How to become an Inbound Marketer
Posted on Sat, Apr 02, 2011
Every day I speak with business owners and marketing professionals who claim to not only understand Inbound Marketing but see the true value behind the concept. Unfortunately when our conversation dives deeper rarely are their actions in line with their words.
For those reading this that are still fuzzy on what exactly Inbound Marketing is a great place to start is with the book that started it all. The book, Inbound Marketing, was written by the cofounders of HubSpot, Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah. At a very high level Inbound Marketing recognizes that consumers and business are increasingly making their purchasing decisions by way of the internet. At the same time outbound tactics such as traditional media advertising, trade shows, and direct mail campaigns are producing less ROI each year.
So where does one begin if you are sick of traditional and outdated marketing tactics? Here are a few quick and easy steps that you can apply to your marketing strategy, you business plan, or even your job search. Please keep in mind, your Inbound Marketing actions will speak louder than your words.
Create Remarkable Content: Everyone is an expert at something. Maybe it is mergers and acquisitions, maybe it is fantasy baseball. Wherever your expertise lies you need to write about it. Create a blog, join discussion groups, comment on other blogs and stay involved. Your participation will not only organize your thoughts but it will begin to establish you as a thought leader in the eyes of the public as well as the search engines.
Optimize Your Content: Now that you are writing it is time to make sure the right people are reading it. Whether it is potential customers or potential employers you need to make sure you are correctly optimizing your blog posts each time. Start by identifying some long tail key words that relate to your topic. Make sure these words are prominently featured in your blog titles, blog posts, and any alt image text present. Remember that a correctly optimized blog post has the potential to pay back dividends for years. Unlike an ad in a newspaper that disappears the day after it appears your blog posts will live and get found on the internet as long as the content is deemed relevant and useful in the eyes of the search engines. Oh, and the best part is this type of SEO optimization shouldn’t cost you a dime.
Promote Your Content: Speaking of free the best way to promote all of this fantastic and optimized content you are now creating on a regular basis is through social media. Free tools such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn provide you access to literally millions of potentially interested eyes and ears. If you don’t think your customers are online simply take a quick poll of your friends and family to see how many use at least one form of social media. The fact is more and more people are using these tools every day, it is up to you to learn how each tool functions, who you want to reading your content, and jump in head first.
Does this make sense? Are you doing these things already? Do you want to practice your Inbound Marketing skills at the company that literally wrote the book on the subject? If you answered yes to any of these questions check out HubSpot MATCHES and see if you would be a good fit to join our always growing team of exceptional Inbound Marketers.
