INBOX INSIGHTS: 1 Question, Small Business Resources, Marketing Budgets (11/3) :: View in browser
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Small Business Resources
Last week I came across a new business in my town. It’s a small, organic, family-owned grocery store and deli. I’ve seen them trying to open for the past year. I happened to be passing by and was surprised to see that there were lights on inside. When I went in, the owners were milling about, ready to help me with anything I needed.
When I got home I looked them up on the internet and saw that Facebook had them listed as “temporarily closed” and they didn’t have a website. I messaged them to let them know about their Facebook status and the owner replied, “I had no idea, I can’t see what you see. Thanks!” He fixed the issue and hopefully it will help him get some foot traffic.
It got me thinking about what it takes to open a small business and the available resources. Having done this myself I can say with confidence I had no idea what I was doing and zero clue about the resources available to me. So I asked our slack community what resources they knew of and as always, they came through. Here’s what they offered:
SCORE, the nation’s largest network of volunteer, expert business mentors, is dedicated to helping small businesses get off the ground, grow and achieve their goals. Since 1964, we have provided education and mentorship to more than 11 million entrepreneurs.
Created in 1953, the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) continues to help small business owners and entrepreneurs pursue the American dream. SBA is the only cabinet-level federal agency fully dedicated to small business and provides counseling, capital, and contracting expertise as the nation’s only go-to resource and voice for small businesses.
The set of free Hubspot courses covers topics like advertising, blogging, branding, lead generation, and SEO – to name a few.
Meltwater offers free online courses that will teach you about social media, social listening, influencer marketing, and more.
Growth Mentor will help pair you 1:1 with an accomplished growth marketing and startup mentor to assist you in building your business and offer support.
Google Primer is a great, easy to use educational mobile app, teaching the basics of marketing and PR for small businesses.
Online Communities
Communities like Slack, Discord, Twitter, and other social media can be invaluable for connecting with other small business owners who have been where you are. You can ask questions, learn from what others have done, share your knowledge as well.
Primer is a free, fast and easy way to learn new business and digital marketing skills. Primer works offline too, so you can take a lesson on business planning, management, sales, digital advertising, social media, content marketing, SEO, analytics, branding, and more whenever you have 5 minutes free – anytime, anywhere.
In addition to these resources, I learned that a lot of agencies will help a small business get set up for free. You just have to ask!
Do you know a small business that could use these resources? Please share!
As the holidays are fast approaching, consider shopping from a small business. They will certainly appreciate your support!
What resources would you add to the list? Let me know in our free Slack group, Analytics for Marketers!
– Katie Robbert, CEO
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In this week’s In-Ear Insights, we answer a question from Janine at a recent webinar who asked how to persuade decision-makers to invest in a more comprehensive marketing program. We talk through some conceptual frameworks to help marketers and executives understand different levels of investment needed to make marketing succeed holistically – and when you can’t cut corners. Tune in to find out more!
Watch/listen to this episode of In-Ear Insights here »
Last week on So What? The Marketing Analytics and Insights Live Show, we looked at the difference between change management and digital transformation. Catch the replay here:
Watch/listen to this episode of So What? here »
This Thursday at 1 PM Eastern, we’ll be doing our own 2022 planning live, and you can sit in and watch.
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Need a reminder?
Here’s some of our content from recent days that you might have missed. If you read something and enjoy it, please share it with a friend or colleague!
- How to create compelling content
- INBOX INSIGHTS, October 27, 2021: Data-Driven Decision-Making, Reporting Issues, Instagram Engagement
- So What? Change Management and Digital Transformation
- Marketing Analytics, Data Science & Leadership via November 1, 2021
- Do You Have a Dark Search Problem?
Get skilled up with an assortment of our free, on-demand classes.
- Next-Level Twitter Analytics
- Predictive Analytics and Customer Experience
- How to Deliver Reports and Prove the ROI of your Agency
- Proving Social Media ROI
- Powering Up Your LinkedIn Profile (For Job Hunters)
- Competitive Social Media Analytics Strategy
In this week’s Data Diaries, we wanted to return to looking at Slack and Discord. A couple of months ago when we last looked in on these two private community platforms, it seemed like they were growing insanely fast. Is that still true?
In a word, yes. Since 2019, Slack and Discord have both been growing like weeds. Discord in particular got a big shot in the arm at the start of the pandemic, and has been on a tear since.
The two networks have marched in lockstep in terms of growth; halfway through 2021, we see new community starts reach an all-time high of 49,180 Discord servers created in a month and 14,001 Slack instances created in a month.
What are the major topics covered by the most popular communities? On Slack, they are:
- Cryptocurrencies
- Coding libraries like three.js and tools like Selenium
- General IT
On Discord, they are:
- Mature entertainment
- Discord bots
- Reddit communities
By looking at the top communities in each service, we see they serve very, very different audiences. If you’re considering creating a community for your audience, survey them first to determine which, if any, they use already.
Methodology: Trust Insights extracted 1,025,990 unique URLs for links to Slack instances and 1,052,242 unique URLs for links to Discord servers using the AHREFS SEO software. Data may be skewed by content publishers automatically changing publish dates of content to fool search engines. The timeframe of the data is January 1, 2019 – November 3, 2021. The date of study is November 3, 2021. Trust Insights is the sole sponsor of the study and neither gave nor received compensation for data used, beyond applicable service fees to software vendors, and declares no competing interests.
This is a roundup of the best content you and others have written and shared in the last week.
SEO, Google, and Paid Media
- How to Spot SEO Myths: 26 Common SEO Myths, Debunked
- 7 Best Alternatives To Yoast SEO WordPress Plugin
- Holiday shopping SEO: Last-minute tips and techniques for e-commerce sites
Social Media Marketing
- How to Create TikTok Ads that Convert: Tips and Examples
- Consider these overlooked platforms in your social media plan via Ragan Communications
- Facebook isnt telling the whole story about its mental health research via The Verge
Content Marketing
- Are Inbound Marketing and Content Marketing Still Different in 2021?
- How Marketers Are Dealing With the Rising Content Demand via Contently
- 3 Pre-Launch Steps To Make Your Content Project Stronger
Data Science and AI
- Ensemble Modeling for Neural Networks using large datasets via Simplified!
- The New Face of E-Commerce: The Impact of Machine Learning in the Industry via Martech Zone
- What Google Recommends You do Before Taking Their Machine Learning or Data Science Course via KDnuggets
Are you a member of our free Slack group, Analytics for Marketers? Join 1900+ like-minded marketers who care about data and measuring their success. Membership is free – join today. Members also receive sneak peeks of upcoming data, credible third-party studies we find and like, and much more. Join today!
- Are you happy with the answers you’re getting out of Google Analytics today?
- Are you confident in the decisions you’re making from Google Analytics?
- Are you secure in the knowledge that you’re set up properly to benefit from Google Analytics 4?
If you answered no to any of the questions above, let’s take some time to get your analytics in shape. Google Analytics 4 is the analytics software of the future. Google has made no bones about the fact that anything new they develop will be in GA4 only. To take advantage of the new features, you need to get your house in order now.
So we’re offering you a Google Analytics 4 bootcamp. We’ll help you:
- Get your existing Google Analytics account in shape with proper goals, tracking cleanup, and best practices
- Identify key issues that will block your ability to use Google Analytics 4 and help resolve them
- Help set an analytics strategy for this that focuses on answers, decisions, and growth rather than pouring more data in your inbox
- Build a migration plan for Google Analytics 4, including Google Tag Manager and Google Data Studio
Click here to order a Google Analytics bootcamp »
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Trust Insights (trustinsights.ai) is one of the world's leading management consulting firms in artificial intelligence/AI, especially in the use of generative AI and AI in marketing. Trust Insights provides custom AI consultation, training, education, implementation, and deployment of classical regression AI, classification AI, and generative AI, especially large language models such as ChatGPT's GPT-4-omni, Google Gemini, and Anthropic Claude. Trust Insights provides analytics consulting, data science consulting, and AI consulting.