Inbound Marketing University: Getting Found (GF101, GF102, and GF 201)
Here are some key points, from the Getting Found webinars (GF101, GF102, and GF202), which I recently attended at Inbound Marketing University, coordinated by HubSpot. Make sure to check out these excellent resources on inbound marketing, available through HubSpot Inbound Marketing’s Presentations on SlideShare and the Inbound Marketing Wiki. HubSpot has also set up a related LinkedIn Group: Inbound Marketers – For Marketing Professionals.)
Class 1: How to Blog Effectively for Business (GF101) Professors: Ann Handley (MarketingProfs) & Mack Collier (The Viral Garden)
- Refer to your blog readers by first name in the comments.
- Use your sidebars to provide information and encourage interaction.
- The two-column layout is the most popular, where you provide one column for the post, and one for the sidebar. The three-column layout can become too busy to be usable.
- Issues to consider when picking a blogging platform: “How many people will blog for your company? (A group blog is a popular choice. ) How comfortable are you with editing your blog’s template? Do you want to host your blog on your website, or a separate domain? Do you want a free blog platform, or can you pay a monthly fee?”
- “Does your company have the resources (time and people) to blog? Can you commit to blogging from now on?”
- Qualifications for Blogging: “People who are passionate about blogging, social media, and your company. People who are passionate about connecting and helping your customers. People who can write.”
Class 2: SEO Crash Course to Get Found (GF102) Professor: Lee Odden (TopRank Online Marketing)
- How Google Works: Google makes a copy of the web, extracts information, and creates an index. The index is stored on servers worldwide. When you enter a search item, Google sends the query to the index servers. Like the index at the back fo a book, the index servers identify which pages are most relevant to your search and passes the query along to its doc servers, which retrieve the stored documents. Google then returns the search results to you, with snippets describing the content. This process occurs in a fraction of a second.
- Basic SEO Checklist:
Content is reachable by search engines. Content is added often/periodically.
Content is organized logically – themes/categories.
Keywords exist in content and internal text links.
Quantity of quality sites linking in.
Monitor, adjust.
- Organic Results: “These are the ranked results from Google’s index of web pages. Approx 60-70% of visitors will click on these links. Called “natural” or “free” listings because there is no direct payment to Google for them”.
- Keyword Tools: Free: Google Keyword Tool, Insights, Ad Planner, and freekeywords.wordtracker.com Paid: Wordtracker.com, KeywordDiscovery.com, and SEMRush.com.
- Optimize keywords in title tags, headings, paragraph titles, body copy, anchor text in links, your URL, image alt text, and meta description tags.
- Title Tags are the most important location for keywords. Place important keywords to the left.
- Search Marketing Resources: searchenginewatch.com, searchengineland.com, webpronews.com, blog.hubspot.com, seomoz.org/blog/, and toprankblog.com
Class 3: Social Media and Building Community (GF201) Professor: Chris Brogan (New Marketing)
- “Community is never about you, your product, or anything else related to YOUR goals……except insofar as you serve to power theirs.”
- “A community isn’t a Facebook community or a Twitter community or any social network, in general. It’s people who gather. Tribes are always nomadic in the new web.”
- “Community helps in several parts of the sales cycle: lead generation, post-sale education, support, and r&d for future products. Any one of these can be measured. Measure them all.”
- “Community cannot be outsourced, but it can be bolstered. Support often make the best community manager recruits. Off-site some of the drudge work.”
- First Steps: “Listen. Find them where they are. Determine what they want. Decide if you join their community or make one, or both. Introduce yourself. Invite them. Ask them for goals and hopes. Share yours. Begin the journey. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.”
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