This is a guest post by Chris Englund who writes "Chris is an MBA navigating Social-Mediaville. Follow him on Twitter: @cgenglund".
This is a guest post by Ilya Mirman (@IlyaMirman), who has held marketing and engineering roles at several hardware and software companies. His last three gigs have been as VP of Marketing for SolidWorks (3D design software), and two venture-backed MIT spin-offs - Interactive Supercomputing (acquired by Microsoft) and Cilk Arts (acquired by Intel). During his free time, Ilya enjoys photographing rock concerts and political events. [Photo: Ilya in his "Florida Uniform"]
I am 2 weeks into my Inbox Zero experiment. So far it is great! After having 300+ emails in my inbox on a regular basis, about a month ago I started trying to be more diligent about email and was able to get down to a steady state of 150. Inbox Zero got me over the top, and while I have not hit zero, I am under 10 on a regular basis. I feel much more in control of my email (rather than the other way around) and email is taking the same or less total amount of my time as before.
This is a guest post by Marijo Tinlin, who is the principal at Sunrise Business Consulting (@SunriseBusiness) which helps small and emerging businesses and entrepreneurs get traction in business, sales and marketing. Her specialities include all facets of marketing including inbound marketing, content marketing, database marketing and search engine optimization.
I found this post "The Marketing Hipster Dictionary" by Craig Rosenberg (aka The Funnelholic) and enjoyed it. (Yes, I found it through a vanity search since he mentioned me... but Craig is a good guy, already in my RSS reader and I've done a webinar with him before.)
Recently an industry guru who is compiling a study/book on transparency emailed me and asked "What are the practices that you think an agency should follow when it comes to transparency in writing content for a client's social media channels?" This is what I emailed back:
I love data. Netflix makes available rental data by zip code. Mash that up with a map and you can get some cool stuff. This article on NYTimes.com has a cool graphic that allows you to see rental popularity by different titles and zip codes.
What is the future of Search Engine Optimization?
How can you be successful in SEO in 2010 and beyond? How does social media affect search? Will Facebook replace Google? What about video? What about other social media sites like LinkedIn and Twitter, will they affect search? This SEO in 2010 video covers the basics of SEO, and then goes onto more advanced topics to set the stage for you to be successful in search engine optimization in 201.
Have you heard of Movember? It is an international foundation that raises money and awareness for men's cancers (prostate and testicular cancers).
Social media and the social web can be used to drive leads and sales for your business, if you use it in the right way.
- Start by growing your following and publishing interesting and useful content
- Then, next to the content you are promoting in social media, include calls to action and offers next to that content - the second and more detailed content piece or free trial is what drives the leads
- Make sure you have content both at the top of the funnel and at the middle of the funnel
With the huge boost in user generated content on websites allowing product and business reviews like Amazon, Yelp, and more, how can you try to get more positive reviews?
- Co-create with key influencers
- Find fans before the launch
- Ask people you know to write the first few reviews
- As your fans to leave positive reviews
Bernie Borges has written "Marketing 2.0", and I think it is a great inbound marketing book that you should buy. Here's why:
There are some great upcoming sales and marketing events you should check out, especially if you are near any of them in person.
Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah have written Inbound Marketing, which hits bookstores today!
I had the opportunity to speak today at The BIG Conference about how to generate leads and sales through inbound marketing.
I had the great opportunity to speak to a bunch of my marketing peers at the Marketing Sherpa B2B Demand Generation Summit in Boston today (#sherpaB2B09). It was part of a panel discussion, and there were no slides, but my notes are below Enjoy and share!
I am listening in at the Marketing Sherpa B2B Lead Generation Summit #sherpab2b09. (HubSpot TV is live streaming the event if you want to tune in.) Here are some notes from the landing page session run by Flint McGlaughlin from MarketingExperiments.
We tried to have a little bit of fun at HubSpot mocking Twitter in an office environment and how some companies are obsessed with it. How did we do? is it funny? (I actually can't tell if I laugh because I know all the people, or it is actually funny.) Do you have ideas for another funny office video?
I have the pleasure today of speaking at the BrandSource National Convention, where they have asked me to talk about inbound marketing (and especially social media). In addition to may latestmaterial, I added a few slides and examples relevant to this particular audience. But, we're looking for more ideas from you! See below and leave a comment.
I use video a lot for creating marketing content, mostly because I hate to type and I think and speak a lot faster than I can type. So for video I do marketing webinars, a great marketing video podcast, this smaller marketing podcast and lots of other marketing video through and with the team at HubSpot.
To be honest, for most people the first steps are easy. I do all these "Marketing with Mike" videos just using a webcam and a PC and edit with either Windows Movie Maker (free!) or Camtasia (expensive). You can use Quicktime Pro ($30) to convert the video formats if you need to, because Windows Movie Maker does not do a good job of supporting the iTunes formats.
What is much more important than the equipment is the content. For all these videos, I have notes to guide me, and I try to take topics from videos that come directly from people I have met in person or online, so I know the videos will be on topics interesting to all of you (hopefully).
Remember, think content before production value.
Today I have the honor of being the keynote speaker at the Internet & Technology Summit 2009 hosted by Tampa Bay CEO Magazine where I spoke about the changes happening in marketing. I'll try to update the post later with notes or audio/video.
Yes.
But first, let's talk about why people buy paid links. Links are really important for ranking higher in the search engines. Because of this, some website started selling links because people would buy them to increase their search engine rankings.
Google's Paid Links Policy (from http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66736)
"Google and most other search engines use links to determine reputation. A site's ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to it. Link-based analysis is an extremely useful way of measuring a site's value, and has greatly improved the quality of web search. Both the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of links count towards this rating."
"However, some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google's webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results."
More relevant discussions I found:
- http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=96569
- http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=49d7d11df37867ff&hl=en
Do you think you are smarter than Google? If so, go ahead and buy all the paid links you want. But I will bet $1 every time that Google is smarter than you are. And if you buy enough paid links to have a big effect on your marketing, then Google will find out and you will be penalized.
If you are launching a new inbound marketing program for a website, there are a number of variables that determine how long it might be until you see measurable results.
- The age of your website. The older your website is, the sooner you might see results.
- The amount of content you have. If you have more content, you have a better chance of seeing results sooner.
- The number of inbound links you have. If you have more links into your website, you have a better level of authority with the search engines, and you might see results sooner.
- The competition in your market. If you have competitors that are well established online, it will take longer for you to
- The amount of effort you put in. The results you see from inbound marketing are completely based on how much time and effort you put into it. If you blog once a week and spend a bit of time in social media you'll see results, but you'll get a lot more a lot faster if you blog 3-5 times a week and spend a lot of time making friends in your industry online.
For a well established company that has a lot of inbound links and has been around for years, but never did an effective optimization of their website, they could start to see results in a matter of weeks. If on the other hand you are launching a brand new website in a competitive market, it could take 6 months to see any significant results for getting found in inbound marketing. To size up your website and your competitors' websites, use the free tool http://website.grader.com/
Karen and I have had a lot of fun hosting HubSpot TV for the past year. We hope you have too, and to celebrate we're having a party! Free and open to all.
HubSpot TV: http://www.hubspot.tv/
iTunes: http://itunes.hubspot.tv/
Promotional Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKaJs4L290A
Party RSVP: http://hstv1year.eventbrite.com/
I hope to see you on August 8!
Karen Rubin and I are putting together 2 sessions for Podcamp Boston this weekend - August 8-9, 2009. Come join us!
- 11:15am - How can you use video podcasting for B2B marketing?
- 1:30pm - What equipment is best for a video podcast? (Steve Garfield will join us for this one to share his expertise!)
Both are on Sunday, so make sure to show up for day 2 of the conference! And if you are in town Friday, stop by the 1 year anniversary of HubSpot TV as well.