I’m excited to share this week’s list of posts because a couple hit close to home. The first listed on Facebook ad strategy is a great audio post by my consultant, Rick Mulready, who provides great insight about the many recent changes marketers need to know. Other posts touch on a new way to view the sales funnel, an awesome LinkedIn cheat sheet and Google’s top 3 search ranking factors. Lastly, I want to share our agency’s list of top Midwest conferences for 2016 – including our own, Experience Inbound taking place this May.

Content marketing can show great ROI for both B2B and B2C companies, so why do so many companies, even those with dedicated marketing departments, struggle with getting it done effectively and frequently? Content marketing is complex and always changing, and hiring the amount of skilled staff that you would need to do everything from writing to editing, to promoting and social-sharing, is time consuming and costly to keep all functions of content production and promotion in-house. Additionally, implementation of a strong content marketing plan can be overwhelming for many small businesses. 

Each year, our team at Stream Creative is proud to issue our picks for the top Midwest marketing and advertising conferences. With budget and short-distance travel in mind, we’ve lined up a great list for 2016!

This week’s list of posts is all about social with a little bit of content and lead generation thrown in. From LinkedIn best practices for individuals and businesses, social advertising to re-thinking how we position calls-to-action and Google+, the social platform we love to hate - the best articles I read from the past week touch on the ever-changing world of social promotion for business and the importance of testing and analyzing how readers are engaging with your content.

Are you currently using LeadPages to create landing pages and convert leads? This video will show you how to make sure your LeadPages forms are connecting to your HubSpot contacts database. You’ll first want to make sure you have your HubSpot Integration set up at the account level. HubSpot integration is available with a LeadPages Advanced plan. Now that you have your integration set up, you will want to build out your first landing page using a LeadPages template. Next,  you can connect the LeadPages form to your HubSpot forms so the data will pass through. Below are the steps that you will need to take to accomplish this task.

In part 1 of this series, we discussed ways how small or 1 person marketing departments can do more in less time. Now, we will pull back the curtain and share 11 of the actual tools that make the magic happen. These resources all meet one of two basic needs: doing more professional-quality marketing in less time, and cutting down on time spent completing administrative tasks.

My list of posts from last week are all about social channels, live streaming and creating interactive and engaging online experiences for your customers. From Snapchat tutorials, Facebook Carousel ads to interactive content and writing the best meta descriptions - the best articles I read from the past 7 days show the transformation taking place in the world of content marketing to include more visually compelling elements.

If your company is moving from Salesforce to HubSpot CRM, there is an easy way to import your databases by importing your company contacts into the HubSpot CRM.

Being a one-person marketing department forces you to master many complex trades. First, you must be a marketing strategist and business analyst who comes up with the big picture goals, campaigns, and calendars. Next, oftentimes you must also be a graphic designer, SEO expert, copywriter, event planner, media buyer, vendor, staff trainer, and overall customer service savant in order to tackle the day-to-day activities.

Looking for a few tips from copywriting experts or ways to help prove ROI for your content marketing efforts? Are you someone who is tasked with generating social media content for your business, but struggle with finding or creating quality images? My favorite posts this week touch on these topics as well as a few others that I found incredibly useful, and I hope you do too.