Tegardless of whether you like Cupcake wines, there’s much marketing wisdom to be learned from their example. They know their audience and have smartly crafted everything from their labels to their Web content to appeal to it.

Most companies don’t want to answer consumer questions well. They shrink away from telling the truth (the good, the bad, and the ugly) and instead lean on pretty ad copy to garner sales and "close deals." Such a strategy is not long for this world my friends, and we can thank social media and blogging for it.

If Amber Case is right, user interface design will not only be relevant to how a consumer connects with our brands across the websites we develop, but also to how they will connect with us across multiple touchpoints, on and offline. Maybe it's time to think about UI design earlier on in our brand/digital strategy and planning discussions.

Thinking about 2012 and the challenges that most brands will face, the basis for this post was born: The challenges for a digital marketer or a digital brand in 2012. What are they specifically as it pertains to the Web?

There's no judgment here about who makes the better hamburgers, but rather an assessment of which has the better online marketing presence. McDonald's wins by using techniques any online marketer could emulate.

Publishers’ inability to convince a majority of print readers to cross over to any of their digital content is a troubling sign.

Feeding your website fresh, regular, content is a way to tell search engines who you are, what you do, what products and services you provide. And a corporate blog, with content that’s relevant, informative, educational, and entertaining, is one of the very best ways to integrate new content into your website.

Although marketing possibilities on the internet are myriad for those who have the time and budget to exploit them all, small businesses should focus mainly on organic search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click advertising, web site content creation (which is actually a subcategory of organic SEO), and social media marketing.

There are definitely things about advertising that drive us crazy: the constant interruption, the obtrusive pop-ups, the stock photos of happy models, all the direct mail, etc. We've captured our top 10 annoyances in this slideshow.

Over the years that my digital creative agency has been working in the integrated marketing space, there are a few things I've learned. One is that CPG consumers are selfish, and you need to give them what they want, not what you want.

Conventional wisdom says that content marketing should take the approach of informing without overtly selling. This is pretty much gospel in the B2B marketing world. But the mass of marketers do things differently. It’s prudent not to keep content separate from marketing, even if it is supposed to be "journalistic," and here’s why.

Here are a few things that advertisers and publishers needs to know about fraud in interactive marketing, as well as some potential solutions. If marketers do not deal with the fraud issue, the possible ramifications are immense.

Brands big and small rely on outside firms to help with their marketing. At the same time, social media marketing is all about finding and using your authentic voice, about putting a personality to your brand. How do you reconcile the two?

Qualities like timeliness, originality, and strong characters are part of what makes a good movie -- and a good curated news site. Here are five sites that deserve Best Curated Content awards, including the site you're reading right now.

More than 10 years ago, I gave a presentation that made these two points: one, in the near future, all companies will be content creators; and two, technology will be a double-edged sword for brands. Sound familiar? Almost all companies are now doing some sort of content marketing, but few brands have shown the drive to become THE trusted experts in their niche through the use of content strategies like those outlined here.

What is social TV? It includes second screens used while watching TV, networked companion devices that support or relate to TV, social tools and applications on connected TVs, and all of the TV-related content and conversations on social media. TV viewing plus Web and social use is big -- one-third of all Web browsing occurs in front of a TV. That's a big market.

The Web is changing from a world wide library with some commercial content to a world wide mall with intellectually interesting publications buried under it, in virtual catacombs.

By behaving like a media company -- focusing on information that customers care about, rather than on promoting its own capabilities and products -- a brand can build a deeper and richer affinity with its customers.

I see the renewed focus on content strategy as an opportunity to improve the user’s experience of advertising. If we improve evaluation, we start disrupting the online advertising system in a positive way.

While Facebook is all the rage, there is a lot more utility and opportunity in LinkedIn than is being surfaced right now. Following are some guidelines on how to use this B2B network's new Company Pages and other features to best represent your company.

Many companies struggle with becoming more data-driven because they don’t have the equivalent of a syllabus for their online business. But unless you go through the process of building a formal Web measurement strategy, you might not fully understand the key requirements of your business.

People don't necessarily want new. They want better. If your new is better then that's great, but make sure it is. So be careful that your focus on modernity isn't lazy marketing shorthand.

There’s much to learn from Branson’s business strategy and his willingness to break new ground in just about everything he does.

The new book offers 20 marketing lessons "straight from Google’s playbook." The author discusses some of his guidelines and suggestions in this video.