In the field of digital marketing, your knowledge of the market is everything. In order to stay successful, you have to be one step ahead of your competitors. And the best way to do that is to learn from the experiences and knowledge of renowned industry experts. Read further to get to know one of them – a content marketing influencer whose advice will help to skyrocket your marketing strategy.
Ann Smarty (@seosmarty)
Ann Smarty is the Brand and Community manager at InternetMarketingNinjas as well as the founder of MyBlogU and ViralContentBee. She has been into Internet Marketing for more than 7 years, and she’s also a frequent speaker at Pubcon. In addition, Ann is the host of regular Twitter chats #vcbuzz and #myblogu. You can follow her digital marketing insights on her Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn profiles as well.
1. Please, tell us shortly about your success story.
What was the big breakthrough moment in your career? I was lucky: My break-through moment happened just a couple of months after I decided to be a digital marketer. I started my blog SEOsmarty and then shortly after that I joined SEOmoz community (now Moz). I became a very active part of it and then a few members suggested that I need to write for Moz’s user generated blog, Youmoz. I did and thanks to my contributions I then quickly got noticed by industry influencers. In no time, I got invited to become a blogger and then editor for SearchEngineJournal, got approached by clients and became a pretty well-known member of digital marketing community. Bottom line: Be out there, become part of community, learn, add value and you’ll get there!
2. What has been your biggest digital marketing fail (and what did you learn from that)?
My very first project, MyBlogGuest, was penalized by Google. I knew it was coming for years and I didn’t expect it to be that big. The penalty went viral and I wasn’t prepared. I don’t think I handled that well but I am really not sure what I would have done differently even if I had a chance… What did I learn: Nothing is permanent. You need to move on! One day you may have a huge successful business which may be ruined overnight. There’s no way to be prepared for that properly but you do need an emergency plan in case that happens.
3. What’s your TOP 1 advice to other marketing specialists?
Be everywhere! It sounds impossible but it’s actually doable! Digital marketing is overwhelming: With so much information and clutter, you need to be always there to finally get customers’ attention. Here’s my favorite collection of productivity tools which you can use to organize all those hundreds of things you need to do daily. Pick your favorite ones that will work for you and be prepared to work hard to earn that online visibility.
