If you don’t read our weekly list of five things you might have missed, you could potentially miss out on cool blogging commenting innovation, some shocking news that will affect mobile marketing and the incredible brand engagement happening in Peru. And you wouldn’t want to do that now, would ya?

1.) SMS, Meet the FCC: If you’ve been using SMS text messaging to market to your clients, things just got a little more complicated. According to ClickZ, an updated ruling by the FCC now dictates that marketers must get written consent before sending sales messages via SMS text. “The ruling classifies text messages with auto-dialed ‘telemarketing robocalls,’ and requires ‘prior express written consent’ from the recipient. This consent can take the form of an ‘email, website form, text message, telephone key press, or voice recording,’” Melinda Krueger of ClickZ writes. Translation: The days of branded text blasts without permission are officially over.

2.) Widespread Comments: This week introduced a super-cool way for blog commenters to also share their thoughts on Google+. Google+ users who comment on Blogger-based blogs will now be able to post these comments on Google+ which instantly spreads the conversation — and the blog — to a huge audience. This innovation is good news for both blog readers and blog marketers.

3.) Twitter Tracks: Speaking of new products from social media giants, Twitter rocked the Internet this week by releasing Twitter Music. Think more Pandora meets MySpace and less iTunes and you’ll get the idea of this new service. Twitter Music seems like a hit already with artists and labels, but it remains to be seen if music fans will respond.

4.) LinkedIn Love: Having a hard time marketing on LinkedIn? You’re not alone. Getting a brand to break through on the crowded, schmoozy site is no easy task, so this article by Mike Delgado of Social Media Examiner is an essential read for marketers looking for LinkedIn love.

5.) The Power of Smiles: Lastly, we wrap up our list with this awesome photo booth marketing idea from Coca-Cola. The world’s favorite soda got serious Peruvians to crack a smile in photo booths posted around the country with the “Happy ID Project.” Armed with smile-activated cameras, the booths popped out IDs that give lucky smilers free Coke stuff and rewards just for turning their frowns upside down.

Happy April Fools Day! Thanks to the digital revolution and online marketing, April 1st has gone from minor holiday to full-fledged pop culture phenomenon. Over the last few years, we have seen brands — from the heavy hitters to creative independents — use social media, viral marketing, innovative online video creation and all things Internet to pull off good-natured pranks on their followings. To celebrate, here’s our list of five April Fools pranks you might have missed.

1.) Bacon Fresh: Topping our list is the granddaddy of all 2013 April Fools gags: Scope’s Bacon Mouthwash. Released a few days before the holiday, the spot has wisely had people wondering, “Is this actually real?!?” which is the sign of a damn good prank.

2.) Kitty to the Rescue: See Eye Inc., the school which helps canines turn into helpful service animals, is introducing the world’s first seeing eye cat in honor of the holiday. One glance at the kitty with the service harness on and you’ll see why this smart joke makes our list.

3.) Pick a Winner: Call it the worst surprise of the year. Call it a joke everybody saw coming. But whatever you call it, YouTube shutting down in an elaborate April Fool’s joke is still pretty genius.

4.) Painted-on Jeans: Kudos to clothier American Eagle for cooking up a hilarious parody of both its own products and 20-something customer base. The AEO Skinny Skinny Jeans, complete with a full online video campaign, are literally just cans of spray paint. American Eagle has managed to laugh at itself while laughing with its following, too, which is a rare thing indeed.

5.) Even More Bacon: If you weren’t totally over/grossed out/exhausted by our collective obsession of bacon, the last gag on our list should do the trick. While we can’t be positive it isn’t an actual product, we are praying J&D Foods’ recently-released bacon condoms and (gag) bacon lube are the stuff of practical jokes. Nevertheless, it is memorable and subsequently has nabbed a bunch of headlines for J&D Foods.

Whether the final death knell for search engine marketing has been officially rung is a debate we’d rather not get involved in. What we do know is that some of our old SEO marketing practices are still incredibly valuable, especially in blog management and blog marketing. Keywords, for example, are one tool from the golden days of SEO that hasn’t gone out of style. But even after all this time, many folks new to blogging might wonder, “What are keywords and why the heck should I even care?”

A keyword, to put it simply, is that word which pops up in bold when a search engine like Google or Bing returns a list of results. At the top of the search engine result heap are the sites which use the keyword in question. Google wants bloggers to use keywords and wants readers to click on sites that use them too, so by putting the keywords or phrases in bold it makes the decision of which search engine result to click on even easier. Every blogger should give a hoot about keywords because they are incredibly easy to use and help make finding your brand online a snap.

To dip your toes in the keywords waters, start simple. With branded blogs and blogging for business, the best place to start is keywords which reflect what you do and where you do it. If, by chance, you are a landscaper in Atlanta, Ga., something like “Atlanta landscapers” or ” Georgia gardening experts” would do the trick. More keywords can go deeper into your specific services and topics that your blog talks about.

Once you’ve picked out keywords, start sticking them in your posts. Coincidentally, a good list of keywords makes planning your posts less stressful, too. As you map out your posts for the week, peruse your keywords and pick out the magic word you want to discuss and optimize. Use this word in your headline and throughout your post, but also use it in tweets and other social media marketing platforms. And don’t worry about packing your posts with tons of keywords. Keyword density isn’t as important as we once thought. Plus, using keywords over and over looks awkward to readers (and for good reasons).

As blog creation changes and SEO morphs, keywords remain a powerful and easy tool. In fact, we wouldn’t be surprised to see keywords flourish even further with the continuing explosion of tablet blog reading and ongoing Google algorithm updates.

Happy New Year! 2012 was fantastic, but in the world of online marketing, it’s all about looking forward. For the last several weeks, every blog has posted predictions about what the next big trends for the new year will be. Not to be left out, we thought we’d throw our hat in the New Year’s predictions game and give you our own list of online marketing trends to be on the lookout for in 2013.

High Quality Content: As Google becomes more hardcore about recycled posts and shifty SEO practices, our No. 1 marketing trend for 2013 is quality content. Bloggers, journalists and brands are going to be put to the test in 2013 to create unique content daily as search engines and readers alike demand great content delivered on a regular basis.

Email Explosion: After countless hours tweeting, pinning and Facebooking, wouldn’t it just figure that good, old-fashioned email would emerge as the hot marketing trend of 2013? Turns out that thing you do every day is more effective for sales than social media. Thanks in large part to easy-to-use services like Constant Contact and the continued smartphone surge, companies of all sizes are returning to the channel to talk directly to their clients and followings. A solid strategy for email marketing is a must have for 2013.

Specifically Social: With big brands scaling back on what they spend on social and smaller companies forced to devoting time to one or two platforms, look for social media marketing to get edited — big time. Brands are moving towards developing dynamic, clever, specialized campaigns rather contributing daily noise and newsfeed pollution. 2013 will be an interesting year to watch how businesses use Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest for more thoughtful and particular marketing.

The Blogazine Gets Bigger: The line between blogging for business and mobile marketing is about to get even more blurry. Look for corporate blogs to address the design and content demands of tablet and smartphone users more than ever this year. As the equipment gets more affordable, the demand for blogs that are more mobile friendly and with that digital magazine look is going to be higher than ever. Readers want style and substance, and they want to be able to take it anywhere.

Go inside a blip that caused mega nightmares for blog marketing specialists! See how one brand is trying to make scrapbooking cool again! And oh-so-much more in this week’s Five Things You Might Have Missed.

1.) 20 Years of Texting: This week SMS celebrated two decades of “OMG” and “K”. The first SMS (short message service) or text was sent in 1992 and it read simply, “Merry Christmas.” Since then, text messaging has exploded and opened the doors for mobile marketing. While some wonder if the SMS days are numbered, the anniversary tops our list for creating a platform that has truly changed the way we communicate and market.

2.) Tumblr Typhoon: If you conduct your company’s blog writing and blog creation primarily on Tumblr, then Monday was probably not your favorite day. In case you missed it (and be thankful if you did), a major worm knocked Tumblr out, causing the popular blogging platform to disable posting. Tumblr urged users to reset passwords while it got things ironed out. The culprit for this blogtastrophe? Tumblr’s re-blogging feature. The worm spread from post to post each time Tumblr users innocently re-blogged posts.

3.) The Scrapbook Comes Back: Leave it to the digital engagement masterminds at IKEA to make the scrapbook cool again. KLIPPBOK (which actually means scrapbook in Swedish) is an inventive iPad app which lets users clip things they like from IKEA (furniture, paint swatches, meatballs, etc.) and create endless decorating combinations. It’s a little bit Pinterest, a little bit old school and a lot of amazing. We’re thrilled to see companies like IKEA take tablet marketing and apps to a more imaginative level.

4.) For the birds: “What would happen if real birds used Twitter?” you ask. The creative folks at Voldemars Dudums advertising created this fun, time-killing video to find out. You’re welcome!

5.) Jason____: And finally, if you thought the guy who wrangled brands to pay him to wear their t-shirts couldn’t come up with a crazier marketing idea, you thought wrong. Jason Sadler announced last week that he was auctioning off his last name. For an entire year, Sadler will now change his last name to the highest bidding brand name. The winner? At $34,500, JLabAudio is the winning new last name… but Jason and his company, IWearYourShirt.com, score millions of dollars in free press coverage.

What do Honey Boo Boo, a Facebook marketing faux pas and some really dumb toys have in common? They’re all part of this week’s five things you might have missed list, silly! Sit back and get ready to be edumacated on new and notorious stories from the online marketing universe that may have passed you by.

1.) The Year in Bing: ‘Tis the season for the onslaught of year-end lists, and it’s actually impossible to read them all. But if you missed it, we highly recommend glancing at the top searches for 2012. Search engine marketers love this sort of thing — it help predict trends — but the list itself is predictable. Honey Boo Boo, the election, the 2012 Olympics and Kim Kardashian all topped the list. Still, it’s worth a gander for the most searched social networks. Facebook topped the list, with retro-surprise MySpace holding at No. 3. 2012′s social media darling Pinterest didn’t even crack the top five.

2.) Twitter Tangle: Absolutely no one missed the hilarious copyright infringement hoax on Facebook but you might have missed the very real proprietary battle brewing over at Twitter. A courtroom tussle between Twitter and PeopleBrowser could very well define who actually owns your tweets… do you or does Twitter? We’re sure to find out more; the case heads to court this winter.

3.) Scary or Snoozy: Here in the U.S., zombies are so 2011. Even most advertisers have moved on. But in Norway, the undead can still scare up major headlines. In fact, a recent viral ad had parents organizations screaming for a boycott. But you tell us, you marketing geniuses, is this spot scary or a little sleepy? Discuss!

4.) Speaking of Boycotts: By now, we know that when it comes to Facebook, Australia does not mess around. The country does not put up with branded post that are offensive, sexist or spammy. So it’s not shocking to learn that this sophomoric photo from men’s magazine ZOO weekly got banned. While the photo is forgettable, the controversy around it brings to the surface enough interesting social media marketing conundrums like censorship and misogyny to make marketers anywhere in the world think.

5.) Trashy Toys: For some major branding fails, look no further than the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood’s list of nominees for Toys Oppressive and Destructive to Young Children Award. Pastel-colored Legos that set women back about 50 years, a shamelessly sugary Slurpee machine and scary stuffed monkey with an iPad on its stomach are among this year’s nominees. We’d prefer coal.

Over the last few days, we have talked about what content marketing is and how we create it. But where, pray tell, does all of this content go once we’re done? It has to get in front of the right eyes and be seen by folks who would be interested in our stuff, right? But how do we do that?

This would be the “marketing” part of content marketing. Without a solid plan to get our content seen, we’re really sunk. Our content just sits and wait to be seen… and will remain all dressed up with nowhere to go if we don’t come up with a marketing plan for it. How many times have you heard a friend or peer whine about their book, new line of bath products or consulting services not selling? More often than not, it isn’t because the products stink but because they aren’t getting out there and getting seen. The same holds true for content. Luckily, our content marketing plans can be easy and immediate. For blogs and articles, social media is a great way to promote content. Sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn thrive on fresh content and juicy information. Our rule of thumb around these parts is the minute you publish it, promote it on social media. Use your corporate pages to really sell your fresh content and drive traffic. People might love your brand but wouldn’t think to check it every day. Therefore, it’s your job to make sure you use your social channels to get those posts in your follower’s newsfeeds.

For things like infographics and excerpts from ebooks, other popular blogs can really be helpful. Just like you, other bloggers are forever looking for new content, and these items can really fill the void. Make a short list of bloggers who talk about your industry and then send them emails with proposals. The worst they can say is “no,” but the best that can happen is thousands of new looks at your amazing content. Studies, white papers and digital catalogues can be promoted with digital press releases using the same philosophy for traditional press.

The avenues for original content are as numerous as the varieties of content themselves and there is no limit on how many you can try — so we say try them all! The empowering nature of content marketing lies much in the fact that small business owners can decide where their content goes and how it gets there. There is truly no limit to where your original, great-looking and fascinating-to-read content will end up.

That’s what we have to say about content marketing, dear readers. Now it’s your turn. Use our comments section to sound off about your own favorite content marketing techniques, tips and tales!

Note: Our Five Things You Might Have Missed will be back next week!

“Content marketing” has fast become a buzzphrase among online marketers. Every hip blog, independent marketing know-it-all and old-timey trusted resource alike is preaching the benefits of content marketing. We’re told we must have a plan for it and that we must know all about it. The only thing is, what the heck is it? In response to all of this hullabaloo, we’ve come up with a four-part blog series to give you some ideas on how content marketing works, how to work it and what not to do. Today, we start off by explaining what content marketing is and why you’re probably already doing it.

Shortly put, the term “content marketing” refers to all formats of content created with the specific purpose of attracting business. This blanket phrase covers an entire online marketing strategy. Email marketing, blogging, online video creation, podcasts, white papers, article marketing and infographics are just a few of the channels that would fit nicely into the vast content marketing column. Basically, if you read this blog on a regular basis or a Google search led you here, then chances are good that you are already doing some sort of content marketing. Why this big umbrella phrase has gained momentum in popularity might have something to do with the fact that it neatly covers so many marketing techniques.

The beauty of this magical content is that you, the business owner, create it. This means now, more than ever, small companies have the chance to really create the language and image for online audiences. Every blog and article that is part of your content marketing plan can truly shape your brand’s image and how people find your company. Content marketing means you are selling the content you want people to know about and we think that is pretty cool.

In the end, those blogs, tweets, articles, guest posts and clever YouTube videos you spend so much time on for your business are indeed content marketing! Congratulations. You’re part of a hip trend and you just didn’t know it.

Tomorrow we will look at why good-looking content matters.

Celebrities and big companies are some of our favorite teachers when it comes to learning about brand engagement. From old directors who talk to furniture to stage moms who show up wasted on talk shows, the last few weeks have been filled with tons of great “What Not to Do Lessons” in online PR. Yet nothing has been more powerful than those Romney videos — you know the ones — that have been making waves this week.

In case you slept through the last three days, a video from a fundraiser last spring made waves this week for featuring the Republican presidential nominee describing 47 percent of Americans as government-dependent, self-defined “victims.” This bitch-slap to the American population was explained in a stumbling, sweaty press conference. Romney didn’t really apologize in this clearing of the air and in fact sort of made things worse. Then another video featuring Romney’s thoughts on Israel and Palestine was leaked on Tuesday where he claimed that Palestinians are not interested in peace. He went from casually ticking off the people of the U.S. to basically spitting on the rest of the planet. If PR disasters were big-budget movies, Romney’s week would make Titanic look like an independent film.

The first thing we can never, ever do (that Romney has done repeatedly) is forget that everything will eventually go viral, especially if you’re on a national stage. What planet does he and his team live on where what we say doesn’t eventually end up in an online video? This baffling arrogance regarding the digital media has cost Romney dearly. As marketers and small business owners, we owe it to our brands to carefully watch our language, social media messages and appearances at events, regardless of how casual they seem.

The second lesson here is to skip the apology and explanation press conference if you’re not going to really do either. Press conferences and Twitter statements all have their place if the message is sincere and really talks about the issue at hand. In short, only apologize if you’re really sorry.

The final thing we can all learn from Romney is to have a good team around us. From day one, this campaign has suffered from sloppy marketing, confused social media strategies and weird public relations choices. Someone paid by that campaign should have told him what to say and how to say it and that, hey, everything’s gonna end up on the Internet.

Keeping knowledgeable people around us and listening to their advice is essential for great PR, online marketing and social media management. Obviously, Team Romney didn’t get that memo.

Long week got ya down? Well, buck up, little camper. We’ve got some refreshing Facebook marketing, a hilariously inspired example of online video creation and much more to help perk you right up. Sit back, relax and enjoy this week’s list of Five Things You Might Have Missed!

1.) Readers are Tweeters: We’ve been saying this for a while, but this new series from ReadWriteWeb confirms it: Readers and social media were made for each other. Likewise authors, publishing companies and literary agents are all reaping the rewards of the electronic reader/social media revolution. The great thing about this demo? They actually buy books and talk about them! Now more than ever, online marketing to indie authors and their readers is a brilliant thing to do.

2.)No Ordinary Comic: What if you could control a graphic novel with your tablet or laptop? This amazing Parallax site promoting the new Peugeot Hybrid lets you do just that. This is some seriously cool digital brand engagement and something you need to go play with right now.

3.) The Evolution of Controversy: We never thought we’d see the day when Dr. Pepper was stirring up trouble on Facebook… yet here we are. Yesterday the soda ticked off more than a couple of people who responded negatively to a graphic posted on its page. The graphic, entitled “The Evolution of Flavor,” features a primate who becomes a man after discovering Dr. Pepper. Needless to say, believers of Creationism flooded Dr. Pepper’s page with posts of the “I ain’t no ape!” variety. Just when you think Facebook marketing is so 2010, within hours of posting the whole hubbub had become national news.

4.) Kitty Conspiracy Theory: Sometimes a ridiculous viral ad just makes you laugh and this spot for Cravendale is one such ad. Milk men kidnapped by clever cats is the general premise here, but a great voiceover, some very funny CGI and perfect music elevates this spot to a “watch again” viral hit.

5.) Manly Men Aren’t Social: Maybe you missed Brut’s attempt to become the next Old Spice with its Mantervention App. The app is designed to highlight your Facebook follies and show you how social media unmans you. Yawn. This app and Brut make our list in hopes that we can all finally agree how over bro-marketing we are. Agreed?