Marketers are constantly having to create new and unique content on a regular basis. In fact, the most common challenge that content marketers seem to come across is creating enough variety of content that engages with an audience.

Creating an Appealing and Effective Infographic

Some information is simply better represented through an infographic rather than with text or even a video. For marketers who struggle with new creative ways to reach consumers, an Infographic is the way to go as it provides an alternative way to communicate an idea or message.

Infographics beg viral activity. They are easy to share, informative, visually appealing and fast. A good infographic can be around for a long time as other writers, industry professionals, or consumers come across it, embed it in their own blog posts, and share it across social media networks – increasing exposure for your organization.

Now, just because infographics are really cool and people love them, doesn’t mean you should create one just for the sake of creating one. Start with an idea or trend you find interesting that’s worth reporting to a mass audience.

Compile relevant statistics to drive your point home and back up your infographic by referring to your resources. Use multiple sources and be thorough, the more sources you use the more informative your infographic will be, making it more desirable for viewers to share.

End with a clearly stated call to action. Whether you want the viewer to download something or follow your social media profile, make it easy for them to carry out your call to action.

Don’t Forget to Say “Thanks”

Just like your parents always taught you, always remember to say “Thank you” to those who share or mention your content. If it’s a Retweet, Tweet back. If someone uses your infographic in a blog post, comment on it. It’s all about networking, building relationships and redirecting the focus back on you as a quality content provider.

Infographics from Around the Web

I thoroughly enjoy searching for infographics. Here is a list of some of my most recent personal favorite infographics for you to find some inspiration.

Global Internet Traffic is Expected to Quadruple by the Year 2015

Infographic Designed by: @nick_sigler

Is Pinterest The Next Social Commerce Game Changer?

Infographic by: @Monetate

22 Ways to Create Compelling Content: When You Don’t Have a Clue

Infographic Brought to You by: @copyblogger

Infographic Designed by: Blue Glass

Inbound Marketing Rising: The Dawn of Marketing You Won’t Hate

Infographic Designed by: @voltierdigital

Inbound Marketing Ecosystem

Infographic Created by: @svolinsky

The Anatomy of a Perfect Landing Page

Infographic by: @KISSmetrics

Google’s Love/Hate Relationship With Affiliates

Infographic Produced by: @seobook

Infographic Designed by: Lumin Interactive

On March 1, this long awaited, incredibly anticipated, exclusive Blue Global Media offer will be available.  It has everything you already love about our 100DayLoans.com offer, with the ability to capture a rapidly growing number of new borrowers.  Affiliates will earn $100 payouts for premium UK leads (yes, you get paid in dollars not pounds).

We are annual attendees to events like Affiliate Summit and ad:tech, but we are also active participants in a number of other great events.  In the next month, you can catch the Blue Global Media crew sponsoring two conferences that are crucial to the affiliate marketing industry.

Make sure you stop by and say “Hi” at these events:

LeadsCon

The Mirage Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas
February 28-29, 2012

With more than 1,100 companies attending this year’s premier lead generation conference, we know we will be amongst the best in the business.  We are proud to be a “Gold Sponsor” for this event and hope to expand our partnerships in a number of verticals.  As we move further into insurance, education, credit cards and many other verticals, we seek to build lasting, impactful relationships and we know LeadsCon is a great place to find that.

If you would like to connect with us at the conference, we’ll be at table T-11.  We would love to talk to you about how we can grow our businesses together.

Affiliate Management Days

San Francisco, CA
March 8-9, 2012

We pride ourselves on providing round-the-clock, quality affiliate support, but we know that there is always room for improvement.  This year, we’re kicking our affiliate management tactics into high gear by going to the must-attend Affiliate Management Days conference.

As a bronze sponsor of this event, we are showing our support and desire to learn from some of the industry’s best affiliate program managers.  We look forward to sharing our ideas and picking up some new tools along the way.

If you can’t make it to AM Days this year, keep an eye on our blog and social pages, we will be live sharing from the event.

If you will be attending either of these events or future affiliate marketing events, please come talk to us.  We welcome any opportunity to meet new business partners and share strategies with fellow industry professionals.  To connect with us ahead of time, follow us on Twitter, visit our Facebook page or sign up for our affiliate marketing newsletter.  See you there!.

That, my friends, is better than heart-shaped Valentine’s Day chocolates.

The release of our first eBook is fast approaching and we’re getting all geared up.  Though the majority of our eBook is written, we’re are in the crazy phase that is the “Launch Plan” and are finding that this process requires as much research as the book itself.  We have continued to seek out the best articles in content marketing, social media, SEO, mobile, video and affiliate marketing. Now we want to share this week’s finds with you.   

Sign up for our newsletter and be the first to know about the release date for our upcoming eBook.  Not to mention you will also gain insider information about Blue Global Media’s latest and greatest offers and affiliate marketing tips you can’t find anywhere else.

Content Marketing

It’s Here: The 100 Blogs You Need In Your Life

This is a really great list of bloggers that every affiliate marketer should get familiar with.  You will likely see some names you recognize on there, but there will also be a ton you have never heard of before.  Tom Ewer carefully developed a list of resources that can help you in all of your marketing endeavors.

17 Copy-And-Paste Blog Post Templates

Even the best writers get stuck.  Every blogger will experience those moments where you stare at your blank Word document praying a magical content fairy will come fill your page.  These copy-and-paste templates can help you snap out of that rut and get back to writing.

What Is The Best Day and Time to Publish and Promote Your Blog Posts?

You can have phenomenal content and a huge social following, but if you aren’t promoting your posts at the right time, no one will ever see it.  Make a posting and promoting plan by following this specific information.

Better Content Marketing for Improved Social Engagement

As with all of the inbound marketing elements, content and social media are interwoven.  Having good content doesn’t matter if your social engagement stinks.  The same is true the other way around.

Planning Your Content Marketing: Bricks vs. Feathers

According to this article, content can be broken up into two main categories: bricks and feathers.  Striking the perfect balance between them can be a recipe for success.

Social Media

The Power of Social Proof and How it Affects Your Business

Business can often be a lot like high school.  Popularity can give you a major leg-up, so make sure you have the proof that people are paying attention to you.

5 Ways Facebook Timeline Could Help Your Brand Tell Its Story

There have been a lot of grunts and groans about the new Timeline feature on Facebook, but none of those complaints should be coming from businesses.

15 Ways to Increase The Click Through Rate On Your Tweets

Have you been Tweeting your little Twitter tail off and getting nowhere?  Here’s 15 strategies you can try to get the RT love you want.

10 Facebook Promotion Tips You Don’t Know About

Sometimes it’s easy to think you know all there is to know about Facebook.  Spending hours on end posting, commenting and Like-ing can make you feel that way.  This list of smart strategies might surprise you though.

SEO

An SEO Campaign Is Like a Marathon

You’ll find a lot of gimmicky offers for quick SEO strategies and instant first-page ranking super software, but the truth is, SEO takes time.  Look at it like a marathon and you just might survive it.

SEO 101: Getting the Right URL Structure

Solid SEO is about much more than just finding the right keywords to target.  Your URL structure might be having a big impact on your results.

Be Careful Using AdWords for Keyword Research

This is a really great read and one that every SEM needs to pay attention to.  While it doesn’t entirely dog on Google, it does open up your eyes to the underexposure of information AdWords may be providing.

Mobile

The 17 Rs of Mobile Marketing

Wrap your head around these 17 crucial elements of mobile marketing.  In a platform where everything is new and fast-paced, enjoy this simplified version of all the most important parts.

Capture Mobile-Driven Actions For Targeted Ad Results

Mobile interaction creates a whole new way to track consumers.  Use your customers smartphone addictions to get to know them a little better.

Video

Why Haven’t All Major Sports Jumped On The YouTube Bandwagon?

Industries of all sorts have adopted YouTube into their marketing strategy, but professional sports seem to be lagging behind.  What are they waiting for?

Tablet Video Viewing On Fire

You may not have invested much time or money into tablet audiences and video viewers, but it’s going to get really hard to ignore mobile and video when you see these stats.

What Is Social Video Marketing?

Slapping a video up on YouTube doesn’t guarantee an instant flood of visitors to your business.  Taking your video to the social world is where the magic really happens.

Affiliate Marketing

What People Think Affiliate Marketers Do

Just a fun meme about the perception people have about affiliates.  What do the people in your life think you do for a living?

5 Worst Mistakes You Can Make In IM (internet marketing)

Sometimes it’s just as important to know what NOT to do as it is to know what to do.  Make sure you’re not making any of these mistakes with your marketing endeavors.

The Ugly Underbelly of Affiliate Marketing

Check out these examples of an anti-inbound affiliate marketer.  Not everyone will play fair, but that doesn’t mean you have to be one of them.

In today’s online world, consumers are continuing to blossom into social butterflies, relying on social media networks to share their thoughts, connect with brands, and interact with fellow social media users to exchange product and service reviews.

What many marketing professionals are beginning to realize is the increased impact of social engagement on their campaign efforts. Check out our interactive video below and see for yourself just how much social media continues to impact consumer behavior.

That doesn’t mean it can’t harm honest entrepreneurs along the way though.  When you see someone sprinting past you in the SERP’s, who hasn’t paid their dues, it impacts your business and your motivation.  When you spend hours developing keyword-rich, quality content, just to see it duplicated on some trashy site you feel uninspired to produce more.

The effect it has on your enthusiasm is probably the greatest injustice these bad apples commit.  Why continue to pursue your monetizing efforts if a troll is going to be there to steal and cheat their way ahead of you?

Like Mama always said, “cheaters never prosper” and there are ways you can make sure they never do.

Google Is a Jealous Housewife

Anyone involved in search engine marketing knows it takes dedicated effort to earn a valuable place on page one.  Google has a lot of rules, many of them secret, most of them changing and all of them fleeting.  A new “update” can rework your whole SEM strategy.

So, when you see someone using less than honorable methods to move up the ranks it is incredibly discouraging, but you can be comforted knowing Google is a suspicious wife.

Google notices bad behavior and brings down the hammer all the time on marketers who are acting out of line.  More and more frequently we hear about the hair-trigger temper and unapologetic wrath of the world’s most popular search engine.   It might not happen right away, but the likelihood an SEO cheater will outsmart Google for long is slim.

Besting Content Burglars

Any good content producer knows that each piece takes time, effort and talent to create.  Few things are more irritating than seeing that hard work benefitting someone else.  However, you can easily overcome this by implementing a couple quick strategies.

Use internal links to ensure that the reproduced content still leaves a trail of bread crumbs.  It may not guarantee that every reader is returned, but it will increase the odds and make the copycat version look suspect.

Famous affiliate, John Chow, recently encountered this problem and recommended a few other tactics:

• Disable the guilty website’s access to your RSS feed
• Block their IP using .htaccess
• Send a DMCA takedown notice
• Disable right click on your site if content stealing is a constant occurrence

Ultimately, John decided to send a letter to the big name company, informing them that somebody had blatantly stolen his content.  An option you could also pursue given similar circumstances.

Don’t Stall When Something’s Suspect

There are a numerous ways people can scam the affiliate system and there are likely going to be new methods that pop up as time wears on.  Continue to pay close attention to your analytics and when you start to see an inexplicable decline, don’t hesitate to look into the matter further.

The descent could be the result of changing algorithms or outdated practices on your part, but make sure you take the time to truly evaluate the reasoning behind traffic and conversion losses.  If this change is the result of an affiliate weasel, contact your affiliate manager.

They are there to support your endeavors and as long as you are playing by the rules, they should be willing to make suggestions or even go to bat for you to ensure only the best remain in the industry.

Every business has their bad apples.  There is no shortage of people trying to take advantage of every industry, but that doesn’t mean honest people have to suffer.  If your affiliate efforts are falling victim to someone’s poor practices, take action and reclaim your success.

Thanks to the 2011 Affiliate Summit AffStat Report, which surveyed over 1,400 affiliates, we have a little insight that could help networks find a solution to this roadblock.

One of the questions from this survey asks affiliates, “How do you most often find out about an affiliate program and then join?”

The top three responses show that:

1. 25% look on affiliate directories
2. 24% use search engines
3. 15% are contacted by an affiliate manager

And other interesting responses reveal that:

• 6% find programs through affiliate marketing blogs
• 7% choose networks who’s affiliate manager is active on message boards

Can anyone else see the common thread here? It seems clear to me that the commonality here is engaging affiliates with inbound strategies including quality content (affiliate marketing blogs), and personal interaction (direct contact from an affiliate manager and message board participation).

Let Affiliates Come to You

One of the cardinal goals of inbound marketing is to promote and increase brand awareness; which seems to fit like a newly discovered puzzle piece with the common thread of the shifting nature of the industry as the AffStat report reveals that 34% of affiliates choose merchants based off their brand awareness.

So, as a merchant or a network, how can you effectively promote brand awareness and garner more affiliates, without overwhelming them with outbound messages?

Program Directories

Since about a quarter of affiliates look form programs on affiliate directories, this is a great place to start promoting brand awareness. You can compile a list of popular directory sites by conducting a search for various general directories, such as Offervault and oDigger, as well as ones specifically geared toward your program’s niche. Affiliates can search, review, and compare what your programs have to offer.

Create accounts on these sites and include links back to your programs, with network and program descriptions, and other necessary information that may help an affiliate make the decision to sign up.

SEO

Many affiliates turn to everyone’s old pal Google to search for affiliate programs to join. They’ll search by network, merchant, keyword, or categories, so optimizing your SEO campaign by creating valuable content that search engines will crawl, and rank will help more affiliates find your content, and ideally make the choice to join your program.

Personalized Recruiting

The AffStat survey also shows that 76% of affiliates prefer contact from an affiliate manager through email. Noting that, as well as understanding that 15% of affiliates join programs after being contacted by an affiliate manager, shows that one of the ways to an affiliates heart is through approaching them as an individual, not just a name on a list who received a generic email blast.

If you are interested in recruiting an affiliate, drop them an email explaining why you think your program would benefit them and their unique affiliate efforts.

Affiliate Marketing Blogs

Most affiliates find new industry blogs by simply typing “affiliate marketing blogs” into a search engine. To make sure that affiliates find you, you can incorporate strategies like keeping your own blog fresh with new content, that not only delivers timely industry information, but also quality insights that will make them want more from your network. You can also grab their attention by buying ad space on prominent industry blogs for potential affiliates to click through to your programs.

Make it an Easy Choice

Affiliates only want to know how they can benefit from your programs, so tell them. Make the choice to join your network easy but offering the solution they’re looking for, and make sure they will find you easily while keeping in mind these most common ways affiliates say they use to find new programs to join.

At Blue Global Media, we want to make sure affiliate marketers catch on to this evolution as well.  We are in the final stages of developing a FREE eBook on how affiliates can seamlessly make the switch to inbound and secure your income for the future.

While creating this eBook, we have spent many hours researching and reading the latest news and trends on the shift in marketing and it has helped us hone in on exactly what affiliate marketers need to do.  A couple weeks ago we shared some links that have helped us and we’ve decided to make a habit of it.

Here are links from this week that can help your inbound strategy and make you a master in the affiliate marketing space:

Content Marketing

Content marketing is booming, but social media doesn’t lead just yet

This is a quick write up with a simple infographic to get you thinking about the importance of content and the social media trend nipping and its ankles.

4 Ways to Overcome Content Marketing Challenges

Allowing a moment of self-promotion, this article is one we wrote this week about overcoming some content hurdles.

Five steps for using Google+ and content marketing to boost search and social visibility

As a segue to the next section, this article tackles the need for content marketing as it relates to the shift occurring in social media because of Google+.

Social Media

Marketers miss the point of engagement

Often people relent to the idea that social media is a must, but miss the mark when it comes to implementing an engaging strategy.  Here, you can see where things go wrong and how they should be fixed.

Affiliate Marketers Need To Get On The Google+ Train

Okay, so we’re going to self-promote twice.  In this post we cover the need to involve yourself (and your affiliate efforts) with Google+.  We know a lot of people are still gritting their teeth over this, but you don’t want to miss what could be a huge shift in social, content and especially SEO marketing.

SEO

Is “Link Bait” the Holy Grail of Natural Link Building?

This simply covers what link bait is, what it can do and a few examples of how you can make it happen.  Everyone should take a stab at developing viral content (or link bait) to see if they can muster up some link boosts.

How Affiliate Sites Can Best Exploit SEO

When I hear exploit I think of something scandalous like Toddlers & Tiaras, but this is actually a great, inbound-focused guide on how affiliates can best utilize SEO.

Mobile

The Great Super Bowl Mobile Marketing Experiment

We all know mobile marketing is growing, but here you can see a breakdown of how the big name brands incorporated mobile into the biggest ad day of the year.

Mobile Marketing is Hot, But for Facebook it’s Not

On the opposite side of the coin, here is a sum up of how one of the world’s biggest companies is flailing within the mobile space.

Video

8 Tips For Making a Stellar First Video

This is a lengthy read, but offers a fantastic step by step guide on creating a quality video.  If you are new to video and need a suggestion about where to begin this is perfect.

How to Add Hyperlink To YouTube video

I just watched this yesterday and used LinkedTube for a video I created.  It is so easy and provides a good opportunity to add a specific call to action within your video.  Think about what affiliate links you could incorporate into your next video.

Affiliate Marketing

The State of Affiliate Marketing in 2012

Though this article has a slightly ominous tone, it does hit on some key issues affiliates need to prepare for this year.

About.com Affiliate Scam

This is a good “what-not-to-do” video about how outbound, bad-seed affiliates are using About.com to coax consumers into shelling out big money for diet products.

Pinterest secretly swaps links for profit

Though it seems Pinterest’s decision to swap links for affiliate links is anything but a secret now, it’s worth looking into this decision and the ethical and legal implications behind it.

10 Ways Paid Marketers Can Leverage Inbound Marketing

Need I say more? This is a really straight forward article about the inbound shift.

Horizontal marketing isn’t a new idea

In our upcoming eBook, we mention how inbound marketing isn’t new and site Seth Godin’s early mention of the trend.  It just seemed apropos that Seth Godin would write about it this week.

Keep watch for news about our upcoming eBook by subscribing to our newsletter.  In addition to being the first to know when the eBook is released, you will also get the inside scoop on Blue Global Media affiliate offers and tips on the industry.

Whatever niche or industry you’re in, it’s essential to know what’s going on. So you study your competition, keep up with the latest trends and do your best to stay ahead of the curve. But competitive analysis is inherently flawed because you are looking to the past, not the future. You’re studying what your competitors have done to this point, not what they’re planning to do in the next six months or year or five years.

Looking Beyond Your Competition

And that’s why competitive analysis simply isn’t enough for today’s affiliate marketers. Einstein once said, “We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.” Apply this to affiliate marketing and you see why competitive analysis, though an important piece of the puzzle, is not enough in and of itself to guide your affiliate marketing efforts.

A new level of thinking is required to succeed in today’s market. It’s not enough to follow the beaten paths; affiliate marketers must be trailblazers themselves, capable and willing to go where their industry has yet to tread. The safe affiliate marketer is the less profitable, and even with its advantages, competitive analysis is just that. Safe.

Instead of traditional competitive analysis, consider looking beyond the details of your competition and focusing on the bigger picture. Here are a few questions you can ask to get in a more forward-thinking approach to competitive analysis.

Ask the Right Questions

What changes have happened to my industry in the past year? In the past two years?
You should know what your competitors are doing. But instead of focusing on the details, look at the issue from 10,000 feet. Find trends in your competitors’ moves, while also considering changes and trends in your industry as a whole. Doing this will help you piece together where your industry is going, not just where it’s been.

What is my competition ignoring?
It’s impossible for affiliate marketers to stay on top of all the latest sites, trends and practices. So find out what your competition is ignoring. What networks have they been slow to adopt? A recent example is Pinterest, an online photo pinboard. The site seemed to explode in popularity in a short period of time, and chances are, there are very few affiliate marketers that are taking advantage of the site (Pinterest itself is the biggest affiliate marketer taking advantage; it uses Skimlinks to earn money from users).

This is just one example of where it can benefit to explore the online spaces your competition is ignoring.

Shouldn’t I be the marketer my competition has to worry about?
Instead of having the mindset that you’re going to analyze the competition, do what they do and add your own touch, consider the alternative. What if you were the thought leader in your space? What if you didn’t wait around to see what was going to happen? Instead, what if you were the one that your competition had to analyze and keep pace with?

Analyze, Then Innovate

This is the single biggest reason competitive analysis is so limited. No one became an innovator in their niche simply by studying the competition. Instead, they see what the competition is lacking and fill the need. To affiliate marketers, innovation may seem risky because anything that’s not proven can also be a waste of time and money, both precious resources.

But today’s affiliate marketer has to deal with business conflicts that weren’t around five or ten years ago. And in five or ten years, there will be a new set of problems to solve. So go to the conflicts head-on, don’t wait for them to come to you.

Explore what your competition is doing, but use it as a reference point, not a compass. Make whatever you’re doing worthy of being analyzed by your competition.

In such a wide space as the affiliate marketing industry, whether you’re a single email marketer or a start up, networking effectively with prospects, colleagues, networks and other industry players is essential for furthering the success of your brand.

Forget Getting Noticed, Be Memorable

Branding drives development. Emerge with a distinctive branding strategy that informs prospects about the market you serve, what you offer and the problems you solve. The most important aspect you want to accomplish is to go from a broad interpretation to a narrow mindset so others will clearly understand your objective and set you apart from your closest competitor.

Get a handle on what niche you belong in, that’s where you’ll start your networking efforts. Use social networks, like Plancast, Facebook and others, to coordinate events and connect with others in your space.

Keep track of everyone you meet so matter if you run into them at the lobby of the hotel you’re staying at, or in passing at a conference. Networking is a system and every happenstance meeting has potential to grow into something more – even if that’s only a friend in the industry or a quality conversation about ideas and previous success.

This is as easy as collecting business cards and cataloging their name, company, website, and contact information in a spreadsheet.

Any introductions you exchange at an event, meeting, session or what have you require a follow up – even if you don’t foresee you’ll be joining forces any time soon, something as simple as, “It was great discussing conversion tricks with you, hope to work together in the future,” can go a long way in promoting a responsive reputation.

Don’t Use Just Any Business Card

One easy way to be memorable and leave a longer lasting impression is with a creative, yet professional, business card. Ask some Affiliate Summit veterans how many business cards they leave that conference with – many of them may tell you they need another suitcase to get them all back to their office. In a stack of hundreds upon hundreds of business cards, don’t you want yours to stand out from the rest?

Check out the Ultimate Guide to Business Cards: Print & Design from Businesscards.com