HubSpot Inbound 2012 Day 1- Content is Key!
Today was the first day of Inbound 2012, HubSpot's annual production for Inbound Marketing best practices and helpful how-to sessions focused on making social media work for us!
Since we are always working on clear and concise content, here's a glossary to get you going:
- HubSpot: "HubSpot is an inbound marketing software company that helps businesses take advantage of the inbound marketing revolution" - Brian Halligan & Darmesh Shah, co-founders of HubSpot and college pals from MIT
- Inbound Marketing: "It's all about getting found online, through search engines and on sites like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter- sites that hunderds of millions of people use to find answers each day!" (David Meerman Scott, bestselling author of The New Rules for Marketing & PR)
- Social Mediasphere: The world where your company lives online. The goal is to have as many roads, highways, trails, routes, airports, bus stations etc. that bring people to your company's website.
And now for the main event, the topic du jour, drumroll please: Content Creation and Optimization!
- Create the content: Keep those keyboards clicking and write the content! Content attracts links from other sites that sends us qualified visitors and lets Google know we are players. Additionally, content can be spread fast through social media, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, etc. Once it's written, it's easy to get it out.
- Optimize the content: When creating a new piece of content, it's important to look back at how people are currently visiting the site through search. For example, lets say we are Boston's best dog walker. How do people find us? Do they search "help with my bad dog" or "licensed and insured dog agency"? Once you know how they found you in the first place, your new content will align better for organic searches! The more content you give out the more links, visitors, and leads the site gains and moves up the Google ranks.
- Publish the content: There are so many options out there, why not use them all? Here's a refresher:
- Blog articles- one pagers related to a specific industry or current news that's relevant
- White papers- educational pieces about industry trends and challenges
- Videos- pieces about something new and exciting within the industry
- Webinars- power point presentations about a specific industry topic
- Podcasts- audio interviews with industry experts
- Webcasts- live video shows
- Market the content: Who do we send the content to? Some strategies suggest we send it to everyone while others suggest finding your niche. No matter what, be the best! If you are the best dog walker in all of Massachusetts- send it to everyone. If you are the best dog walker in the southwest section of zip code 02067, you should only reach out to that market! By narrowing your market, you become THAT worlds best.
- Measure what's working and what's not: There are so many tools in place to help us learn from our mistakes or to get more from our successes. Using HubSpot keywords and other metrics, we can watch a "marketing event" like a new whitepaper from the moment it's published. We can measure how many views the content gets and from there, how many people download it. Understanding these conversions helps us to create even better content next time!
There's only more we can learn here and I'm just at day one... but can't wait for day two and Cyndi Lauper, yes... she's performing!
Posted by Leah Raras on August 27, 2012 at 6:56 PM
