Welcome to the Online Marketing News, it's the 2nd of March of and here is my round of digital marketing news that has caught my eye during the month of February.

1. I got a very promising email the other day from Infusionsoft saying they are soon to release an app so we can use InfusionSoft on mobile, which is obviously excellent news for InfusionSoft users. I believe it will be free for current users and available on both IOS and Android.

2. OP2 released their copy and paste a row feature. This was previously enabled within the same page but now you can take a row from one OptimzePress page and put it into another. A handy time saver and more definitely brownie points earned, they are getting into a lot of peoples good books again!

3. Leadpages as always have been innovating. In my opinion their most exciting update is automatic pre-population, so when someone lands on your page and decides to opt-in, this new feature will automatically have the opt-in form filled out with their details! Making the opt-in process even more frictionless. They also recently added the ability to split test & add images to leadboxes.

4. The big news over at Facebook last month was of course Facebooks $19 billion dollar acquisition of What's App. This was worldwide news so I'm sure you already saw this. Early rumours that the monetization strategy for What's App would be advertising like they did with Instagram were quickly downplayed however, Mark Zuckerberg himself announcing that their initial focus would be on growth rather than monetization. When the time comes for monetization it may or may not present a new opportunity for us online marketing folk, we'll have to wait and see on that one.

5. In other Facebook news, Facebook have announced that they are discontinuing sponsored stories. These are the ads that page owners can use to show a users that one of their connections has liked their page or checked-in, in the hope that they might do the same. As of April 9th however, this kind of ad will be gone.

6. Facebook ads have a new update coming on the 4th of March will be to add another level within their ad structure. They used to have 2 levels which was campaigns and ads but this made for a quite messy and unorganized way to keep track of your ads. The new level they are adding inbetween campaigns and ads is, ad groups. This means you can group certain types of ads together within your campaigns and will make it much more organized. Welcome news for FB advertisers.

7. Facebook will also be rolling out new targeting features available thanks to their 3rd party partner categories, this data will now be available in the regular FB ad platform giving better location,interest, behavior and demographic targeting.

8. In more excellent FB ads news, Facebook announced they will be adding job titles to their ads targeting. LinkedIn ads have given this option for years and now Facebook wants a piece of it too, I can't wait for that to happen.

9. Finally on Facebook, Facebook page tagging just got a little more interesting too. When you tag another page in a status update from your fan page, their fans may see your update in their newsfeed meaning you can tap into almost any other fan pages audience by using tagging. I think this could be easy to abuse but done correctly it could help you grow your fan page audience for free.

10. LinkedIn has opened up their publishing platform, where you can publish long-form content to the site. This used to be a feature only available to top influencers like Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Tony Robbins, Gary Vaynerchuk and other high level people but now all users will be able to use this tool.

11. LinkedIn has also recently added a block feature just like Facebook has. It means you and the other person will no longer be able to see each others accounts on the site. So don't go spamming people or using any weird black hat marketing tactics, you'll simply be blocked!

12. Google has added usage rights to it's image search tools. This has been around a while but wasn't included as an option in it's main menu. You still need to be careful when using it though, it's not 100% accurate. So you could use an image thinking you have permission when you do not. My advice is where possible create your own images or purchase stock images.

13. Twitter advertising took another big step forward by introducing the ability to target ads based on email addresses and user ID's. This is similar to custom audiences on Facebook and it means you can retarget your email list through Twitter or even have the ability to avoid those users, depending on your marketing goals. Great option to have. Twitter ads continue to rise in my estimations.

14. Adroll has just beta launched mobile retargeting for cross device campaigns. Meaning desktops users can now also be followed up on the mobiles and tablets too. For example someone who enters your website on their desktop, may then see your retargeting ads whilst using FB or Twitter using their mobile phone.

15. A few big upcoming events that have caught my eye...

On the 11th of March, Marketing Land's Digital Marketing Summit will be held in San Jose, California. Top speakers include Googles Search Chief, Amit Singhal, Copybloggers Brian Clark and Rand Fishkin of Moz.

Also on the 11th -13th of March, The Joint Venture Summit is being held in Atlanta, Georgia. Speakers taking the stage include Robert Allen, Alex Mandossian, Joel Comm, Spike Humer, Mike Filsaime, Lorrie Morgan-Ferrero, Daven Michaels and whole list of other excellent speakers too.

On the 22nd and 23rd of March, Brian McLeod and Sam England are hosting the Spring 2014 Warrior Networking Event in Raleigh, North Carolina. Joel Comm, Matt Bacak, E Brian Rose and a whole line up of top speakers will be sharing their best stuff.

Social Media Examiner are hosting the Social Media Marketing World event in San Diego, California on the 26th -28th of March. They have a huge list of amazing speakers, Chris Brogan, Mari Smith, Patt Flynn, Michael Hyatt, Michael Stelzner, John Jantsch, Amy Porterfield, Joel Comm, Brian Clark, Cliff Ravenscraft and bunch more.

If you're listening to this on the podcast, you can get links to these events over at my blog.

16. A few new podcasts that I'm excited about have been announced Jon Benson the king of VSL's has just recently started his podcast called The Sales Copy Samurai. Colin Theriot of the cult of copy has also he will be starting a new podcast sharing his copywriting wisdom so keep an eye out for that one, and last but not least Clay Collins and the team over at LeadPages announced that their new podcast called conversion cast will start soon and they will be diving deep into split testing and what's working now in online marketing. You won't want to miss that either.

Both Colin and Clay have been on previous episodes of the online marketing show are always good value. Jon is set to come on the show in a few weeks time too so stay tuned for that.

17. Tim Castleman has released his Traffic and Conversion Summit 2014 notes. I attended this event and it was brilliant. His notes have all the golden nuggets from the presentations for just a fraction of the cost of going to the event. Grab a copy, it's well worth it.

18. Todd Brown is launching his latest product this week, it's called Six Figure Funnel Formula. Todd has been on the podcast before and he is my recommended go to guy when it comes to marketing funnels. His last flagship program has been locked down for quite some time so you'll want to jump on this if you want to learn how to convert leads into paying customers. There will be a lot of buzz over the next week or so and Todd will be releasing a ton of free premium content during the launch. Again if you're listening to this on the podcast, head over to my blog you can get the link for Todd's free videos there.

And that's the online marketing news, 2nd of March 2014.