Keyword research is a fundamental part of content marketing.

It is an indispensable tool for developing a potent inbound marketing strategy and improving SEO. Search engines favor compelling content, but you won’t generate much traffic if you don’t include the words and phrases people are most interested in and actively searching for. Because many of the available keyword research tools are confusing and counterintuitive, the process can be challenging and time-consuming. The valuable insights offered by keyword research will inform your strategic process by identifying exactly what your customers want, need, and are concerned about. The demise of Google’s Keyword Tool, the most popular of its kind, has left marketers scrambling for alternatives. Viewed as an essential mechanism for conducting research on keyword phrases, it offered lots of useful information about popularity, competition, and phrase variations. It has been rebranded as Google AdWords Planner, which offers much less functionality and requires users to have an AdWords account in order to use it. What to do?

 

10 Best Google Keyword Tool Alternatives

Here are ten keyword research tools that I’ve found to be good replacements for Google’s Keyword Tool. Check them out and see if they’re a fit for your keyword research routine:

Free keyword research tools

• WordStream Keyword Tool has a huge database and enables you to customize searches by filtering adult keywords or “nichefying” results. It also offers options for identifying negative keywords, keyword grouping, and finding keyword niches. The full, paid version delivers thousands of results for some keywords, with the top 100 available for free.


• Wordtracker reveals high-performing keywords in minutes via its easy-to-use interface. It shows you what people are searching for, gives you a multitude of suggestions for keyword phrases, and computes how much competition you might face for the terms you select. A free account is required.


• SEO Book Keyword Tool offers search volumes by market for Google, Yahoo, and Bing and links them to related global search results; links to Google Trends, Google Suggest, Google Synonyms, Yahoo! Suggest, and Keyword Discovery keyword research results; links to vertical databases like Topix, Google Blogsearch, and Del.icio.us; and much more.


• Ubersuggest makes good use of Google Suggest and other suggest services. You can instantly get thousands of keyword ideas from real user queries. It also offers vertical results for images, news, shopping, video, and recipes.


• Keyword Eye helps you simplify your keyword research. The visual tool displays keywords in increasing or decreasing sizes based on their search volume or AdWords competition. 10 free keyword searches per day are allowed, with 100 results delivered per report. You also receive great data about your competitors.

 

Paid keyword research tools

• MOZ retrieves the top 10 rankings for any keyword, then assigns that keyword a difficulty score based on the pages that currently rank for that word. View search volume data for your keywords, then pull up the SERP to see the top 10 results for each term. Competitive keyword analysis metrics show you where a competitor is ready to be bumped out.


• KeywordSpy tracks all search advertising activity in any given industry, which empowers you with marketing analytics, SEO intelligence, competitors’ keywords and their ad copies, and much more valuable information.


• SEMrush helps you discover your competitor’s organic and paid keywords in search. You can search by your competitor’s domain or search for competitors using specific keywords. You can see volumes, trends, and other data across ten different Google regional domains and Bing. You can also enter your site or that of a competitor to see the top 10 organic keywords for which it ranks.


• Keyword Discovery helps you identify the keywords that your customers are using, related keywords you need to look at, and common spelling mistakes, as well as how your industry’s keywords are impacted by seasonal search trends.


• Advanced Web Ranking offers a keyword research tool that brings data from Google AdWords, Google Webmaster API, Google Trends, Google Suggest, 7Search, SEMRush, Wordtracker, and Yahoo API Related Keyword Search together in one place, helping you to identify efficient keywords and find your competitors’ best keywords.

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Best and Worst Times and Days to Post Your Social Media Updates [Infographic]

Best and Worst Times and Days to Post Your Social Media Updates

(InfoGraphic)

Posting your social media updates at the right times is the key to improving your presence on any social network. All social media aren’t the same. Each social network has different kinds of users and their daily activities vary. They use these networks at various times and days to engage with the updates published. To attain maximum engagement on your accounts you need to find out what these times are and then schedule your posts accordingly. You also need to figure out the best days to publish them.

To help you with this, I have created a single infographic that contains the best times and days to publish your social media updates in order for them to receive the highest exposure. I have included the networks Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest and Tumblr. So check out what the best times and days to post your social media updates on these different networks are and schedule your posts accordingly…

Click on Infographic to View Large Version

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For many webmasters, attracting traffic to their website is the most challenging thing to do. Yes, many people profess that traffic building is not an easy task at all. In fact, it is perhaps the most tedious task that you can do as a webmaster. That's why many people are just trying to ease their burden by hiring some SEO specialists, link builders, content creators, and so on. But, do you know that you can easily attract traffic to your website just by using YouTube? If you want to know how to use YouTube to attract more visitors to your website, here are 7 simple ways to attract your website traffic with YouTube:

7 Killer Ways to Get Website Traffic from YouTube

 

1. Put A Shocking Headline On Your Video

The headline is the most important thing that you need to pay attention in your video. That's because no matter how great your video content, if you have a lousy headline, no one will want to watch it. Your headline must be shocking and make people want to watch your video right away. It should also be adapted to the topic that you are covering in your video. For instance, if you are creating a video about how to improve self-confidence, you can put a headline like this in your video: "Shocking Fact Reveals That This Simple Method Can Improve Your Confidence Instantly."

2. Don't Spoil The Video Content In The Description

You might be tempted to fill your description with all the things that you are giving in your video. Don't do that. Your description is meant to be a short summary about your video content. You need to make it interesting and attract curiosity for your viewers. Continuing with our self-confidence video example, here's the description that you can put for your video: "This video reveals one simple method that can magically increase your self-confidence instantly. After watching this video, you'll start feeling a big increase in your self-confidence right away. Be sure to watch this video carefully."

3. Write Tags That Are Relevant With Your Video Content

Tags are basically short words that will identify your video. For instance, if your video is about how to improve your self-confidence, you can put tags such as improve confidence, boost self-confidence, secret to more confidence, and so on. Remember that you should write your tags carefully because if you do it wrong, your video may be considered as a bad video by YouTube system and it will result in your video being hidden from YouTube search. Relevancy is always the key, and also, you should not write more than 10 tags at a time.

4. Build A Channel For Your Website On YouTube

You should be able to build a strong community on YouTube. Create a channel on YouTube and attract more subscribers to your channel. In this way, you will keep your video views high. Be sure that the name of your channel matches with the name of your website. In this way, people will recognize that your channel is actually an official channel fn your website. Thus, a percentage of your YouTube subscribers will want to visit your website as well if you can provide valuable videos for them.

5. Always Put A Watermark On Your Video

Don't forget to watermark your video with your website URL so that people can't steal your video or spread it around without knowing where the video comes from. As long as you watermark your video, you can let people to spread your video all they want without worrying that they will not credit you as the video creator. Watermark is good for your viral video marketing purpose.

6. Ask People To Subscribe And Share

Within the video, and in the description about your video, you should always ask people to subscribe to your channel and share your video. Why is it important? That's because unless you remind your viewers to do it, they will not likely subscribe to your channel or share your videos. So, always remind people to do those things with your video.

7. Give Your Website URL At The Start And The End Of Your Video

At the start of your video, you should create a simple but interesting animation that tells your viewers that the video is presented by your website. At the end of your video, you should do the same. This will encourage people to visit your website to know more about what you offer.

Those are 7 simple ways to attract your website traffic with YouTube. If you want to gain more website visitors, simply go to YouTube, create a channel, and upload high quality videos regularly following the tips above.

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5 Reasons Why Most Bloggers will Fail in 2014

The year 2014 is upon us and the blogosphere is already filled with predictions of the hottest trends for the next 12 months. Internet marketing gurus are unveiling new strategies for the post Google Panda era, while bloggers are trying to find new ways to make more money online.

In short, things are moving quickly. One thing, however, that will remain constant this year as well, is your fate as a blogger.

Yes, you’ll continue to fail.

Like every year, you’ll see countless new blogs enter the digital world and become success stories. You’ll add tens of new bloggers to your mentor list and download numerous new eBooks in the hope of learning the secret of making money online.

But guess what, nothing will change.

You’ll spend another miserable year in front of your computer screen wondering what all the fuss is about.

5 Reasons Why Most Bloggers Fail

Here are 5 reasons why 2014 will be another year full of failures for you as a blogger.

1. You Do Not Have a Fixed Blogging Schedule

Do you know about the most critical thing in building up real life relationships?

It’s called staying-in-touch!

And blogging is no different.

If you publish 5 posts in one week and then stay silent for the next two months, then forget about building a relationship with your readers.

Google also keeps a close eye on your blog’s posting frequency and is more likely to rate regular publishers much higher.

No matter how frequently you publish on your blog, you need to have a fixed blogging schedule. Don’t wait for a killer idea or a spark of creativity to create your next post.

Consistency is one of the biggest challenges in blogging and following a fixed schedule is one of the best solutions for it.

You’ll hardly find any successful blogger who doesn’t have at least a rough posting schedule.

So if you continue to trick yourself with an “open” blogging schedule, then 2014 will be another year of zero blogging relationships and poor search engine traffic.

 

2. Your Blog Does Not Have a Voice

Have you ever wondered why most people sleep half way through college lectures and corporate presentations?

It’s because dry and boring information fails to engage people.

That is why presenters and lecturers who add personality to their talks find much more success even with some of the most uninterested audiences.

This is what’s missing from your content as well.

It’s just plain, dry and boring information that nobody wants to know.

Your content has no voice, no personality and nothing to relate with.

Continue doing that and be prepared for another year of comment-less posts and social media shares by your family members only.

 

3. You Still Write for Google

Some of your favorite things as a blogger are submitting posts to article directories, commenting on blogs for backlinks and writing keyword rich posts that Google loves, right?

Unfortunately, your kind was ditched by Google mid-way last year. These things don’t work anymore.

Google knows you’re only trying to win favors by using your target keywords in each line of your articles.

But of course you can continue to follow the SEO gurus who’ve somehow managed to find a tiny loophole in Google algorithms that they’re using to drive crazy traffic to their websites.

And you have the ever reliable article spinning tools at your disposal as well.

Who writes for people anyway?

 

4. You Have No Plans to Build Your Mailing List

Throughout 2013, you published hundreds of posts that attracted thousands of visitors to your website. Only a handful, however, subscribed to your mailing list.

This is one of the secrets behind your continued failure to make money from blogging.

2013 was the year when subscriber lists were needed the most. Blogs and online businesses with a healthy number of subscribers successfully recovered from all the major Google search engine updates and traffic pits.

And 2014 will be no different.

In fact, there’s every chance that mailing lists might soon become the only organic source of traffic generation for blogs and websites.

As the saying goes, money is in the list.

You, however, still seem to disagree and, as a result, will continue to suffer.

 

 5. You Are Not an Aggressive Marketer

Whatever I’ve said about you aside, you still are a pretty good writer.

When you get your head down and focus, you churn out awesome content. Unfortunately, nobody reads it.

Because the world doesn’t know you exist.

All successful bloggers are aggressive marketers as well. This aggression not only reflects through the various promotional strategies that they adopt, but also in the structure and the voice of their content.

They reach out to their target readers using strategies like guest blogging, email marketing, Facebook advertisements and networking.

You, however, continue to believe that sharing the links of your posts on your Facebook and Twitter profiles is enough to get visitors.

You believe that the sheer quality of your content is enough to drive Google crazy, and would force the few readers that you have to spread your content to every corner of the web.

You’re wrong, of course, and, as a result, would continue to waste your hard written content.

 

Conclusion

The blogosphere is changing rapidly, with new marketing strategies and new ways of making money online. All you need to do, in order to succeed as a blogger, is to sync yourself with the demands of modern blogging trends and start thinking like a real life marketer instead of just being a narrow minded keyword spammer.

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Make Money with Turbo PayPal Booster Professional

Make Money with Turbo Paypal Booster Professional

 

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Look at the extended view of  daily sales made from this system! Just simply Amazing!!

Just look at how Turbo PayPal will stuff your GMAIL account after setup below!

After you have completed all the steps in setup, just simply look for places to advertise and watch the cash role into your account daily....

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If you make a purchase today, you will also receive a free copy of the  "PayPal Money Booster" with your purchase so you will be getting two for the price of one!!!

Please make your purchase of just $2.99 today while this deal last!!

  

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You should know how important it is to understand the wiring of your consumers' brains to get their attention. It's not enough to just get their attention; you also have to drive action. And when we're talking about subject lines, that action is an email open. Here are two methods that are particularly effective at accomplishing this objective - and one that isn't.



 

3 Methods to Getting Your Emails Opened

 

Method 1: Highlight the Potential Loss of Not Opening (Loss Aversion)

Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman demonstrated people's strong preference to avoiding loss rather than seeking gains. This simple insight earned Kahneman the Nobel Prize in 2002.

An important feature of loss aversion is phrasing. For example, you're purchasing a computer monitor: would you rather get a $15 discount on the monitor, or avoid a $15 fee? Loss aversion tells us you would rather avoid the fee, even though both are economically equal.

You can leverage loss aversion by rephrasing your subject lines to highlight a loss that will occur if the recipient doesn't take action. For example, "$10 off this week" becomes "Save $10 before Friday," or, in an extreme case, "You lose $10 on Friday."

As with anything, a respectful approach should be used. Putting statements like "You lose…" in subject lines is a tactic to be used sparingly, and only where appropriate. Did the recipient receive the discount for a certain action they took? If so, mentioning that it's about to go away is acceptable. On the other hand, if it's just a random discount, a direct statement of loss may frustrate your recipients.

Bottom line: using loss aversion to get opens should be subtle and relevant to the recipient and the email's content. If you come on too strong, you risk ruining the long-term relationship.

 

Method 2: Use a Name (the Cocktail Party Effect)

Déjà vu? The use of a name is not only effective for grabbing someone's attention from the other emails filling the inbox, it can also be used to get an open.

The first part of the "cocktail party effect" is the sudden reallocation of attention when an emotionally salient word, especially the person's name, is spoken or written.

But once you've got attention, you can still leverage the name and people's inherent self-interest to drive an open. For example, ThinkGeek recently sent me an email with the subject line "ThinkGeek finds Justin charming." First, it got my attention by using my name. Then, once I read the subject line, I felt immediately curious to know why a geeky retailer found me charming. I opened…wouldn't you if that was your name?

This method requires creativity. It's not enough to write "NAME, here's a 10% coupon." There's no reason for the name to be there. A more effective subject line might be "Hey NAME, we clipped this for you."

As before, this strategy should not be abused. It only takes a few emails with subject lines like "Help me NAME" or "NAME's personalized newsletter" to cause subscribers to leave.

 

Method 3: Use Humor (Note: This Method Doesn't Always Work)

A common misconception bordering on cliché is that humor somehow makes advertising, marketing, and even education more effective. While it's easy for most people to rationalize why that might be (e.g., I pay more attention when it's funny), no conclusive evidence has come out linking humor to increased behavior or retention, despite numerous studies.

My point here is not to downplay the use of humor in marketing. I believe appropriate, synergistic humor helps define a brand and keep people engaged. But I believe it is overused, and the fact that its use in driving action is not as effective as many marketers have grown to believe should cause you to think twice about using humor as a crutch.

Instead, mix things up. Try highlighting a potential loss, an intriguing question, or just stating plainly what the email will do for the person should they choose to open.

These methods tap into inherent desires and fears to cause action. Use them wisely and you'll see more people reading that email you worked so hard on.

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What is a Facebook Dark Post ? Why and How Make A Dark Post ?

 

What is a Facebook Dark Post ?

 

A tutorial on creating dark posts – a technique many big brands are now doing newsfeed advertising

Facebook has become quite the place of the dark arts in recent years as brands seek to outdo each other in the advertising wars.

One of the features available to those in the know is the art of the “dark” or “unpublished” post. What this actually means is that the post will not appear on your timeline but can be accessed by anyone with a direct link (or by clicking through from an ad). They are used extensively by advertisers to create copy that then appears as a “Sponsored” piece of content.

A few months back, dark Image posts were the only way advertisers had of getting results into the newsfeed with images that took up a decent amount of real estate. In recent months, links with appropriately sized images have also been rewarded with a decent chunk of screen space on newsfeed.

Dark link posts are, in my opinion, a better bet partly because nowadays you still get a nice big image but crucially users clicking anywhere on the ad go to the post itself rather than a photo (with photo posts they have to actually click on the url you have pasted into the caption to go anywhere other than to the image in your photo albums). You also have significantly more options for copy in the link post option and likes and comments will show up on the post rather than on the photo. I reckon you also stand a higher likelihood of users liking your Page from a link rather than an image post.

Creating a dark or unpublished post

You’ll need to be using Power Editor, an essential Chrome app for anyone doing regular advertising on Facebook. Power Editor gives you way more control and functionality than Facebook’s Self Serve ad platform.

This article is not intended as an introduction to Power Editor so if you’re not yet using it you will possibly need a basic tutorial in that first but see how you get on. If you are fairly IT savvy you can probably pick it up from here.

Having loaded the Chrome Power Editor app and synchronised with your Page and account, first of all you need to go to Manage Pages in Power Editor (left of the top nav)



Select your Page and hit “Create Post”. I’m creating a Link Post here. Ensure the photo you upload is 1200×627 pixels. And make sure any text it contains is within Facebook’s 20% rule (My ad is over that but we got away with it!).

Here’s a useful tool for you to use to check that your ads are within the 20% rule. You’ll see the obvious problems with my initial ad where the text occupied more than the allowed 5 boxes (copy in pack shots doesn’t count but logo copy is included in the 20%). The tool has split the screen into 25 boxes (rather unhelpfully here they are orange on top of my orange background but if you look carefully you will see I actually have text in at least 7 (if not 9) boxes so am over the 20% rule. Of course I went back and changed my ad to comply.



The 1200×627 size will surface nicely both on desktop and mobile devices. The screen clip below is an explanation of where all the elements show up. You may need to test a few to work out maximum line lengths. Unfortunately once created you can’t edit an unpublished post so you need to start again from scratch.



I would leave the targeting options blank – you can then select targeting by country when you come to create your ads.

So here is my finished unpublished post:



You can see what your post looks like by hitting the “View Post” option a the bottom of the ad. Take note of the url as you may want to go back to it later. Here’s the post I created: https://www.facebook.com/222807424432/posts/10152078177919433

If you click through you’ll see you are taken to a page on our website which has some clever coding designed to datacapture email addresses and then present the free gift. We’ve done this in conjunction with our Mailchimp database.

Once you are happy that the post looks good you can create an ad.

Creating a Facebook ad using a dark post

Go to Power Editor and create a new campaign and then create a new ad within the campaign. Having created the campaign upload it by pressing the green button (note you have to upload any changes in Power Editor otherwise your work will be in vain).



Now with that campaign selected in the left hand nav, create an ad. I tend give it the same title as the campaign (and it’s not good practice to have more than one ad in a campaign – I know, it’s very annoying). As you start to create a lot of ads you will want to create a naming system that enables you to easily sort and compare them.

Use the wizard going from Creative through to Audience to Optimization and Pricing. You can see the settings I used in the screen clips below (note that I have conversion pixels set up – it’s good practice to do this).

Creative

You’ll need to select your unpublished post from the Page Post drop down. It will be the one with the half moon symbol.

I am selecting News Feed (Desktop and Mobile). Having tested Right-Hand column ads I’ve not found them cost effective for my audience. And even if I was using them I’d want to create different ads for them to the News Feed ads.

Now progress to Audience



You’ll see that I am selecting various countries to target, adding in age and gender as well as targeting people with different interest categories. For this example I’m using a broad category of people who like Christian and Gospel Music. And I don’t want to advertise to people who are already fans so these are excluded.

Optimization & Pricing

Now progress to Optimization & Pricing. You have lots of options here. I’ve tested extensively and for this kind of ad, with my audience I find CPC to be the most cost effective. I wouldn’t always go for the lowest option either. I have often gone for say 20c (my account is set in USD) and found my average CPC to be a lot lower.



Now press the green Upload Changes button. Facebook will take anything from minutes to days to check and approve your ad. You may also find that it is initially approved and then unapproved (often due to violation of the 20% rule).

Results – checking effectiveness

Measurement of ad spend has improved a lot in recent years on Facebook. As well as using conversion pixels you can also use custom utm tracking codes in the links you create in your ad. For this ad I used both a mailing list sign up pixel (see below for where to create these in Power Editor) as well as a checkout conversion pixel.



I tend to use the self serve ad manager rather than Power Editor to look at the results of my Facebook ads but with the right utm codes set up you can get quite sophisticated with tracking in Google Analytics too. Crucially with the tracking pixels set up you are not only seeing resulting clicks, Post Likes, Page Likes etc but also conversions to (in this case) mailing list and sales.

Other types of dark posts

I’ve shown you how to create an unpublished link post. Of course you can also do the same for creating photo posts, video posts, plain status updates and offers. Have a play with them. They are all pretty simple once you’ve got the first one sorted.

One word of warning, whilst I have found CPC to be best for my audience, I would probably look to use CPM or Optimised CPM for video posts. Reason being that I’ve found video gets a much higher click rate but often a poor conversion. You therefore want to be paying for eyeballs rather than clicks. But test and see what works for you.

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2014 Marketing Resolutions and Goals to Live Up To

The time has come. It's 2014. You've likely considered a number of resolutions you want to follow through with in the New Year. Maybe it's to spend more time with family, or run more on the weekends, or try to cut pizza and other greasy foods out of your diet for a while (that's one of mine -- I doubt it'll last long, but I digress).

2014 Marketing Resolutions and Goals

Take a second to think about what you've resolved to accomplish in 2014. Are any of your resolutions marketing-related? Maybe you've thought of ways to better manage your time or come up with fun ideas for team outings, but if you don't have a list of resolutions to take your marketing to that next level, it's time to start developing one -- and we can help.

The one thing the resolutions listed below have in common is, they all revolve around the inbound marketing methodology, which means they require some in-depth data analysis to ensure you make the right adjustments and alterations to your marketing strategy.

So take the time to crunch the numbers, discover what is and isn't already working for you, modify your campaigns accordingly, and your 2014 is bound to be just as -- if not more -- successful than 2013.

1) Focus on mobile.

As Google Chairman Eric Schmidt outlined in this recent Bloomberg TV video, 2014 is going to be all about mobile. Don't believe him? Well, believe this: As of February 2013, there were 6.8 billion mobile subscriptions, the International Telecommunication Union reported. (I'll give you a minute to drink that one in.) Now, just imagine how much that figure has grown since then.

Smartphones and tablets are increasing in popularity by the day -- and we don't just mean in terms of sales. Consumers are using mobile devices more and more to conduct transactions, research brands, visit their favorite sites, and read and reply to emails.

So, if you're still under the impression that it's absolutely fine not to worry about optimizing your email campaigns and websites for mobile, it's time to modernize and make some headway in improving your mobile presence. This free mobile marketing guide should help you get started.

2) Make your website responsive.

While we're on the topic of mobile, this is as good a time as any to talk about responsive design.

Making the look and functionality of your site the same on both desktops and mobile devices can go a long way in bringing in new visitors and leads and bettering your bottom line. And with 17% of global web traffic coming from mobile, as Statista reports, you'll want to make your site is completely optimized for smartphones and tablets.

Given how relatively new the concept of responsive design is, we totally get it if you're not up to speed on exactly how to get your site fixed up properly. That's why we created this guide about what you'll need for your website, including tips to make it responsive. And good news if you're a HubSpot customer, since our new Content Optimization System has built-in responsive design, right out of the box!

3) Ditch a lot of those outbound efforts.

Our stance that inbound is the present and future of marketing only strengthens when we continually see the ineffectiveness outbound tactics have for brands and the incredible benefits inbound strategies bring marketers. Case in point: 54% more leads are generated from inbound than outbound efforts.

That stat is bound to grow more each year from here on out, so if you've still got precious budget invested in billboards, print, radio, and the like, it's time to consider reallocating those funds for better use.

For instance, given the importance of content marketing, you could double-down on content production and hire a full-time writer or some freelancers to develop blog posts, ebooks, whitepapers, and other viable types of content for you.

What you'll see from this modification to your marketing is tangible data in your marketing analytics that shows your efforts' effectiveness. It's a lot better than having to guess if those newspaper ads did the trick, wouldn't you say?

4) Revitalize your content strategy.

Speaking of content, it's only going to become more important over the course of 2014, given Google's assertion that quality content will gradually have a bigger impact on SEO.

Because of this, it may be smart to evaluate a variety of types of content that could work for your inbound campaigns. You can determine what's best for your efforts in several ways -- chiefly, going over your analytics from the past several months and engaging in continual A/B testing.This post will help you get started with the former, and this one, the latter.

If you're planning on taking on a bunch of content types and need some help organizing and structuring them, these numerous templates can come in handy.

5) Adjust your social and email strategies as needed.

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram -- these are the undisputed kings of social (at least for the moment).

While new, flashy social sites are bound to pop up over the course of the New Year, you'll first want to ensure you master these aforementioned platforms that have proven to bring substantial ROI for marketers worldwide before putting all of your eggs in a new-and-unproven social media basket.

In other words, we advise you resolve to fine-tune your prospecting on these sites before diverting efforts to the "next big thing."

Similarly, it may be wise to make one of your first priorities in 2014 to comb over your email marketing metrics to see what may need to be adapted or revised. For instance, if your workflows are out-of-date, set up new ones with the help of this lead nurturing ebook. Of course, to know which workflows to update, you may need to ...

6) Take a look at your buyer personas, too.

What good are all of the resolutions above if you don't know for whom you should be creating inbound campaigns in the first place? There's likely no better time than the start of the year to reexamine your buyer personas.

Be sure you don't put the horse before the cart in 2014. Truly understand your audience by conducting thorough research on them. Heck, you could even do some online surveys or focus groups to get a better, updated grasp on who they are and what they want (old school, perhaps, but still effective even in this day and age).

The bottom line is, you'll need to comprehend as much about your target demographic(s) as possible to know how to develop your content production, offers, and email and social strategies, among many other efforts.

Complete this resolution effectively by utilizing this free comprehensive guide and template that will assist you in creating your new persona(s) for the New Year.

7) BONUS: Consider a homepage revamp.

Although you may have already put in a great deal of time, effort, and resources to making a top-tier homepage, a change in buyer persona could mean it's time to give it a facelift.

Even if you haven't altered your persona, it may have been a while since the last time you made sufficient changes to your homepage to account for marketing new products or services, or even rebranding your company.

Whatever the reason for your update, you can fulfill this resolution using the resources in this detailed kit, which can help you plan your redesign from start to finish.

This article was originally featured on HubSpot blog.

What are some marketing resolutions you've come up with for this year? Tell us about one or more of them below!

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