Inbound & Digital Marketing Blog

If you care about getting traffic to your website, you care about Google's new Penguin update!

The Penguin Update affects the ranking of websites that don't comply with Google's SEO guidelines. It's already impacted the traffic for many sites. What's the quick summary? Google wants sites to create great, relevant content! Over-optimization and SEO tricks get you penalized.

In "How To Survive Google Penguin Update with Content Writing, Amrit Hallan's provides a checklist to use when creating and promoting your content. 

If you want good search engine rankings, be sure to create content that deserves reading. See the full article on "How To Survive Google Penguin Update..." for guidelines on creating and promoting your content.

Here's another article on over-optimized marketing and the Google Penguin Update by Clarke Bishop: "Inbound Marketing Trap--Over-optimized Marketing".

Has the Penguin affected you? What did you do about it? Please leave a comment.

Combining inbound and outbound strategies will help your content spread further, a technique we refer to as the Inbound Marketing Multiplier.

Marketing automation enhances and amplifies inbound marketing and leads to shorter sales cycles, increased revenue, and better overall marketing ROI.

As Niel Spencer points out, don't fall into the trap of focusing solely on inbound marketing. All your marketing should work together.

Combine your inbound and outbound resources to create content which is interesting, informative and yes, even entertaining. Buyers are unique. They like and engage with different types of content.

Great content is essential. Use all forms of marketing to generate more subscribers, more shares, and more customers.

Read more on "How To Build A Better Inbound Marketing Machine"... 

What's your greatest marketing challenge? Please, leave a comment.

I've been training a new Inbound Team writer and gave her a challenging topic to write about. She struggled with it some and then said, "I honestly don't know where to start writing."

Writer's block, where to start, is a common problem for business bloggers. Here's what you can do about it!

Writing Isn't the Problem!

First, know this -- Writing isn't the problem. Instead, what's really happening is that we don't have a clear idea of what we want to communicate. 

Here's the solution ...

Start thinking about your audience. Who would want to read your article? Why? What are their problems or questions. What are their goals and challenges?

Imagine as many questions as you can. You see, it's easy to answer questions -- At least if you know the answer. If you don't know the answer, do some research!

Revisit Your Marketing Persona

If you're an experienced Inbound Marketer, you already have some good marketing personas for your audience. Reconnect with your personas. Who are they? What do they need?

If you don't already have marketing personas, see the links below for a short course in how to create personas.

Audience Analysis or Marketing Persona

Two terms that mean essentially the same thing. The point is to know your audience and write for them. 

• Whiteboard Friday: Creating Marketing Personas - A very useful 20 minute video from SEOMoz. Well worth watching.
  
  
• Precise Prospect Profile - Our resource for taking your persona to the next level.
   
• 6 Core Benefits of Well Defined Marketing Personas - HubSpot's take on how to use your marketing personas to improve your business results.
   
• Develop Personas - Who knew the government cared about Usability! Personas are also used to make usable software. Even though it's not about blogging, this article has good advice and an example persona.
   
• How to Conduct an Audience Analysis - Step-by-step guide to knowing your audience.
   
• How to Write an Audience Analysis - A similar step-by-step guide.

Takeways

What's most important for blogging is the value of your ideas. Value only exists for a specific audience -- Write for them!

If you're ever stuck:

• Remember your audience. If it's a new audience, imagine who they are.
• Know their top questions, problems, or concerns.
• Answer their questions.

Do you ever get writer's block? How do you get unstuck and how do you use personas? Please leave a comment and let me know.

Image Credit: whitakerc1985 

It's 2012, and most companies realize that Inbound Marketing works much better than old-fashioned interruption marketing.There's only one problem -- The number of worthwhile marketing intiatives is overwhelming!

I know, just Google for "best marketing initiatives." Now you're overwhelmed again. And, some of the recommendations you'll find are just plain wrong.

Here's what doesn't work: Trying to trick Google and the other search engines. Google has billions of dollars and over 30K employees including some of the smartest people on the planet. What definitely does work is creating remarkable content that help your prospects -- As long as you do it consistently.

Inbound Marketing Priorities

Here's what I do to set priorities. Have you seen HubSpot's new Marketing Grader? It's free -- Even for non-HubSpot customers. It's the upgrade for their old Website Grader.

The best thing, is that the good folks at HubSpot have already done the hard work of seeing what's important for your Inbound Marketing in 2012. Just don't be disappointed if your score is lower than it was in the old Website Grader. HubSpot is being tough on us to help us have the best possible inbound marketing!

Here's the marketing grader for Inbound Team:

OK, a 76. Maybe, I should have hidden our results. Oh, wait. This is all built from public information. You can run a marketing grader on anyone you want, including Inbound Team! You can even run this report on your competitors (And they can run a report on you!).

I benchmarked us against HubSpot, and they only got an 87! HubSpot created the tool, and even they can't ace it. It's a pretty tough scale after all, so maybe a 76 isn't that bad.

The best part is that HubSpot provides detailed coaching on how to improve your score. In fact, we orginally scored a 74. We were missing some mobile optimization. In another post, I'll show you how, in just a few minutes, we added Apple icons and Meta Viewport tags. As a result, Marketing Grader gave us two more points.

Besides the coaching, Marketing Grader groups the results by Top of the Funnel, Middle of the Funnel, and Analytics. They'll even show how you compare to your competitors in each area. Sure, all of your Inbound Marketing works together. But, it really helps to be able to focus on one key area at a time.

The 2012 Inbound Marketing Challenge

Run, your own Marketing Grader. If you can beat our 76, leave a comment and brag about it! Of course, we're not going to accept our current score, and it will be improving. So you'll have to stay on your toes.

If you can't beat us, then call 800.609.9669 and get some help with your Inbound Marketing.

Social Media for Big Businesses (GF302)

More and more big businesses are realizing what small businesses have known for a long time – they need to be personable with their clients if they expect to gain a loyal customer following. That is, engage them in continuous and meaningful dialogue. This requires using social media tools to create interest and encourage responses from clients while building lasting relationships with them. In an age where consumers have grown jaded and more skeptical about the world around them, businesses NEED to find ways to build trust with their audience.

1. Create blogs that are personable.

In recent years, the blogosphere has proven itself to be an ideal forum for getting the word out. Company blogs are the place for virtual focus groups, posting breaking news, and generating new ideas. Not only are they valuable from an SEO perspective, they’re the perfect platform for company employees to share industry knowledge. Creating a voice for your blog is essential. If you have knowledgeable employees who are passionate about their work and have a story to tell, leverage their skills and enthusiasm to create company blogs. Blogs should be written in a personable voice – like the way you’d carry on a friendly conversation with a co-worker. At the same time, they should be credible and relevant to your company’s industry.       

2. Make your site interactive

Visitors stay on a site so long as it holds their interest. Paula Berg of Southwest Airlines offers some great tips on how to make a website more interesting. Paula recommends adding features like personalization options, reader polls, photo and video galleries, links to company communities, user login and profiles, a consumer-generated Flickr feed, video blog, sharing features, a news feed, podcasts, and rating opportunities. All of these features encourage interaction from site visitors. Interactive sites experience more visits, more individual page views, and more visitors who remain on the site longer. From a consumer perspective, site interactivity conveys an image of friendliness and openness – just the kind of company they’d feel comfortable doing business with.

Enable your site for customer commentary – it’s the best way to gauge public sentiment. Consumers are fed up with the communication barriers big businesses throw up in front of them. Restricting the communication link between you and your clients will not win your business points. Businesses that communicate with their customers openly are viewed as credible and trustworthy. Ignore people and they perceive you as untrustworthy and disinterested in their needs. 

3. Be an active social media participant

The company blog may be your social media anchor, but it’s not the only place where customers can find you. They’re at other outlets like Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, and Twitter. If you’re going to cover your social bases, reach out to your customers wherever they’re most likely to be found. Social media outlets are also useful for promoting new product/service launches, branding campaigns, building a strong fan following, and receiving direct customer feedback.  

From time to time, the names of big companies appear in the news headlines. The media sometimes gives them bad raps through accusations that may not be necessarily warranted. If you’re ever the target of bad publicity, you’ll be glad you have social media channels in place to defend your good name! Your social media outlets are where you can publically defend your actions and clearly state your position. There are many instances where companies saved their brand reputations by delivering publicity through their social channels.

Takeaways

• Your company blog is the epicenter of your social media communications. Create blog content that sounds conversational and is relevant to your audience. Build credibility and trust.
• An interactive website generates interest and allows customers to become engaged with your company.
• Broadcast your product/service via social media outlets you’re customers use. Establish a fan following.      

Twitter for Business (GF501)

Twitter is becoming an increasingly important platform for online business communication. It’s a microblogging service that enables users to send out and read tweets of up to 140 characters. Twitter has unfolded as a valuable and easy-to-use social media tool that enables businesses to share up-to-the-minute information about their products or services. Businesses that are active members of their business community rely on Twitter to share ideas and keep tuned in to what their competition is doing.

Image by: stevegarfield

Building relationships
Twitter is useful for building a more personalized brand for your business by developing deeper relationships with your customers. If your business has the reputation of being sociable and approachable, people will want to do business with you! When consumers have questions about a product, they want to be able to reach the manufacturer quickly and easily. Nowadays, so many businesses restrict their communication channels by throwing up barriers between them and their customers. Remove the barriers and give your buyers access. Twitter provides them access via real time interaction with your business.  If you can establish deeper relationships with your customers, they will feel more loyal about doing business with your brand.    

Receive consumer input
Listen to your customers…closely. Twitter is a perfect way to discover what people are saying about your business. Before considering a new product launch, get feedback from your Twitter followers on whether or not they think it’s a good move. No one understands the value of your products better than the people who use them. Consumer input is the key to developing better products. People buy your products to solve their unique problems. If your products are not delivering the intended results, you want to know about it. Twitter provides an open channel for you to learn ways to better enhance your offerings and make them more marketable.

Promote your business
The nice thing about Twitter is that it’s ideal for people on the move who use mobile devices like iPhones or Blackberries. You can easily deliver your message straight into your customer’s pocket without having to depend on email or expensive printed media. Twitter is the perfect medium for sharing the latest news, promotions, or events related to your business. It’s often easier to announce an upcoming webinar in a short tweet than in an email because many people are more apt to acknowledge tweets than emails. As long as you adhere to the 140-character limit, Tweets allow you to include links to your web pages, blogs, or videos.   

Broaden your horizons
Develop greater expertise in what you do by following industry experts on Twitter. Staying connected with the leaders in your industry provides you with a steady stream of fresh ideas, resources, and tips focused on how to build a better business. Engage with those you follow by joining conversations. Contribute answers and make suggestions so you can build a reputation within your business community. Retweet particularly valuable content with your Twitter followers. The more informative content you forward them, the more reliable they will view you. As your reputation grows, so will your list of followers.    

Chris Brogan’s 50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business post offers some practical steps on how to get your Twitter business network set up. Do you have some additional Twitter tips for business? We’d love to hear your comments! 

PR for Inbound Marketing (GF402)

In HubSpot’s Inbound Marketing University video, PR for Inbound Marketing, Todd Defren of SHIFT Communications eloquently sums up public relations for inbound marketing as “frequently distributing relevant content via the right channels, to boost credibility and findability.” What running a successful inbound marketing PR campaign comes down to is adding value to your buyer community. If you target the right prospects in the right places, and prove your content to be valuable for them, you’re running an effective inbound marketing PR campaign.  

Image by: Fritz Park

We’ve undergone a revolution in mass media distribution. A social media explosion of blogs, podcasts, and RSS feeds now enables the common person to communicate directly with the world via social networking tools. The objective of PR for inbound marketing is to generate prospects who will convert into qualified leads. If you can draw prospects to your website where they opt-in and eventually create purchase orders, you’ve successfully completed your mission. Where do you begin? I’ll show you how:

Steps to Complete Your Inbound Marketing PR Mission

1. Pinpoint your targets. Who are your prospects and where do they go to acquire their information? The more you know about your prospects (what they do and where), the more accurate your targeting strategy will be.
2. Blog your targets regularly. Craft relevant blog articles your prospects are likely to find valuable and post them frequently (at least 3 times per week). Distribute your content through channels that are most likely to reach your targets. Analyze your website traffic often and tweak your SEO accordingly.
3. Check for explosive content. Measure the relevancy of your content. Is it explosive enough? If your content is not being actively shared through the social networks or your conversion rate is dwindling, it may not be relevant enough to your target market. Reassess your target audience and figure out what they find relevant for solving their unique problems.
4. Unleash your content arsenal. Use every social media tool at your disposal to direct your valuable content at your target audience. In addition to blog posts, leverage videos, podcasts, articles, tweets, and eBooks to promote your message. 
5. Assess mission effectiveness. Determine which of your blogs is generating the most traffic by using Google Analytics, HubSpot’s Blog Analytics, or Technorati. When you tweet, are you using TweetReach to track just how far your words are spreading? If you’re deploying video content, use TubeMogul to spread your content across several sites.
6. Get promoted to a higher rank. How are you ranking? Are you building enough credibility for your community to view you as an authority in your field? Prospects are unwilling to convert to qualified leads until they’re convinced that you have what it takes to solve their problems.
7. Strategize outbound tactics. Give bloggers in your industry a reason to write about you. Bloggers not only help your search engine rankings by creating inbound links to your website, but they help promote your brand by getting its name out there in front of others.  
8. Remove your camouflage. Get yourself found by making SEO at the forefront of everything you do. Optimize your social media content as you would your website to make it as easy as possible for your prospects to find you. The more interest you can draw, the more apt prospects will be to find you.        

Takeaways

• Add value to your community of buyers by helping them solve their unique problems.
• Create compelling content that prospects find interesting.
• Leverage social media outlets to reach your audience.
• Analyze your campaign’s effectiveness on an ongoing basis using analytics tools. 
• Build credibility with your online community and enable your business to be found.    

Viral Marketing and Worldwide Raves (GF301)

Did you know it takes only a handful of people to create a worldwide rave about your product or service? Be smart about how you present your content, and word about your business will spread like wildfire! Write compelling content and place it in front of people who are interested in reading it. If you generate attention with the right buyers, your marketing will go viral!

Image by: ausnahmezustand

Write to your buyers’ personas

Knowing your buyers’ personas is critical for success. Determine the demographics for the buyers you’re trying to reach, and then reach out to them. Many businesses make the mistake of writing content around their products. They go on and on about the greatness of their products and why people should buy them. Did you ever stop to think that buyers don’t really care? They’re not interested in reading about fluff – they’re interested in reading about how your product will help solve their problems. Write your content around your buyers’ personas and you’ll capture their attention.   

Earn your buyers’ attention

If you get your buyers’ attention through cold calling and spending gobs of money on advertising, you’re likely to wind up with ticked off ex-buyers and empty pockets. Everyone knows buyers distrust pushy car salesman tactics, so why do so many businesses still use them? Annoying customers into buying your products just won’t work. Use your marketing to genuinely help them, and they’ll feel compelled to do business with you. Deceiving your customers into buying from you won’t work either. If you portray yourself as authentic, they’ll feel good about doing business with you. If you dupe them into believing your product’s something it’s not, you’re sure to receive payback in the form of negative publicity.

Spread your message

Shake the world by spreading your marketing message! You want your ideas to be discovered, right? So, go viral by sending them across cyberspace. Remember, you want to gain as much attention as possible. Draw attention on the social media sites where your buyers hang out most. Speak their language by reflecting their personas in your content. Offer up free information that is valuable to them – something that will keep them coming back for more. Being helpful gives them a reason to blog about your remarkable content. As your ideas go viral, you’ll be creating your own worldwide rave!       

Professor: David Meerman Scott, author of New Rules of Marketing & PR and World Wide Rave      

I've been reminding clients that trying to use tricks in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is at best a waste of time. Here's one reason why! Google just announced a crackdown on content farms that have a lot of poor or duplicated content.

Image By: warrantedarrest

Sites with meaty, original content are not affected by the changes in Google's algorithm. But, people who have been trying to use SEO tricks to manipulate the search results just lost out!

Google has an army of highly intelligent PhD's who spend all day, every day working to deliver the most relevant information to their customers -- People who are searching the web looking for information or answers to their problems.

I know some SEO companies claim to have secret methods for making a page rank highly on Google. These tricks may work for a little while, but ultimately just waste your time and money.

Simply, there's a better way. It's not as sexy as the tricks are, but will deliver a good ROI over the long term. The answer?  Consistently create relevant content that addresses the needs of your target persona.

Business blogging is a perfect way to regularly create the needed content. Over time, you'll build up a library of relevant, valuable articles that your target customers can find via Google.

Sure, you want to optimize your posts and build links, too. Just do it in the right way -- By adding value for your audience!

If you want to know more, there's plenty of information on the details of Google's change to eliminate low-quality content.

Have you been burned by trying to use SEO tricks? Please leave a comment and let me know.

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