Early on I passed the tough Hubspot Partner inbound marketing knowledge test with a 95. Although I”m not an active partner (as of July 2020), it occurred to me that others might benefit from my notes. I’m certain the courses have changed but these notes and ideas are still applicable for a successful inbound marketing process.  – Gene Bellotti

Blogging for Business (GF101)

  1. Blog: quick to post, visitors can leave feedback on yours and other comments, stay high in Google vs being high based on what other people say about your company.
  2. Talk about what your customers are interested in, not your products. That is more appealing to more people. Establishes your expertise in a wider subject matter.
  3. Reply to comments with the person’s first name to make it a conversation
  4. Embed Twitter feed in blog
  5. Put up photos and bios of the blogger(s)
  6. Include your branding in your blog: logo, links: header sets visual tone for the blog.
  7. Layouts: wider post column, narrow sidebar column- most popular layout
  8. Blog post: what value is this post going to create for your readers
  9. Do you have the resources to launch a blog: do you have the time? do you have the people? Best to have more than one person blogging.
  10. Your blog does not have an expiration date. It will be from now on.
  11. You will not see results at first. Have to stick with it and be passionate about it. You’ll need healthy self esteem, hence the need for passion and who like to engage in a dialog with customers, and someone who can write!
  12. Should the CEO blog? If he or she has a passion to connect with customers.
  13. What is a blogroll? A list of other blogs that you endorse to your readers.
  14. Should you moderate negative comments? First create a formal blog policy about comments. Negative comments are great opportunities to solve the customer’s problem, and leave a positive impression on other readers.
  15. Is the blog working? Measure traffic, comments, links. Start measuring from the start., down to the individual post level. If traffic goes up on a topic, blog more about that topic.
  16. Should you hire an outsider to write the blog for you? No. If you hire a consultant, they should provide you with training on how to blog.
  17. How to make your blog more “findable.” Stay narrow in your focus, where you can rise to the top of searches. Define your tightly focused niche.
  18. Take a position. One side or the other. Take a polarizing stand. Not argue both sides.

 

SEO Crash Course to Get Found (GF102)

  1. Are you overspending on ads? Online and offline?
  2. By using SEO, you can reduce your overall marketing spend and increase traffic to your site
  3. Great images are not helping you for SEO.
  4. Google searches a copy of the web, not the live web.
  5. An index is created from the copy. And stored on servers all over the world.
  6. A Google search begins by identifying your location, matches your search words with the index, and returns matching docs, docs are sorted (ranked by over 500 signals) and then displayed.
  7. The meta description is displayed.
  8. Proper SEO: make content reachable
  9. Each new page attracts another search engine bot
  10. Organize your content logically
  11. Need keywords in the content and internal text links.
  12. Need quality web sites to link to your web site, not just your home page
  13. Monitor in real time and make continual adjustments to optimize.
  14. Keywords and inbound links make the document very relevant.
  15. SERPs: search engine results pages
  16. Results are not just text Web sites. They include shopping sites and video.
  17. Google Options: top left of page to filter your results. Try it.
  18. Three keys: keywords, make site search friendly, link building
  19. Keywords: where are customers in the buying cycle:
    Early: broad search terms
    Considering: Brand and company name
    Buying: product specific terms
  20. Review competitor content for keywords, talk to those that talk to customers
  21. Google keyword tool (free) to suggest keywords
  22. SEMRush: can type in domain name and learn top ranking phrases for that site
  23. Use Excel to segment keywords by categories, popularity, competition, relevance.
  24. Where do you use the keywords: title tage, headings, paragraph titles, keywords in the body copy, anchor text links, URL, image alt text, meta description tag
  25. But don’t stuff keywords.
  26. Most important keywords to the left, keywords to the left are more important in a phrase like the title tag
  27. Each page needs a unique title tag and a unique meta description
  28. Use keywords in documents, social media, blogs
  29. Research customer-driven keyword phrases, not what you’ve named a product or use in your company or industry
  30. Extend SEO off-page to social media and blog.
  31. Making a site more search engine friendly:
  32. Make site crawlable: a quantity of quality inbound links, use text links in navigation, use text links between pages – link to other pages on your site, html and xml site maps
  33. Avoid complex URLs, use breadcrumb navigation that uses your keywords
  34. Canonical tag to avoid duplicate pages when someone copies the page on your site: canonical means the search engine knows which page is the original.
  35. When you link to the home page, use the EXACT same link not bellotti.com/ and www.bellotti.com and www.bellotti.com/php , html, htm
  36. Changing the url at all: employ a permanent 301 redirect (not 302).
  37. What are top sites linking to yours, tell them the new URL.
  38. Monitor for 404 not found errors.
  39. Use CSS Ajax, Javascript or Flash
  40. Inbound Link Building
  41. Links build traffic
  42. Inbound links from relevant, authoritative web site are key
  43. Link text infers meaning
  44. Do use inbound marketing not click here as link text.
  45. Be active off your site: link with marketing partners, embed links in news releases, cross link internally, use links in social media
  46. A blog can be a centerpiece to your social media awareness
  47. com/inlink Who is linking to the competition and not linking to you? Shows you what sites to go after for links.
  48. Linkscape and Buzzstream for link building management software
  49. What content will be passed around?
  50. Search Analytics
  51. Webmaster tool reports
  52. Measure ranking relative to your own site over time
  53. What keyword phrases are most productive?
  54. Measure conversions
  55. Use Google webmaster tools
  56. Set goals, take benchmark measurement,
  57. How to create inbound links: create remarkable content that others will link to. Be useful. It’s the best way to get links.
  58. Write for other sites.

 

Social Media and Building Community (GF201)

  1. Building a community is all about them, not you, your products or your goals except when you serve to power their goals.
  2. Do not dissuade people who have formed a community that is outside of your control to discuss your products.
  3. Be humble as a community participant.
  4. Listening is point 1. Acknowledge people’s participation: thanks so much for the suggestion.
  5. Where the community is hosted is not relevant: Facebook, Twitter, or elsewhere.
  6. Your community looks to you to help them succeed. Give them more and more success, not more and more of your product.
  7. Praise the people in your community.
  8. What is the ROI of a community? Lead generation, post-sale education, support, r&d for future products
  9. ROI: return on influence.
  10. Resource costs and team: community cannot be outsourced. Not a job for an intern. The community manager is the key to your CRM.
  11. First steps: find out where your community is. Google groups, Yahoo groups, or other places.
  12. What does your community want? Not what marketing or sales wants.
  13. Be personable.
  14. Listening: radiant6, visible measures, scoutlabs
  15. Twtter: your name@company: @rick@dell.com

 

Successful Business Uses for Facebook and LinkedIn (GF202)

  1. LinkedIn used only for business.
  2. Know your audience and be clear about your objective.
  3. Play with the tools yourself: check out the learning center for LI and FB
  4. Start with measurement in mind
  5. Define the outcome and pick the right tool.
  6. What is objective?
    1. Customer relations
    2. Customer service
    3. PR
    4. Event management
    5. Crisis management
    6. Lead generation/promotion/sales
    7. Corporate reputation management
    8. Internal communication
    9. Fundraising
  7. Creating content rules: link to your website or blog, link to articles of value, link to pictures, videos, podcasts
  8. Frequency: to gain attention and momentum
  9. Be of value in every post
  10. Engage: post questions, answer queries, the more you connect, the more people will come back to you
  11. LinkedIn: new member every second
  12. Executives from all F500 companies are members
  13. Profile views on home page: idea of who is viewing your profile
  14. Your summary is your elevator pitch – optimize it for your keywords
  15. Use education listings for connections
  16. Security settings: open or closed?
  17. LinkedIn Company Profile
    1. Description – keywords, elevator pitch
    2. Logo
    3. Employee info
  18. Building your network
  19. Upload your databases: outlook, ACT, gmail, PR, tech support – invite all
  20. Search your connection’s connection
  21. Search for old contacts that you worked with in the past: invite to connect.
  22. Quality and relevance trump quantity: search members of relevant groups.
  23. Groups: join strategically. Use to find new connections.
  24. Ask for help. Pose questions. Solve problems
  25. Seek common interest, experience, affiliation, goal
  26. Ask/answer questions. Showcase knowledge, questions will be listed on your profile. Don’t over use for self-promotion.
  27. Service Provider page: built from recommendations, you can request recommendations for your service.
  28. LinkedIn direct ads: text only, CPC or CPM
  29. Polls: Can only ask one question
  30. Facebook
  31. Build a personal profile: keep business focus in mind
  32. Create a business page
  33. What is your strategy?
  34. Create an update schedule: have 2 admins
  35. Promote FB page shamelessly
  36. Facebook Group
  37. Create both page and group. See which one gains traction. Drop the loser.
  38. Events: your opportunity to set up an event: clever and keyword sensitive, date/time, send update to your fans on business page,
  39. Facebook ads: good feedback from other advertisers as to response
  40. Can target by location, age, sex, keywords, education, workplace, languages – will tell you size of reach.
  41. Click-through rates very low
  42. Metrics are under Insight on business page. Tracks metrics over time.
  43. Takes 2 hours/day for social media: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter

 

Viral Marketing and World Wide Raves (GF301)

  1. What is a remarkable idea for your business that would create a world wide rave?
  2. Buyer Personas: tell your story directly to an interested market
  3. Create the web site around buyer personas, create inbound marketing around personas – talk directly to the person
  4. What do you want each of your buyer personas to believe about your organization? One thing? Obama: Change Different things? HubSpot
  5. You can buy attention with ads, direct mail; beg for attention with PR, bug people for attention: call them, trade show floor, sales people
  6. Earn Attention by creating something great online
  7. Create ebook: new rules of viral marketing (downloaded 660k times)
  8. Add creative commons license for sharing without losing copyright
  9. On the web, you are what you publish
  10. Play nice, encourage sharing to get people talking about you
  11. Not suggesting stopping off-line marketing
  12. Online you have think differently
    1. No one cares about your products except for you
    2. Avoid gobbledygook – read the Gobbledygook Manifesto
    3. Goobbledygood Grader – will grade your content
    4. Goobbledygook goes for stock photos too
    5. Lose Control: don’t require email address to download
    6. Rules of measurement is changing: how are your ideas spreading? How is it driving people to your business?
    7. Put down roots where your prospects are online: Facebook, blogs, forums, groups where your prospects are: give expert advice – don’t sell product
    8. Point the world to your virtual doorstep
    9. Manage Fear: new media in the air force
  13. ebook is in a landscape orientation – a colorful book not a boring white paper – goal of ebook to get people to reach out to your company – it is totally free, not to capture emails – success is in the number of downloads, how have people heard of you, you can put secondary offer at the end of the ebook that does require registration.
  14. You might need to do 10 viral ideas for 1 or 2 to succeed.

 

Advanced SEO Tactics: On Beyond Keyword Research (GF401)

  1. Google’s ranking algorithm
    1. what is most important is links –trust/authority of host domain 25%, link popularity of a specific page, the anchor text of external links.
    2. On-page keyword use only 15% relative importance.
    3. Links are vastly more important than page content
  2. Keyword use in the root domain, first words of the title tag, in title very important
  3. Meta tags: weak impact – Google doesn’t use it for ranking
  4. Meta description is advertising text: very important
  5. On Page Factors: h1, h2, h3 are not highly correlated to keyword use
  6. Title and URL are very important. Highly correlated to ranking
  7. Alt text is very important. Highly correlated to ranking
  8. Keywords must be first words in title tag
  9. Substantive unique content on a page highly correlated to ranking
  10. Link Metrics: external links highly correlated: the number of domains linking to URL but no single metric can predict rankings
  11. Number of unique domains linking to site is important
  12. Subdomains: less important than domains for ranking
  13. They do not inherit all of ranking benefits: stay on single domain: bellotti.com/blog not blog.bellotti.com
  14. International ranking: using country’s domain important .de, .it and language
  15. Links will continue to be important in future ranking algorithms
  16. Page Rank Pyramid
  17. Content Tactics: great content is useless unless it can make people link to you. Target the linkerati by leveraging emotions that will make people link. Anger, pride, excitement, surprise, envy, sharing
  18. Content hierarchy: keyword usage, unique content, provides vale to visitors, relevant to query
  19. Experts like link-baiting: creating viral content to generate more links
  20. Use hash or dash not underscore in the page URL
  21. Using same meta description triggers duplicate content filtering
  22. The frequency of crawling goes down when content is static
  23. SEO experts urge you not to use flash for SEO. Flash elements ok. A pure flash page: no
  24. Mozrank: another assessment of links
  25. Links to high ranking sites more important than keywords

 

Calls to Action and Landing Page Best Practices (CV101)

  1. Can your landing page “close?” Pick one: call, download, click
  2. Instead of a button, why not a link: see examples.
  3. Use links to engage the visitor
  4. Take our quiz: they work well.
  5. Do not use submit button or the words click here.
  6. Landing page optimization: Have you tested different landing pages: change headlines, call to action, etc.
  7. Lack of time, what to test, what analytics – barriers to landing page optimization
  8. People spend less than 8 seconds on a landing page
  9. You are only a click away from the competition
  10. Value proposition: need value, not just you are the leading….
  11. Friction is very important: too many elements
  12. Landing pages are not about design
  13. Optimization is multistep process after initial improvement.
  14. Put form on landing page, not sign up now button.
  15. Clarity on a landing page trumps persuasion.

 

Inbound Lead Nurturing (CV201)

 

  1. Requires human touch
  2. Make it easy to continue the conversation
  3. Make appropriate offers based on behavior
  4. Track all touch points (phone, email, online, in person)
  5. Support ad hoc delivery
  6. Measure results: % of contacts in sphere of influence, that opt-in for nurturing, that become sales-ready leads
  7. Less is more: nurture fewer leads
  8. Centralize inquiry information
  9. Pick up the phone to qualify leads
  10. Have a clear hand-off on every lead
  11. Measure sales pursuit on every lead
  12. Step 1: profile of ideal customer
    1. What is most important information do you need to know
  13. Step 2: What does a sales-ready lead look like?
    1. Allow leads to be scored and prioritized
    2. Define degrees of sales readiness: level 1 -5
  1. Automated email response to inquiry form is the most read email. Look to move them forward in the sales process with this email.
  2. Only 60% of web inquiries fill out their phone number.
  3. Look at customer wins: what worked in the process, what questions were asked, who in the organization was in contact?
  4. Message Map:
  5. The key to moving people forward is a library of content based on message map.
  6. Thought leader toolkit
  7. News alerts for third party content: Google alerts, yahoo alerts, technorati watch lists: send customers link to relevant information.
  8. Don’t pitch them with every email. Add value to their day.
  9. Plot out track of information based on buyer persona: month 1, 2, 3 of meaningful touches.
  10. Define your ideal customer profile.

 

Successful Email Marketing (CV301)

  1. Delivering valuable information the recipient wants
  2. Costs 1/20th of direct mail
  3. Step 1: build email list. Build quality over quantity.
    1. On web site
    2. Point of sale signup book in retail location (60% will give email address when asked)
    3. Inbound call: ask for email
    4. Where are all of the touchpoints with your customers and are you asking for the email address
  4. Collect information and permission
    1. Ask about your customers interests
    2. Describe your content and how often you will be sending
    3. Clearly identify your brand
  5. Creating valuable email content
    1. Nirvana is a customer creating a folder for your email
    2. Will your customer keep it?
    3. Will they refer to it in conversation?
  6. What are your content objectives?
    1. Promote: motivate purchases
    2. Inform: inform potential customers
    3. Relate: increase loyalty, encourage product use
  7. Types of emails
    1. Newsletters: educational – remember me, here is something of value
    2. Promotions: limited content, more images, less text, click through to action
    3. Announcements: event driven, to build relationships
  8. Content
    1. It’s not about you, it’s about sharing what you know
    2. Help other people be smart
    3. Put a folder on your desk that says content ideas. As you talk to people and read articles, write notes in folder
    4. Content should be personable
    5. Articles should be short
  9. Call to Actions
    1. 85% of response to email happens in first 48 hours
    2. Links to click on, information to print out, phone numbers to call, instructions for reading and saving the email
    3. What’s in it for your audience, why should they do it now?
  10. Frequency
    1. Permission is perishable: at least quarterly
    2. Create a master schedule
    3. Keep content concise with a strong call to action
    4. Time to send: divide your list and send at different times: compare results
  11. Getting email read
    1. From line: do I know you? Be consistent
    2. Subject line: what is the value of opening this email
    3. Spam check before sending
  12. Bounced and blocked email
    1. Non-existent address – hard bounce
    2. Undeliverable/mailbox full/email blocked – soft bounce
  13. Open Rates
    1. 1 x 1 image embedded, but if opened text only (blackberry) will not register as opened
    2. Pay attention to trending up/down vs absolute open rate
    3. Don’t have big image at top of email (images turned off by default in newer email clients)
    4. Use text at top for preview window
  14. Click –throughs
    1. Visit your website, download a file, take a survey, send an email
    2. Clicks tell you what topics are interesting to your audience
  15. Questions
    1. What is avg. open rate?
      1. Low to mid 30% (religion, non-profits)
      2. B2B mid 20s
  • B2C high teens
  1. 10 – 20% is good
  1. It takes avg of 7 interactions before a prospect turns into a customer
  2. From line: person or brand? What is most recognizable?
  3. Email is an inbound marketing technique – it is sharing content

 

Midway Inbound Marketing Review

  1. Outbound marketing is harder: people are better at filtering out the messages
  2. Inbound: Get found, convert, analyze
  3. Creating Content
    1. Who is the content for? Who are you trying to attract?
    2. Which personas are they trying to attract?
    3. Clearly define your persona(s)
    4. Blog
    5. Podcast
    6. Videos
    7. Photos – flickr
    8. eBooks
    9. News Releases
    10. PPT
    11. Commenting on other blogs
  4. Publish content everywhere
  5. 97% more inbound links for companies that blog; 55% more visitors
  6. More blogging increases results
  7. Marketing Persona
  8. Create content useful and interesting to your persona
  9. Ranking Content
    1. Context – information on web page
    2. Authority – number of web sites that link to it
  10. On-page SEO
  11. Authority: much more important than context
    1. Get more high quality web sites link to your web site
    2. More web pages generate more links
  12. SEO
  13. Organic search gets 75% of clicks
  14. How to evaluate keywords: non-generic words
  15. On page vs off-page SIO
  16. Page title
  17. Image alt text
  18. Links with anchor text
  19. Be attractive to Google and people
  20. Promote
    1. It’s not about you.
    2. Content makes you interesting
    3. Leverage the content
    4. Blogging drives success in social media
    5. Social media is about leads and sales, not buzz
    6. Promote in email
    7. Build relevant relationships by being helpful
  21. Convert
    1. Offers and Calls to Action
      1. What is value of the offer
      2. Visual design of CTA
      3. Text on CTA
  1. Placement of CTA
  2. Test and experiment
  3. What’s in it for me: WIIFM
  • Every page needs a link to a form to download something of value
  • Use CTAs everywhere
  1. Test to find the best CTA
  1. Landing Page
    1. Consistent with past steps, same design and message as offer
    2. Simple and clear
  • Limited navigation
  1. Short form yields higher conversion rate
  2. Test and experiment
  1. Keep things moving to next step in the process
    1. Email marketing
    2. Lead qualifying
  • Lead nurturing
  1. Analyze
    1. Look at how blog articles perform
      1. Number of inbound links
      2. Number of comments
      3. Number of visitors
  1. Performance of landing pages
  2. Traffic
  3. Measure leads
  • Track sales – which visits led to customers; which channels led to customers (SEO vs Social Media)
  • Closed loop marketing: tracking visitors to closed sales
  1. Compare what works and what doesn’t
  2. ROI: was it worth the time or money?
  3. Conversion rate calculation
  • Lead scoring
  • Visitors/leads/sales
  • Measure to understand and improve

 

  1. Questions
    1. At bottom of blog article is a secondary offer.
    2. Can rank for longtail keywords immediately
    3. Only one form per landing page

 

PR for Inbound Marketing (GF402)

  1. Overall media landscape has changed, the PR industry has been rattled to its core.
  2. Mass media was used to reach the masses.
  3. No longer just top down.
  4. Mass media now belongs to the masses.
  5. PR now interacts with social media to talk directly to the audience instead of through media.
  6. The audience can now talk back, to the brand and to the PR agency.
  7. Traditional media struggling to survive.
  8. Reporters now have to write online articles and blog posts that get traffic as part of their review, not just newspaper stories.
  9. Conversational collaboration with end users
  10. The worlds biggest neighborhood potluck. What kind of neighbor will you be? Do you want to be?
  11. Wallflower: just listening to what others are saying about your company and products?
  12. Blowhard: Sell, sell, sell without listening, often around an event.
  13. One of Us: have a conversation, bring something that you know that is of value, good enough to tell other people.
  14. Goal: more qualified prospects.
    1. Find you and your website
    2. Look around
    3. Sign up for a…
    4. Ask for a salesperson to contact them
    5. Sit through a demo
    6. Create a PO/write a check
  15. Focus on qualified prospects, not just more web traffic.
  16. PR is about frequently distributing relevant content through the right channels to boost credibility and findability.
  17. Frequency
    1. Every day is the amount of frequency you need.
      1. Blog post
      2. Blog comment
  • Relevant content (retweet or sending links)
  1. Pitch new ideas to journalist or blogger
  2. Showcase a new media hit
  3. Analyze your website traffic and tweak your SEO
  • Attend an event and broadcast content from that venue (tweets and posts)
  1. Relevance
    1. The community will tell you if your content is relevant.
    2. Are they sharing it?
    3. How is website traffic being affected
    4. Any new trends in Google terms in how people are finding your site?
    5. Where are visitors coming from?
    6. Is the content that is reflective of your brand?
    7. Are customers happy?
  2. Content
    1. Press releases that contain actual news
    2. Video (short)
    3. Podcasts (short)
    4. Articles
    5. Blog posts
    6. Research
    7. Make a widget, FB or iPhone app
    8. What are you best competitors doing?
  3. Rightness
    1. How do you determine the right channels?
    2. Upfront research: technorati, google, Cision, Compete?
    3. Use Backtype to see where top industry bloggers themselves are reading?
    4. Use Tweetreach to track tweets and RT
  4. Credibility
    1. Very important online
    2. Media prominence accounts for 25% of brand value
  5. Findability
    1. You’re no longer in the marketing dept, your in the findability department
    2. Make SEO a factor in everything you do
    3. Use pressreleasegrader.com
    4. Appropriate and consistent titles and tags across all posts
    5. Keep the spiders busy: put out a lot of content
    6. Use analytics to determine how people find your site
    7. Use google insights or Hubspot insights.
  6. What not to do
    1. Don’t spam a prospect group with your release, contact the administrator
    2. Don’t bore people with a long video, podcast, blog
    3. Don’t overexpose yourself
    4. Set legal ground rules early
  7. Conclusion
    1. You can find, listen to and interact with prospects online
    2. Can find prospects cheaply where they are already hanging out
    3. Newsroom where press release is posted and people can comment on it
    4. Blogging is not about broadcasting. It’s about conversation. You need to allocate time to blog and time to listen and respond to the comments.

 

Twitter for Business (GF501)

  1. Why do it?
  2. User multi-face – not bound to an browser
  3. Mobility
  4. Build a wider network
  5. Engage more deeply with consumers
  6. Better idea exchange
  7. Customer service, market awareness, understanding, direct sales, SEO, driving traffic, networking
  8. Internally: sales teams, event planning, coordination, problem solving, employee support, news, project status, social
  9. Business value
    1. Visibility, relevance, relationships, social capital, community, ideas, trust, research, marketing, networking, customer, service, traffic, news, sales, SEO
  10. Influence was attracting attention to yourself.
  11. Now it is providing value and attention to others
  12. Make tweet about reader, link to blog post
  13. Social media is nothing new
  14. Social media is knowledge, mediated from a trusted source
  15. Markets are socially mediated
  16. How to get started?
  17. First: listen. 10x more important than tweeting.
  18. Dress nicely (profile, graphic, avatar)
  19. Introduce yourself (profile completeness)
  20. Be a good conversationalist: listen, respond, contribute relevant, useful material
  21. Cultivate: excellence, authenticity, engagement
  22. How to bring the entire team on board, not just one account.
  23. Publish to become known, be helpful
  24. Measure twitter based on normal business ROI objectives
  25. How to prevent time suck: you and employees: focus on results
  26. Not information overload, its filter failure.
  27. Follow key people in you industry
  28. Branding lessons: twitter.zappos.com
  29. Array of products twitter search links
  30. Microsharing and use in business: on twitter.com
  31. Significant off-platform benefits
  32. Twitter is becoming more mainstream: a massive consumer sentiment engine
  33. com, pistachioconsulting.com, twitter for dummies
  34. Tweet
  35. com has new business section

 

Advanced Marketing Analytics (AZ501)

  1. What web and marketing metrics can you measure?
  2. Bounce rate: I came to your web site, I puked, I left. Your web site sucks. How can you make it more relevant?
  3. Where is traffic coming from?
  4. Look at pages with high bounce rate, don’t focus on home page.
  5. It’s not the recession, you suck.
  6. What has changed in your data? Clicktracks – what are the movers. Most statistically significant. Keywords rising the fastest and falling the fastest.
  7. Segmentation of data: depth of visit: a distribution of the amount of content consumed. Use Google analytics.
  8. Then can focus on people who are loyal to you.
  9. Also can see how much content you have on a subject versus how much customers are visiting that content
  10. Outcomes: economic value
  11. Why don’t we get love? We give out data that has no meaning to the other person.
  12. Focus on creating many different goals on your web site:
    1. Off line leads
    2. Traffic
    3. Macro and micro conversion
    4. Macro example: those that buy
    5. Micro example: download something, signup for newsletter, RSS signups, etc.
    6. Compute economic value created by micro examples
  13. Always focus on outcomes
  14. Twitter: what I track is message amplification: how many are retweeted.
  15. Twitter is not a shouting channel. It is a conversation channel.
  16. Experimentation: hippo: highest paid person’s opinion. That’s how web sites are created.
  17. Web sites give you the ability to be proven wrong quickly.
  18. The 10/90 rule: invest $10 in tools, $90 in the people to understand it.
  19. What is acceptable bounce rate: Google Analytics has bounce rate benchmarks by industry. Around 30%. Over 50% is high – for new visitors.
  20. The only acceptable bounce rate is the one that goes down.
  21. com, Google trends for web sites: http://www.google.com/trends

 

Passion-Inspired Video & Other Creative Content (GF502)

  1. Video on Facebook now – serious upside
  2. Biggest connection to fans and customers is livestreaming because it is interactive. Ustream..com
  3. Businesses need a video strategy because of the mobile aspect and sharing.
  4. Can become viral because there is already trust.
  5. We are living in a word of mouth economy
  6. It’s about the message, not the video, audio, lighting.
  7. Companies not listening and responding to Twitter chat.
  8. Content and service is going to win because of the word of mouth economy.
  9. We are connected at a level that we have never seen before.
  10. Caring for customers is the key.
  11. Need to create emotional attachment.
  12. It’s story telling. What are your best stories?
  13. Focus on strengths, not fixing weaknesses.
  14. com
  15. What does your brand represent? What is your story?

 

Social Media for Big Business (GF302)

  1. Southwest: 30+ employee bloggers: write when you feel like it, write what you are passionate about, share industry knowledge
  2. Blog is the anchor of all social media efforts – push content out to other sites
  3. Channel owners: each channel is owned by one person: facebook, flickr, twitter, youtube, linkedIn
  4. Stayed active on 250 aviation blogs
  5. Introduce executive to bloggers in your industry
  6. Blog feedback of 1000 customers influenced open seating plan
  7. Facebook – first customers came for a contest, when they updated their status first the number of followers dropped, now over 1 million followers
  8. Twitter: started July 07 – over 1 million followers.
  9. YouTube: rapper of safety announcements taken by customer went viral: over 3 million views,
  10. Use video for crisis issues, features, maintenance: engine washing has over 100k views
  11. Monitoring the Twitter chatter lets companies respond immediately before the formal company statement.
  12. Where are ah-ha moments in the metrics? Quarterly reporting is based on case studies, not numbers.
  13. Measurement: what are you trying to prove? Who cares? It’s not all about the numbers. Focus on what you’ve got, not what you think you want. Do it yourself. Do PR for your efforts. Report your screw ups.
  14. Make it personal: not faux personal.
  15. Engage the positive people first.
  16. Establish channels before a crisis.
  17. Act fast: 2 hours to respond is too long.
  18. Most executive don’t get social media
  19. Educate your employees and leaders.
  20. Live and breathe social media.
  21. Have fun. This is not a burden, it is a gift.
  22. Use Radiant 6 for paid measurement tool
  23. Need to put people on social media full time.

 

Internet Marketing Comprehensive Review

  1. Can you afford as a company to have more than an advertising-jingle persona?
  2. A lot of marketing is based around a splash: an event, a banner ad, email marketing, act now, etc.
  3. New channels: creating ripples: drip, drip, drip
  4. Drip ideas into the ocean of the world
  5. Be seamless and flow together: know why you are on Facebook and YouTube
  6. Old web was about eyes, new web is about hands: doing things with what is on the web
  7. Old web: Britannica online, new web: Wikipedia (where all are participating)
  8. Old: personal websites, New: blogging
  9. Old: CMS, New: Wikis
  10. Old: directories, new: tagging
  11. Old: conference, new: unconferences: unstructured discussions
  12. Was: IM, Is: Twitter, Foursquare
  13. RSS: the foundation of everything we are doing – subscription world
  14. The base for everything is google reader : use it on phone
  15. Use star in upper right: takes info offline, google gears
  16. Can star and share items
  17. Can email to others
  18. Create feed to send alerts to google reader
  19. Google Blogsearch, delicious as a research engine
  20. Benchmarking success
    1. momentum effect: how many people are talking about my brand in each channel
    2. Viral effect
    3. Connectors – # of people connected to the brand
    4. Community acceptance/involvement
    5. Conversation
    6. Credibility
    7. Cash
  21. You blog to be knowable, not to be known
  22. Social marketer: focus on a core group of who are the most important. It is not about the number of fans and friends, subscribers. It’s about who.
  23. Recommendations: For immediate release podcast; joe jaffee, joe brogan, Avinash Kaushik, seth godin, tom peters, mashable, copywriter, look at blog roll: twistimage.com

 

Small Business Seminar

  1. Content isn’t only text: photos and videos are important
  2. Social media builds a barrier to competition with content, because it increases your reach and stays up on the web to be found in the future without additional effort.
  3. Social media allows you to be first, before others create content in social media.
  4. Top 10 tips on social media for small businesses:
  5. Schedule time for social media: each day or 10hrs week.
  6. Have some way to measure what you are doing: so you can do more of what is working and to stop what is not working.
  7. Regularly generate and distribute content
  8. Don’t try to do it all: figure out what works and do more of that. You can’t do it all: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Buzz
  9. Social medial is both online and offline communication method: it helps drive offline activity. Connect people with events, shows, offers.
  10. Set expectations with your customers how often you will publish blog articles, can answer them on Twitter, etc.
  11. Become a thought leader in your niche.
  12. Have call to actions that convert. Make them clear. Make it easy.
  13. Use social media data for business strategy.
  14. Use social media to reduce PPC traffic and increase organic traffic
  15. Questions: Analytics: look at Leads and Reach (subscribers, followers, fans and how is it growing?)

 

 

Social Media Monitoring: HubSpot Customer Webinar

  1. Monitor your brand and the problems that your brand solves
  2. These conversations are happening: you need to be a part of it.
  3. You can help shape the conversation, but not if you are not listening.
  4. Imagine it like a trade show. Lots of conversations about a particular subject.
  5. You are still early to the party. It is growing and not a fad. 1/3 of US adults participate in social media: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn
  6. Facebook: people you know; Twitter: people you don’t know yet; LinkedIn: professional contacts looking to network/answers to business questions
  7. Use social media monitoring: keyword phrases that you want to track
  8. Add brand terms to track: company, brand, names of executives, industry terms and acronyms, competitor names
  9. Takes 24 hours to “cook” after you tune your keywords
  10. Track brand mentions, industry mentions, reach
  11. Share posts and links with sales team: best mentions in social media
  12. Respond to some comments publically or click through to the source and reply directly to the post.
  13. Leave a comment on a blog article everyday
  14. Get someone else in the company to comment on blog article
  15. On commenting: many hands make light work
  16. Internal wiki for staff only: blog article ideas
  17. Share the workload
  18. Track your reach: are more people following you? Use Analyze -> Reach

 

 

Advanced Twitter Webinar

  1. Communicate and build relationships
  2. Share information quickly
  3. Thought leadership and authority building
  4. Now on Twitter are media, PR, marketing people and techs
  5. Engage senior executive in social media
  6. Build relationships with clients, PR, bloggers
  7. Twitter grader
  8. Tweets per day: 22 – 25 tweets per day is the sweet spot for people with the most followers
  9. How to succeed with Twitter: build your network, engage them in conversation, track and analyze
  10. Better use of time than blogging for senior executives
  11. Set up business account as well as individual accounts
  12. Twitter for PR: answering questions from journalists, PR, media people
  13. Need to monitor your keywords in real time.
  14. Click on star to mark good tweets as favorites: good for sales presentations
  15. Twitter drives traffic to your site and blog.
  16. Twitterfeed: automatically publishes new blog content to your Twitter account.
  17. ReTweets (RT) are perfect viral mechanism for followers, buzz, traffic
  18. RTs are for link sharing. It’s suggested that you put links into your tweets.
  19. Don’t be afraid to ask for the retweet: please retweet. The key word is please.
  20. How to’s and instruction content, warnings, breaking news, freebies, contests are those subjects that spread quickly.
  21. The rate of retweets increases as it spreads. Forms social please, implicit call to action
  22. To get more followers, follow more people.
  23. Back channel discussion at events using hash tag. Good way to meet people at a professional event.
  24. Can request meetups through Twitter.
  25. TweetDeck is the way to track people, mentions, groups, keywords. Can shorten URLs and tweet from application.
  26. Search for SM5 in the HubSpot forums for more comments.

 

Advanced LinkedIn Webinar

  1. Your professional resume online
  2. Establishes your professional brand
  3. Provides inbound links to your site
  4. Generates traffic and sales leads
  5. Company Pages
    1. Logo, links to current employees, job openings
    2. All info can appear in Google search results
  6. LinkedIn Answers: if you write a great answer, you can get marked as a best answer on your profile
  7. Short and easy to skim tips
  8. Link back to blog articles
  9. Can subscribe to a category of questions
  10. Hubfeed will pulling in LinkedIn articles from your favorited keywords
  11. Create your own professional group: not around your company but around your industry : ProMarketers group by HubSpot: 29k members
  12. Dedicated LinkedIn group page
  13. Invite key customers and contacts
  14. Invite industry experts
  15. Integrate LinkedIn into your marketing
  16. Share your blog post to LinkedIn
  17. Can post an event: http://events.linkedin.com
  18. Post your event and invite attendees
  19. Ads on LinkedIn: similar to AdWords but in alpha phase of development
  20. Settings > Marketing Link Builder
  21. Measure and Optimize: number of connections, % of employees on LinkedIn, number of group members, number of forum discussions and news articles, number of best answers in various categories.
  22. Search for SM7 forums in success.hubspot.com

 

Show and Tell

  1. Marketing is more about using your brains more than using your wallet
  2. This is how the modern marketplace shops and learns
  3. What are the most successful members? Those who work like a gym member that is an active user.
  4. Marketing has changed more in the last 4 years than in the last 40 years
  5. Can learn more about customer from Twitter and LinkedIn accounts of lead.
  6. Lead nurturing: an automatic sequence of leads that goes out to a lead that has filled out a form and downloaded an offer.
  7. Emails sent from HubSpot are automatically tracked and the tracking token is added to the URL link to your site you put in your email.
  8. Can integrate any CRM, not just Salesforce.
  9. Social media monitoring: your listening app
  10. Focus on lead generation in sales pitch
  11. Use services marketplace to define your services

 

Landing Page Video

  1. Must include image
  2. Keep it simple
  3. Little or no navigation or other links
  4. People scan, don’t read
    1. Bullet points
    2. Pictures
    3. Bold copy
    4. Five second rule: if they can’t understand it in five seconds, they won’t click
  5. Make it instantly obvious what they will get
  6. The shorter the form, the higher the conversion rate
  7. Thank you page – redirect to a url 99% of the time
  8. Auto response email
    1. Offer demo, subsciption to blog,