Inbound Marketing 101

Reposted from my entry on Mediacurrent's blog

You’ve built an awesome website. It’s exactly what you envisioned - beautifully designed, great functionality, and performs flawlessly. Days go by, weeks go by, and you’re still not seeing the traffic you had expected to see. Why? It’s not your site. It’s your inbound marketing strategy.

BUT WHAT IS INBOUND MARKETING?

Gone are the days where people are okay with intrusive marketing (sorry, Mad Men lovers). Let’s be honest, most of us get annoyed with the required ads on YouTube. So, instead of hunting for customers, wouldn’t you rather they all just come to you? That’s inbound marketing - the art of allowing your target audience find you.

HOW DOES INBOUND MARKETING WORK?

Your potential customers take to search engines to find solutions to their problems. They click on the link that seems to best answer their question. While learning more about ways to solve their problems, they are prompted to get more information by signing up for an offer, providing you with a means to contact them to start the sales process. Though it sounds simple, there is a science to an effective inbound strategy.

HOW DO I IMPROVE MY INBOUND MARKETING?

It all starts with a solid content marketing strategy. Once you’ve established what your goals are and who your buyer personas are, you’re able to start optimizing the content on your website to increase traffic. Think about the questions your buyer personas are asking. Is your content answering them? If not, it’s time to create new content.

But you not only want to write new content, you also want to give your visitors clear paths to become leads, taking your strategy one step further. By using calls to action in your content, you can encourage visitors to not remain anonymous and to open up the door to have conversations with your company. Marketing automation is a great tool to use to track a buyer’s journey through your site.

It’s important to note that consistently huge waves of traffic won’t come overnight. It takes a solid strategy backed with consistent efforts to see results. But by taking the time to create content that speaks directly to your ideal customers, you’ll find that the traffic you get will not only be higher in quantity, but also in quality.

2 Things You Need To Do To Improve Your Personal Brand

Reposted from my entry on Mediacurrent's blog

Preserving our personal reputations has always been a cultural priority. But what about our professional reputations? Yes, we try to maintain great relationships with former employers, which is essential for furthering a career. However, there is a significant value that exists when you are able to translate your professional experience into thought leadership and thus build your own personal brand.

1. Define your brand

Treat your personal brand like a business. As a professional, answer the following questions:

• Who am I?
• What do I do?
• Why is it important?

For example: I am a marketing coordinator who specializes in content creation, curation, and brand development with a proven track record of increasing brand awareness and driving traffic and conversions.

Once you can concisely and confidently outline to anyone your areas of expertise and how they can positively affect a prospective employer or client, you can begin to craft your personal pitch and your personal marketing strategy.

2. Sell your brand

One of the easiest way to build a brand is to get the product in front of potential buyers. If you’re going to sell Brand You, you need to take the time to get in front of influential people in your industry.

• Start by networking: Attend events specific to your industry and make it a point to give away 5 business cards to people you have meaningful conversations with. Also, consider joining and serving on committees of professional organizations and offer to speak at the group’s meetings and events on topics that relate to your brand message.
• Build your influence: There recently was a story of an IT guy who decided to set up a Twitter account. His tweets were so funny and amassed so many followers that he was offered a job as a writer on a late night show. Use social media and blogging to your advantage by creating content that that is interesting and applicable to your personal brand. The more you write, the more you solidify yourself as a subject matter expert, which will only strengthen the value of Brand You.

Building and preserving your personal brand is one of the most important things you can do as a professional. Here at Mediacurrent, we have a team full of the Drupal thought leaders who have each built solid personal brands. When a personal brand and a company’s brand gel well and create a mutually beneficial relationship, magical things occur.

Infographic: Business Blogging Made Easy

Reposted from my entry on Mediacurrent's blog

Recently, I wrote a blog about building your personal brand, but now it’s time to delve a little deeper. When individuals and businesses alike are developing their brand, a good bit of time needs to be spent establishing expertise. Blogging is one of the best ways to flex your knowhow while driving search traffic to your site. We've created a simple guide to go from zero to blogger in no time flat!

7 Reasons Your Company Should Be Using Social Media

Reposted from my entry on Mediacurrent's blog

Social media. Everyone has it, but not everyone is using it correctly. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube exist not only to entertain and connect people to one another, but also to connect people with businesses. With advertising dollars getting smaller, the need for effective, low cost marketing tactics is more important than ever. And if your business isn't using social media, then you're missing out on a huge opportunity to develop your brand and garner new revenue.

Here are the top 7 reasons why your business should be on social media:

1. Build your brand – You have the opportunity to determine how people feel about your company based on how you present yourself online. Your social media presence allows you to create your brand persona and perpetuate that sentiment in everything you do - from posts to pictures to general customer service.
2. Spread the news – Many people find out about what's going on around them from their feeds. If you don't have the means to send out press releases via the wire, then take advantage of social media as your announcement platform. If you have a new product or service offering, or an event coming up, share your good news (or any news, really) on your social media account.
3. Manage your reputation – Part of building your brand includes being aware of how your messaging is being received. Also, it is imperative to handle any negative sentiments with grace. If there's a problem with your online reputation, social media is a great tool to use to fix it.
4. Build trust in your company – Customers today need to trust a company before making a purchase. They check reviews on Yelp and Google before selecting a vendor or even a doctor. Social media does several things to help your target audience trust you and your services. First off, people trust their friends and family more than anyone. So if people are talking about your organization positively on social media, chances are you will get referrals from those posts. Also, social media allows you to be accessible by customers. Customers can get questions answered immediately via social media.
5. Establish long lasting relationships – Along with building trust, you can build lasting relationships and brand loyalty through social media by simply being personal. Make your strategy more about making your customers happy than making profit. The profit will come from repeat business if you take the time to be relatable through your social media interactions. Ultimately, happy customers are profitable customers.
6. More affordable than traditional marketing – Setting up a profile is free. Creating content will cost time, but, when done effectively, will be worth the return on investment.
7. Find out what your customers really want – Who needs focus groups when you have a the opportunity to poll your customers in real time? Have you recently launched a new product? Ask your customers for feedback. You will save time, money, and valuable resources by getting feedback from your target audience through social media.

Stretching your advertising taking full advantage of social media and integrating it into your existing inbound marketing strategy. By doing so, you’ll get a solid feel on what you’re doing right and what you need to improve on to make the relationship with your customers last.

4 Tips for Optimizing YouTube

Reposted from my entry on Mediacurrent's blog

Eight seconds. That’s not a whole lot of time at all. But that’s the average attention span of the typical internet user (fun fact - it’s one second less than a goldfish’s). What does that mean for us marketers? We now have even less time to engage our target audience before they scroll down their timelines and forget the messages we’ve invested countless hours on crafting. Now is the time to spend time grabbing your prospective client’s attention both visually AND audibly through your YouTube channel.

YouTube has become the second largest search engine (Google being the first), so it’s vital to spend time optimizing your videos to reach as many of your buyer personas as possible. If you do, the likelyhood of your video reaching the first page of search results pages (SERPs) increases by 53 times. Try it: type in “how to do long division” in Google. Does your search result page look anything like this? If so, you now see why making your videos search engine friendly is key. Here are a few tips to help you get found quicker and increase traffic to your website through your videos.

1. ENTERTAIN, DON’T SELL

Think about it - Would YOU watch a video that started off with “Hey, buy my product”? Probably not. Your customers don’t want to sit through a sales presentation either. So, just as you would with your content strategy, seek to inform and entertain your audience first, provide solutions to their pain points, build the trust with them, and open up lines of communication for them to come to you.

2. COMPLETE THE DESCRIPTION BOX

Because YouTube is second only to Google for online searches, it’s super important to create a video description that is keyword relevant, using terms and phrases that your buyer personas are looking for. Adding these keywords will improve the likelihood that a prospective client will find your videos at the top of their results when doing a Google search.

3. GIVE THEM SOMEWHERE TO GO!

You’ve spent all this time creating amazing content. Now it’s time to direct your viewer to your website! It’s a best practice to always include your company’s website in your video descriptions along with a call to action, like “For more information, click here” or “Want to learn more? Contact us.” This will get your viewer started on the path to becoming a client.

4. HELP LOCAL USERS FIND YOU

Always include your company’s contact information. Why? Because if you’re a local business, adding your address, city, state and phone number, coupled with your description will help your ideal local customer, who is Googling for your services in their city, pick up the phone and call you or walk through your doors.

I go back to those eight seconds. The average YouTube video is 4 minutes and 20 seconds long. That’s 32.5 times longer than a person’s average attention span. So when a person is watching your video, they’re hooked, already engaged with you and your brand. Take these extra steps to make sure that engaged viewer becomes an enthused client.

Getting in with the (Linked)In crowd

Last weekend, my fiancé and I packed up my entire existence in Orlando, FL and moved me to Atlanta in a 48-hour period. Not only have I had to relearn a city that was my home for over 20 years, but now I’m having to build my personal network from the ground up in order to find a new job.

So, here I am in one of the top advertising cities in the country with no network, no chapter of Ad2 or the American Advertising Federation (AdFed), no knowledge of friends or former colleagues in the industry. What’s a girl to do?

My favorite go-to source? LinkedIn. There I find a plethora of information, from decision makers at top agencies, to job postings that use your profile to complete the application. But my personal favorite is the ability to join groups. Every day, I receive emails updating me on activities in my groups. Often it’s mostly articles with regards to the industry, but sometimes some really great job opportunities can be found in those emails.

Recently, my best friend forwarded me an opportunity at a non-profit organization that screamed “Didi”. I used LinkedIn to research the organization and their company culture. I researched who I would be working for and what their resume looked like. With this information, I was able to tailor my resume and cover letter and submit the most appropriate writing samples, ensuring I put my best foot forward.

In a place where I have no physical network, I have to rely on my virtual one. And quite frankly, the virtual one isn’t so bad. If you know how to leverage LinkedIn, you may find that your dream opportunity is just an InMail away. Check out these infographics for more information about LinkedIn and how to use it.

My (Social) Life, Your Entertainment

I have no interest in the entertainment industry. But I do have an interest in what entertains people, which is why I am so interested in the business of social media. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest have become a part of our daily routines. We wake up to check our newsfeeds. We learn about news via with RSS feeds, blog rolls, and microblogs. A newspaper? What’s that? Do they even make those anymore? Fifty years from now, probably not.

Our world of communications has been forever changed. We text people across the room from us. My fiancé and I love going to new restaurants, but not before reading reviews on Urbanspoon and Yelp, entrusting complete strangers to point us in the right direction. Not only is social media a key part of our lives, but the ability to access those mediums on the go has become increasingly important.

As the Social Media intern of a local marketing and advertising agency, I study trends daily. My morning begins with a giant cup of coffee and Mashable. I take the time to learn what’s new in my industry. Not only is understanding the return on investment, analytics, reach and acceptance of messages important, but knowing what mediums my target audience is using to access these messages is equally essential. We are becoming more connected with the pulse of the world every day through technology. Recently, on Mashable, an infographic produced by OnlineColleges.com showed how  heavily college students rely on their smartphones in their daily lives.

College students are using their phones for more than just voice calls. In fact, 75% of students often use them during idle time throughout the day, 52% use their phones before even getting out of bed after their alarm clocks go off. It is their form of entertainment, which would then make it my kind of business.

Resources: http://mashable.com/2012/06/30/smartphones-college-students-infographic/