EQ’s new advertising platform is called Accelerate. It is a self-service platform designed to help EQ Network members accelerate the performance of three critical operational functions that are core to any business: Recruiting, Marketing and Selling.

Fancy trying it out? Create a new member account on the EQ Network and follow directions to unlock a 30-Day Trial of Accelerate advertising tools. No credit card is required and you’ll get 100% free advertising on EQ for the duration of the offer.

Accelerate St. Louis Acquired by EQ

You might recognize the logo! After two years of negotiations, EQ acquired Accelerate St. Louis last summer. This summer, we’ve rolled all its assets into EQ and re-invented the brand as our new advertising platform; now simply called Accelerate.

Accelerate St. Louis was formerly a joint economic development marketing initiative first launched by the St. Louis Regional Chamber and St. Louis Economic Development Partnership in 2013. Its main function was as a directory of St. Louis startups and entrepreneur resources.

New Ecosystem Pages

If your company was previously listed on Accelerate St. Louis, you’ll find that it now exists as a new Ecosystem page on EQ, replete with any articles you might have published there. The URL of your old Accelerate St. Louis listing now redirects to your new Ecosystem page on EQ.

Now every St. Louis Startup that has been featured in stories on EQ has its own ecosystem page. You’ll find them in every article via the “Mentioned in this Article” section.

If you don’t have an ecosystem page for your company, just create a new member account on the EQ Network and follow directions to unlock a 30-Day Trial of Accelerate advertising tools. Then simply login to the EQ Network to create your company profile page.

Each ecosystem page is now a hub about that organization. It displays every role they are hiring for, every event they are hosting and every special promotion they are offering EQ readers.

Every job ad, calendar update, call to action, links to recent press coverage or articles you upload via Accelerate will be aggregated on your ecosystem company profile page. Create a new member account on the EQ Network or login to the EQ Network any time to make changes.

Classified Ads

Our new classified ads are designed to help you drive more leads from EQ. They’re a quick way to direct EQ readers to the most important landing pages on your website or marketing campaigns.

Every classified ad can be customized with an icon, a 20 character message and a destination link. Use your own tracking link to measure clicks and track conversions.

You can create up to six “classifieds”, so feel free to spotlight a variety of things you’d like to draw people’s attention to. Published a new research paper? Offering a discount code? Got an app? Link it all up.

Presenting Sponsors

When you opt to be a presenting sponsor on a specific article, you’ll see a “Presented by” button pop up on the article and all of the ads on your ecosystem profile will be boosted into the article itself. EQ Voices columnists are automatically the presenting sponsor of their own work – you’ve put in all that effort to write so why not get the maximum benefit?

“Presented by” means the entire sidebar becomes about you. All your job ads, event listings and classifieds will automatically replace the current content in the sidebar.

Micro Media Network

The advertising mechanic is unique as any article can have any presenting sponsor one. Web analytics for the article is automatically set up too, so the sponsor will get reports on the performance of every article they choose to present.

We’ve done this for two reasons: firstly, to give any writer or creators the ability to set sponsors for their own work and secondly, to empower creators to talk about whatever they want while distributing the value of the exposure wherever they want.

Enhanced profiles are a great way to boost the impact of your writing on EQ or create content that spotlights the stories of other organizations, such as clients or collaborators while improving the visibility of your own business.

Visibility Stats

Our “enhanced profiles” are designed to drive even more visibility of your ads on EQ. But to prove it’s making a difference, you get access to an interactive web stats dashboard that gives you an all-time ranking of your most popular stories, average time on site, and exit clicks to your website.

Your EQ stats dashboard is fully interactive and includes access to our data commonwealth dashboards (not shown here) which are designed to help improve the reach of every article.

Are you interested in trying all this stuff out? If you’re feeling adventurous, there are many more features not explained here (for example, text and display ads, job ads and event calendar listings) and you can use all of them with the special 30-day free trial that accompanies this article below:

To claim it, simply create a new member account on the EQ Network and follow directions to unlock a 30-Day Trial of Accelerate advertising tools. No credit card is required and you’ll get 100% free advertising on EQ for the rest of the summer!