Jonathan Rick is a director at Levick Strategic Communications. He contributes to Levick’s Bulletproof Blog. Follow him @jrick.

Every year, for the last ten years, someone has proclaimed that the press release is dying. While the rumors of its demise are exaggerated, they are not totally unfounded. That’s because the press release is, in fact, being eclipsed by digital alternatives that are more flexible, more interesting, and more relevant.

In 2010, when Google made a major announcement not by press release but by blog post, we reached what seemed like a milestone. Five years earlier, a company of Google’s stature would have issued a statement on a newswire. Now, a Google executive was crafting a more thoughtful narrative that the company published on its official blog.

This shift in medium and message represents a new era in corporate communications. News now needs to be conveyed in an empathetic tone and delivered in a user-friendly format.

And Google isn’t the only company using this strategy. Dell breaks news on its blog all the time. When Netflix has something to say, it complements a traditional release with a first-person post. Southwest Airlines takes the prize for a blog that whips CNN-type announcements into HBO-like celebrations.

What’s so encouraging about this trend is that it isn’t exclusive to corporate behemoths. To the contrary, smaller companies can leverage blog-centric communications with great success. Here are four examples of those that do it well.

1. ZillowZillow, the real estate company, has a great blog where it bypasses the typical corporate press release. Instead, it opts for more conversational posts like: “Whether you’re driving around a neighborhood checking home values on your smartphone, using an iPad to draw a search around that dream neighborhood while waiting at the airport, or doing some serious house hunting on your computer at home, there are multiple ways to home search and shop with Zillow.”

Similarly, new hires are introduced by their respective manager in a first-person post.

The Lesson: Keep it human. Your stakeholders, and your customers, prefer it that way.

2. PatagoniaThose searching Patagonia’s website for a press release will look in vain. Instead, media folks are invited to join the Patagonia PR Facebook group. This group is dedicated to keeping journalists, writers, editors, and other media informed about Patagonia and its outdoor clothing products. While a social network isn’t technically a blog, it works. In fact, Patagonia also operates a robust blog.

The Lesson: Passion, even edginess, does not get in the way of your message. Passion actually shows personality, and that there’s a real person behind your press shop.

3. InnocentWhen the British smoothie-maker Innocent announced new juice blends earlier this year, it did so via press release and blog post. The difference between the two versions speaks volumes.

Here’s the press release: “We’ve been so pleased with how popular the juice has been that we got back in to the kitchen and have made some delicious juice blends, which we think everyone will enjoy just as much.”

Here’s the blog post: “You can choose from our delicious apple and raspberry recipe or totally tasty tropical (sorry), depending on whether you need to be transported to a dappled orchard or a desert island.”

The formatting differences between the two are even more glaring. The press release lacks any social sharing buttons. Its claim to fame: it’s downloadable as a PDF. The blog post features the colorful new bottles and video created for the occasion. There’s also a promise to reward the most interesting comments with a free case of the new blends.

The Lesson: Entertaining consumers is as important as informing them.

4. ServIntWhen ServInt, a web host, announced a new line of servers from their Flex brand, the press release followed the tried-and-trite formula. “ServInt, a pioneering provider of managed cloud hosting for enterprises worldwide, today introduced its new line of fully managed, dedicated servers under the Flex brand.”

Then things got interesting on their blog, ServInt Source, which ran three posts about Flex. First, ServInt’s sales director touted the servers’ “power and options.” A week later, its vice president of marketing connected the new machines to the company’s new brand identity. Finally, the COO placed these changes in the context of industry-wide developments.

What’s significant about this approach is how it turns a single announcement into multiple opportunities. With press releases this continuity is difficult. A blog, however, is perfect for ongoing updates.

The Lesson: Make it personal. Comments from soldiers in the trenches are more memorable than a few quotes from a chief executive.

Go big or go home? Forget that. These strategies for increasing your brand influence take hardly any time, and very little money.
Let's say you've got some down time between major marketing campaigns. Does that mean your marketing efforts have to go into hibernation? Of course not. You can fill in the downtime in your bigger advertising strategy with some mini-marketing campaigns that are often quick, uncomplicated and cheap—or even free. Experts from top marketing firms share some ideas on things you can do to run a smart—and influential—mini-marketing campaign that might even change the way you reach your customers in the future.

1. Experiment with new audiences.
"Throughout the year, large campaigns rarely stray from their core target audiences. But there are opportunities within secondary audiences. To draw on these opportunities, we usually turn to social first. We monitor social campaigns throughout the year and identify key questions and conversations we want to explore further. Then, when we have time, we survey these audiences, conduct small, targeted promotions, or post engaging messages to see what they have to say. More often than not, we learn something new that we weren’t considering for an upcoming launch or get added validation for a new idea or direction."
—Todd Miller, managing partner, The Archer Group

2. Go big with pop-up events. 
"Find a venue where many people who are your customers or prospects show up. Better yet, buy a booth or offer your services for speaking or host a party for customers and encourage them to bring friends. This gives you the chance to speak with current customers to learn what they like/dislike, but mostly it gives you the chance to prospect. Just don't make the mistake too many business people make after the event: failing to follow up on every lead. If you gathered hundreds of business cards or email addresses then send a thank you and invitation to stay in touch. Offer something of value in this email—a discount, a free newsletter, added features, etc.—then the people most interested will "hand raise" and identify themselves to you for further follow-up and marketing efforts."
—Linda Worrell, managing director, Red F

3. Sponsor conversations.
"People today love to talk and express their opinions. Blogs, chat rooms, comment sections are filled with loads of people expressing themselves. This, if you play your cards right, can be a great opportunity for your product or brand. Why not offer up topics for people to discuss? And make them topics that relate to your marketing efforts. Use Facebook or blog comments to start a relevant conversation where, at some point, your product can play a role. Be careful, however, not to appear to be 'selling.' Generate a conversation that is authentic to the topic, and that your brand can become a part of as opposed to a conversation that is about your product. People will happily talk about things that are interesting to them, and brands are not interesting. So make your brand a byproduct of the conversation, not the topic itself."
—Kevin Roddy, chief creative officer, Publicis & Hal Riney 

4. Attach yourself to large events.
"Sponsoring big events can be an effective but expensive way of connecting with industry leaders. Instead of going the sponsorship route, think of interesting ways to associate your product or service with the event to create organic buzz. For example, a cocktail hour at a nearby venue or a social-media driven game that incorporates panels and parties might be more cost-effective ways to leverage an event. Your campaign idea should provide value to event-goers; the reason Foursquare was a hit at SXSW was because it made it easier for friends to find each other. Keep in mind that early adopters can be your biggest cheerleaders, so connect with anyone going to the event who is an admitted fan of your product and reward them for sharing positive stories. People trust the advice of their friends and peers, so keep in mind that one good experience with your product can have a waterfall effect that goes viral."
—Maneesh K. Goyal, CEO of MKG, an experiential marketing agency

5. Emphasize earned media.
"Emphasize 'earned' media programs during these 'dark' periods in-between your big campaigns. Earned media, in the form of, for example, traditional public relations efforts and social media programs can be a cost-effective way to stay in market even when you don’t have ad budgets. We have found that emphasizing social media outreach and programs just as paid advertising campaigns wind down can be a highly effective way to keep an organizations message in market even after paid ads go away."
—Jose Villa, founder and president Sensis advertising agency

6. Try a new format.
"One of the things you have to look at when you attempt short-burst marketing is how much share of somebody's attention you can capture for the most reasonable share of money. What I would consider looking at social as an environment to capture market share. There's not much advertising in social apps. Usually, you get a large percentage or 100 percent share of voice within the application. Within that you're also getting a very engaged audience. Some offer the opportunity to buy in the stream of social activities people are performing across web and mobile. It's the most effective way you can spend your money for a short burst of time. The key is buying 'in activity:' as you send a gift, perform a mission, check in or set a status, that is when we perform our advertising. You're reaching an engaged consumer at the right time. As somebody performs a social activity, and you reach that consumer, that's when they're likely to share, that's when they're likely to 'like.'"
—Robert Victor, CMO of Appssavvy

7. Revisit old leads.
"One thing to do would be to recontact people that you've spoken to that have for whatever reason, in a friendly way, turned you down in the past. Revisit those people. If people have called you to inquire about your product or service but have not bought from you, it's always good to call those people back and re-pitch them. They've already expressed interest in you, they may or may not have been in research mode when they called. It’s a fruitful, no-cost list. You don't have to spend money to get that list. You know they're interested in your product."
—Dan Feldstein, cofounder and chief marketing officer, Red Ventures

Copyright © 2012 Mansueto Ventures LLC. All rights reserved.
Inc.com, 7 World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007-2195.

Do you want to optimize your website but have trouble communicating with the technical folks running it? Jargon alone shouldn't stop you from making your site the powerful marketing tool it can be.

This is a list of the 40 most essential search engine optimization (SEO) terms to help marketers communicate with developers and understand how to optimize their websites.

40 SEO Terms You Must Know!


301 Redirect – A way to make one web page redirect the visitor to another page. Whenever you change the web address of a page, apply a 301 redirect to make the old address point to the new one. This ensures that people who have linked to or bookmarked the old address will automatically get to the new one, and search engines can update their index.

AALT Text/Tag or Attribute - A description of an image in your site's HTML. Unlike humans, search engines read only the ALT text of images, not the images themselves. Add ALT text to images whenever possible.

Anchor Text - The actual text of a link to a web page. On most websites, this text is usually dark blue and underlined, or purple if you’ve visited the link in the past. Anchor text helps search engines understand what the destination page is about; it describes what you will see if you click through.

Blog - A part of your website where you should regularly publish content (e.g. commentary on industry/company topics, descriptions of events, photos, videos, etc.). Each blog post on your website is a new page that a search engine sees, and therefore a new opportunity to get found online. Make sure you keep your blog within your own domain.

Bookmark - A link to a website saved for later reference in your web browser or computer. Social bookmarking sites (example: Delicious.com) let users share websites they like with each other. Having links to your site in social bookmarking sites is a sign to crawlers that your website content is interesting to people.

Canonical URL - The canonical URL is the best address on which a user can find a piece of information. Sometimes you might have a situation where the same page content can be accessed at more than one address. Specifying the canonical URL helps search engines understand which address for a piece of content is the best one.

Conversion Form - A form through which you collect information about your site visitor. Conversion forms convert traffic into leads. Collecting contact information helps you follow up with these leads.

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) - The part of your code that defines how different elements of your site look (examples: headers, links).

Directory - Just like directories for people and phone numbers, there are directories for websites. Submitting your site to a directory gives you more than just an inbound link; it helps people find you. The most popular web directories are Yahoo! Directory and Dmoz.

Domain - The main web address of your site (example: www.yoursite.com). It's good to renew ownership of your domain for several years. Search engine rankings favor websites with longer registrations because it shows commitment.

The Fold - The “fold” is the point on your website where the page gets cut off by the bottom of a user’s monitor or browser window. Anything below the fold can be scrolled to, but isn’t seen right away. Search engines place some priority on content above the fold, since it will be seen right away by new visitors. Having too many ads above the fold can be seen as a negative issue, too. (See Panda).

Headings - Text on your website that is placed inside of a heading tag, such as an H1 or H2. This text is often presented in a larger and stronger font than other text on the page.

HTML - The code part of your website that search engines read. Keep your HTML as clean as possible so that search engines read your site easily and often. Put as much layout-related code as possible in your CSS instead of your HTML.

Inbound Link - A link from one site into another. A link from another site will improve your SEO, especially if that site has a high PageRank.

Internal Link - A link from one page to another on the same website, such as from your homepage to your products page.

Indexed Pages - The pages of your website that are stored by search engines.

Javascript - A scripting language that allows website administrators to apply various effects or changes to the content of their website as users browse it. Search engines often have difficulty reading content that is inside of Javascript, but they are getting better at it over time.

Keyword - A word that a user enters in search. Each web page should be optimized with the goal of drawing in visitors who have searched specific keywords.

Link Building - The activity and process of getting more inbound links to your website for improved search engine rankings.

Long Tail Keyword - An uncommon or infrequently searched keyword, typically with two or more words in the phrase. Small businesses should consider targeting long tail keywords, as they are lower difficulty and often have more qualified searchers. Common keywords such as 'software' are more competitive, and very hard to rank high for them in search.

Metadata - Data that tells search engines what your website is about.

Meta Description - A brief description of fewer than 160 characters of the contents of a page and why someone would want to visit it. This is often displayed on search engine results pages below the page title as a sample of the content on the page.

Meta Keywords - Previously used by search engines in the 90s and early 00s to help determine what a web page was about, the meta keywords tag is no longer used by any major search engines.

mozRank - A logarithmic ranking provided by SEOmoz from 0-10.0 of the number and quality of inbound links pointing to a certain website or page on that website. A 10.0 is the best linked-to page on the internet, and a 0 has no recognized inbound links.

No follow - When a link from one site does not pass SEO credit to another. Do not use nofollow when linking to internal pages in your website. Use it when linking to external pages that you don't want to endorse.

Page Title - The name you give your web page, which is seen at the top your browser window. Page titles should contain keywords related to your business. Words at the beginning of your page title are more highly weighted than words at the end.

PageRank - A number from 0-10, assigned by Google, indicating how good your overall SEO is. It is technically known as 'Toolbar PageRank.' Note: PageRank relevancy is changing.

Panda - Refers to a series of updates released by Google to its search engine ranking algorithm that are intended to discourage people who create large amounts of mediocre content in an attempt to claim many keyword rankings without generating much value for users. Read a marketer's guide to understanding Google Panda here.

PPC (Pay-Per-Click) - Advertising method in which an advertiser puts an ad in an online advertising venue and pays that venue each time a visitor clicks on his/her ad. Google AdWords is the classic example of this.

Ranking Factor - One element of how a search engine determines where to rank a certain page, such as the number of inbound links to a page or the contents of the title tag on that page.

Referrer String - A piece of information sent by a user’s browser when they navigate from page to page on the web. It includes information on where they came from previously, which helps webmasters understand how users are finding their website.

RSS Feed - RSS stands for 'really simple syndication.' It is a subscription-based way to get updates on new content from a web source. Set up an RSS feed for your website or blog to help your followers stay updated when you release new content.

SERP (Search Engine Ranking Page) - The page that you are sent to after you run a query in a search engine. It typically has 10 results on it, but this may vary depending on the query and search engine in question.

Sitemap - A special document created by a webmaster or a piece of software that provides a map of all the pages on a website to make it easier for a search engine to index that website.

Social Media - Online media created by and shared among individuals. Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Google+, and Twitter are popular social media websites. Links from many social media sites now appear in searches. It's important to have links to your site spread throughout social media.

Spider - A computer program that browses the internet and collects information about websites.

Traffic - The visitors to your site.

Title - The title of a page on your website, which is enclosed in a <title> HTML tag, inside of the head section of the page. It appears in search engine results and at the top of a user’s web browser when they are on that page.

Traffic Rank - The ranking of how much traffic your site gets compared to all other sites on the internet. You can check your traffic rank on Alexa.

URL - The web address of a page on your site (example: www.yoursite.com/contact).


What others SEO terms do you think are useful for marketers to know?



Read more: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/6080/40-Essential-SEO-Terms-Marketers-Should-Know-Glossary.aspx#ixzz1hUoZtGsH 

All inbound marketers will agree: more 'Likes' for your Facebook business page are quite nice. But when has 'nice' ever been enough? In and of itself, Likes are ultimately useless unless you're successfully converting them into leads for your business. At the end of the day, the effectiveness of your marketing team is likely evaluated by metrics like traffic and leads. If your Facebook page has 500 fans but is generating no traffic or leads for your website, you really don't have much to brag about. And if all that "engagement" you're creating on your page isn't contributing to your team's goals, it's essentially worthless.

The good news is, Facebook fans offer a great opportunity for lead generation if you know how to leverage them. As they say, it's not size that matters -- it's how you use it. To get you well on your way to use Facebook effectively for lead generation, here are 6 guaranteed tactics for turning likes into leads.

6 Great Ways to Turn Likes Into Leads 1. Implement a Like Gate: Like gates are popping up all over Facebook these days, and it's not difficult to understand why. They're a great way to convert new likes into leads right off the bat. Use your like gate to initially turn new page visitors into fans. Once they like you, present them with a valuable content offer that they can obtain directly from a form on your page. (Top for HubSpot Customers: The HubSpot Welcome App makes doing this extremely easy.)


2. Share Links to Landing Pages on Your Wall: Amongst the updates and content you share with your fans on your wall, be sure to include a hearty mix of landing page links for lead generating, premium content like ebooks, webinars, and other educational downloads. In addition, make sure any blog posts you share include CTAs within the post.

3. Offer Exclusive Content to Facebook Fans: According to research from ExactTarget, 58% of Facebook users expect exclusive content from business pages. Take advantage of this insight by offering downloadable content that is exclusive only to your Facebook fans. Set up a targeted landing page for this content, and share the link exclusively on your Facebook page. Require that page visitors must like you in order to view your offer to make it even more exclusive. You'll be generating leads and leveraging the power of exclusivity all at the same time. How's that for killing two birds with one stone?

4. Use Overlooked Page Real Estate to Promote Offers: There are quite a few places on your Facebook page you're likely overlooking to promote your offers. What about highlighting your latest offer in your page's profile picture? Have you added links to offers in your page's 'Info' section? Don't miss out on these juicy pieces of low-hanging lead gen fruit!

5. Create Custom Page Tabs to Promote Offers: Customization of Facebook pages is tough...but not impossible. Creating custom page tabs are a great way to expand the possibilities of your Facebook page. Consider creating a tab just to highlight your offers. You can use it one to aggregate some of your best-performing offers, or maybe just promote your newest offer or promotion on a rotating basis. 

6. Create Product/Service Awareness: While it's always a bad idea to be overly self-promotional in your social media efforts, you also want to make sure that your fans are aware of your products/services. Sure, they might keep coming back to you again and again because you offer engaging conversation and valuable content, but if they don't even know what you sell, you're not doing your job. Make sure your page clearly communicates what your business sells, and use your lead gen offers to support that with content that aligns with your product/service offerings. This will help spark a connection between your content and your product. 

Read more: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/28657/6-Guaranteed-Tactics-to-Turn-Facebook-Likes-Into-Leads.aspx#ixzz1dcnPE1MX

1. Go out and explore the services. Get yourself set up on Yelp, Foursquare, Gowalla, SCVNGR, and Local Response. Claim your location in those places.

2. Start embracing the influencers that are checking in. Pick one or two services that are right for you (probably Foursquare, and maybe Yelp), and do that.

3. Create your offer. Make sure your offer syncs up with what your business goals are (loyalty, engagement, increase foot traffic, increase sales, etc).

4. Test, learn, optimize, and measure. Keep tabs on what's working and what's not working, and make changes.

5. Operationalize. Train everyone involved (from the top to the bottom) on what the offer is, how it works, and what the purpose is.

Using Location Based Services to Build a Loyalty Program"I think that goes into perpetuity. Every fifth time you go, you're getting this extra benefit, and smart companies will start to think about how do I do that."

Here are a few examples of companies who are using location based services to build up loyalty programs:

• Tasti D-Lite has a loyalty program where, through the swipe of a card, you can check into Foursquare, Twitter, and Facebook. Checking in earns you additional points towards free menu items.
• Starwood Hotels has a similar program where, when you attach your Starwood account with Foursquare, you get additional points for checking in.
• Hideout Theatre has it so you don't just benefit the first time you check in or if you're the mayor, but also during your 5th and 10th visits as well.

Point-of-Purchase and Location Based Services"So I think the more you can tightly tie in some of these elements to the point of sale, the bigger retail stores will embrace this. But I don't know if it's going to be the end-all, be-all. It will definitely add scale. It will add comfort, I think, to a lot of these customers."

A new element that is emerging is a way for businesses to track when people have actually purchased and been inside their business. This builds on loyalty programs, but it can also be used to further relationship building and engagement.

Offering Incentives for Sharing With Your Networks"The more reasons you give for someone sharing their check-in with their Facebook account or other social networks, the better."

It's best to give the user the control on how/what they share with their networks, but the more reasons you give them to share, the better (e.g., "Get more points for sharing your check-in on Facebook.").

What Happens After Check-In"We need to think about the benefit that geo-awareness adds to any kind of transaction business data, etc."

Businesses need to figure out how they can use this information going forward. Can you build check-in information in your loyalty program? Can you add that into your communication with your customers?

Digby (a mobile ecommerce company) is looking into this issue. If they can get you to check-in on an app that they've built, they can passively know whether you've been in a store or not. So then you have that data that you can work with.

What Kinds of Businesses Should Use Location Based Services?"I think if you look at companies like Bravo TV, companies that are either publications or they're consumer package goods, there are things that you can do -- whether they're educational, they can be partnerships with the actual retail locations."

Location based services aren't just for brick-and-mortar businesses with lots of locations. Other types of businesses can partner with retail locations.

For example, you can check in at the Statue of Liberty. When you do, you can pull up a particular show episode on the History Channel and historical facts. The History Channel has partnered with historical locations so that when someone checks in, they're shown History Channel content.

Measuring the Effectiveness of Location Based Marketing"This is a space that will continue to evolve. One of the things that we do have is we have a website. It's LocationBasedMarketingForDummies.com, and that's going to be the book site, and we're going to keep a regular blog there. You'll be able to find out about some of these services as they evolve, because Mike and I will keep wiki pages that will let users contribute as well -- talk about all these different services that can help measure and monitor."

A lot of the platforms offer their own dashboards for tracking who's checked in, demographics, etc.

But there are also a lot of other tools that can help you measure and monitor these campaigns. Some of them are:

• MomentFeed: for tracking across multiple locations and multiple services
• Geotoko: for managing multiple offers
• Valuevine: for all kinds of tracking of location based campaigns
• Local Response: for mining Twitter and finding specific check-ins and making offers to them

Resources for Location Based Marketing Information"I have a list that I've actually built if someone checks out my Twitter handle, @AaronStrout. You can see my LBS Twitter stream that I've got."

Check out @Mr_LBS on Twitter, the Location Based Marketing Association, @JBruin on Twitter, and all of the individual services' Twitter handles and blogs.

Where to Start Your Location Based Marketing Efforts"Try it out as a consumer and check in to some places and get some ideas, and then get your company set up. Claim your location. Think about maybe a light offer that you could do."

If you're just starting out, get set up on Foursquare. Try it as a consumer. Get some ideas. Then claim your location, and work on a light offer.



Read more: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/24508/5-Golden-Rules-for-a-Successful-Location-Based-Marketing-Campaign.aspx#ixzz1XSiHUA8u

In case you somehow hadn't heard, Steve Jobs, an amazing marketer, presenter, and product designer, resigned as CEO of Apple earlier this week. This week on the Marketing Update, Karen Rubin and Kipp Bodnar discussed lessons marketers can learn from Jobs. The Wall Street Journal published a great article about his best quotes.

 Below are some of our favorites and how they apply to marketing. 


Quote #1: Marketing Budget: "Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it." Fortune, November 9, 1998

Marketing Takeaway: Innovation in marketing has nothing to do with how much budget you have either. In fact, this is what makes inbound marketing a much better, cost-effective alternative to traditional outbound marketing. Make sure your team is filled with passionate people who believe in what they are marketing. In inbound marketing, it's about the size of your brain, not the size of your wallet. Create amazing, remarkable content, and you'll be amazed at the kinds of results you can achieve. 

Quote #2: Inbound vs. Outbound Marketing“When you’re young, you look at television and think, there’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That’s a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It’s the truth.” Wired, February 1996

Marketing Takeaway: More people are ignoring television ads by blocking them with TiVo and DVR technologies every day. At some point, the television networks will catch on that their business model is no longer working. As a marketer, make sure you have started using inbound marketing techniques to stop interrupting people and start engaging with them. 

Quote #3: Differentiation“It’s more fun to be a pirate than to join the navy.” 1982, quoted in Odyssey: Pepsi to Apple, 1987

Marketing Takeaway: Be unique in your marketing! Try new things, and be remarkable and different. Wearing an eye patch and a peg leg could do wonders for your marketing!

Quote #4: Passion"And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it." Stanford Commencement 2005

Marketing Takeaway: Inbound marketing demands passion. You can't create remarkable content if you don't believe in what you're creating. Hire people who are passionate about what your business has to offer, and it will inspire an awesome inbound marketing strategy that features amazing content that generates results.

What else can Steve Jobs teach you about inbound marketing?



Read more: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/23630/4-Marketing-Lessons-From-Steve-Jobs-Marketing-Update.aspx#ixzz1WXa31sR5

Twitter is a tool for "micro-blogging" or posting very short updates, comments or thoughts.  In fact, since Twitter was designed to be very compatible with mobile phones through text messages, each update is limited to 140 characters.  Truly, a micro-blog.  Another way to think of Twitter is like a cross between instant messaging (IM) and a chat room, because it is an open forum, but you restrict it to the people with which you connect.

I have to admit I have not always been sold on Twitter.  At first I did not get it at all.  Then I thought I understood it, but thought it was stupid and useless.  Then I used it a bit more and got some more followers and followed a few more people.  Now I think it has some value, especially as a marketing and PR tool.

Ideas for How to Use Twitter for Marketing & PR

1. Engage your CEO in social media.  Social media is a great way to have a conversation with your market and make and mange connections with prospects, customers, bloggers and other influencers.  But for a CEO, the typical routes to social media can be hard.  Especially if you are a larger or global company.  A CEO typically has little time to write a blog or answer lots of messages and friend requests on Facebook.  I cannot tell you how many CEO blogs I have seen with only 1 or 2 posts because the CEO never had time to update the blog after the first couple entries.  But, Twitter is limited to 140 characters per update, so it is all about short thoughts and comments.  If your CEO can send a text message, they can use Twitter from anywhere in the world as a marketing and PR tool.  Twitter is actually perfect for CEO or founder who is always on the road meeting with people and who has some interesting opinions on your market.
2. Keep in touch with bloggers / media.  It is really easy to follow someone on Twitter (see below). And you'll be surprised how often they decide to follow you as well.  In fact, I have lots of people I consider "famous" in the marketing and PR worlds following me.  In my opinion, this is a way easier way to connect with influential people in the media than calling and emailing them.
3. Monitor your company / brand on Twitter.  A while back we noticed that Guy Kawasaki mentioned Website Grader on Twitter.  Well, of course we had to let him know a bit more about Website Grader and maybe ask if he would also blog about it?  The result was this blog article on Website Grader which drove a good amount of traffic and leads.  (See below for a cool tip on how to easily monitor people talking about your company on Twitter.)
4. Announce specials, deals or sales.  If you are a retailer or anyone who often has special offers, you can use Twitter to announce these deals instantly to a large audience.  You know those commercials from Southwest Airlines about that "Ding" application you could download and would then alert you about specials on flights?  Well, Twitter can be used as a kind of free version of that.  Dell and Woot have done just this type of marketing, with a lot of success.
5. Live updates on events or conferences.  If you participate in a large trade show or run your own corporate event, you can use Twitter to announce last minute changes, cool events that are happening ("Just announced, David Meerman Scott book signing in the exhibit hall until 11am") and more.  It is a great last minute marketing tool.
6. Promote blog articles, webinars, interesting news and more.  Its really easy to post a link to something in Twitter, and I often post links to blog articles on this blog, or other news articles relevant to HubSpot.  A good idea is to post articles on other websites that are relevant to your business, like a customer success story or other PR coverage.  If you have other content that is appealing to your audience like a free webinar, post links to those too.

Using Twitter for Marketing & PR - A Step-by-Step Guide

1. Sign-up and post a profile.  Visit Twitter and click on the "Get Started - Join" button in the middle.  The rest is simple enough that I think you can figure it out without my help.
2. Write some updates.  The beauty of Twitter is that the 140 character limit is the great equalizer - I am about as good of a writer as Shakespeare on Twitter.  Post a link to a news article you liked with a one line comment, mention an interesting thought you had, or tell everyone what you are cooking for dinner.  Just write something.
3. Make friends.  Making friends on Twitter is pretty easy.  Just surf around the web on your favorite blogs, people's Facebook profiles etc, and when you see a Twitter box that tells you what they are doing click on it.  That will bring you to their profile and then you just click on the "Follow" button on the top left and you are now following them.  Most of the time they will then follow you back, and the audience for your 140 character insights will have grown by one person.  You can get started by following me: Mike Volpe on Twitter.  You can also click on the people that other people are following to find more people to follow.
4. How to post URLs.  Twitter is based on 140 character updates.  If you have a really long URL, that doesn't leave much room for  Most people on Twitter use www.TinyURL.com to take a long URL and make it short.  Give it a shot if you have a long URL that you want to market on Twitter.
5. Monitor conversations about your company.  Even if you don't join Twitter yourself you can monitor what people are saying about any person, company or brand.  This is quite useful from a marketing and PR standpoint.  Twitter has a search engine that lets you do just this.  For instance, here is a list of everyone who is talking about HubSpot on Twitter.  You can subscribe to these searches by RSS to keep yourself updated.  Another tip is that you can "follow" all the people you find talking about your company (just click on their username to go to their profile).  If they are talking about your company, they would probably be pretty happy that someone from the company wants to follow them.
6. How to "chat".  Using the @ symbol before someone's Twitter username is how people have "conversations" in Twitter.  This makes their username a link to their profile so other people can follow the conversation (sort of).  For example if you wrote "@mvolpe thanks for the cool blog article about Twitter today" that would be a way of telling me you liked this article. Try it out.  It's not IM (instant messaging), but it is sort of like a publicly broadcast IM service. 

Read more: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/4034/How-to-Use-Twitter-for-Marketing-PR.aspx#ixzz1OwpNAoo5

 
Posted by Jeanne Hopkins Wed, May 25, 2011

Abracadabra.

When it comes to business websites, there are only two kinds: Those that work, and those that don’t. 

The ones that work get found by search engines, generate leads, and help you convert those leads into prospects and paying customers.

The ones that don’t work just sit there, ineffective or under-effective, taking up space and wasting precious time that could be better used to drive traffic and revenues.

If your website is one of those underperforming web properties, and you’ve concluded that enough is enough, it’s time to transform your website into a true business asset—perhaps even your most important business asset. Here are a few tips to help you make that transformation quickly, easily, and effectively.

Take Me to Your Leads Begin by understanding the fundamental purpose of a business website: to generate leads. Successful websites attract prospects by offering great content, by maximizing search engine optimization (SEO), and by converting the leads it generates into people who click through and provide their contact information so you can convert them from leads into paying customers. A successful website is also one designed to help you measure the return on investment (ROI) you make from your website, your marketing campaigns, and other efforts.

To Blog, or Not to Blog? (Hint: You Already Know the Answer) You may have heard this before. Even so, you cannot hear it often enough: on the interweb, content is king. Create useful, valuable, interesting content. If you don’t have the skills to do that in-house, hire someone who does. Good content attracts readers, holds their attention, and brings them back time and again. It triggers search engine results via keywords and prompts readers to take the next step via calls-to-action that lead them to a landing page that captures all their vitals—name, address, phone, email, business they’re in, and what it is they’re shopping around for.

Search engines love fresh content. Publish everything—blog articles, podcasts, presentations, photos, ebooks, newsletters—as long as its high quality, valuable content. Then, promote it via social media. The more you publish, the more tickets you have in the mega-lottery that makes getting found online easier.

Four Steps to Website Transformation Apply these four steps to magically transform your website:

1) Audit your website, and protect your key assets.  Determine which content, links, keywords, and conversion tools are your most important assets. Use tools, such as those HubSpot provides, to do this. Find the most popular, most powerful content; keep it, and lose the rest. Figure out which links drive the most traffic; protect them, and ditch the losers. Decide which keywords rank best for you. Keep those, dump the weakest ones, and figure out which new ones you might want to add. Study your conversion tools to see which generate the most leads and which are most successful at converting leads. Identify your most valuable URLs; protect them with redirects, if necessary.

2) Art projects are for museums. Invest more in great content than pretty design. No, your website shouldn’t look atrocious, but search engines are design-blind. Google doesn’t reward beautiful graphics; it lives and breathes words and numbers only. Use a blog to disseminate your content, and your website will be over 400 percent more likely to get indexed by search engines, 97 percent more likely to attract links, and will generate 55 percent more visitors than sites that don't maintain a blog.

3) Keep it simple. Design your conversion experiments so they are clear, ask for limited information, and appear above the fold on-screen. Tracking your conversion rates so you can constantly improve how your website delivers for you is critical. The logic is simple: faster experiments yield results more quickly. Use HubSpot tools to design landing pages that can be deployed by a single person in 15 minutes or less.

4) Don’t measure absolutely everything. Concentrate on three to five metrics. The easier it is to measure the results of your web marketing, the easier it is to succeed and meet your goals. 

If you’re going to transform your website, do it right and for the right reasons. Transformation for the sake of transformation is not a good reason. Because the CMO or the CEO wants something different is not a good reason. Because you haven’t changed things up in a while? Also, a no-no.

The defining reason to transform your website is to improve the results it delivers for you, which might include more visits and visitors, better qualified leads, or higher conversion rates of those leads into paying customers.

How many rabbits do you need to pull out of your hat to make these changes to your website today?

Read more: http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/14877/How-to-Transform-Your-Website-With-Four-Magical-Steps.aspx#ixzz1NR6Ecqsb