Too many websites are meticulously built and then filled with thrown-together content that doesn’t engage with the customer. Think about how you browse the Internet as a consumer. How often do you read a whole page of content to find out one piece of information? Do you instead scroll to the bottom of the page to find the product or conclusion? Do you search the page for the phrase you are looking for and read that sentence but nothing else? I admit to both of those techniques, and I bet you do, too. So why would we expect a visitor to our site to act any differently?

Your goal is to expand your business’ reach, drive sales and increase its profitability. Your website, social media presences, blog and directories are all forms of content. They have the potential to make or break your business’s reputation and profitability.

A content strategy will help you understand the content your customer is interested in so you can give it to them. Even better, the right content strategy will help you analyze the big picture, determine where you should invest your energy and budget, and help you generate the best possible ROI.

First, what’s a content strategy?

I am going to define a content strategy as a framework within which businesses can manage the content being published about their brand and products/services online in order to ensure that they are always seen as authority content publishers that deserve search engine and user respect.

This post focuses on digital content, but you can build a content strategy that accounts for all marketing activity in order to successfully manage an integrated marketing plan.

Here’s how to get started on creating and measuring yours.

Establish a goal

The first things to establish are what you want to achieve and how your business makes money. Any combination of objective and business model will require a unique strategy, there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all strategy.

If your business sells services directly to customers and products through re-sellers, then you’ll need two different strategies even if they both have the same goal of increased revenue. Similarly if you want to achieve increased brand awareness and increased profit, you’ll again need two different strategy approaches. Therefore, it is advisable to select a single objective for your content strategy and then expand it later to encompass new elements if appropriate.

Study your customers

Next you need to understand who your current customers are and who your target customers are. What do they do online? Are they active on Twitter? Do they engage in LinkedIn Groups? Do they read industry blogs? Do they follow Google News? Do they spend a lot of time reading your website?

The answers to these questions will determine whether the focus of your content strategy is on your website or not. It will determine the types of content you’ll be creating (the kind that customers are likely to engage with). It will determine the level of investment required in order to engage with them. Bear in mind that you will probably have several distinct customer groups with different interests, presences and values to your business.

Inventory your online presence

How much money do you spend building up your business’s brand? All it takes is for a small group of customers to have a bad experience and write about it online for your brand to be irrecoverably tarnished. The next vital information to understand is how your brand is perceived online.

However new your business you will have some kind of presence online, even if it is a simple as being a registered employer to different team members. Google your brand name. Depending on the nature of your business at least the top three results should be owned and controlled by you.

Do people talk about you at all? Are comments positive or negative? How is your product/service perceived online? Are people having conversations about issues or positives that you don’t know about? Is this content you own and control or not? Whether positive or negative, you need to know what is being said about your brand and products/services in order to effectively respond.

Add value

Whatever your unique selling proposition, you can be sure that it will not convert people into customers on its own. It is a competitive market out there, and consumers are becoming increasingly demanding of businesses.

The right content strategy will ensure that you engage with target customers and differentiate from your competition without having to reduce your margins and win business on price. Once you understand your customer you can determine how to add value for them.

There’s plenty of content you can provide for your customer that doesn’t cost you much but has a potentially huge customer value. This will be content that you own and control. It could be available to download from your website, or by subscribing to your YouTube channel, or be emailed to customers once they sign up through Facebook.

Some potential value-adds include:

• Discount code
• Video tutorial
• Free white paper
• Infographic
• Contest or giveaway

Measure

Once you’ve established your content strategy, it’s absolutely vital that you measure its success in order to determine the contribution it made to the achievement of your marketing objectives.

After you create the strategy – but before you begin to implement it – benchmark the key measurables of your campaigns. These will vary depending on the findings of the strategy.

Plan for regular reviews of the campaign in order to assess the success of different elements of the strategy and allow appropriate refinements to be carried out.

Bring in tools

There are many tools out there to measure the success of your content strategy. These include:

Google Analytics

• Pages/visits, traffic volume, sources to site,time on site (measure overall onsite engagement)
• Goals in Google Analytics (measure the success of downloadable content)
• Referral traffic from offsite content (measure offsite engagement with content)

Social monitoring tools

• Brand mentions and sentiment
• Product/service mentions and sentiment

Social media platforms

• Likes/followers/circles/members etc. your brand profile has
• Level of engagement with your brand profile by customers
• Leads/sales generated from these sources (using Google Analytics)

I am a big fan of Raven Tools as it pulls together all three of these tools and allows you to run a single report that includes all the elements you wish to report on and nothing more. This makes proving the value of the work you have delivered considerably easier than creating a report manually so that you can focus your time on the work to get the results.

Alexandra Gaiger is a Digital Marketing Architect at ThoughtShift Ltd and can be found on Twitter and Google+.
Photo courtesy of nestor galina on Flickr

Spend less, do more. Find out what Raven can do for you: Sign up for a free 30-day trial today.

As usual, I asked them all to pick out 10 questions to answer from the famous Vanity Fair Proust questionnaire. Also as usual, at least one person can’t count (but he’s a “creative,” so it’s probably not in his job description).

It’s your favorite part of these posts, isn’t it?

The One We’ll Never Call Jon*

Jon Zumbrun has joined Raven Internet Marketing Tools as a web developer. Jon has more than five years of experience in web development and web architecture. He previously served as senior web developer for AttendStar.

1. What is your greatest fear?
   Midnight robberies.
2. What is the trait you most deplore in others?
   Fronts. Hiding behind fronts.
3. What is it that you most dislike?
   My in-law’s dog.
4. What do you most value in your friends?
   Mercy.
5. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
   Physical strength.
6. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
   “See you suckers later.”
7. What is your greatest regret?
   Forgetting to do something for some one.
8. What or who is the greatest love of your life?
   My wife.
9. Where would you like to live?
   Muppets Theater.
10. Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
    Scooby-Doo.

*Because there can only be one Jon at Raven. Ever.

Contact Jon JZ

E-mail: jz@raventools.com
LinkedIn: Jon Zumbrun

The One Already Nicknamed Squirrel*

Steven Squires has joined Raven Internet Marketing Tools as a developer. Steven has more than 10 years of experience in building open source software solutions in a variety of industries, including Zappos.com.

1. Which historical figure do you most identify with?
   Richard Feynman, the quirky scientist.
2. Which living person do you most admire?
   My father.
3. What do you most value in your friends?
   Honesty.
4. What is your favorite journey?
   Life.
5. On what occasion do you lie?
   Questionnaires.
6. Which talent would you most like to have?
   Drawing.
7. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
   Windows ME.
8. What is your favorite occupation?
   Venture capitalist.
9. Who are your favorite writers?
   Ray Bradbury and Issac Asimov.
10. What is your motto?
    “Problems are opportunities in disguise.”

*Because we already have a Stephen. Seriously, parents of the 1970′s and 1980′s, you could have gotten a little creative with baby names.

Contact Stephen Steven

E-mail: steven@raventools.com
LinkedIn: Steven R. Squires

The One Who Really Is Named KC Jones*

KC Jones has joined Raven Internet Marketing Tools as a creative director. KC has more than 14 years of experience as a creative professional. He previously worked for Intero, The Lampo Group and Interactive Dream.

1. What is your greatest extravagance?
   I spend money on really great beer. Trappist Ales are worth every penny!
2. What is your most treasured possession?
   Sadly, it might be my iPad…I clearly have a problem.
3. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
   Moderation. I always laugh when people say “Moderation in all things.” Because heroin in moderation is still stupid.
4. What do you dislike most about your appearance?
   My stunning blue eyes. They’re always getting me in trouble.
5. Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
   Matt Murdock aka The Daredevil, the Man Without Fear. I’ve become a comic nerd as an adult.
6. What or who is the greatest love of your life?
   My family. They have shaped me and consistently made me a better man.
7. When and where were you happiest?
   Right here, right now. I’ve got a beautiful wife of 15 years, 3 amazing kids, awesome friends!
8. Where would you like to live?
   I am a proud Nashville native, but Portland, Oregon, could have my heart. The dream of the ’90′s is alive there.
9. What is your most marked characteristic?
   I talk a lot. And I mean A LOT! (Editor’s note: He means A LOOOOOOOT!) And since I know that about myself, I’m not too offended when people need me to shut up.
10. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
    I would gain the ability to bend space and time. It would make for a much shorter commute.
11. Who are your favorite writers?
    Ravi Zacharias, Neil Gaiman, C.S. Lewis and lately a lot of YAF writers … Hunger Games, Matched, etc. Clearly I’m part teenage girl.

*But we don’t know why.

Contact KC

E-mail: kc@raventools.com
Twitter: @RavenKCJ
LinkedIn: KC Jones

The Name Game

By popular request, I am adding a pie chart.

Want hints as to who is whom? Read more about Raven.

SEO, SEM, social media and so much more. Put Raven to work for you! Sign up for a free 30-day trial today.

In honor of Social Media Explorer’s Jason Falls’ book No Bullshit Social Media, we’ve been asking contestants to tell us the best (worst?) BS they’ve heard from social media “experts” and tweet it using the hashtag #BSsocialmediaexpertssay. Seven winners will get tickets to Explore Dallas’ day-long social media symposium worth $400!

You’ve got until Feb. 14 to enter (Note: the event is on Feb. 17th, so you’ll need to be able to get there quick! Locals and people with private planes, we’re talking to you), but in the meantime we thought we’d explore some of the common BS themes we’re seeing.

Ninjas

Oh, people. Just say no to ninjas. You know how we feel about this. Apparently we’re not alone. Witness entries like:
“We are a Social Media Ninja Company.”
“Hey there small biz owner, trust me, I am a social media ninja.”

Interns

Sure, let the interns run social media. Aren’t they on Facebook all day anyway? If CEOs are actually saying stuff like this, we’re all in trouble:
“Interns should run your social media strategy.”
“Let’s hire an intern to run our SM strategy since they use it every day.”

ROI

Of course ROI, the Holy Grail of social media, is seeing its share on entries. Like:
“Everyone wants ROI and our tool can prove it. We have what your Exec team is looking for!”
“It’s easy to definitively measure ROI in social media. Likes equate to purchases.”
“ROI Doesn’t matter. It’s Facebook’s fault. There’s no way to track it.”

Spam happy

Personality: who needs it? Just keep spamming. Witness these gems:
“The more exposure is the best exposure.”
“Your followers NEED your push messaging; it’s not SPAM.”
“Don’t get personal in your social strategy, make sure you only promote your brand and products.”

Followers first

Everyone knows fans and followers are the best metric. Right?
“Follow everyone you can on Twitter!” Really? That should get me some quality followers back.
“We can increase your ‘likes’ by 100%”
“It’s all about how many ppl Like you on Facebook and follow you on Twitter.”
“Just starting on Twitter? We can buy 5K followers in 2 weeks”

These are just a few of the great tweets we’ve received. Got your own BS to share? Hit us with your best shot!

It’s no BS – Raven has the tools you need for social media monitoring and management. Sign up for a free 30-day trial today!

Recently I’ve found myself turning to the Backlinks and Keywords sections to discover new backlink opportunities that I wouldn’t have been able to find without Research Central. Let me show you what I mean.

Research key members of a company for new link partners

If you head over to the Backlinks section of Research Central, you can sort by any of the table columns. The key to this trick is to sort by the Keyword/Key Phrase column. While we’d normally look for the anchor text of keywords we’re targeting, in this particular exercise we want to uncover where our competitor is guest blogging, doing interviews, etc.

Once you sort by anchor text, find one of your competitor’s key stakeholders’ names in the table. Here you’ll be able to identify all of the links to their website that use that stakeholder’s name as anchor text. Now you have a list of websites that they’ve either commented on, been mentioned in, guest blogged on or some other type of press that you might be able to recreate for your own client/company.

Finding the anchor text you want out of a link

Over in the Keywords section, Raven is able to identify both internal and external keywords that a website is likely targeting. On the External keywords tab, sort the table by “Ext. Root Domains”. The table will now sort in a way that focuses on how many different sites link to the site you’re researching using particular keywords or phrases as the anchor text.

If you click the gear icon for any link in the table, you can choose to view all of the domains linking to the website with that anchor text. This is a great way to quickly identify a large number of potential link partners who are willing to use the anchor text you’re trying to rank for.

Those are just a couple of the cool ways you can find new backlink opportunities with Research Central. What tricks have you found?

Research Central is just one powerful piece of Raven’s full Internet marketing platform. Get to know all the tools in our arsenal. Sign up for a free 30-day trial today!

What can be tagged in Raven:

• Keywords (Site > Keywords)
• Competitors (Site > Competitors)
• Links (Links > Link Manager)
• Events (Site > Events)

To begin, head over to the section in Raven that contains the data you’d like to bulk tag and click the “Export Data” icon (in Link Manager and Keyword Manager, choose your type of export as well).

Open the downloaded CSV in your spreadsheet program and find the “Tags” column. Fill in the tags you’d like to apply to each piece of data; use commas to add more than one tag.

Save your CSV, and in Raven click the “Import Data” icon. Upload your adjusted CSV, and your data will be tagged with your newly added tags.

To remove a single tag, click the “X” next to the tag. To bulk-remove tags, go to Site > Tags and click “Remove” in the “Options” column for the tag you’d like to remove. This will remove the tag from any piece of data across the entire website.

Find out how Raven can help you do more and spend less. Sign up for a free 30-day trial today!

We had a few extra tickets to give away, and since OMS is one of the first Internet marketing conferences of the year, we asked: what will 2012 be “the year of” in Internet marketing?

Here are the four best answers, as chosen by Ravens. The winners of our OMS giveaway received All-Access OMS Passes worth more than $1600. And maybe a drink or two from some Ravens.

2012 will be the year of: blogging and authorship

“With the recent changes in Google’s search functionality and information presentation on SERPs, it’s quite possible that we will witness yet another huge amplification of blogs’ power.

Authorship  will be associated with centralized profiles (Google +, Facebook, etc). Microdata is making its way into WordPress as well. What Google is trying to do is to associate content, ranking, reviews with real people. That’s what blogs have been doing since the very beginning. So, by connecting blogs, author pages and Google + profiles, bloggers will be jumping on this wave of changes and getting even more attention than ever before.

It’s quite possible that keyword association and quality ranking will go beyond any given stand-alone text. It may spill over to the author’s profile and improve ranking of other related materials that will be created by this author elsewhere on the web.

So, perhaps it’s time to concentrate on blogging and guest postings for the sites that will help to identify the author of content.”
– Dan Denysenko

2012 will be the year of: synchronization

“Instead of increasing the number of sites, tools and apps we use in social media, 2012 will be the year of synchronization; we keep it simple and use one single platform that organizes, puts together and syncs all our activities.”
– Henrik Berglin

2012 will be the year of: the app

“91.4 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in November, up 8 percent from the preceding three month period.

Smart phone sales are booming, and nearly everyone is downloading apps. People with smart phones are spending more time on apps than surfing the web.”
– Ellen Hakala

2012 will be the year of: the dragon

“Why? Because the Chinese say so, and who are we to question the likes of Confucius?  To the Chinese, the dragon has the following positive characteristics: innovative, enterprising, self-assured, brave and passionate.

Online marketing, an interesting obsession for many like myself, has become more and more of a challenge over the years. Disillusioning some, but for those SEO/Ms who exhibit the drive and motivations of the dragon, 2012 won’t be the year the world ends or zombies invade, but a year of passionately embracing new challenges (looking at you Google).”
– Marty Martin

What else will 2012 be the year of?

Although only four of entries could earn tickets, all the answers had insightful things to say about Internet marketing trends in the year to come. I commissioned one of our most artistically inclined Ravens, Arienne Holland, to whip up a pie chart showing what you guys think 2012 will bring. Thanks to everyone who entered!

SEO, social media, research, PPC – all in one place. Ready to see what Raven can do? Sign up for a free 30-day trial today.

Twitter is aggressive about advertising

Obviously. Twitter’s main source of revenue is their promoted products, and they want to compete with other self-service advertising platforms like Google and Facebook. In my opinion, it is actually easier to target users with one of Twitter’s promoted products than with a standard Facebook display ad.

Initially, promoted products were only available to US advertisers, but they have been expanding with new offices in the UK and Japan. According to reports, Twitter’s ad revenues are expected to be close to $400 million during the year 2013. Which is a pretty impressive number considering the community is only a few years old.

Consumer don’t mind promoted tweets

But how do people on Twitter feel about ads in their Twitter stream? Check out these statistics from eMarketer on attitudes towards promoted tweets.

Only a small percentage said they find promoted tweets annoying, and a much larger group is engaging with them and even finding valuable discounts. The vast majority of Twitter users surveyed were OK with seeing promoted tweets that are relevant to them – possibly even enjoying them.

Twitter trumps Facebook in fan loyalty

When comparing Twitter to Facebook, CMB Consumer Plus recently found that users who follow a brand on Twitter have a higher likelihood of buying something from that brand than those who are a fan of the brand on Facebook (67% compared to 51%). They also found a higher likelihood that Twitter followers of a brand would recommend it to others as compared to Facebook fans (79% compared to 60%).

The competition is low – for now

Because Twitter’s advertising program is still in a beta, the competition is low. You bid against other advertisers, and without many other advertisers to bid against, you can pretty good cost per engagement (CPE) prices. The minimum CPE bid is only $0.50 (which is not necessarily what you would pay, as you have to bid high enough to beat out other advertisers), which presents a great opportunity to start a campaign on a reasonable budget.

But that window could be closing soon. Twitter Sales Chief Adam Brian spoke with the Wall Street Journal a few months ago and said that more than “1,000 advertisers, including many small businesses” have used purchased ads from Twitter, “and about 80% have made more than one purchase.” As more and more advertisers purchase more ads on Twitter, the competition will rise.

How to get started

If you can spare $5,000 a month (Twitter’s minimum commitment, for 3 months) from your advertising budget, consider testing a Twitter campaign. Right now, you still need to apply for an account to begin running promoted tweets or accounts.

Usually, you will be required to complete an insertion order, but a few weeks ago Twitter announced a limited beta allowing electronic payments – a good direction, as their ultimate goal is for advertisers to be able to set up and launch a campaign without help from a representative. Still, I can tell you that you can easily get a sponsored follow or tweet campaign running within seven days. Your options are:

Promoted accounts

Promoted accounts are probably the easiest and most straightforward advertising solution on Twitter. Your account is listed under the “who to follow” section on Twitter.com, and you bid against other advertisers in a cost per follow bidding model. Just like with AdWords, the bidding really depends on your industry and the competition but generally CPF starts around $1-$2.

You can target users by location, interests, and keywords mentioned in their Twitter stream. Here’s an example of what a promoted account looks like on Twitter.com.

This is the official Occupy Wall Street account being promoted, by the way. If an occupier hooked up to a car battery, using WiFi from a nearby coffee shop can run ads on Twitter, your business can too!

Promoted tweets

With a sponsored tweet, you can promote a message in Twitter’s search results, in a follower’s timelines, or in the timeline of users that Twitter deems “similar” to your current followers. Advertisers pay on a cost per engagement model, where you can bid your maximum CPE. Promoted tweets carry a minimum CPE of $0.10 and a suggested CPE of $0.50.

Engagement is defined as one of the following actions:

• Click (can be a link, hashtag or open of the promoted tweet to the details pane)
• Favorite
• Retweet
• Reply

Notice that you will be charged for the click of a hashtag. This is why, unless you have a specific reason for doing so, I usually don’t recommend including a hashtag in your promoted tweet.

Promoted trends

Worldwide promoted trends are Twitter’s most expensive advertising solution by a long shot. For a $120,000 flat fee you can promote a trend to all users in the USA. The trend will also appear on third party and mobile apps. Experts estimate this promoted trend can deliver an average of 25,000,000 impressions a day.

With such a high price tag, this is obviously not an option for most advertisers. But for those representing, say, a large brand launching a new product, or a television network looking to create conversation about a new show, then promoted trends can actually be a pretty effective way to reach a huge audience.

Layer on top of organic efforts

If you’re ready to run a Twitter promoted campaign, make sure you’re getting the most of out those advertising dollars. The most important piece of advice I can give you is that any effective paid Twitter strategy must be paired with natural interaction in the community. You, or your community manager, will need to be active in posting valuable updates, interacting with your followers, keeping on top of popular trends, etc.

If you don’t have that foundation in place before launching a sponsored campaign, it will inhibit the success of your paid effort. Why? Because no matter how high you bid on a promoted follow campaign, if users don’t see any value in the updates in your Twitter stream then they aren’t going to follow you. Plain and simple.

Set goals before launching

Before you begin spending money on followers or actions, think about your goals. Exactly what actions do you want users to complete? Exactly how will you define the success of your campaign? Always establish your goals first, and then build your campaigns around these desired actions.

You may just want to get more followers for your brand. That’s an easy goal to achieve. But maybe you have a more complicated goal, like getting people talking about a new product launch. Maybe you want to get users to click through to sign up for a newsletter on your site or complete a contact form. As with any paid effort, it is always important to define these goals, otherwise you could be wasting your advertising dollars.

I have no affiliation with BeachBody (the P90X workout company) but I think this is a great example of a promoted tweet.

I took this screen shot on November 10th, 2011 – the day before 11/11/11, which was trending worldwide on Twitter. BeachBody did a great job of capitalizing on the popularity of 11/11/11, and tied in a contest for $1,111. Also, notice how the only link they have in the promoted tweet is a link to enter the contest. No hashtags, no push to get users to retweet, the goal is very clear: click the link and enter the contest.

Consider deals and contests

According to a study from Shop.org, 58% of people surveyed say they follow retailers online to find discounts. Another 39% said they follow retailers for information on contests. These are great elements to include in your sponsored effort, and they often lead to higher engagement rates.

As an avid Tweeter, I have entered probably hundreds of contests that I’ve heard about on Twitter. From iPads, to books, to gift cards. Users on Twitter have come to expect contests and special “Twitter followers only” deals, so why not give them what they want?

Mathew Guiver specializes in paid search and sponsored social campaigns at e-storm International. He is also a mega Britney Spears fan. Find him on Twitter @MathewGuiver.

Have you considered or run a promoted campaign on Twitter? What were the results? Tell us about it in the comments!

Way back in the summer of 2011, we started a few fantasy football leagues that have been the source of lots of fun and smack talk throughout the season. Since then, three Raven fans have scrapped, traded, and yelled at their TVs (we imagine) to emerge victorious as the winners of their leagues.

What better time to introduce them than the biggest football weekend of the year?

Dustin Thompson

Online Marketing Consultant at Konnected Interactive
Fantasy team: Konnected Minneapolis
Strategy: I was in four leagues this year so my main strategy was to try and draft as many of the same players as I could across leagues (which was nearly impossible) so I wouldn’t be competing against myself. I’m a fantasy football geek, so by Monday morning I would always know who I wanted to pick up that week.
Star players: Rob Gronkowski is a stud, and I think anyone who had them on their team this year would agree. I also had the luck of drafting Reggie Bush who ended up being a good player for once in his career.
Lowest point: I had a pretty up-and-down season and didn’t do as well as I though I would in the regular season. Being that I was in four leagues, I was just happy if I won in half of my games in any given week.
Fantasy history: I have been playing fantasy for about 10 years in two leagues. I typically end up at least making my league dues back, and I have won three or four times. I really do it because it makes some of the terribly uninteresting games fun on Sunday afternoon.
Super Bowl pick: I am going with the Giants.

Nate Griffin

Owner, Man of Action Metrics, LLC
Fantasy team: Chain Smokers (This comes from my days of being a heavy smoker. I don’t smoke anymore, but I still like the team name.)
Strategy: I drafted Aaron Rodgers first, and as a Vikings’ fan you have no idea how much that killed me. I thought I could do pretty well with a beast quarterback and a good tight end. I talk very little smack because, again Vikings fan.
Star players: Aaron Rodgers, obviously; he had the most points out of everyone on in the league. Percy Harvin was consistent all season, but the real surprise was CJ Spiller. He came on at the end of the year when my two starting running backs were doing nothing.
Lowest point: I had the #3 seed in the playoffs, but I thought I lost the first round in week 14. Going into the Sunday Night Seahawks/Rams game I needed Doug Baldwin to get 9 points to win. The most he had in the previous seven weeks was 7 points. I couldn’t even turn the game on. When I checked the score Monday morning and Baldwin had 15 points, I ran around the office.
Fantasy history: I’ve played FF for years and this is my first win. I would have a great regular season, and then lose in the semi-finals. I had Tom Brady during his 18-1 season and still couldn’t make the finals. It’s really nice to have that monkey off my back.
Super Bowl pick: I think the Giants can win, and they’ve proven it, but Tom Brady is crazy intense during the playoffs and Bellicheck knows how to game plan well. I’m going to say the Patriots will win in a shootout, but if I were a betting man, I’d take the Giants to win and the under.

Samantha Yeargin

Online Media Manager, Goodwill Industries of Middle Tennessee
Team Name: East Nasties
Strategy: I took the highest-ranked player available at the draft (unless his name was Peyton Manning). That turned out to be a good move.
Star Player: Jacksonville RB Maurice Jones-Drew turned in consistently great numbers, and I had the best Defense/ST in the league (San Francisco).
Low Point: The team finished the regular season 7-5, so I didn’t expect to do well in the playoffs. I checked in mostly to see how much I was going to lose by. Also, I had to draft Denver QB Tim Tebow mid-season because both of my quarterbacks had season-ending injuries.
Fantasy History: Never played before.
Super Bowl pick: Honda, if that YouTube “middle aged Ferris Bueller” clip really is from their Super Bowl ad.

Congrats to our winners!

Photo courtesy Morning Theft on Flickr

One way to stay on top of your game? Spend wisely on great Internet marketing conferences like SMX West in San Jose, CA Feb. 28-Mar. 1, 2012. Even better: spend nothing and get $1695 worth of insider Internet marketing advice for free!

Raven Tools is exhibiting at SMX West among many other conferences in February, and we have one extra All-Access Pass for a lucky winner.

Enter on Raven Tools’ Facebook page for a chance to hear from more than 130 of the world’s most knowledgeable search marketers and attend 60-plus sessions focusing on search engine optimization, paid search advertising, social media marketing, local and mobile search, landing page conversions and more.

We’ll notify the winner on Monday, Feb. 6. Good luck!

Stay on top of your Internet marketing game – Raven Tools can help! Sign up for a free 30-day trial today.

Meanwhile, back at home we’ll have no shortage of ways to hang out with us and keep learning how to make the most of the Raven platform.

Here’s where you can catch us this month.

On the road

Online Marketing Summit in San Diego Feb. 6-10
In addition to exhibiting (that means T-shirts!) at Online Marketing Summit, Raven’s VP of Product Marketing Taylor Pratt will speak in a session focusing on Social Media Analytics and ROI.

An Event Apart in Atlanta Feb. 6-8
Raven’s Chief Product Officer Jon Henshaw and our Art Director Jeff Crump will be hitting up this three-day codefest to make sure Raven stays on the cutting edge of web design and development.

MarketingSherpa Email Summit in Las Vegas Feb. 7-10
Communications Director Arienne Holland will be reppin’ Raven and ready to learn at this conference – the world’s largest research-based email marketing event.

PubCon Paradise in Honolulu Feb. 13-17
Lucky Taylor and Jon get to make the tough trip to Hawaii for the search-focused PubCon Paradise. Taylor will speak in a session on SEO Analytics, and Jon in a session on SEO tools. None of us are bitter about this one, nope.

Explore Dallas-Fort Worth in Dallas Feb. 17
Raven is psyched to be the top sponsor of social media rock star Jason Falls’ Explore Dallas-Fort Worth event. We’ll be exhibiting and giving out some cool swag, and Arienne will also speak on smarter social media monitoring. Even better: we’re giving away 7 tickets worth $400 each for the price of a tweet! Get in on that action.

SearchFest 2012 in Portland Feb. 23-24
User Experience Manager Alison Groves will be representing Raven as we sponsor SearchFest, Portland’s premiere search marketing and social media conference. Make sure you meet her if you’ll be there!

HSMAI Digital Marketing Strategy Conference in Boston Feb. 28
We’ll be making our first appearance at the Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International’s interactive one-day conference

SMX West in San Jose Feb. 28-March 1
Raven is exhibiting at this conference focusing on search and social media marketing, and Community Manager Courtney Seiter (that’s me!) will speak on the panel “Justifying the Investment: Analytics for Social Media.” We also have a free ticket with your name on it!

At home

Murmuration in Nashville Feb. 8
We’re also excited to attend a conference right in our own backyard! Raven is attending Murmuration in Nashville Feb. 8 and sponsoring Birdbath, the event’s VIP afterparty.

#Ravenchat
If you missed January’s #Ravenchat with Joe Hall, you missed lots of fun – and some great intel on search and social trends as well as Raven. Catch up with the highlights and then join us Feb. 22 at 3 pm CST (GMT-6) for the next chat. Special guest star to be announced soon!

Webinars
As usual, you can connect with us any Thursday during our popular weekly walkthrough webinars of the entire Raven platform, with live question-and-answer sessions. These webinars take place every Thursday at 11 a.m. CST (GMT-6), and you can sign up now for the Feb. 2 walkthrough.

We’re also continuing our weekly webinars focusing on a specific feature or aspect of the Raven platform. These take place most Tuesdays at 11 a.m. CST (GMT-6). We’ll be adding topics over on the webinars page, so check back often.

To see the latest webinar sign-ups, visit the webinars section of our customer care page. (You can also look here to find the archived version of any webinars you might have missed.)

On Twitter
And most days, you can also find the whole flock of Ravens on Twitter.

Marketing People (we tweet a lot)
@RavenAlison
@RavenArienne
@RavenCourts
RavenGiant
RavenPratt

Developer Nerds (they tweet a little less)
@RavenAmbler
@RavenJason
@RavenYeargin

Support Posse (they answer your questions)
@RavenConz
@RavenMegan
@RavenNate

Product Dudes (we have no idea what they’re up to)
@RavenCrump
@RavenJon

Photo by Jessica Rose Lane on Flickr

Want to learn more about how Raven Tools can help you do more and spend less? Sign up for a free 30-day trial today!