Inbound & Digital Marketing Blog

Troy Adamson

Recent Posts

Inbound Marketing and Community Building

Posted by Troy Adamson

February 17, 2011

Social Media and Building Community (GF201)

Is your focus about you or your customers?

Does your business revolve around your product, personal goals or yourself? If you answered yes to any of these, you need to reconsider your focus! Your business is not all about you – it’s about your community of customers and their needs. Give your customers what they want! If your product doesn’t address their needs, why should you expect them to buy it? Your customers want to know what you can do for them, not what they can do to bolster your profits. Rather than focus on how to sell people on your products, focus on how your products help people succeed.  

Do you know what your customers need?

Consumers respect businesses that listen to what they have to say. Listen to what your customers are telling you. Their words are like instruction manuals for creating products that sell. Listen and acknowledge them. Acknowledgment demonstrates that you are personable and serious about catering to their needs. Community-building is the best way to hear the voice of your consumer base. Encourage them to express their opinions about your products. Allow them to ask questions and make suggestions. Never presume to know what they want. Ask them instead. Their input will only help your business grow!    

Take action!

Ever heard the saying, “actions speak louder than words?” Well, guess what? It’s true! Take action with the input your customers give you. Don’t allow their feedback to go in one ear and out the other. Acknowledge it and do something constructive with it! When you set their ideas into motion, they’ll realize just how much you value them. If you want your customers coming back for more, give them more of what they’re looking for.          

Go beyond social networking sites

When it comes to social networking, Facebook and LinkedIn are hard to beat. Just don’t limit yourself to them alone! Be active in building a Web community where your customers can interact. Foster a fan base through writing blogs or host a forum on your website where you can interact with people on an intimate level. Praise your customers for their innovative ideas and valuable feedback. People are far more likely to feel good about your company if you treat them like you would your closest friends.  

Professor: Chris Brogan, New Marketing Labs

 

more

Topics: Blogging, Inbound Marketing


SEO Optimization: Generating Leads

Posted by Troy Adamson

February 10, 2011

SEO Crash Course: Get Found to Generate Leads & Sales (GF102)

SEO is the most important marketing strategy to generate leads and conversions. By making your site more search engine friendly, it will rank higher in search results – meaning, better visibility and better results.

Get found through the words you use

Keywords are the words that exist in the minds of your target audience. Which words are they most likely to use when searching for your product or service? Coming up with solid keywords requires getting to know the needs of your audience well. In order to rank high in search results, you need keywords that are relevant – words that best describe what you have to offer. Optimize your content for the keywords you target. Remember, keywords matter…a lot!     

Search engine friendly sites are easy to find

You can’t make it easy for customers to find your products unless your content can be found easily by search engines. Web crawlers index text, so you must use results-driven keywords in your content. Add fresh content regularly to reinforce your keyword vocabulary. Site architecture is also important. Search engines can find you more easily if your site structure is logical and easy to navigate. To drive traffic to your site, you need to demonstrate to search engines that your site receives good search results.   

Links, links, and more links!  

To boost your search engine rankings, you need lots of strong inbound links. A strong link is one that ranks high in search results. One of the most effective ways to attract links is to create remarkable content and promote it on social networks. If people find your content useful, they will link to you. Schmoozing with the big boys pays off – affiliation with reputable links will do wonders for your rankings!       

How does your site perform?

Optimize your site by monitoring its performance over time using analytics. It’s useful to pay attention to several key performance indicators. Some important ones include number of indexed pages, rankings, quality and quantity of inbound links, social media traffic, and conversions. You want to maintain a positive user experience on your site – if visitors run into crawling errors, they’re likely to become frustrated and move on to another site.       

Professor: Lee Odden, TopRank Online Marketing

 

more

Topics: Lead Generation, Inbound Marketing, SEO