Online Marketing News: Creating Knockout Infographics, Must Have Google+ Tools, Facebook Star Ratings, Real Time Social Monitoring

	Online Marketing News: Creating Knockout Infographics, Must Have Google+ Tools, Facebook Star Ratings, Real Time Social Monitoring 7 Super Tips for Creating Powerful Infographics – What better way to demonstrate the power of the infographic than with an infographic! Follow these steps to consider when planning, creating and sharing infographics that get shared and drive traffic on the visual web. Create knockout infographics that can give your marketing a visual flair. Entrepreneur How Facebook is Building a Global Marketing Ecosystem Around its Products – Facebook's Preferred Marketing Developer (PMD) network has been around in its current form since April 2012. The aim of the group is to help connect brands and advertisers with developers who can make their marketing campaigns more engaging and comprehensive. Read the interview with Mike Randall, new global head of PMD, to learn what changes we can expect from this program next year. TheNextWeb 5 Tools to Measure Your Marketing Success on Google+ – If you're among the marketers who are still figuring out the best way to use Google+, use these 5 tools to measure your effective content marketing efforts. Content Marketing Institute Study: Google’s Enhanced Campaigns Even Out PPC Responses – Paid search click-through rates on tablet computers were 27.0% higher than on desktops, compared with 51.0% higher in the year-earlier period. The study also found that smartphone search budgets continue to rise, hitting 12.6% of all paid search expenditures. B2B Magazine B2B Marketers Find Success With Content Marketing – [Infographic] As marketers get savvier with the strategies they use to distribute their content, which tactics, platforms, and trends are garnering the greatest benefits?  LinkedIn team up with MarketingProfs and the Content Marketing Institute to answer this question. Check it out. MarketingTech Blog Google+ Commenting is Now Live on YouTube – YouTube has been pushing people to tie their YouTube account to their Google+ account for many months and now they're making it even harder to say no. This new feature allows you to direct your comments to your Google+ friends with a tag mention. Marketing Pilgrim 4 Social Analytics Tips to Improve Your Social Media Marketing – Track the right metrics for your community and you'll better understand how and when to share information, as well as what type of content drives the most traffic to your website. SocialMedia Examiner Facebook Tests Star Ratings Displayed On Pages – Screenshots and live testing show that Facebook has turned on the star rating display for at least a small subsection of users, providing information to network users that goes beyond the basic Like. Using a star system for place and page ratings isn't entirely new. What is new is making this information explicitly displayed on the social network itself, in a prominent place on a business or place Page. Read the full implications here. TechCrunch How to Use Social Media Monitoring to Generate Viable Leads – 68% of marketers claim to have created leads from social media sites and 55% have closed deals found from a social media lead. Learn how to how to navigate the key areas of creating a lead generation campaign, in order to assist in the finding of viable leads for your business. eConsultancy Study: Only 8% Of Brands Believe Its Marketing Team Is Strong Across All Digital Marketing Channels – New research by OMI, in partnership with ClickZ and Kelly Staffing, reveals Fortune 500 companies and global agencies face a serious digital marketing skills shortage. While the skill level is inflated and talent is slim, there are opportunities for brands that are proactive. Read more here. OnlineMarketingInstitute The Beginner's Guide to Facebook's Edgerank – What does it take to really understand the hundreds of factors that contribute to Facebook's news feed algorithm? Here's the latest research telling us which four are the most important. Buffer 6 Steps for Successful Content Marketing Using SlideShare’s Search – Think of SlideShare's link juice as rocket fuel for SEO. All you need is a coordinated plan to start borrowing some of the professional network's search clout. Content Marketing Institute 4 Tips for Monitoring Your Social Campaign in Real Time – Social media gives companies huge marketing opportunities, but also challenges them to stay up to minute on the second-by-second social interaction consumers are having with their brand. Launching a social marketing campaign and not tracking it in real-time can backfire. SmartBlogs Google+ Quietly Introduces New Share and +1 Buttons – Google employee Paul Lindner posted about them in the Developing with Google+ community on Google+. He says that the +1 and Share buttons are now consistent with the Follow and Badge widgets. MarketingLand Marketing Lessons From a Garage Sale – No matter how sophisticated the world becomes, the fundamentals of buying and selling never change. Read these six lessons learned from this marketer and home owner. BusinessWeek LinkedIn Unveils Major Pulse Integration, Replaces LinkedIn Today – LinkedIn announced that its popular news curation feature, LinkedIn Today, has been replaced on both desktop and mobile by Pulse, which now provides the back end technology for all content surfacing on the platform. The transition comes alongside an update to the Pulse mobile app, which will more tightly integrate the news reader with LinkedIn. Mashable Report: Survey Finds Social Media and SEO Drive Inbound Marketing – 21% of marketers report that social media has become more important over the past six months. The HubSpot research shows that inbound marketing dominates lead sources, with social media and SEO driving the highest level of leads with each driving 14% of all leads. SocialMediaToday 3 Simple Ways to Incorporate Your Influencers into Your Blog Posts – As you read your influencers' content, look for opportunities to incorporate their work into articles on your own blog. Keep your eyes peeled for good questions in their content. Read more tips here. Traackr 15 Greatest Marketing Innovations of All Time – History’s greatest contributions to the fine art of connecting buyers and sellers. What did they miss? Inc. Twitter Announces Custom Timelines For Hashtags or Topics on Tweetdeck – This will allow people to create powerful streams of information out of Twitter's public fire hose, effectively allowing anyone to curate individual streams of data tailored to a topic. The ability to create custom timelines in Tweetdeck is rolling out slowly, so not everyone will have it right away. It also offers a bunch of customization options for people that use Twitter for information gathering. TechCrunch From the Online Community From “Content Marketing with Interactive Tools: Pros, Cons, Examples & Best Practices,” Mark said, I have been wondering how to make my website more sticky. I believe this post has provided the answer. It should have been obvious, because that is the reason I return to my favorite site. Thank you for an information-packed post. Guest said, While I’m not sure what the next generation of interactive tools looks like, I can only imagine that they will become more advanced. A great example of an interactive tool that I use on a daily basis is Pixlr. I know by looking at the three options on the homepage (Editor, Exprss or O-Matic) which one I will need for any given photograph. The whole editing process is smooth and easy to use. P.S. I think you’ve got it right when you say we need to create “experiences” with our customers not just content. This is what will keep them coming back and build loyalty. Thanks for sharing! From “It's Not the Moment, It's the Story – A Bigger Picture View of Personal Social Media Participation,” Sean Raulsen said, Very timely, man. Thanks! I was just thinking about the growing number of social media platforms, and whether it’s really necessary to have a presence on all of them. Your article serves as a great reminder to step back, and to think about what tools you want to utilize to assist in presenting your story to others. Barbara Mckinney said, The division between storytelling and marketing has dissolved. Stories play on people's fears and emotions. With stories, brands connect with readers on a more human level. What’s Your Take? When you look at the cumulative effect of social media participation, does it make your decision to jump on board and stay connected easier? Think of each social interaction as a pixel; over time, what you’ll see is a dynamic portrait of a person or a brand.