23 Thought Leaders Every Online Marketer Must Know

Now more than ever it’s important to surround yourself with influencers in your industry if you want to succeed online. This is how you build your own following, how you learn about the latest trends and stay up to date, earn more social shares and visibility, build natural links, and more. Even if you don’t “know” some of the top online marketers, engaging with them by commenting on posts and learning new tips can be invaluable to your online strategy.
If you’re not sure where to start and who to start searching for, it can help to break down some of their expertise into categories and sort out who you should follow that way. Below gives you a starting point with 23 of the top thought leaders for online marketers to get to “know” today:
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Rand Fishkin. Wizard of Moz.
It sounds like a “ludicrous” title as Fishkin will tell you, but he is the founder and former CEO of the company, formerly SEOMoz. He is also the man behind the popular “Whiteboard” Friday posts that help to teach SEOs about complicated topics through video and whiteboard examples. He’s one of the best when it comes to cracking tough SEO questions and breaking down complicated topics. He built Moz from the ground-up in 2004 as he began posting data reports and creating tools, and it has blown up to be one of the most well respected blogs and SEO tools in the industry.
Mike Blumenthals. Author of Understanding Google My Business & Local Search.
There is a lot of competition when it comes to thought leaders in the SEO category, but Blumenthals made the list because of his extensive knowledge on local SEO and his ability to stay in that niche and dig deep. He is the owner of the popular blog Understanding Google My Business & Local Search, and what’s cool about Blumenthals is the fact that he keeps the blog in-house. In other words, when you want to hear what he has to say about SEO, you can count on his blog covering his writing and thoughts and his writing only. In addition to this blog, he also founded Local U, a conference series to learn more about search marketing, and co-founded GetFiveStars.com, which helps small businesses create a customer feedback and review management strategy.
Adam Heitzman. Co-Founder and Managing Partner of HigherVisibility.
Heitzman is Managing Partner of the nationally recognized SEO agency HigherVisibility. For over 10 years Heitzman has been a presence on the SEO scene before starting his own agency in 2008. Having worked with him before, it’s clear that he is passionate about what he does and is filled with extensive SEO knowledge and how the industry has changed over the years (and why it’s so important). He has worked with small businesses to Fortune 500 companies and was even recognized by Forbes as a Top 10 SEO Guru to know in 2015, so he’s one not to miss.
Eric Enge. Founder and CEO of Stone Temple Consulting.
If you’re even a little bit familiar with some of the SEO blogs out there, you’ve likely seen Enge’s writing. Although he is the founder of his own consulting firm, he makes it a point to get out there in the community and contribute articles on hot topics in the SEO world. He has had a 30+ year career in SEO, is the author of The Art of SEO, and regularly speaks at some of the top industry conferences such as Pubcon, ClickZ Live, and more.
Glen Gabe. President of G-Squared Interactive.
If you look at Gabe’s history it’s no wonder he started his own agency. He has held leadership positions both in-house and at a global interactive agency, was a Vice President at MRM Worldwide, led all of the aspects of SEO for yellowbook.com (a website containing nearly 20 million webpages), and blogs over at The Internet Marketing Drive, which is G-Squared Interactive’s blog. He is also a featured author in the Google Analytics Help Center, so he knows his stuff thanks to his 20+ years experience. His writing is clear and engaging, so he makes it easy to learn from him.
PPC/SEM

Larry Kim. Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Wordstream.
Kim is constantly speaking at the top PPC and SEM events and has been out in the community since founding Wordstream in 2007. He’s one of the most approachable thought leaders on this list and really seems to “get” the importance of connecting with your community online. The Wordstream blog is stellar and consistently features Kim’s own pieces, and he is the author of 4 award winning books on software development. If you head over to his author bio page for Wordstream, you can see a list of all the guest blogs he’s ever written.
Jennifer Slegg. Founder and Editor of The SEM Post.
Slegg is another thought leader on the list who frequently speaks at different SEM and PPC events like Pubcon, but it’s really her skills as an author and writer that make her stand out. Her blog includes a few outside contributors, but she remains the main writer, and you can find her writings on places like Search Engine Watch and Moz almost as frequently. She says that she’s “definitely a writer at heart” and it shows with her content-rich websites and engaging articles. If you’re someone that learns best through writing, she is the thought leader to follow.
Matt Umbro. Founder of PPCChat.
Although PPCChat might be what Umbro is most known for, he actually holds a more recent position as Senior Account Manager of Community at Hanapin Marketing. He specializes in e-commerce PPC and client relations and oversees content production for PPC Hero. In other words, although he is well versed in all aspects of online marketing he is definitely a thought leader that likes to focus on PPC specifically. As for his company, PPCChat is a weekly Twitter chat where industry specialists can interact to discuss various PPC topics using the hashtag #PPCChat. Give it a try and you’ll easily see why he’s a thought leader.
Content Marketing

Brian Clark. CEO and Founder of Content Marketing Institute.
Content Marketing Institute paved the way for content marketing, and even won the 2014 John Caldwell Lifetime Achievement Award for his efforts over the years. He’s on top of his game and definitely puts a focus on content in everything he does. Content Marketing Institute (CMI) also produces Content Marketing World, a premier international event for content marketing. It is now the largest content marketing event in the world, so this guy is arguably the top thought leader in the industry when talking about content specific.
Lee Odden. CEO of TopRank Marketing.
Odden tops the list as one of the most experienced since starting working in web development and online marketing in the late 1990s. His company currently consults Fortune 1000 B2B companies like Dell and LinkedIn. Still, even with such high profile clients, Odden manages to share his expertise on the TopRank blog and continues to put out some of the best content in the content marketing space. He is a big believe in the power and importance of content for online success, stating on his website that “Content isn’t King, it’s the Kingdom,” and it shows in his detailed writings.
Social Media

Mike Stelzner. CEO and Founder of Social Media Examiner.
Stelzner’s company was founded in 2009 and grew to over 435,000 email subscribers in just a few years thanks to the site’s comprehensive articles, expert interviews, reviews, and overall quality content, all published daily. Social Media Examiner also hosts a Social Media success Summit where more than 3300 marketers from around the world can learn online as well as Social Media Marketing World, an in-person event that hosts more than 3000 marketers. Naturally, all of the content centers around social media topics.
Dan Zarrella. Social Media Scientist at DanZarrella.com.
Zarrella coins himself the “original Social Media Scientist” and that title has stuck on major blogs like HubSpot, where he really started his career and worked for over 6 years. At HubSpot he was able to help the company grow from a startup to a major public company. Since last January, however, DanZarrella has been his main website (which he built up over 10 years), although his projects extend far beyond. He is the author of four social media books, has a webinar series called “Science of…” that has drawn upwards of 30,000 registrants, and holds the Guinness World Record for the largest webinar ever.
Gary Vaynerchuk. CEO of Vayner Media.
Although Vaynerchuk could probably be considered a thought leader in a lot of categories, it’s social media that makes him unique. He is all about “the hustle” and it shows with his massive community of social followers. His company is a social-first digital shop that focuses on storytelling across multiple platforms, gaining insight through micro-content to help build campaigns and drive results. VaynerMedia is one of the only companies you’ll find that uses this approach so aggressively, and it works, so he’s certainly and innovator. Just for fun, he was also an angel investor early on to many major social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr (as well as other companies like Uber and Birchbox).
Affiliate Marketing

Zac Johnson. President and CEO of MoneyReign Inc.
Johnson is also the man behind popular blogs bloggingtips.com and zacjohnson.com, and MoneyReign has been in the affiliate marketing space since 2000. His claim to fame: He is a self-taught entrepreneur who started making money online as a teenager. Fast-forward a few years, and on his blog you can read his story of “How I Made $860,538.38 Profit in 4 Months!” Now a seven-figure business, Johnson reviews affiliate networks to help small businesses understand where they could be making more money.
John Chow. Founder and CEO of JohnChow.com.
Chow has had JohnChow.com as well as his company TTZ Media Inc. both running for the last 10 years and has seen huge success with his affiliate marketing practices and his willingness to write about what works for him. He actually took his blog from zero to making $40,000 per month in just two years, and his blog still remains one of the biggest blogs on the Internet. With countless awards, he’ll be a thought leader in the affiliate marketing space for years to come.
Jeremy Shoemaker. President of ShoeMoney Media Group Inc.
Shoemaker is a huge proponent of sharing his own stories and struggles to help you better understand affiliate marketing, and that’s part of what makes him so successful and a thought leader in the industry. After all, who doesn’t want to hear from someone who used to sell washers and dryers and Sears and now runs a multimillion-dollar company? He calls himself “Shoemoney” and is famous for running one of the highest-trafficked websites in the world, Shoemoney.com. He later launched successful businesses AuctionAds, FreeSEOReport, and Fighters.com
Analytics

Brian Clifton. Director of Data Insights at Search Integration.
Clifton was actually Google’s first Head of Web Analytics for Europe back in 2005 for three years, but he’s actually known as an author. Students and professionals actually use his third edition of “Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics” worldwide. Despite the fact that he has his PhD in Physical & Theoretical Chemistry, he found his calling with Search Integration, a company that specializes in helping organizations implement “metrics understanding” using Google Analytics and other tools.
Avinash Kaushik. Chief Education Officer & Co-Founder of Market Motive Inc.
Kaushik’s company provides online education and certification for different online marketing categories, Analytics being a big one, and he is also the Digital Marketing Evangelist for Google. He runs a blog called Occam’s Razor and is an author of many successful Analytics books, both known for being easy to understand and able to put a real-world application alongside all of his teachings. You’ll also see his face on other authoritative Analytics blogs around the web offering guest articles, interviews, videos, podcasts, advice, and more.
Annie Cushing. Founder of Annielytics.
Cushing lives and breathes Analytics, and lucky for us she shares her knowledge all around the web. Although Annielytics may be her main project, so is a regular Analytics contributor to many online marketing websites such as Search Engine Land and MarketingLand. According to Cushing, she “makes data sexy,” and we couldn’t agree more. Her writings are engaging, easy to apply to your own company, and they’re everywhere. She was also the Senior SEO at the popular SEER Interactive Agency, so she has experience working with Analytics in an SEO context, and it shows through her writings.
Email Marketing

Justine Jordan. Vice President of Marketing at Litmus.
Jordan is a frequent speaker at interactive and digital marketing events, and according to her LinkedIn page she says, “my passion for educating and inspiring fellow marketers to create better email is relatable, actionable, and contagious.” This comes through whenever she writes for the Litmus blog, and in fact she was even the recipient of the 2015 Email Marketing Thought Leader of the Year award.
Tink Taylor. Founder and President of dotMailer.
Taylor is a thought leader that focuses on email marketing made easy, but without skimping on quality. In other words, he’s been famously quoted saying, “dotMailer’s mission is to provide Nasa technology with a Fisher Price interface to marketers in the marketing automation space.” He has worked with major brands like BBC and Shell and has over 17 years experience in digital communications.
Jordie Van Rijn. Founder and Chief of Email Vendor Selection.
Rijn’s company was founded back in 2009 before there were any quality sources of information for those interested in email marketing. Today, the company has a list of over 300 email service providers to help make things easy for small business owners. As for Rijn, he’s a thought leader because he’s great about getting out in the community and offering interviews to Forbes and videos to email marketing companies, and of course he is an avid writer on his company’s blog. Even as an independent consultant, he was also voted one of the world’s top 50 email marketing influencers by Vocus.

23 Thought Leaders Every Online Marketer Must Know

What Every Marketer Needs To Know About Facebook Relevance Scores

Paid advertising has been a growing trend in digital marketing as new channels continue to open up and online users continue to grow more diverse …

What Every Marketer Needs To Know About Facebook Relevance Scores

Methods and Tools Every Publisher Should be Using

In the world of affiliate marketing there are still many areas that require improvements. Affiliate networks offer a wide variety of tools for publishers and also give advice on how to optimise sale commissions. However, that is not enough if you really want to be competitive. In this article you will find some technical advantages that I think every publisher should have in order to generate more leads and sales. Of course, not every company has a team of developers available, but many tools exist online to improve your performance.

Conversion tracking

First up is conversion tracking for landing pages, deals, products and/or advertisers. Observe your traffic sources and ads and see how they perform. You can do this by using existing tools or services like Voluum. Personally, I both use this tools in addition to a self-developed tool.

Also, make sure that you know from which page of your website a conversion or (e-mail) subscription originates, so that you can optimise it when necessary.

Dead links detection

Broken links won’t make you any money. Manually looking and finding dead links takes a lot of work and effort. Also, a system to let users report broken links is not optimal, as broken links on your most remote pages won’t easily be discovered. Best is to can create your own tool that automatically finds broken affiliate links and replace them. There are also some WordPress plugins and other dead link checkers to help you cope with this problem.

Self optimising website based on performance

Self optimising websites or landing pages can explain themselves in many ways. Some websites automatically push their most popular deals or products forward to their homepage, where other websites categorise on search metrics. This saves a lot of time on sorting things out and it also improves financial performance. Work that you would normally do manually, after having to analyse the traffic and clicks on your site, can not only be done automatically but also continuously.

A/B testing based on conversions

A/B testing allows you to split traffic on your website, so that visitors experience different web page content or designs on version A and version B of a page, while you monitor visitor actions to identify the version that yields the highest conversion rate.

Most (performance) marketers are optimising by the amount of clicks. But it’s better to make the technical connection to be able to optimise on the amount of conversions. That’s because a high number of visitors clicks could just come from confused visitors. So try to close this blackbox.

Technical SEO done right

Although many of you have the skills and knowledge to do SEO, doing SEO right is actually quite hard. Of course, it’s important to have a fast website and have sitemaps available in html and xml, so a search spider can crawl and index your website.

When you are not a developer, there are many tips on how to improve technical SEO. Think about keeping your site free from cloaking, using redirects, and URL structure properly and preventing duplicate content.

Automatic quality checks on content

Another thing that can save you lots of time when done automatically, is checking and updating your content. Personally, I like to use a tool that checks sites for duplicate content. Make sure you are connected and make use of as much automatically generated data as possible. Doing things manually on a regular base is your big enemy for productivity, it should only be allowed when you want to do something special.

Automatic SEO checks on pages

A great tool to automatically check your SEO is Yoast. Actually Yoast is a game changer to boost your SEO. It’s a plugin for WordPress that can easily improve your SEO, even when you have moderate knowledge of it. The tool checks if your website is SEO-proof and will give you tips on how to improve your site SEO.

Methods and Tools Every Publisher Should be Using

Email Marketing Tips That Work Every Time

Email marketing lends itself to a lot of creative endeavours. If your goal is to make this successful, you are will need to think outside of the box in order to get things done. It’s with that in mind that you should consider these 11 tips that will make sure that things go your way. They are quick, easy to work with, and will provide great options down the line. Counting down from 11 to 1, here are some tips to use today.

11. Transparency in the Sender Option
Who is the email coming from? Make it clear, and don’t try to hide or change it often. This is the key to keeping your customer base from labelling you a spammer. Keep it transparent.

10. The Subject Line Shuffle
Test out several subject lines and measure how each one works. You’ll find a good methodology once you test out several options. Keep them short!

9. Keep the Tone Correct
The writing you do shouldn’t be too “corporate” in nature. Make it a bit more homely, and without going over the reader’s head. Keep the tone simple, and use it to your advantage. Remember, you’re not going to want to create a lavish style here.

8. Personalise Everything
Make sure that you keep things personalised, and outside of a “template” format. If you end up with a “template” that gets sent out often, you will end up with a problem overall. Personalise things so that the end user feels as though you’re communicating to them, and them alone.

7. Think about What the Reader Wants
The end user has given you permission to email them, but why? Think about that every time you send an email, or you’re going to end up with a lot of people unsubscribing to your messages. Think about how you can fulfil their wants and needs, and don’t just send out messages thoughtlessly.

6. Keep Things Brief
Do not send long winded messages through email. Email marketing doesn’t lend itself too well to this. Keep things to the point, and don’t waste the time of your readers. Furthermore, don’t send too many messages either.

5. Link Sparingly
If you have a call to action you want to have in place, don’t crowd it with other links. Your email list is not the main resource you need to work on for SEO. In fact, chances are your SEO doesn’t matter when it comes to email alone. Don’t overthink this, just link to your call to action once, and make it obvious as to what you’re doing.

4. Split Your List
When you have thousands of people on a list, and you want to send specific messages to certain members, then split it. Find a way to segment things so that you are not addressing every member at once. This will help keep things tidy, and the messages you want to communicate appropriate for the target audience you want to have in place.

3. Elastic Email Design
Make sure that your audience is not left out cold when they are using smartphones and tablets. Responsive design is here to stay, and your email matters. Make sure that your email design flows with the appropriate implementation, design, and elasticity.

2. Test Before You Send
Test your email, read it over, check for dead links, and more. Always test the email that you’re going to send out to the masses, and if you make a mistake, acknowledge it immediately. Never just send your first draft, it’s a mistake.

1. Send It to Friends
Perhaps the easiest thing to do when working with email marketing is to have a small testing ground. Have a few friends get your email and see whether or not there are issues. This is a form of testing that will help you avoid costly errors, that’s for sure.

To find out more about how I can help with your Email Marketing can contact me here or via LinkedIn and for further marketing tips sign-up to my monthly newsletter or simply email me at hello@kellylovesmarketing.com

If you enjoyed this post, it would be great if you’d help it spread by sharing it on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or LinkedIn. Thank you!

Email Marketing Tips That Work Every Time

What Every Business Owner Should Know About Email Marketing

Email marketing has long occupied a strange place in the content marketing landscape. It is perpetually underrated, perhaps because it’s not as flashy or simply not as new as Facebook marketing, Pinterest marketing, YouTube marketing, and the like. Underrated though it may be, study after study confirms that email marketing is an essential tool for small businesses—and that in fact, it may be the most potent online marketing tool of them all.

Of course it is only potent when used properly, and to that end Search Engine Journal has a great new read: Some essential points about email marketing, gleaned from some thorough HubSpot data collection. The points made in the article are all worthwhile, but, for all the small business owners out there, we will affirm the following points in particular:

• Mobile matters. How do most people check the bulk of their email? Through their smartphones. Mobile use has increased 400 percent since 2011 alone, making it a must for marketing emails to be formatted for mobile.


• HTML is the way to go. When using an email platform, it’s preferable to use an HTML base rather than a text one, as it allows for emails to include bold, italicized, and colorful text; a majority of consumers prefer these more eye-catching emails.


• Consumers are using email filters more and more. Knowing what the filters look for is essential.


• Consumers don’t necessarily reject all marketing emails, but they are picky about what they save and what they delete. Offering attention-grabbing subject lines that convey immediate and actual value is the key. Make it clear that you’re not just talking up your brand; you’re offering something customers might truly be interested in.

For small business owners, email marketing is a must—and you can perfect your email marketing measures by checking out all of this impressive and illuminating data.

Author: Amanda Clark

Amanda E. Clark is the president and editor-in-chief of Grammar Chic, Inc., a full-service professional writing and editing company. Amanda is a published ghostwriter and editor, and currently under contract with literary agencies in Malibu, California, and Dublin, Ireland. Since founding Grammar Chic in 2008, Amanda, along with her team… View full profile ›

What Every Business Owner Should Know About Email Marketing

Three Paid Marketing Tools That Are Worth Every Penny

As a small business, Curve deeply understands the importance of keeping costs down. There are hundreds of different paid marketing platforms out there, from social media feeds to brand analytics platforms. How do you know which ones are worth the money?

Here are three paid marketing tools that we highly recommend to any marketers, social media managers, or entrepreneurs looking to build their online profile.

Note that Curve Communications is not affiliated with any of these companies. We just love them!

Litmus

Recommended for YouWebcast: The Art of Community Development: Turning Brand Awareness Into Sales

If you’re using an email newsletter to connect with your fans, how confident are you that your emails are showing up properly? This is a huge problem especially if your email newsletters are designed from scratch in HTML, but even pre-made templates might not be perfect on every single platform.

Litmus takes the guesswork out of it for you. You can send a preview email from your email-marketing platform like Constant Contact or Mailchimp to a special email address provided by Litmus. Litmus will then display your email on several dozen different browsers and devices, from iPhones to Outlook to Gmail.

Why is it worth your money?

The time and labour cost it would take to manually send these emails to different devices would be tremendous, especially if you’re managing several emails a week. Litmus cuts this process down to a single streamlined task, and provides a lot of other value-added services like HTML assistance, live editors, and useful webinars.

While the price is still steep, Litmus is invaluable if email marketing is a major part of your marketing plan.

Price: Plans start at $79/month, free 7-day trial available

Edgar

Edgar is a brand new social media automation platform. So new, in fact, that you have to request an invitation to be a part of it, but it’s definitely worth the extra effort. Edgar is all about helping you share evergreen content: articles and blog posts that can be posted year-round and aren’t time sensitive.

Let’s say you have a sale you want to promote twice a week. Normally, you would have to copy and paste the text of the tweet and manually schedule it every week.

However, if you used Edgar, you can schedule any promotional tweets to go out on Monday and Wednesday at noon. Next, you just write a couple of tweets (let’s say five) about your sale and label them as promotional. Edgar will then automatically rotate through the five promotional tweets without your input. If you want to add more tweets to the queue, change the times, or remove older tweets, this can be easily done through the dashboard.

Why is it worth your money?

First and foremost, Edgar helps you save an incredible amount of time. Manually scheduling hundreds (or if you’re like us, thousands) of tweets a month for different clients and accounts eats up a tremendous amount of time. We still look for great articles to share on our Twitter feed every day, but the process has been greatly simplified due to Edgar.

Price: $49/month

Hootsuite

When it comes to having full control over all your different social media accounts, Hootsuite is the undisputed champion. While Edgar is fantastic for helping you schedule your posts, Hootsuite does all that (although it requires more manual tweaking), and it helps you monitor and track hashtags, mentions, DMs, and anything else you need to be a social media superstar.

In Hootsuite, each account has its own page, and each page has a customizable feed so you can focus on what’s important. Have an account that’s used primarily for tweeting out marketing content? You can prioritize your scheduled tweets and anyone using #Marketing (or any other hashtag) on your feed.

What about a tech support account that focuses on responding to customer questions? You can prioritize Direct Messages and Mentions to make sure you can easily monitor anyone trying to contact you.

Why is it worth your money?

Hootsuite is invaluable for any company that has to manage (and track) social media accounts across different departments and product lines.

Hootsuite isn’t limited to just Twitter. Hootsuite is also compatible with LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, Foursquare, WordPress and Mixi. If you’re looking for one social media tool for your business, we strongly recommend using Hootsuite Pro.

Price: From $8.99/month for a Pro plan. A free user has limited functionality, with only two social media networks and very basic post scheduling.

Have any other paid platforms you love using? Continue the conversation below.

Three Paid Marketing Tools That Are Worth Every Penny