The Hub: creative directory

Here are ten marketing influencers worth following who regularly share advice and tips to help you stay up to date with the latest digital marketing trends.

To learn more please visit: 10 marketing influencers that every entrepreneur can learn from – LINK

• Clicky – is a way to monitor, analyze and react to your blog or web site’s traffic in real time. Everything in Clicky is up-to-the-minute real time. Clicky lets you see every visitor and every action they take on your web site, with the option to attach custom data to visitors, such as usernames or email addresses. Analyze each visitor individually and see their full history.

• Crowdbooster – offers social media analytics with suggestions and tools. It also provides recommendations on Twitter and Facebook.

• Meme generator – you can use it if you need to add a comical spin to your content. Everyone loves memes, right?

• ePodcast creator – is an audio editing and recording software program.

• Grammarly – you can check your grammar right from your browser or Microsoft Office, so you can improve your writing in emails, documents, social media posts and more. If you’re not a native speaker, of course.

• Remember the milk – it’s an app that allows you to manage all your tasks, like a to-do-list. A great alternative to the classic Notepad.

• Surveymonkey – you can create and publish online surveys in just a few minutes, and you can view the results graphically and in real time.

• Contently – allows businesses to work with high-quality freelance writers. It also handles the payment and management of the editorial process.

• Campaign monitor – with this you can create, send, and optimize your email marketing campaigns.

• Piktochart – is an infographic design app that requires very little effort to produce high-quality graphics. There are more than 400 fully customizable themes to choose from.

• MarketMuse – a tool for identifying interesting content ideas that can generate traffic. It measures content quality and improves relevance in your content, boosting lead quality and engagement. Is considered an addition to any marketer’s arsenal.

• Cooperatize – You can buy sponsored content and native advertising on blogs with a guaranteed audience and you can get unique stories written about your brand.

• Crowdfire – Use Crowdfire for publishing, social analytics and growing your Instagram and Twitter account.

• Like Explorer – is a tool that shows you how many people shared or liked a specific web page on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus or other social networks. And it’s very easy to use.

• TrackMaven – by analyzing all the digital content across your competitive landscape, TrackMaven identifies exactly what is working and what’s not. This helps you craft your editorial calendar and optimize your distribution strategy.

• Socialbakers – being active on social media is very important nowadays. So we have another tool for you. Socialakers it one of the most popular provider of social media analytic tools, statistics and metrics for Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and Youtube.

• Paperrater – is a free online grammar, plagiarism and spelling check program, that allows you to find mistakes in your content and correct them before you put your material out there, on the Web.

• Lingosport – offers automated content marketing for your website, automatically updating the content throughout your web properties. With flexible control of the level of automation to use on each of your pages, businesses can create thousands of dynamically refreshing topic pages.

• Visual.ly – you can create infographics and data visualizations. There are more than 30,000 infographics already created on the website for inspiration for your content marketing.

• Followgen – is a fusion between targeting system and social advertising. It allows you to find a right audience for your content.

• Mailchimp – is an email marketing platform that helps you market your content to your email list.

• Scoop.it – with this tool, you can discover, curate and publish content to get visibility online.

• Acrolinx – is a software that can read your content and guide your writers to make it better, based on your terms, style and tone. You’ll feel like you’re writing all the content by yourself.

• Social Bro – Are you a Twitter maniac or you know that you’re content well get more publicity on Twitter? Well, this tool is for you. With this, you can manage and analyze your Twitter Community.

• OneSky – offers professional translation services, translation management system and crowd sourcing solutions that enable companies to expand internationally.

Prevalence of GIFs in Social Media

Although GIFs can be used in blog posts (such as this one) and in website content, people primarily think of these animated images in the context of social media conversations. Here’s a quick breakdown of how many GIFs are posted to different social media platforms, according to the New York Times:

• Tumblr: An average of 23 million GIFs posted every day
• Facebook Messenger: Roughly 5 million GIFS sent between users every day
• Slack: More than 2 million GIFs sent between users each month
• Twitter: More than 100 million GIFs shared in 2015

To learn more please visit: Prevalence of GIFs in Social Media – LINK

The trends point at some recurring themes that weave their way in and out of Fjord’s annual forecasts. Mobile is still changing everything – if anything faster, and now includes new ways of working. Personalization will be a hot topic for success. Finally, data and the success of new systems are tightly bound together. And as ever – for truly great service design – people come first.

Fjord Digital Trends 2013 – LINK

However, the platform is not SE-optimized off the bat and instead of manually tweaking the permalinks, the code, or the different elements, you could use a number of WordPress plug-ins that can increase your site’s chances of higher rankings.
http://www.testking.com/techking/roundups/10-must-have-seo-plugins-for-wordpress/

TwentyFeet provides you with a One Tweet summary every week that gives you all the details in less than 140 characters. If you are very busy, this is super helpful.
https://www.twentyfeet.com/

http://www.1stwebdesigner.com/design/preparing-web-design-project/

Benefits of a Facebook Page
Facebook pages are indexed and findable through Google and other search engines. Especially if you’re targeting a highly competitive keyword, having an optimized Facebook page may be the best way to rank highly in the search engines.
http://freelancefolder.com/how-to-use-a-facebook-fan-page-to-promote-your-freelance-business/

In this post, I have compiled a list of five ways for freelancers to use Twitter to gain followers and generate an interest in your freelancing business.
http://freelancefolder.com/five-ways-to-generate-referrals-or-followers-with-twitter/

In this article, we’ll look at what the future Web might look like and how we can adapt our current skills to this new environment, as well as how to create fluid websites that are built around a consistent core and that adapt to the limitations and features of the device on which they are viewed. We’ll also look at how our conceptual approach to designing websites should evolve: designing from the simplest design upwards, and not from the richest website down.
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/03/29/designing-for-the-future-web/

Introducing ReachSearch: pay-per-click search engine advertising developed specifically for local and regional businesses.

Be at the right place – at the right time.
ReachSearch is the most affordable and effective way to get your local business in front of people in your service area right as they’re ready to make a purchase. That’s because we cover over 98%* of the places where North Americans search online. Because we’re not bound to any publishers except the ones that deliver the best results for you, we include heavyweights like Google AdWords™, Yahoo!® and Bing™ as well as the ReachLocal Search Network: a stack of powerful specialty sites that can turbo-charge your campaign.
http://reachlocal95-px.rtrk.com/reachsearch