A Marketing Opportunity Beckons

With mobile apps trouncing mobile websites as the preferred medium among smartphone and tablet users, businesses looking to reach those audiences are seriously considering marketing and advertising “in-app.” Essentially, mobile-device users are spending much more time with their apps than with the mobile web—in part because those apps often run much faster on smartphones and tablets than the mobile web does.

A Marketing Home Run, Research Finds

Business-to-business (B2B) marketers find that case-study articles placed in key professional and trade journals are some of the most effective ways to close new deals with current and prospective customers, according to a pair of new studies. Specifically, 67% of B2B buyers surveyed said that they relied on research and white papers presented by trade and professional organizations more than any other source when making purchasing decisions.

E-mail marketers operating without significant, robust accommodations for mobile device users are leaving trunks of money at the table, according to two new reports on e-mail usage.

A full 41% of all e-mail is now read on mobile devices—smartphones and tablets—and that’s a spike in preference that will continue to rise for the foreseeable future, according to the “Mobile E-Mail Opens Report, 2nd Half 2012,” released by Knotice, a marketing firm.

Getting Your Business to Look Good on All Computer Devices Just Became Effortless

Businesses looking for a quick fix to the increasingly vexing challenge of getting their web presence to look good on all screen sizes—including smartphones, tablets and desktop PCs—may want to turn to YouTube. The online video goliath is rolling out a major upgrade this spring specifically designed to ensure that a company’s website on its service, which YouTube calls a “channel,” looks great no matter how visitors decide to view it.

“The main focus of this update is to make your new channel look great on browsers across all screens and devices,” said Jeb Havens, a product manager at YouTube.

Feature Articles Now the Top Digital Marketing Tool

Three new studies have unearthed a startling trend in online marketing: The traditional feature article—used for centuries to market brands in conventional media—is now the go-to digital marketing tool for 2013. Driving the trend are changes Google has made to its search engine during the past few years. Essentially, the revamp rewards websites that post interesting, quality content and heavily penalizes sites that cough up yawn-fests stuffed with keywords only a search robot could love.

New Wave of Hacker Technology Threatens Unsuspecting Businesses

Regularly making chump meat of the most sophisticated of computer defenses, hackers will be unleashing a new wave of malware in the coming year on the unsuspecting—many of whom will be completely unprepared, according to Sophos, a computer-security firm.

“Cybercriminals tend to focus where the weak spots are,” said Gerhard Eschelbeck, chief technology officer at Sophos. “Protecting data in a world where systems are changing rapidly and information flows freely requires a coordinated ecosystem of security technologies.”

Search-Engine Optimization

The single most critical factor to search-engine optimization (SEO) success is creating amazing content—‘share-worthy’ content that is so useful, meaningful and interesting to your target audience that they want to consume it, share it with their own audiences and talk about it,” said Susan Gunelius, author of Content Marketing for Dummies.

For Many Businesses, Better Candidates at Reduced Cost

Social media is now a serious player in employee recruitment, in many cases significantly reducing the cost per hire for companies while simultaneously bringing in higher-quality talent, according to many recruiters.

“Underneath the iceberg of vacant jobs advertised on job boards and newspapers, a strong, invisible current of talent is ingeniously using social media to identify and strategize their next career moves,” said Charles Van Heerden, general manager at WaveBox Consulting.

Microsoft’s Big Bet

Sporting a radical redesign that’s expected to charm some and disappoint others, Microsoft’s new Windows 8 operating system (OS) faces a tough slog, including a slow adoption rate, analysts said recently.

“The challenges of a new user interface, a complex set of processor choices and a long ramp to a compelling set of app offerings in the Microsoft Store will translate to a slower-than-usual Windows upgrade cycle,” said Frank E. Gillett, an analyst with research and advisory firm Forrester.