You know there’s a delicate balance between infrequent email communications and bombarding your email recipients with messages to the point that they opt out. Maybe you’re interested in ramping up your email marketing in 2012 but don’t want to see all your hard lead generation work go to waste by increasing your sending frequency. How do you know what email sending frequency is the right frequency for your subscriber list?

If you guessed “test,” you’re right on the money! While we’ve performed tests and released research on email sending frequency, every brand’s email marketing campaign objectives and subscriber lists are unique and thus require fine-tuned testing to determine appropriate sending frequency.

So how do you get started with an email send frequency test? Many people have been nervous about performing this test for fear of ruining their lead generation efforts, but it really is quite simple. Let’s break down the steps you can take to perform this test so you can start understanding how often you should communicate with your email subscribers. – The 5-Step Test to Determine Optimal Email Frequency by Corey Eridon

Marketers are really starting to understand the impact social media can have on their businesses. A recent survey conducted at the Pivot Conference revealed that 37% of marketers plan to move beyond just experimentation in social media in 2012. The reason for this shift? 68% of marketers said that an increased understanding of the benefits of social media is the factor that most influenced them to flip the switch.

Hallelujah! Marketers are starting to realize that just setting up social media accounts on sites like Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and Twitter and “experimenting” by participating sporadically isn’t really going to generate results. After all, no one ever achieved anything noteworthy by doing the bare minimum, right? If you really want to get the most out of all social media has to offer your business and truly make it work for you, you need to do more than just experiment. That’s why you’ll find no fluffy, elementary tips like “be engaging,” “share content,” and “be transparent” in this post. We’re pulling out the big guns. Here’s how you can step up your social media game and leverage all social media has to offer your business in 2012.

15 Ways to Step Up Your Business’ Social Media Game

1. Leverage All Features of Social Networks: We don’t just mean filling out your business’ social media profile and adding a photo. We’re talking about leveraging all the features at your disposal on each social network on which your business is present. We’re talking nitty-gritty details, and it’s amazing how many businesses don’t take advantage of all the free, awesome features social networks offer. Have you enabled company status updates for your LinkedIn Company Page? Are you using them? Have you created custom tabs for your Facebook page? Do you leverage the visual potential of Google+? Here are some awesome cheat sheets for Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn to help you get the most out of each of these networks. – 15 Fluff-Free Ways to Step Up Your Social Media Game by Pamela Vaughan

You’re a dedicated inbound marketer putting already strapped time and resources into creating content for your blog on a regular basis. And you deserve to get as much return as possible on that investment. But did you know there are some things you can do on top of creating remarkable content that will make those blog posts work even harder for you? Alone, each one of these things may not seem like much; but together, they add up to a powerhouse punch that will bring a blog post from good to great.

These blog post add-ons only take a little bit of time, but they will make your blog content infinitely friendlier to both search engines and readers. Next time you write a blog post, take a little extra time to polish it up with these 16 tips that will make your blog perform better with more visibility and reader engagement.

16 Ways to Squeeze More ROI From Your Blog Posts

1.) Include internal links with relevant phrases. Internal linking refers to linking to another page on your own website. If you’re trying to drive traffic and rankings for a certain page on your website, internal linking relevant phrases in your blog posts can help you in those efforts. It can also help move readers through to other parts of your website, increasing their time on site and the probability that they’ll engage in a conversion event. Just be sure that whatever you’re linking to is relevant to the anchor text you select, or you’ll have some misled and annoyed readers on your hands! – 16 Quick Ways to Squeeze More ROI From Your Blog by Corey Eridon

Inbound marketers are getting even better at attracting visitors to their websites. But as we all know, in B2B environments, eyeballs don’t pay the bills. Getting visitors to convert into leads and ultimately sales is the name of the profitability game. With today’s modern analytics and marketing automation tools, marketers can play a bigger role in that ‘middle of the funnel’ conversion path with the power to re-engage interested prospects and tee up their sales teams for success.

If you’re not taking advantage of prospect behavior to drive conversion, here are 7 buying signals you should look out for and specific actions you can take to increase sales.

7 B2B Buying Signals All Marketers Should Track and Pounce On

1. Multiple Visitors to Your Site in a Short Time

Did you know that you can use tools that leverage reverse-IP lookup to track not only a known lead’s but also a company’s visits to your site? Well, you can. Even if that hot company you’ve been trying to get access to hasn’t filled out a form to become an official lead, you can find out if one or more people from that company have visited your website. And … if you see a pattern of multiple different visitors from the same company in a short period of time, it’s a pretty good sign you made it to their ‘consideration’ step. Now is the time to alert your sales rep to reach out to the person who may be your target and really work deep into that account. – 7 B2B Buying Signals Marketers Should Pounce On by Kirsten Knipp