Google’s SEO Report Card – Information Nuggets or Fool’s Gold
Mar 10th 2010SiteProNewsSite Pro News
Sifting through Google’s SEO report card to see what informational nuggets are hidden inside.
Going to SXSW? Rate Speakers and Win an iPad!
Mar 10th 2010Kipp BodnarUncategorized
Boring presentations suck.
Don’t you hate it when you attend an event and feel like the speaker is completely wasting your time?
Conferences are expensive and networking time is too valuable to waste by sitting down and listening to a bad speaker. With South by Southwest Interactive (SXSW) coming up, our team wanted to solve this problem.
Introducing Speaker Grader!
Speaker Grader is the newest free tool to join the Grader family. It rates speakers at conferences via votes gathered from Twitter.
It is easy to get started with Speaker Grader. While attending a presentation, send a tweet that contains all 3 of the following:
- The @speakertwittername
- The #eventhashtag
- Your vote, which is either #upvote if you think the speaker is doing a good job or #downvote if you are unhappy with the presentation.
Optional: Any other feedback you wish to include in your tweet is fine, but make sure the first three items are also included.
So a sample tweet for SXSW would look something like:
“I #upvote @GaryVee for speaking with passion at #sxsw.”
Using Speaker Grader is as simple as sending a tweet; no sign up or login needed.
Please make sure to check out
Speaker Grader during SXSW to see who is being voted as the best and worst speakers from the event.
One more thing…
As a way to reward people who take the time to grade speakers during SXSW, we will be giving away Apple iPads. More specifically …
The most active Speaker Grader voter each day will win an iPad!
Note: Individuals are only eligible to win once. The most active grader at the end of each day (11:59 p.m. Central Time) of the conference will win an iPad.
Get SXSW News:
HubSpotters will be live-blogging SXSW, covering the hottest presentations and announcements. For the latest HubSpot SXSW coverage, please stay tuned to http://blog.hubspot.com/sxsw.
Connect with HubSpot:
What Star Wars Can Teach You about Inbound Marketing
Mar 9th 2010Frank AuerUncategorized
In our busy, time-constrained world, it is harder and harder to generate a large amount of content in a short amount of time. One solution to this problem is what I like to call Storybook Marketing. The general idea is to use age-old archetypes and paradigms to do an end run around the requirement to process everything. One of the best known examples of using these storytelling methods is a little film you may have heard of — Star Wars. George Lucas was greatly affected by the Joseph Campbell book, The Hero With a Thousand Faces. By using the “monomyth” idea presented in the book, Lucas was able to tell a story that people immediately engaged with and understood across many cultures because it was hard-wired into people’s human experience. Imagine how much more powerful your business blog or tweets would be if they accessed people’s core understandings of how the world works. But how might you do that?
Your Product as a Character
Think about your product or service as a character. Is your product the loveable rogue, such as Han Solo? Look again at your product or service’s characteristics. Is it fun? Powerful? Efficient? Use those characteristics to discover who your “character” is. You must also understand where on its journey that character is. For example, if your service is new and groundbreaking, your character may be at the stage of “Crossing the First Threshold” where it “actually crosses into the field of adventure, leaving the known limits of [its] world and venturing into an unknown and dangerous realm where the rules and limits are not known.” Certainly sounds like launching a new product or service, doesn’t it? Use these characters and narrative structure to determine how to position your story.
What or who is your product’s nemesis?
Discover what your product or service’s nemesis is. Apple does this extraordinarily well. It is clear that Microsoft is the nemesis to be defeated. This gives them the ability to use certain shorthand when making comparisons and engages consumers who will frequently root for the “hero.” That desire is coded in our humanity! Your nemesis needs not be a specific company or product. For example, it can be argued Google’s nemesis
is closed and disorganized information. You probably know your mission, but defining your “nemesis” gives power to your mission and makes it easier to communicate.
Clear Goals for Your Product
Clearly set what your product must accomplish in order to win. You must have a goal for your consumers to pull for. Imagine trying to cheer for someone who is racing if you don’t know where the finish line is! This doesn’t need to be your final goal, just as an Olympian may ultimately be targeting a gold medal, but still has to win many races along the way. What races does your product or service need to to win? Setting those goals help consumers feel as if they are part of something and cause them to engage in the chase for it. Is it becoming the number one product in its niche? Is it helping 100,000 customers? Set this goal and communicate it. This also gives you fodder for frequent blog or Twitter updates — the perfect excuse to remind people of your mission.
Use Symbols to Fill the Gaps
Think about what age-old symbols and other characters you can use to quickly fill in the blanks for your customers. One of the oldest examples of this is the snake. Simply using the snake as a symbol brings to mind evil and sneakiness. Symbols such as this can quickly fill in the blanks for customers and help set the right tone. Imagine if you were selling a personal safety product. Simply place a photo of a snake at the top of your blog entry. Immediately this prepares your readers’ minds as you write about sneaky threats to their personal safety or how danger can creep up without them being aware. Your blog entries become super powered with an emotional charge that only symbols and archetypes can create.
These four tips together can power your inbound marketing in new and exciting ways. These techniques will allow you to quickly communicate information to your customers, and emotionally charge it. Your product or service will cease to be simply a product or service, but rather take on a personality and character that can be cheered for and supported.
In a time-compressed world, people talk about that which they care about most. Given a generic product or your storybook-empowered product, you will hold their interest while your competition will fade from their mind.
Photo: Hawee
Webinar: The 2010 State of Inbound Marketing
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Listen to Mike Volpe, VP of Marketing at HubSpot for a 30 minute overview of the 2010 State of Inbound Marketing! Download the webinar now to learn how more than 230 professionals have been using inbound marketing to transform their businesses. |
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8 Common Mistakes in B2B Social Media Marketing
Mar 9th 2010Pamela SeipleUncategorized
About the author: Tom Pick is an online marketing executive with KC Associates, a marketing and PR firm in Minneapolis, Minnesota, focused on B2B technology clients. He’s also the award-winning writer of the Webbiquity blog, which focuses on B2B lead generation and Web presence optimization — the fusion of SEO, search marketing, social media, content marketing and interactive PR.
You’ve seen the statistics. Over 90% of B2B decision makers use social media somewhere in their buying process. Two-thirds of B2B marketers have caught on, using social media in their marketing mix. Social media has a direct impact on brand search. Social media is mainstream.
And yet, many B2B companies struggle to show results. Part of the problem is that it’s difficult to measure ROI with any precision, and part of it is confusion over whether social media is a marketing or PR activity (or something else, like customer service).
But the biggest factor is execution: according to a recent MarketingSherpa report, “two-thirds of marketers who work for organizations that have not used any form of social media marketing or PR consider themselves ‘very knowledgeable’ or ’somewhat knowledgeable’ about this emerging strategy. Their overconfidence in unproven ability can doom social media initiatives to failure.”
Here are eight common mistakes B2B companies make when jumping into social media marketing. Avoid these, and you’ll greatly increase your chances of success.
1. Using social media as a direct response vehicle.
Unless your product is a price-sensitive impulse purchase (e.g. a restaurant tweeting about today’s lunch specials), social media doesn’t work well for direct response. For B2B companies, social media is primarily about interaction and knowledge sharing. A hard-sell approach is not only ineffective, but it can also damage a firm’s brand.
2. Expecting instant results.
Social media is not like an advertising or email blast campaign designed to produce immediate results; it takes time to develop relationships, build significant blog readership or attract a large Twitter following. Social media marketing can produce significant results, but not overnight.
3. Failing to invest sufficient time and effort.
As a consequence of #2 above, many social media efforts are dubbed failures before they have a chance to succeed. Blogs have a few posts written and are then abandoned. Twitter accounts sit silent with only a handful of followers. Facebook fan pages go without updates for months on end. The B2B companies achieving results with social media are those that set a clear strategy, adjust tactics based on results and experience, and maintain commitment to their social media efforts.
4. Focusing internally.
Social media is about listening and interacting. Focusing only on your own message — our product this, our company that — is as boorish as talking only about yourself at a business mixer or cocktail party. Of course, you can link to your own blog posts or other content on occasion, but these should be mixed in with links to external content, and in the context of answering a question or providing helpful information to solve a problem.
5. Not building networks or using syndication.
It’s not enough to have great content. You need other people sharing it on your behalf as well. Use your blog, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts, and other social media tools to build a network of influencers who will amplify your content, and use RSS syndication sites to expand the reach of your blog.
6. Having unoptimized and inconsistent profiles.
For CEOs and anyone who represents the “face” of your company to customers, prospects or other stakeholders, every profile on LinkedIn or other social networking sites is a marketing opportunity. While obviously allowing space for originality, every profile should include a compelling and consistent brand message (as well as links to the corporate website, blog, Twitter account, etc.).
7. Not monitoring.
One of the most significant aspects of social media is that it empowers others to share your message (or contradict it). You can’t control every conversation about your brand in social media, but you can help shape them, or at least be seen as responsive in participating in them. Social media monitoring is imperative for understanding what’s being said about your products or services, thanking your fans and responding to critics.
8. Ignoring synergy between different media.
Social media, your corporate website, PR activities and even online advertising don’t exist in isolation from each other; the impact of all of these programs can be magnified by linking them wherever appropriate. Press releases should link to related content on your website or blog as well as to the profiles of anyone quoted. Your corporate website, email newsletters, even employee email signatures should link to your blog and Twitter account. Product microsites can be linked back to the corporate site or blog for additional information. Cross-linking between these different sites and sources raises your profile in search, maximizing your Web presence within your industry and product space.
Avoid these common mistakes, and you’ll greatly enhance your company’s success with social media.
Photo by: Truth Went Trendy
Live Webinar: How To Monitor Your Social Media Presence In 10 Minutes A Day
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Join HubSpot to learn tips and strategies to monitor your company’s brand and engagement in social media in just 10 minutes per day! Date and time: Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 1:00pm ET Reserve your spot now to set up a solid routine to monitor your online presence! |
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Get Paid Daily or Monthly – Your Choice!!
Mar 9th 2010thegoose1Home Business Opportunities
Get Paid Daily or Monthly – Your Choice!!
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For marketing tools and domain names or hosting
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Content Marketing—For Your Website and Beyond
Mar 8th 2010SdishongContent Marketing & online marketing & performance marketing
“The only marketing left is content marketing.”
–Seth Godin, Marketing Guru
Content marketing is providing useful, helpful, interesting, authoritative articles, audio podcasts, videos, images, and other rich media that engage people. The content can be online or offline; however, we’re focused on the online publishing aspects for advertisers and publishers in performance marketing. Outstanding, fresh [...]
Restaurant Owner Increases Sales by 110% with Foursquare Swarm Badge Party
Mar 8th 2010Pamela SeipleUncategorized
How do you attract a flash mob of 150+ people to your restaurant? Offer the possibility of a Foursquare Swarm Badge, of course!
Last week, restaurant owner Joe Sorge attracted 161 Foursquare users at the same time to his burger joint in Milwaukee, AJ Bombers (pretty impressive considering there are approximately only 300-400 total Foursquare users in the area). Even more impressive is the fact that the restaurant more than doubled its typical Sunday sales, with an increase of 110% that day.
So how did he do it? If you haven’t heard, Foursquare is a location-based mobile app that has been growing in popularity. Using the service, people “check in” at locations and earn badges based on a variety of factors, including frequency of check-ins, etc. In order to attract people to his restaurant to raise money for the Milwaukee Social Media Community to host an event at popular interactive conference South by Southwest (SXSW), Joe promoted the possibility of restaurant-goers earning the coveted Swarm Badge, which is awarded to users who check in at a location where over 50 other users are checked into at the same time. As a result, the restaurant raised over $500 toward the SXSW meetup.
In an interview with Joe, he explains that he came up with the idea when he realized how much of the restaurant’s fan base was getting into Foursquare. He promoted the event primarily using Twitter, but also took advantage of Facebook fan connections as well. As a result, AJ Bombers attracted well over the 50 people required to award the Swarm Badge, and restaurant-goers generated a ton of buzz about the meetup via their social networks. Joe also created a video (below) and a Flickr set showcasing photos from the event.
Why Should Businesses Care?
This case study is a great example of business owners harnessing the power of social media sites and applications to attract customers. It’s also testament to the growing power of location-based mobile applications. Joe paid attention to his customers to learn more about them, discovered their growing interest in Foursquare, then did his research about how he could take advantage of the new trend. The result was a carefully and successfully implemented promotion that afforded him new customers and additional buzz (and — you guessed it — the opportunity to create more content).
The lesson here is simple: Using social media for business works. Stay on top of and understand the latest trends, and most importantly — be creative! Think about innovative ways you can use these applications to generate traffic to your website and/or your physical store.
Mobile and location-based applications continue to grow in popularity. Are you thinking about how you can use them to your advantage?
Already a Foursquare user? Measure your Foursquare mojo with our new Foursquare Grader tool!
Live Webinar: How To Monitor Your Social Media Presence In 10 Minutes A Day
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Join HubSpot to learn tips and strategies to monitor your company’s brand and engagement in social media in just 10 minutes per day! Date and time: Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 1:00pm ET Reserve your spot now to set up a solid routine to monitor your online presence! |
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Study Shows That Facebook Fans Become Valuable Customers
Mar 8th 2010Roshni MirchandaniUncategorized
How effective are Facebook Fan Pages? Are they actually generating customers and leads for your business?
Dessert Gallery, a popular Houston-based bakery and café chain, experimented with a Facebook Fan Page to measure how helpful the popular social media site really is. They set up a “sweet” Fan Page and updated it regularly with pictures, contests, reviews and other items designed to interact with their customers. Three months later, they surveyed over 13,000 customers on shopping behavior and store evaluations and received a significantly higher and more positive response from those customers who became Facebook fans.
In fact, the study found that compared with typical Dessert Gallery (DG) customers, the company’s Facebook fans:
- Made 36% more visits to DG’s stores each month
- Spent 45% more of their eating-out dollars at DG
- Spent 33% more at DG’s stores
- Had 14% higher emotional attachment to the DG brand
- Had 41% greater psychological loyalty toward DG
Creating a Facebook Business Page helped the bakery chain reach a wider range of people and connect with them on a more personal level. More people felt inclined to visit and spend more money, and a large portion of customers felt increased loyalty to the brand.
Here are 5 key takeaways from Dessert Gallery’s example:
1. Use Facebook and other social media sites to establish an online presence, reaching a larger audience and attracting potential customers, prospects, vendors and even media.
2. Engage with your community for free and easily post up-to-date information about promotions, new products, upcoming events, etc.
3. Strengthen customer relations by interacting with customers directly on a social level as opposed to a business level.
4. Listen to customers’ feedback. Customers are more likely to share reviews about products/services as well as good or bad experiences online, so utilize the information presented for your company’s benefit.
5. Keep expenses low by building a Facebook Fan Page for free. Take advantage of low-cost, online resources instead of spending money on direct mail and paper advertisements.
Free Report Webinar – Facebook For Business Report
Download the 30-minute Facebook For Business Report webinar, presented by HubSpot’s Rick Burnes and Jeanne Hopkins, which offers deeper insights into Facebook For Business and covers several case studies of businesses using Facebook successfully.
Want more information on how businesses are using Facebook?
Connect with HubSpot:
Social Media Is Not an Eating Contest
Mar 8th 2010Rick BurnesUncategorized
The way people talk about social media these days, you might think it’s an eating contest — to succeed you need to gorge yourself, to be become the Takeru Kobayashi of Twitter.
If you’re a marketer or business owner dubious of this dynamic, don’t worry. Social media is not an eating contest. Most people get sick when they eat too many hot dogs, and most businesses lose money when they spend too much time on Twitter.
But, wait — isn’t social media a foundational element of inbound marketing? Isn’t it something smart marketers should be experimenting with and embracing?
Yes! And, yes! But that doesn’t mean you need to over-do it.
Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook can be highly efficient new marketing channels for your company, but they shouldn’t be your company’s only marketing channel. Businesses also need to create content, do search engine optimization, collect leads, nurture leads — and analyze the volume and conversion rates through your marketing and sales funnel.
So what’s the right balance? Here are four simple ways to find the right balance for your business:
(1) Start With 10 Minutes of Monitoring a Day — Don’t try to do too much. Time-box 10 minutes every day to check the community sites that are important to your business. That isn’t enough time to make a huge impact, but it is enough time to listen and see what’s going on in your industry.
(2) Monitor Your Brand — When you finish your 10 minutes of listening, respond to the people who have specifically reached out to you. For most businesses, this should be quick. If the volume builds, you’ll have a community, so consider ways of empowering it to help answer questions.
(3) Pick Worthwhile Interactions — Make sure you pick the right people to interact with. Reach out to the specific people who are likely to help your business. That means the people connected to the communities you want to reach, the people with the most reach themselves, and the people who are most likely to become customers. Use tools like Twitter Grader and Alerts Grader to do this.
(4) Pick the Right Social Media Channels — Which channels are working best? Where are you getting the most volume? Where are you getting the best conversion rates? At HubSpot, we get the most out of Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. You need to know which channels are driving conversions for your business.
How do you find the right balance? Are you stuck in a social media eating contest or do you have a healthy diet? Let us know in the comments?
Want to learn more about monitoring social media?
I’ll be speaking about some of the ideas in this article and more during a live webinar this Wednesday, March 10 at 1 pm, ET. Sign up here.
Photo: Feastoffun.com
Connect with HubSpot:
Killer Campaigns Volume Four – The Color of Branding
Mar 7th 2010SiteProNewsSite Pro News
Good Web videos are not as much about making a sale as they are about making contact to re-enforce a message and a brand.
Brilliant – Take the Free Tour – Get paid daily!
Mar 6th 2010thegoose1Home Business Opportunities
Are you a GENIUS?
Well, I'm not... not even close:-)
I ask this question because some folks seem
to (obviously) believe that they are geniuses.
They try to earn here online and never even
consider the fact that they'd have to FIRST
learn how to do things correctly.
If you're already a member with us then you
already know what I mean... as you've seen
the type of training that we have in place and
the dedication our team has towards helping
other people.
However, if you're not a member (reseller)
with us YET, then perhaps you don't yet
know how to market online, how to follow up,
how to place EFFECTIVE ADS, etc.
If you're NOT a reseller, it's just
10 bucks... What are you waiting for?
Take the free tour now and you will see that
you will want to be a reseller for sure!
After the tour - Just login and click "Upgrade to Reseller"
and follow the prompts.
Sure, I know that you might have some
questions and you're always
welcome to attend a LIVE business
presentation. We have them twice per
week for our tour takers.
Again, we will be explaining the entire opportunity
and also answering any questions that you or your
guests may have on these LIVE Presentations
Wishing you the BEST of Success in all you do!
CLICK HERE to take the FREE TOUR
PS
Marketing tools free at http://onlinebusiness.ws
Well, I'm not... not even close:-)
I ask this question because some folks seem
to (obviously) believe that they are geniuses.
They try to earn here online and never even
consider the fact that they'd have to FIRST
learn how to do things correctly.
If you're already a member with us then you
already know what I mean... as you've seen
the type of training that we have in place and
the dedication our team has towards helping
other people.
However, if you're not a member (reseller)
with us YET, then perhaps you don't yet
know how to market online, how to follow up,
how to place EFFECTIVE ADS, etc.
If you're NOT a reseller, it's just
10 bucks... What are you waiting for?
Take the free tour now and you will see that
you will want to be a reseller for sure!
After the tour - Just login and click "Upgrade to Reseller"
and follow the prompts.
Sure, I know that you might have some
questions and you're always
welcome to attend a LIVE business
presentation. We have them twice per
week for our tour takers.
Again, we will be explaining the entire opportunity
and also answering any questions that you or your
guests may have on these LIVE Presentations
Wishing you the BEST of Success in all you do!
CLICK HERE to take the FREE TOUR
PS
Marketing tools free at http://onlinebusiness.ws
Finding and Getting Links – FAST
Mar 5th 2010LinkSharebento box & links & products
As you build your business in the LinkShare Network and increase the number of partners you work with, you’ll want to be aware of all the different ways to promote, find and get links. One way is to login to the Publisher Dashboard and browse an Advertiser’s available links in the “Get Links” area.
But [...]
Save the Date!
SAVE THE DATE
Symposium East 2010
New York City, June 22
Mark your calendars, Symposium East 2010 is shaping up to be the best ever! We’ll kick off the day with presentations on the latest trends that will help you drive sales followed by LinkShare’s Annual Golden Link Awards Luncheon, which you won’t want to miss! Stay [...]
Quick Tip and Tool on Keyword Research
Mar 5th 2010VedwardsSEO & keyword research & keyword tools & twitter search
Keyword Research: Quick Tool & Tip
Keyword research at times can be a real pain, but alas, it MUST be done. I have found a site that has helped me to make it a rather painless and quick task, but also make it effective when doing keyword research for SEO. Along with this tool, I will [...]
HubSpot TV – Olympic Champions and Social Media with Guest @ColleenCoyne
Mar 5th 2010Rebecca CorlissUncategorized
HubSpot TV is LIVE every Friday at 4:00 p.m. ET. Watch the show in real-time at www.hubspot.tv, and chatArticle with us via Twitter using NEW hashtag, #HubSpotTV.
Episode #81 – February 26, 2010
(Episode Length: 26 minutes, 41 seconds)
Intro
- How to interact on Twitter: Include #HubSpotTV in your tweets!
- On the show today is Mike Volpe (@mvolpe), Karen Rubin (@karenrubin) and Coleen Coyne (@ColeenCoyne)
- All old episodes are in iTunes: http://itunes.hubspot.tv
- March 19: HubSpot goes to Vegas!
Special Guest, Olympic Gold Medalist Colleen Coyne
- Why I Would Hire Bode Miller as My Inbound Marketer
- “If you are honest in your approach to creating content, it’s going to work out in the end. There might be some bumps along the way, but the satisfaction of knowing you gave it a truly honest effort will be rewarding in and of itself. Additionally, you will definitely gain a following. There is no reward without risk, and there is definitely a market for authenticity.”
- PPC is like liposuction
- Olympic athletes’ social media restrictions
Doin’ It Wrong
- Citibank Freezes Some Fabulis Assets
- From HubSpotter Christopher Haddad – Does Citibank Suffer From Homophobia Or Just A General Dislike For Startups?
- Citibank apparently froze the assets of Fabulis because of “objectionable content” on the company blog.
- Fabulis is an established company with investors ($625K) and an experienced entrepreneur as founder (Jason Goldberg – SocialMedian and Jobster), but they are “the social network that helps gay men connect with amazing experiences nearby and around the world”
- Citibank never called or warned Fabulis at all
- Marketing Takeaway: Aggressively communicate with customers and be available for comment quickly. This will help problems from spiraling out of control.
Headlines
Should Mahalo Say “Mahalo” to Google for Tolerating Spam
- SEO guru Aaron Wall gets upset that Mahalo is stealing his content, not adding value and still ranking in Google.
- Matt Cutts (head of Google anti-spam team): “When trying to decide if a page is spam, it is helpful to ask yourself this question: if I remove the scraped (copied) content, the ads, and the links to other pages, is there anything of value left? If the answer is no, the page is probably spam.”
- Comic response from SEO Black Hat: Spam vs Mahalo: Matt Cutts Explains the Difference
- Marketing Takeaway: If you are not Jason Calcanis, you need to create original and valuable content to rank in search.
Twitter Goes Yahoo
- Details: The Yahoo-Twitter Partnership
- “We knew that the Yahoo-Twitter partnership would be comprehensive and more encompassing than Twitter’s search partnerships with Google and Bing, but now Yahoo tells us the integration will focus on three primary areas:
- Access to your Twitter feed on Yahoo
- Ability to update status from Yahoo
- Yahoo Search and media integration
- Marketing Takeaway: Keep doing inbound marketing. Developments like this just make it more effective.
Bravo to Foursquare as They Partner with Traditional TV Media
- Foursquare Teams With Bravo TV
- “Starting Monday, Bravo will begin offering Foursquare players badges and special prizes when viewers visit more than 500 Bravo locations. Locations will be picked by Bravo to correspond with select Bravo shows including “The Real Housewives,” “The Millionaire Matchmaker,” “Top Chef,” “Kell on Earth,” “Top Chef Masters” and “Shear Genius.”
- Although this deal will help put Foursquare in front of millions of mainstream television viewers, it also offers the company a chance to try to blur the lines between traditional television media and mobile experiences. Although some television executives have been successful integrating TV and the Web, merging TV with mobile has proved to be more difficult.
- Dennis Crowley, Foursquare’s chief executive, said the company was excited to work with Bravo and push some of these boundaries further. “Bravo’s shows really overlap with our users and a new mainstream audience that we want to reach. I don’t think check-ins are a nerd-only experience. It’s about sharing content and experiences with others.”
- Marketing Takeaway: Making trades is better than paying cash for advertising. Get creative!
Forum Fodder
- Question from Inbound.org – How many times should a keyword appear on a page for optimal density?
- Ben Robbins – For several years now, good sources at Google (like Matt Cutts) have indicated that keyword density carries little or no importance in their algorithm. Keyword-related factors that are still considered include anchor text for editorial links, page title, page URL, and heading tags. They also seem to reward pages with lengthier content, maybe 500+ words, and long tail keyword variations.
Marketing Tip of the Week: Cheating does not work. Don’t spam Google, and don’t rely on PPC alone. Do the hard work and inbound marketing will pay off.
Closing
Video: How to Get Off the Google AdWords PPC Crack
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Learn how to break your Google AdWords addiction! Download the free video to learn how to use inbound marketing to generate leads and break your dependence on programs with recurring expenses. |
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How To Wreck A Relationship Using FourSquare [cartoon]
Mar 5th 2010Dharmesh ShahUncategorized
Even if you’re not as obsessed as John but still use FourSquare, you should check out our new, free tool: Square.Grader.com. It’s a grader for FourSquare! How fun! It also does some cool things like helping you figure out what badge you should be working on.
Live Webinar: How To Monitor Your Social Media Presence In 10 Minutes A Day
|
|
Join HubSpot to learn tips and strategies to monitor your company’s brand and engagement in social media in just 10 minutes per day! Date and time: Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 1:00pm ET Reserve your spot now to set up a solid routine to monitor your online presence! |
Connect with HubSpot:
39 Free or Low-Cost Tools for Marketing Your Small Business Online
Mar 4th 2010SiteProNewsSite Pro News
Help round out your small business marketing toolkit with this list of the most popular low-cost or free small business marketing tools.
Thou Shalt Blog: What Marketers Can Learn from the Church’s Foray into Social Media
Mar 4th 2010Andrew PitreUncategorized
If you’ve been waiting for a sign from above telling you to start using social media, then your time has come.
Over the past few months, Pope Benedict XVI has been calling on the Catholic Church to get more involved in Web 2.0. In a video released by the vatican on YouTube, Pope Benedict states that the Church should continue to be present in the “ever-evolving communications system that surrounds our planet.”
To date, the Vatican has created a YouTube account, a personal Facebook page for Pope Benedict, an iPhone app and Facebook app. Outside of the Vatican, many of those in the Church have heard the call and started blogging and creating other online resources like Open Source Catholic.
Okay, I admit that it’s not exactly a burning bush, but it’s certainly a clear sign that times have changed.
Religious groups have long been associated with traditional outbound marketing techniques. Think about men in ties and backpacks knocking at your door, religious pamphlets left on your windshield or people handing out flowers at the airport.
Why have these devotees gone to such great lengths to spread the “good word?” Because people have been searching for it.
According to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, about 92% of Americans believe in a higher power, 28% have left the religion of their childhood and 16% consider themselves unaffiliated. This means that there is liquidity in the religious market, and many Americans are actively searching for spirituality. It also explains why religious groups have spent so much time, energy and money trying to get attention.
The Catholic Church’s embrace of blogging and social media is yet another clear sign that, no matter what your audience, the conversation has shifted online. In a statement, the Pope Benedict notes that, “Church communities have always used the modern media… for encouraging dialog at a wider level.”
The key business takeaway is this: If the 83-year-old leader of one of the oldest organizations in the history of Western civilization has embraced Web 2.0 and recognized the benefits of inbound marketing techniques, you’re officially out of excuses for why social media won’t work for your company.
Our recommendation? Follow the Pope’s lead (at least in regard to your marketing efforts): Get involved in social media, especially Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Start a blog, and join the conversation in your industry.
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And the Winner for Most Important Social Media Channel is …
Mar 4th 2010Roshni MirchandaniUncategorized
[Drumroll] … Blogs!
Company blogs took the top spot in HubSpot’s recent 2010 State of Inbound Marketing report, which surveyed marketing professionals about the importance of various social media channels. The other rated nominees included Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc. in order of importance to inbound marketing strategies.
Up from 2009, 85% of users ranked company blogs as “useful” or better this year, showing increased preference for creating conversations around the industry and interacting personally with customers. Twitter came in 2nd place with a huge leap to 71%, and Facebook and YouTube followed suit with increased ratings.
Social news/browsing sites Digg and StumbleUpon dropped rankings over the past year, while MySpace completely fell off the map with only 10% of users rating it as “useful” or better.
Other key findings of the 2010 State of Inbound Marketing report:
- Over 40% of customers using Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and company blogs have generated a customer from that channel.
- 88% of companies have either increased or maintained their inbound marketing budget since last year.
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Why Joel Spolsky Should Not Quit Blogging
Mar 4th 2010Mike VolpeUncategorized
The blogosphere is losing a valued member. In this article in Inc Magazine, Joel Spolsky (founder and CEO of Fog Creek Software and blogger at Joel on Software) says he is going to stop blogging. I was frankly really shocked when I read this. If you read this blog regularly, you know that businesses get 55% more website traffic if they blog, and 58% of businesses that blog weekly say they have gotten new customers because of their blog. I want to go on record that Joel is a really smart guy, and someone we respect a lot here at HubSpot. We’ve learned a lot from his blog, and use software from his company. But, on this topic of his blog and marketing strategy, I think Joel is missing the mark. Yet, before we decide that Joel is totally crazy, let’s look at what he says in the article and think about what makes sense, where he went wrong, and what he should actually do.
What did Joel get RIGHT?
- Blogging is about content your customers like, not your press releases. Joel says most companies “make the blog about themselves, filling it with posts announcing new hires, touting new products, and sharing pictures from the company picnic. That’s lovely, darling — I’m sure your mom cares. Too bad nobody else does… The big-hit technology companies from the past 10 years tend to have pathetic blogs. Twitter’s blog, like Facebook’s and Google’s, is full of utterly boring press releases rewritten to sound a little bit less stuffy.” Agreed! Those blogs suck, and the best blogs think about content from the point of view of their audience. (You won’t see any press releases or boring product info on this blog!)
- Blogging generates leads and sales. Joel attributes a lot of his company’s growth to his blog. “[Our blog] was essentially a small, perfectly targeted magazine for programmers with a certain pragmatic philosophy toward software development… Once I had built an audience among programmers, enough of them turned into customers that I was able to get my bootstrapped company off the ground.” Right on! Your experience matches that of thousands of other businesses who see blogging as an important part of their inbound marketing strategy.
- Blogging takes time and effort. “…my daily duties now take so much time that it has become a major effort to post something thoughtful even once or twice a month.” Often things that have a great payoff take time and effort. The benefit to blogging is that you are building a lasting asset that pays dividends in SEO and social media, which produce traffic, leads and sales. However, to feed this engine you need content, and yes, that takes time and effort from someone.
- Blogging is not the only marketing tool. “The best evidence also suggests that there are many other effective ways to market Fog Creek’s products — and that our historical over-reliance on blogging as a marketing channel has meant that we’ve ignored them. My company needs to get better at what every other company already knows — how to promote and market products without depending on one single channel.” True! You can’t build a house using just a hammer, and you can’t build a company using just a blog. A comprehensive inbound marketing strategy creates content (blog, video, eBooks, presentations, podcasts), but then optimizes that content for search and social and promotes that content using social media.
What did Joel get WRONG?
- Joel thinks blogging is not widely successful. “I have trouble pointing to other successful entrepreneurs who have used the same formula and reaped the same dividends I have [with blogging].” That’s a surprise to me. I’d encourage Joel to start reading this HubSpot blog, or catching up with our co-founder Dharmesh and his blog, or reviewing the State of Inbound Marketing Report, which has lots of stats about how companies who blog get more website traffic and leads. Blogging, when used as part of an inbound marketing strategy, really does work for thousands of companies.
- Joel thinks he has to do all the blogging himself. Companies can, and should, use the entire team to create content. Over 50 different people have contributed articles to this blog; many are employees, some are guest bloggers. There is no reason that one person has to carry the whole weight of the blog on their back. Build inbound marketing into the fabric of your business, and that means marketing is a responsibility with which everyone in the company helps. Even if you carry the complete burden, there is no law about frequency of posts — posting more often does get better results — but the world would be a better place if Joel blogged just a little bit.
- Joel thinks blogging makes his other marketing less effective. The opposite is true — your blog makes the rest of your marketing more successful. Blogging is essential to effective social media marketing, and also central to a successful SEO program. Without a blog, the rest of your marketing will be worse off. A blog can even help with old school marketing — people that you contact through direct mail, sponsored email, trade shows and other methods can find and subscribe to your blog. The blog is a more modern and open version of lead nurturing.
What should Joel do for marketing and growth?
I am sure there is more to the situation than what the article says, but Joel seems frustrated that his company is not growing even faster. It seems like they have strong loyalty in a segment of the market, but they want to sell into new markets. Here’s the problem: Joel’s blog targets a specific audience, and he feels like he has tapped out that market. No problem! Let’s take the success you have had and duplicate it in other market segments.
Here is what I would tell Joel to do if he wanted marketing advice:
- Figure out the next 2 target market segments you want to reach. Think about the 6 products you have and who you think should buy them, and pick 2 markets where you think you should focus next. Don’t over-analyze, just pick the 2 that seem like they will be the best.
- Create a persona for each market. To do marketing and product development well, you need to have a persona for each product you build. Joel’s company builds great products, so I bet they have personas. Take these personas, and apply them to your content creation and inbound marketing so that all your content is aimed at them, and you don’t talk about yourself.
- Create content for each market/persona. You need a blog, videos, presentations, podcasts and more for each persona. All of Joel’s comments about many company blogs being boring is right on, and it’s because they don’t think about their persona. Your persona should represent the whole market you are going after, and you need content that speaks to the big issues and challenges they face regularly.
- Leverage the whole team for blogging and content. Blogging can be time consuming. Joel should not bear the burden himself. Many companies have a team of bloggers, and we have found this to be a really successful strategy.
- Do more than blog. A blog is the home base for your online presence, and the core of your inbound marketing strategy. Focus on SEO. Build a more engaging social media presence. Use other types of content that your personas like. Launch a PPC campaign (but don’t get addicted). Buy some banner ads. Test lots of other things.
- Don’t abandon your hugely successful blog. You have built an asset that most companies would kill for. Letting it wither and die on the vine is a mistake. Share the burden with others, but keep blogging. Your blog gets a grade of 92 on Blog Grader, meaning that you are in the top 10% of over 200,000 blogs we have analyzed. That is a very valuable marketing asset you have built, and walking away from it is like flushing money down the toilet.
What do you think? Should Joel stop blogging? What should Joel do for marketing? Leave a comment and let’s discuss.
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