Here are some key points, from the Getting Found webinars (GF202, GF301, and GF401), 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 4: Successful Business Uses for Facebook and LinkedIn (GF202), Professor: Elyse Tager (Silicon Valley American Marketing Association)
- How You Can Use LinkedIn: Homepage, Profile (importance, add apps, build in keywords), Company pages (profile and search), Build and Maintain a meaningful network, Join Groups, Ask/answer questions, Show up in Service Provider (request recommendations), and Polls.
- Your LinkedIn Profile contains a Summary (who are you, what do you do, and an elevator pitch that you want to optimize), Education (use for connections), Interests (may be too personal for business use – you decide), Security Settings (decide how open and visible you want to be), and a place for adding applications ( for credibility – depth).
- A LinkedIn Company Profile includes a description (with keywords, an elevator pitch, and logo) and employee information. All are searchable within LI and outside.
- On Facebook: Start by building a personal profile, with basic info, contact information, and education.
- With your privacy settings, control who can see how much of your profile, who can search for you, and how much they can see. You can also control what of your activity is visible on your wall and newsfeed.
- Facebook for business includes Fan pages, groups, events, ads, and metrics.
- Tips for setting up a Facebook Business Page: “Be sure to sign up as your first fan. Have 2 admins – in case one disappears. Update frequently. Add FB page to your email address – promote shamelessly, FB badge on blog. Create a beefy page – videos, blog posts, discussions, and photos.”
Class 5: Viral Marketing and World Wide Raves (GF301) Professor: David Meerman Scott (author of New Rules of Marketing & PR and World Wide Rave)
- A “World Wide Rave” is when people around the world are “talking about you, your company, and your products.”
- Rules of the Rave: 1. Nobody cares about your products (except you). People do care about solving their own problems. 2. No coercion required. 3. Lose control. 4. Put down roots. 5. Create triggers that encourage people to share. 6. Point the world to your (virtual) doorstep.
- Publish content around buyer personas, instead of around your product. Buyer personas represent what you want you want buyers to believe about your brand. As an example, Scott described web sites for hotel chains, which could be so much more effective, if developers organized content around buyer personas, instead of around the product. For example, a hotel web site’s organization and content might reflect each of these different personas: business person, corporate travel manager, family on vacation, and couple planning a wedding. Blogs on the hotel web sites could reinforce these various personas. Scott mentioned HubSpot’s user persona for an Internet Marketing Manager, as “Internet Ian.”
- Let customers speak in their own language, not yours. Avoid corporate Gobbledygook (overused words and phrases), which is a symptom of not understanding your buyer personas. See the Gobbledygook Grader, available via HubSpot, to detect and revise Gobbledygook phrases. Keep in mind that visual Gobbledygook exists, too. (Pictures of happy, smiling corporate people, around the conference table, for example, which become visual cliches.)
Class 6: Advanced SEO Tactics: On Beyond Keyword Research (GF401) Professor: Rand Fishkin (SEOmoz)
- “Links, as they pertain to both the domain and the individual page, are vastly superior in importance to the page’s content.”
- What determines high search rankings: According to data, using Alt Text tags to describe images, having a keyword in the URL, and placing keywords closer to the left resulted in a higher search ranking.
- The data did not support a high correlation between using keywords in H1 Tags and search rankings, as much as expected.
- For high search ranking, substantive, unique Content is very important. Data suggests that W3C Validation and the code to text ratio are not very important. Static URLs are somewhat better than dynamic.
- Subdomains likely “DO NOT inherit all of the ranking benefits of the Root Domain, but neither are they completely separate entities.”
- Nofollowing a link no longer passes more juice through the remaining live links.
- The new methodology for sculpting page rank is to use iFrames to block access to links you do not want Google to see.
- Recommended Reading: www.seomoz.org/blog, www.searchengineland.com, www.seobook.com/blog, www.seroundtable.com, www.mattcutts.com/blog, www.distilled.co.uk/blog, and www.searchenginejournal.com.
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Thanks for the writeup on my session. You were paying attention!
And thanks to you and HubSpot for offering such an informative series of webinars to the marketing community. I’ve read your World Wide Rave book as well, some sections at least twice. It’s a must read for anyone entering the social media space, either professionally or personally.
Great recap of IMU. Thanks for spreading the word. Please join me at http://www.elymedia.com/blog/
Hi, Elyse. Thanks for stopping by and for the webinar course on Facebook and LinkedIn. You covered lots of ground in one short hour; I learned a lot. I also just subscribed to your Elymedia Frenzy blog and look forward to reading your posts.
Nice Post!
The Internet provides great opportunities for entrepreneurs and small businesses, but doing business online presents unique challenges and requires new skills. Per my experience search engine optimization would be the best practice to improve your online business.
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