infographic is very near and dear to our heart because inbound marketing is the foundation of what we do over here at the OttoPilot Media hangar. Good to see that firm emphasis here is placed on content marketing–whitepapers, eBooks, webinars, and more.   As this diagram so concisely describes, inbound marketing is a two-way conversation and is much more about “pull” marketing. This means that your business provides valuable information for people that are looking for that [...]

These big-name brands have leapt on Facebook’s business opportunities and have developed some inspiring Facebook promotion campaigns. As much as we might not like to admit it, any small business online marketing firm can learn a lot from these big-business Facebook campaigns. Use Facebook to introduce a new product: Ford Explorer’s 2010 Rollout Ford’s 2010 “Reveal” of its new Explorer model relied heavily on Facebook marketing, introducing fans to the car with videos, live chats, and other features. Photo: Ford Ford used Facebook to make its rollout a universal event, engaging fans from all over the world and uniting those [...]

Mark Zuckerberg likes to remind us that Facebook is all about the image. His most recent, very forceful reminder came when Facebook purchased image-editing app Instagram for $1 billion (An 8 person company bought for $1 billion… obviously we should have gone into the app-building industry…) The recent change to the Facebook Timeline layout emphasizes that focus on the image, with a large cover photo taking up well over a third of every user’s screen. For those using Facebook for business, this means that your cover photo is the single largest image that your customer will see. First impressions loom [...]

Continuing our Friday dosage of infographics from last week’s Components of the Perfect Website, we love this social media usage infographic. Showing social media usage around the world, this infographic makes a pretty persuasive argument for Facebook as the most prevalent social media platform. Additionally, its a great graphic to show those skeptical about the impact and reach of social media marketing or social media ROI (if such skeptics even exist). Sadly, no data is included from China or India, as the researchers did not find that data reliable. Infographic: Mashable   Follow this blog