If there is one marketing tactic out there that is important to almost every business today, it's undoubtedly SEO. Let's face it, Google runs the world.

As we look forward to 2018, we are all beginning to think about all that the next year could bring. For schools and education organizations, that means improved student recruitment through more effective education marketing. With more competition, an industry that hasn't really had to focus on marketing in the past, and an increase in the number of schools and districts throughout the US, schools are struggling to effectively recruit and retain students. Let's take a look at five ways to improve your student recruitment with effective education marketing in the new year.

Starting a business is exciting, terrifying, fun, sleep depriving, and most of all - it is all you can think about. It's your baby. It's your life. Man, was that the truth for me when I started, what was then, Bee Social.

A new year means a new opportunity to make 2018 the best year yet. For many businesses, that also means a website makeover may be on the horizon. While not every business needs (or has the budget) to completely redo their website, there are things that you can do to give your website a digital face lift in the new year. Here are six of our favorite website additions and changes that you can make right away to improve your online presence.

We've all got plenty of competition, both direct and indirect. In order to get a leg up on our competition, it's important to understand where the 'low hanging fruit' is within the market. As the digital landscape has grown, it has actually gotten easier to skip through some of the growing pains behind new campaigns and marketing in general.

Marketing has changed. The sales process has changed. Consumers have changed. In order to reach your potential customers and really get them into your funnel so that you can nurture them into customers, intrusive outbound marketing just doesn't work anymore.

The best marketing campaigns of the past year all have one thing in common - they all did much more than just promote their brand.

Did you know that when you generate a lead online they are already over half way to their purchasing decision? According to research, 57% of their decision is already made. 

UPDATED September 22nd, 2017.

Creating great content is what separates businesses on social media. Do you like seeing sales pitches with every single post? HECK NO. We want to see interesting, engaging, and fun content that relates to us. The companies that figure that out and deliver on that are the businesses that see the value and benefit of a great social media content creation strategy. Like we talked about in Social Media Content Creation: The 80/20 Rule, we recommend focusing 80% of your efforts on creating engaging content and only 20% on sales material.

Finding great content is the hardest part. Let's take a look at eleven resources that will help you create, develop, and share great content on all of your social media pages.

Want to know why people say "content is king" when they talk about marketing? It's estimated that 95% of consumers look for a business online before making a purchasing decision. Your online content is the first thing they'll see, well, hopefully it's your content and not a competitor's.