You know what? What you heard is absolutely right!

Inbound marketing is really powerful for your business. It’s not only revolutionized the way people think about marketing their business, it’s also brought businesses and consumers closer. More like a nice ecosystem.

Now, this post is not about inbound marketing in general. It’s more about the tools we use to accomplish our goals.

Is Blogging The Ultimate Tool for Inbound Marketing?

Yes and No!

Ah, now you are thinking it’s unfair. I didn’t give you a clear cut answer as you expected. Let me ask you one thing. Do you really want me to give you an answer that may or may not work for you or be upfront about the truth so that you can make a better informed decision?

I’d choose upfront information over a maybe type answer. And that’s what I am going to give you.

I wrote previously about business blogging and its benefits. For most businesses blogging can be their ultimate inbound marketing tool.

However, for some businesses they may find blogging to be a waste of time. Yeah, you heard me right. In certain industries blogging can prove to be a not so effective way of gaining customers.

Now, i am not going to make a list of industries that should and shouldn’t blog. It’s because each industry behaves differently in each region.

When Blogging Doesn’t Work?

OK, let me tell you a real life story.

There is a certain movie theatre in my area. They wanted to attract more movie goers to their theatre. The problem is they didn’t know where to start.

So I asked them to try a hand at blogging. I also made sure that they understood about providing value and that blogging isn’t about self-promotion.

They started blogging about present movies, upcoming movies, interesting theatre experiences, and so on. It went on floor about 6 months.

When the data was analyzed all they had was around 30 people reading the post and the bounce rate was [pretty high as well.

Then I advised them to try social media. Guess what? They struck gold with Facebook. People started engaging with them on their Facebook page, started providing feedback and they started to build a loyal following.

Whether blogging will work for you or not largely depends on the demographics of your locality. If you have a local business, you might need to check if your target audience is open to consuming blog contents. If not, switch to other mediums.

Should The Sole Focus Be On Blogging?

No. Although blogging works extremely well for 95% of businesses (yeah, I made up that %, but I can assure you that blogging works for pretty much all industries except a few), you should not treat blogging as the only inbound marketing tool.

Twitter, Facebook, bookmarking sites, and other social media sites can all act as inbound marketing tools. Learn where your customers hang out and target those areas. Drive traffic from these networks to your blog to build up a sizable community.

Over to You:

Is blogging your sole inbound marketing tool? Or do you find success with other medium? What’s your strategy? Let me know in the comments.

There, I said it.

What is Lead Nurturing Anyway?

In simple, plain English, lead nurturing means engaging with qualified leads until they are ready to make a buying decision.

You get people to subscribe to your newsletter, download your whitepaper or simply enroll in any other lead management system you might have. Once you have a lead, you don’t try to sell anything until you figure out that the lead is “ready” to make a purchase.

While waiting for the lead to mature, you provide value to your lead by giving them more useful information, case studies, informative videos and more. This helps your customers develop trust in your brand and overcome the barriers to make a sale.

There are a lot of percentages doing the rounds on the internet regarding how much % of people are not yet ready to buy from you the first time they land on your website. (95%, 50%, you name it)

I won’t go into any figures just to entice you. But what I can tell you is that majority of your prospective customers will never buy from you the first time they come to your website. That’s where lead nurturing comes into play.

You need to use lead nurturing techniques to get them onto your list, build a good relationship with your lead and when you think they are ready to make the sale, present them an offer. You’d be surprised at how many people will convert to a paying customer when you adopt this strategy.

The Problem with Traditional Means of Lead Generation

Some companies do an exceptional good job of capturing leads.

However, when it comes to converting those leads, they fail miserably.

In most companies, you have marketing department as well as sales department. Marketing team is generally in charge of generating leads and sales team is generally in charge of closing the sale.

While it’s good to have two separate teams, it also poses a challenge.

Sales people are going to be interested in sales only. They have targets to achieve. So guess what they’ll try to do with the leads generated? They try to sell to your fresh leads.

Here lies the problem.

In most cases, just because someone gave you permission to call them or send them email doesn’t mean they like to be called up to make a purchase when they don’t necessarily want to do so.

How to Effectively Use Lead Nurturing to Overcome Buyer Resistance?

You know the lead is not yet ready to make a sale. You also understand that sales department couldn’t care less to nurture a lea because they are more concerned about reaching their targets.

#1: Marketing & Sales Need to Work Together

The key to effective lead nurturing is making the sales and marketing department work together. Don’t just discard leads if they are not yet ready to buy something from you.

Instead build a solid relationship with the not-so-hot leads. Sooner or later they’ll convert.

It’s a win-win (or should I say win-win-win-win) situation. Sales team gets a revenue generating customer, marketing department generated a high quality lead, your business generated more profit, and your customer could confidently make a good purchase.

#2: Understand Lead Nurturing Takes Time

While you are ready to embrace this methodology, it should come as no surprise that some leads can take a long time to convert.

Be patient and come up with a lead nurturing plan to engage your prospective customers.

I have had a customer take around a year to engage me as their SEO consultant. So it’s not a quick fix solution.

#3: Test, Test and Test…

One of the strongest selling points of nurturing a lead is that you can sell when your prospect is ready to jump in.

But, how do you know when the prospect is actually keen on buying from you? When do you make an offer?

To get this kind of insight, you need to test and segment your leads. Understand how the lead was generated (from search engines, from other blogs, word of mouth and so on), how well they are engaging with you, and so on.

Over to You:

Do you engage in lead nurturing? What’s the biggest challenge you had to face? Let me know in the comments.

I currently own a blog that teaches people how to write so as to take their online career to the next level and saying that writing has been influential to my success will be an understatement.

With over 160 million blogs online today a lot of individuals and companies are starting to realize the importance of leveraging content marketing to build a successful blog. Things were different a few decades ago and the power has always been in the hand of the media and companies with big budget, but now even a nobody from a secluded part of the world can build a successful business from anywhere through content marketing.

I’m a young blogger from Africa and I’ll be sharing a few tips with you in this article on how content marketing helped me become a trusted authority.

It Takes Hardwork and Consistency

Before I start sharing my tips with you I’d like you to get prepared for some serious hardwork. A lot of prospective content marketers have been sold the dream of doing nothing and making money and some people believe they only need to buy a “powerful” course, put in some efforts and start getting results. Right? Wrong!

Succeeding with content marketing actually takes time and I’m not just referring to writing for your blog either. You might be ready to commit yourself to writing and sharing your experiences and how you can help on your blog for years but that might not make a difference.

Effective content marketing isn’t just about writing for yourself, it is also about looking for where your audience hangs out and writing for them. It takes a lot of work, probably more work than you’ve been made to believe.

Developing a Unique Selling Proposition (or Winning Difference)

When it comes to getting results from content marketing online most people have the impression that all it takes is creating a blog, slapping it with a few articles and multimedia content and expecting people to start flocking to them for business. Unfortunately, everybody else does that and if there is one thing about success business can teach us it is that doing what everybody else does will only result in average results.

To be sincere, I was a typical example of what I just explained above when I started and I never really knew what I was doing. I believed it was all about having a cool blog with great design and I kept publishing new blogs posts every day. In fact, I even published posts as long as 3,000+ words in some days but I had a huge problem; readers can’t tell what my website was all about even after reading it for days.

Just pause and take a minute to look at your blog, decide what your blog is all about and how readers will perceive it without being biased in less than a minute. If you’re not too sure you might even want to ask a few friends to give their opinion. And no, your blog can’t be about multiple things; it has to be about just one thing.

If readers are to describe your blog in one word what will they say? Don’t continue unless you’re able to answer this because you will otherwise be kicking against a brick wall.

Why is your website different from all the other websites in the world? And no, it isn’t because you talk about marketing or blogging, there are thousands of websites that talk about that already so why should your website be different?

A USP helps separate your website from the crowd and gives people reason to trust you. In other words, it creates a hook that helps explain what your website is all about and why it is different from the crowd. It could be that your website is tailored to a specific audience or that it only gives tips of a specific kind. Either ways, there has to be something that makes your website different from other websites in your field and you should work on making this stick out on your website.

Focusing on Where the Real Results Lie

The reality is that it can be very easy for us all to get carried away thinking that effective content marketing is about writing for ourselves and our audience. But the reality is do you even have an audience?

Smart content marketers don’t just write to drive conversions or impact results, they also leverage the audience of other successful websites in their field by providing them with content and then driving results back to their websites. In other words, don’t just stick to writing about yourself and your business because it won’t be worth it. Instead, write for others and drive results back to your business.

I wrote over 270 guest posts for other blogs before getting real results online. You might decide to be smarter with your approach and not write that much, but the key to content marketing success is learning to write for others, not just yourself; this means you need to be able to write for your audience while still being able to write for the audience of others so as to direct their visitors to your website.

***Author Bio***

Bamidele is willing to give a hostgator discount on his blog to anyone interested. You should also check out his writer resources.

Yes, most businesses simply can’t get people to trust them enough. People need to trust you in order for them to hand over their hard earned cash for your product or service.

Now, what if there is a simple almost zero cost way to earn their trust?

No, I am not talking about brand endorsements by celebrities or pushy advertisements. They are not even remotely close to free, so why would your thought even go along those lines?

I am talking about using powerful content marketing strategies to build trust, engage your prospective customers and convert them into loyal customers for life.

Why Do You Need to Adopt Content Marketing Strategies?

Firstly, content marketing is almost free if you are creating your own content. Nothing beats a marketing strategy which doesn’t cost you anything to acquire a customer (Not factoring in the time you put into creating the content).

The internet has changed the way people buy products. With ecommerce exploding in popularity, it’s just a matter of time that almost everything goes up for sale on the internet (recently someone was selling a buffalo on eBay!).

It’s no longer true that you can put up some product or service for offer and people will give you their full attention. You have to earn their attention via engaging and useful content. Selling comes second to awesome content.

You are no longer dependent on third party to interact with your customers. Content marketing enables you to provide high value content to your customers directly and they in turn get to know more about your business. Useful content builds trust and your prospect is now easier than ever to convert into a paying customer.

7 Powerful Content Marketing Strategies

Strategy #1: Embrace Content Marketing

This should be a no brainer.

You need to understand the benefits of content marketing and be prepared to deliver high value content to your customers. Whether they are already your customer or a prospect, the value of the content decides their future conversion rates for your offers.

You can make use of proper keyword research to find out what people are currently searching for online and write content based on demand.

If you don’t have the time to come up with high quality content, consider hiring someone to manage the content creation process. The thing is, there must always be a system in place to churn out quality content for consumption by your customers.

Strategy #2: Be Relevant

Create compelling content that solves your customers problem. However, take care to see that you do not deliver too much information that your paid offer is no longer needed.

Finding the right balance is the key to a winning content marketing strategy.

Let’s assume you sell financial budgeting software that makes it easy for people to manage their personal or business finance on the go.

You could deliver articles, videos, and PowerPoint presentations on controlling spending, setting & managing budgets and so on.

Your selling point is ease of use. By giving away useful and relevant content to your readers, you are giving away a ton of useful information and establishing yourself as a trusted authority in your niche.

Giving away the information for free doesn’t affect your sales negatively since knowledge doesn’t necessarily transform into ease of use or time savings and people will mostly end up buying your product.

Strategy #3: Understand Content Marketing Doesn’t Stop Once a Sale Is Made

Many small business owners are guilty of this.

Once a sale happens, they move on to acquire new customers. Content marketing worked for them since they got customers. Isn’t it time to fish for more fish?

No!

Although getting more customers is crucial for most businesses, you shouldn’t consider your content marketing campaign to be a one-time solution. It’s an ongoing process.

You still need to deliver quality content to your customers even after paying you. This will ensure that they stay with you for a longer time (excellent if you have a monthly/yearly paid plan).

I am amazed at how many software’s get a lot of content marketing right, yet, they do not even have a properly documented get started guide. Just because you know your product inside out, doesn’t mean your customers feel the same way.

Provide content that helps users make maximum use of your product or service. Do you provide software? If so, give them in-depth guides on how to use the software (complete with screenshots), a user support community, knowledgebase repository, and a way for them to reach company support.

Strategy #4: Make the Content Sharable

You have worked hard on providing quality content. Don’t you want your users to spread the word? I know I do!

Make sure that your content is easy for them to share it with their friends. The best way to do this is to provide social media sharing options on the content page. The easier it is for users to share your content, the more likely they will spread the word for you.

This is one area where people either overdo it, or not do anything at all. When people decide to offer social media sharing options, they think that more is good.

Nothing can be farther than the truth.

More is not always good, at least for social media sharing purposes. Sometimes, giving more options can confuse the readers and prevent them from sharing anything at all.

Find out where your target audience hangs out and provide options to share your content on those medium. You might also consider asking your readers a poll regarding their preferred social media sites.

Strategy #5: Have a Purpose for Each Content

It’s easy to fall into the trap of endless content creation.

Before you keep on creating content with no clear goal, ask yourself one question.

“What do I need my readers to do after consuming this piece of content I am about to produce?”

This is effectively the call to action you need to have on your content.

Do you want them to sign up for your newsletter, buy your product, sign up for a webinar or download your free eBook? Make it clear!

Strategy #6: Test Content Channels

You could go on and on creating high value content. What if no one comes to know about your content?

It’s essential that your track each channel to measure the most effective content marketing medium.

For some businesses, social media works great. For others, blogging is the ultimate content marketing tool.

Just because there is a new social media website on the block, you needn’t flock over to that site. See which works for you best and stick with it. At times test if newer channels work for you.

Strategy #7: Test Your Content Itself

You know what the problem with us content marketers are?

When we create content, we feel that it’s the most effective way to give information to our readers and engage them.

Problem is, not everyone thinks like us.

The format of your content can have high impact on your audience. For some video works best, for some text works best. Then there are people who want podcasts.

Mix up your content offering. See which works best and provide more content in your readers preferred format.

Concluding Content Marketing Strategies for Your Business

Content marketing is absolutely the best way to get more customers for your business in most cases. That being said, I wouldn’t rely on content marketing alone either.

No matter what the gurus say, you should continue marketing which brings you results currently.

Are you using any other content marketing strategy in your business? Let me know in the comment section.

Some say blogging is dead, some say traditional marketing is dead, email marketing is dead, and some say well the whole paid business model is dead (and everything should be free and open source).

Well, I am not so sure about these statements. In fact, I think they are downright wrong (funny too in a sense). My personal story is a proof that blogging can work for almost anyone.

Why Blogging is Not Dead?

You can argue all you want, but blogging is simply not dead.

Increasing trend for the term "start a blog"

People have been claiming the downfall of blogging for the past several years. It’s kind of like the end of the world prediction. Each time they predict the end of world and it doesn’t happen, it gets shifted to a later date!

People started asking questions about the death of blogging back in 2004 or well beyond that. Here is one blog post where the person says blogging is not dead.

Now if someone says that it’s not dead yet (mind you the post was from 2004 and some of the hyperlinks on the article no longer work), that means there should have been a lot of speculations about the death of blogging then.

Fast forward to 2012 and blogging is not dead yet. I don’t see it dying for several years to come either.

But Adarsh, I hear that a recent study conducted by The Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth claims that blogging usage has declined across INC 500 companies.

Why the University of Massachusetts Study Shouldn’t Be a Concern?

Business blogging slows down for INC 500

I am not saying the study is flawed. All I am saying is that it’s not something you need to worry about.

INC 500, Fortune 500, whatever companies on the top you take, most of them still don’t get what blogging is! My friend Marcus wrote a great post on this topic recently.

Again, indicates the decline of blogging

There are a couple of reasons why INC 500 companies might not even need to care about blogging

1. They already have millions of dollars to pour into traditional advertising medium which has worked well for them
2. After the Obama administrations early initiatives, there are several government organizations on the INC 500 list. These organizations do not necessarily need to use blogging to get business (15% of those in Government Services have adopted blogging compared to 37% overall adoption according to the study)
3. Their social media presence is better than maintaining a blog. I know I would rather follow a company twitter account or rather their Facebook page rather than following each company blog

Not all companies look down upon blogs though. A few companies have really embraced content marketing and have started to make a difference. “Coca Cola” and “Procter & Gamble” comes to my mind as prime examples. Content is not limited to writing. It’s about creating high value articles, case studies, compelling videos, powerful presentations and so on.

You are not INC 500. You don’t have millions of dollars or the brightest marketing minds (other than you) to work at promoting your business. So if you stop blogging because blogging is losing popularity among INC 500, how else do you expect to gain customers online? Small business internet marketing is best achieved through content marketing, and a blog is at the core of this strategy.

Social media you say? Well I have news for you. Social media is not very effective for a large number of businesses. No matter what social media gurus or agencies trying to selling you their service say, social media is yet to mature in terms of gather a buying audience.

People go to social media sites to get entertained, share things, and not necessarily to solve a problem or buy things. Of course, this might change in the future, but for now it’s a cold truth you need to accept.

Agree that you could get onto Facebook or Twitter or whatever to build a brand and engage customers (which you should be doing anyways). But then again, does it make sense to continue doing it if you are not getting any ROI from these activities?

To Do or Not to Do, Is the Question about Business Blogging

This actually shows blogging success is higher in 2011 even with lower number of people blogging. That means higher success for individual blogs!

There is no absolute answer as to whether you should adopt blogging for your business. Although content marketing is very powerful, you must evaluate your options carefully.

Here are some questions to ask yourself before you decide to start a blog for your business.

1. Do you want complete control over your content and own it forever?
2. Do you have the time to write at the least 2 articles a week on your blog?
3. Are you open to criticism?
4. Do you like to open up a two way communication channel with your customers and prospective customers?
5. Do you see yourself writing blog posts for several years to come? Or can you hire a content editor for your blog who can write for years on the topic?
6. Can you provide value via your blog? Instead of posting self-promotional material are you ready to help solve people’s problem without expecting anything back?

If you answered no to any of the above questions, you may NOT want to blog. Mind you, blogging and content marketing are very powerful tools to build your business and skyrocket sales.

The reason why many people don’t get around the concept of business blogging is because most of the time it takes a lot of time and effort to build momentum with a blog.

Your business blog will not be a success overnight unless you are a widely accepted brand and you have absolutely amazing high value content on your blog.

However, if you put in effort and have patience, blogging is certainly going to bring you results. So don’t lose hope and stop blogging. If you haven’t already, start now.

Is your business blogging?

Content marketing is the only marketing left- Seth Godin.

Small businesses around the world are hopping on the internet trying to market their products and services to online customers. It’s a whole new way of engaging with people who might never have heard about your business.

Small business internet marketing is a topic that I would like to explore in this post. You’ll find ways to market your small business using content marketing.

If you haven’t heard of content marketing, it’s only of the most cost effective ways of driving loads of customers to your business website via search engines and social media using tools like blogging, e-books, and so on. It just doesn’t stop at getting people to your website.

Content marketing is also about engaging the visitors on your website and turning them into customers. As a small business, you probably don’t have the marketing budget to match the “big guys”. But using the power of content marketing, you can definitely achieve better results than draining all your money on paid advertisements.

I already assume that you have a website set up for your business with its own unique domain name representing your business name. If not, contact me and I will help you set one up.

How to Use Content Marketing for Your Small Business Internet Marketing Efforts?

When you are trying to market your small business, there are two things you can do.

• Try to sell to everyone who you can get to visit your website and end up with few customers or
• Try to build a relationship with your website visitors, engage them via useful content on your website and later sell to them and end up with loads of customers

Now, which path do you want to choose?

Any sane person would definitely choose the second one. But not many people actually implement it. Why?

It’s difficult!

Creating content to engage your prospective customers, providing value and helping them before paying you a dime comes off as crazy for many business owners.

After all, isn’t business all about making profits and providing awesome after sales service?

It used to be. Not anymore.

You see, people are bombarded with choices. So much so that they can’t even count the number of choices they can make regarding making a purchase.

Take the case of Apple.

Steve Jobs promoting one of apple products

There are dozens of phones in the market. Android is now becoming a craze. There are new companies coming up with dozens of new phones each month. You have thousands of choices and endless offers when it comes to buying a phone.

Yet people who use Apple, and choose not to buy anything else.

Even as most popular companies are struggling with thousands of phone models to attract a wider audience, apple just have one phone they actively promote.

You could buy old models, but still, how many old models are there for you to buy? Just a handful.

Apple did not choose to compete on price or variety. They just provided something they thought was amazing and built a brand following.

It’s working for them. At least that’s what they profits seems to tell.

Now, who wouldn’t want to build a business as great as Apple’s?

Your business should be all about providing great value. It must build a connection with your audience. They must not dumb you for your competitor even though they might have a compelling offer.

That’s where you could use content marketing.

Create amazing content. Provide valuable, actionable advice to people looking for help.

“But Adarsh, how do I provide service and give away free content to people who haven’t yet paid me for my time?”

I hear you. It’s one of the most asked questions by people who are a bit skeptical of content marketing.

Again, I would like to use the Apple example.

Have you tried walking into any of the apple store? If so, then I believe it might be hard for you to walk out without actually making a purchase.

Why is that so?

Firstly, they have an amazing selection of awesome piece of hardware for you to try out. You can try all you want and no one’s going to ask you to step out since you have been in there for long.

The staff is more than happy to assist you with any question you have and they are always pleasant. You are not paying anything to them to use the Apple devices. They simply allow you to use it for as long as you want.

Once you get enchanted by the apple products, it’s almost a no brainer that you will want to buy it. Still, you can walk out of the store without making any purchase and return the next day to try apple products again.

Now, do you think apple would be able to sell more or sell less based on this approach? I assume you just thought more! If not, it’s time you hung your head in shame and go stand in the corner.

How to Use Content Marketing to your Advantage?

Overview of small business internet marketing strategies

You see, you don’t need to set up high quality apple stores to provide a great experience and build a loyal following.

Your greatest asset, and yet the most highly underused part, is your business website.

Here are some dead simply ways to take advantage of content marketing.

1. Start a blog. Write in-depth and useful articles that your target audience would likely find useful
2. Create a free e-book that will serve as a guide for people who have a problem and which could be solved using the strategies mentioned in your e-book
3. Produce videos that help your readers solve problems
4. Hold webinars. You can discuss a popular issue in your niche and give advice on how to overcome problems
5. Start using email marketing. Build up your list of newsletter subscribers and send them high quality information over time
6. Can you create a whitepaper or sponsor one for your niche? Great, do it.
7. Can you come up with an awesome free tool that your audience might be interested in? It’s certainly going to be a win-win situation if you can!
8. Strapped for time? How about trying content curation to help your audience?
9. Shy to appear in video or lack the skills for it? How about trying podcasting? All you need is a voice recorder, a voice editing software and listing it in popular podcast directories
10. Last but not the least; build a relationship with your audience by interacting with them on social media

If you noticed one common trend on all the 10 ways listed above, it’s about solving a problem your user has.

Now, you may ask me “But isn’t that what a business is supposed to do? How can I give away my business for free?”

Again, it’s not about giving away your business.

Here are some examples

• If you run a bakery, you could very well give away recipes (Not the super-secret household recipes though) that people can try out. If they like it, they’ll come back for more; possibly as customers. You also stand a chance of getting word of mouth referrals
• Have a tool that solves a problem? Come up with a free tool with limited functionalities and give it away. Also write up articles relating to the common problems people in your industry face. You could then use the articles to drive traffic to your tool sales page and get them to buy from you
• Do you provide services? Then go ahead and provide articles, videos, and tools that will help your audience. You needn’t worry about losing business just because you are putting out the information out there. People who buy services usually don’t have the time to do it themselves. Otherwise they would simply do a search online, find out information and then do it themselves

The list can go on and on and on. The idea is not to give away your business; it’s about making it a resource hub for people when they have a problem related to the topic.

As you can see, providing valuable content (in the form of articles, e-books, whitepapers, videos, tools, etc.) is not going to hurt your business in anyway.

In fact, it’s going to bring you more business.

I have been online providing small business marketing services for over 5 years now. Yet, I do not believe that my business has been affected just because I gave away high quality information for free. It’s only helped me get more business.

So, how are you planning on doing your small business internet marketing? Are you still skeptical about providing high quality content to get more customers?

• Businesses are jumping into content marketing because it’s a sure shot way of getting more customers on board
• Marketing agencies are promoting content marketing as if there is no other kind of marketing that works

While I do love content marketing and enjoy the benefits it gives me, there is one question that I always wanted to ask my clients before getting into it.

Does embracing content marketing make it a win-win situation for your business as well as your customers?

The Dangers of Content Marketing

You think it’s great to embrace content marketing. I can’t deny that. It’s absolutely powerful and my personal content marketing story proves it beyond doubt.

However there is a hidden danger associated with achieving success with content marketing.

Let’s take the case of the health industry.

I am planning to launch a diet program along with my sister (who happens to be a Doctor of Naturopathy) soon and we were discussing about it a few days back.

One thing that she told me particularly upset me. Let me quote her.

Adarsh, I was doing some research on the internet and came across one article. The article is supposed to help people lose weight if they follow what they have mentioned on the site.

However, I was absolutely shocked after reading the whole article. The advice mentioned there is plain wrong and potentially life threatening as well.

I don’t get it. Why would people write such content on the internet? Isn’t there any regulation about what you can write about?

I had to say to here that the internet is not something bound by rules (Provided SOPA and PIPA doesn’t come up). That’s exactly the reason why internet is so popular today.

The question I want to ask is “Is utilizing the power of content marketing always a win-win situation?”

Granted the website may get a lot of visitors from search engines. They may even get someone to follow the advice. But who really wins in this case? Is it fair to the readers that the content created is “potentially life threatening?” Hell, even medical researches are fraudulent!

Another Case of Wrong Advice…

Recently I saw a post on my Facebook feed where a popular blogger liked a piece of weight loss content. The title made me curious that I decided to check it out. It so happened that the article was very confusing and the advice was simply plain wrong.

I am not a doctor or health expert. However I have enough knowledge to understand when someone gives drastically wrong health advice.

Blame my sister for asking me to proof read her health eBook. I have also read numerous other “diet and wellness” books in the market while doing market research. I did confirm with her about the article just to make sure that I was right.

The site was obviously set up to make money from advertisements or affiliate marketing. But isn’t there a hidden risk in providing wrong advice? What if someone believes it to be true and start following the wrong advice?

What’s funnier was that the article had a byline where it stated the author was a freelancer, SEO expert and something along those lines. Not even a word about what made this person eligible to provide health advice. Not even a statement that he loved writing about health & wellness!

The Content Marketing Problem is Not Limited to Health Niches

Reading the article till now, you might have assumed that the problem is present only in the health industry. No it’s not.

Sometime back I had a SEO client who came to me since he got hit by the panda update.

I took a look at his link profile and sure thing, he deserved to be torched. I asked him about his link building practices and he said that he never outsourced any SEO tasks and did all of it by himself.

He also told me that he got all the info from a link building blog. Once he started implementing some of what the blog advised to and saw it work, he simply believed everything the blogger had to say about link building.

It so happened that the blog had an article which discussed some spam techniques to get quick rankings on Google (The article was taken down when I checked). My client went ahead and applied them only to find that his site got hit by the furious panda!

This is not a single case. Take a look at most of the popular forums related to internet marketing and you’ll see how much wrong advice is spread.

Out of curiosity I chatted with a blogger who seemed to be getting most of his SEO basics wrong. The problem was not that he wanted to cheat anyone. The guy was genuine.

The root cause was that he genuinely believed the tactics he’s implementing is how it should be done. I asked him how he got the information and he pointed me to several forum threads he had opened and people were giving funny (and wrong) answers.

Take a look at most of the niches popular online and you’ll see the problems I mentioned here.

How to Make Content Marketing a Win-Win Situation?

The main idea of content marketing is to provide high value content. “Value” is a subjective term. So what appears valuable to you might not be valuable to another person.

Here are some tips you can use to ensure that your content marketing strategy is really a win-win scenario.

• Don’t blindly trust something just because you read it somewhere. Test, test and test yourself and only then use it for your main business or website
• Provide advice only if you are qualified to do so. At least make sure that your advice doesn’t cause a negative result to someone should they implement it
• What works for you might not work for others. So always make it a point to stress this fact and not make it seem that what you are preaching is the only way to do it
• Genuinely believe in what you are doing
• Be ready to make changes. Just because you said something and that was proved wrong doesn’t make you a scammer. Be ready to accept the facts and take corrective action

What’s your experience with content marketing? Do you have a story to share on your own?

Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with Hubspot and this is a completely honest review. I am not being paid by Hubspot nor do I get any monetary benefits from them in terms of affiliate commissions.

What Exactly Is Hubspot and The Claims of Inbound Marketing?

Even though you may have heard about the company, it’s worth taking time to understand what the company stands for and how it’s products are going to benefit you.

Hubspot is a company founded by Dharmesh Shah and Brian Halligan in June 2006. The basic idea about the product they offer is that you should use inbound marketing to gain customers as opposed to interruption marketing.

To make things simple

Inbound Marketing: Customers who have a problem (for which you have a solution) find you via search engines, social media, and other resources.

Interruption Marketing: You advertise through TV, Print, Radio, Billboard ads, Magazine advertising and other means of traditional advertising.

While the idea sounds good (and it works too in most cases), is it something that benefits your business? This Hubspot review will help you make an informed decision as to whether it’s worth paying for their service.

Hubspot Review: The Actual Tool & First Impression

The guided Hubspot Dashboard

I signed up for their trial account just for this review. I can’t actually review something which I haven’t used, can I?

Overall, the tool is focused on helping users make each step in a controlled manner. They have a guided navigation, progress bar, “do-this-first-this-second…” approach, and has a lot of options to play with.

The admin bar at the top when you login

Module #1: Get Started

Although this step does not have a lot of things to say, the trial dashboard shows what you can expect with this trial, has an intro video, and also gives a tracking code to publish on your website which you might need to track.

Module #2: Get Found

In this module, you have to do three things

• Do keyword research
• Write a blog post based on the keyword research
• Use social media

Keyword Research: I find this interesting because they have already discovered some keywords related to my site and starts showing suggestions. You also have the option of manually entering keywords you want to target.

This is what the keyword research tool typically looks like depending on your website content

It does have a lot of metrics to play with. However, there are some issues I found with the keyword research tool offered by Hubspot.

Problem #1: Location Targeting & Keyword Search Volume Data

They don’t specify anything about how they get this data or which location it’s targeted. However I did some research and found that they pull the data from Google Keyword Tool (Free), and also uses the exact match global monthly search data.

There is no option for us to change this to reflect local search data. This becomes an issue when your target audience is just your local users and not international users. E.g: The keyword [buy clothes online] has 8100 global searches each month while it has only 1600 local US searches.

These data can mislead you sometimes while choosing the correct keyword. Even Google data is very unreliable. I have ranked first for keywords that supposedly have 800 searches each month but I saw only2 or 3 click-troughs to my site. So if you are serious about finding a great keyword, you need to run a Google Adwords campaign and see how much impression it gets.

Problem #2: Incorrect CPC Data

Their CPC (Cost Per Click) data is way off. They showed that the CPC for the term [search engine optimization] is $3.89 while my Google keyword tool tells me that the average CPC is $ 17.27. That’s a miss by a very big margin.

Problem #3: Difficulty Rating

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t really trust ANY tool to tell me accurately how difficult it is to rank a particular keyword. I’m not sure how Hubspot decides that keywords are competitive or not by giving us some random values. This can sometimes be misleading.

Since I dint want to give you a half-hearted review, I tried comparing it with SEOmoz difficulty tool. Here is the comparison

If there is one data set I trust, it’s from SEOmoz. I am not sure how Hubspot comes up their numbers.

It’s Time to Blog…

The blog WYSIWYG editor in Hubspot

Now, the next part of Module #2 after keyword research is to write a blog post. I was asked whether I have been blogging. Just to use the service as a newbies small business owner, I said no (They dint catch me for lying though!).

Here comes the most sickening part of Hubspot- Their blog platform. Blame WordPress for pampering me with the easiest way to blog. Nevertheless, I decide that I should go ahead and learn Hubspot blog because most small business owners might not have experienced WordPress themselves.

The create article section is pretty much easy to use (Maybe a bit easier than WordPress but lacks the flexibility of WordPress though). It also has a reminder box which tells us what to do to better the blog post.

Here again, I encountered problems with using this tool.

Problem #1: Incorrect SEO Advice

Hubspot suggests adding keywords to your document META. It’s been a repeated SEO advice that there is no point in using keywords for SEO ranking. Yet, Hubspot recommends we add keywords. Even after adding 2 keywords, the tool tells me that it’s “too little”.

Another possible incorrect advice they give is including keywords in META description will make Google use our description. Even when using description, I have found Google sometimes uses text relevant to the user query instead of our description.

Problem #2: Limited Blog Features

I don’t want to start comparing Hubspot to WordPress. Yet I can’t resist noticing the lack of certain features in Hubspot when it comes to blogging.

1. No “more” button. This means that the entire blog post will be shown on the front page. If you write long articles, then you might have trouble exposing more of your posts to your readers
2. Limited customizability. I seriously couldn’t figure out how I can change the colors of my website or make other modifications the first time. Even after finding their editing options, the only things I can do is change colors or add some custom styling

For some reason, the whole thing reset itself after about 2 hours. I had set up the blog, and made some customizations. All gone in an instant and the blog page returned a 404 error. I guess it must have been a temporary glitch. (I wouldn’t be pleased if it happened to me after I had put up a lot of content)

However not everything is doom and gloom. Here are some blog features where Hubspot shines.

1. It’s mostly a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor. This means that most of the editing can be done via drag and drop or click-to-edit. This doesn’t include color changes or advanced (read limited) customizations though
2. You can visually customize each page independently. If you are trying this in WordPress, you’ll have to write a lot of code for this (unless you are using a theme framework that gives you drag and drop features like in Headway themes)
3. The landing page feature is also nice. It gives us a clean layout to come up with a good landing page (Limited customizations though)
4. They have a visual call-to-action generator. It’s cool (useful too), and you can easily add it to any page

Overview of Page Grader and Link Grader

Hubspot provides page grader tool which can grade your pages based on

• How many keywords the page is currently ranking for
• Number of visits to the page
• Inbound links to the page

Again, I don’t like to rely on any tool to grade something. However, this tool is very useful to get a high level idea about which page on your site is the most valuable.

Link grader is again another tool that grades inbound links to your site. I am not sure how they grade links, but I assume they have an authority score for popular domains. They may also employ some other sort of mechanism such as leveraging page rank or MOZ rank of linking pages.

It’s time to make use of social media…

Social Media Monitoring Page

You can add your social media accounts and use Hubspot to

• Auto publish your latest blog posts to social media
• Track particular keywords and participate in conversations happening on social media
• Filter conversations based on social media sites
• Reply to tweets and publish on Facebook without leaving the Hubspot interface
• Queue messages and auto publish them to your different social media accounts

This is a great tool to have if your customers are active in social media. You can also use this to find influencers in your field.

Module #3: Convert

In this module, you’ll find tools to help convert the website traffic into subscribers or paying customers.

After all, what’s the use of millions of visitors if they do not convert into business leads or complete the desired action on your site?

Turn Traffic into Leads

In this sub module you’ll be able to create landing pages, visually customize them and even create tracking URL’s.

Lead management section in hubspot

Tracking URL’s can be very effective when you are trying to measure the effectiveness of different medium. E.g. you can use tracking URL’s to find out how each social network performs by using different tracking URL’s for each site.

• You can identify prospects (Based on where they are from, which company they work for, which all pages they saw and so on). Useful if you are a B2B company
• Manage and view landing page data (conversion rate, submissions, page views and so on)
• Analyze leads with a great deal of data. You can see where the leads come from and can even grade leads. Great if you have a lot of leads and would like to sort through the noise and find out the best leads out there
• Use list manager to segment users and build lists. Great when you have different offers to promote to different segments of customers. You can also test the effectiveness of your offers by sending a variation of the offer to different lists and see which one performs the best
• Nurture leads: This is similar to getting them to sign up for your newsletter/freebie and then sending them follow up emails until they convert to a paying customer

Module #4: Analyze

This module contains a lot of tools to analyze your website visitors. It’s basically a stripped down version of Google Analytics but more user friendly and visually appealing. You can also compare your site with your competitors based on

• Website Grade (Use Marketing grader from Hubspot if you want to find your grade without logging into Hubspot)
• Moz rank (A rank similar to page rank from Google, but published by the company SEOmoz)
• Twitter followers (You need to add your twitter account  to Hubspot )
• Facebook fans (You need to add your Facebook account  to Hubspot )
• Indexed Pages
• Traffic Rank (This is Alexa rank. But I wonder why they have this data in there. Alexa rank is not at all an authoritative score of domain popularity)

Additional Remarks About Hubspot Inbound Marketing Platform

1. They do have an app marketplace where you can install apps to enhance your Hubspot site. However, there are not many apps in there (I sure hope you don’t think about comparing with Apple App Store)
2. If you need help, they have a service marketplace that has a list of providers who will help you with various aspects of Hubspot or marketing in general
3. The site was a bit slow and timed out a few times when I tried to access the dashboard

Hubspot Vs WordPress

Hubspot vs WordPress- which is better, is one of the most commonly asked questions. Hubspot is more than just a blog platform. It’s a complete inbound marketing system. This is perhaps one of the reasons for such a high price Hubspot commands.

However, you can match most of the functionalities of Hubspot by customizing WordPress and using different plugins and third party solutions. (It’s a post of its own, but for a later time).

Should I Buy Hubspot?

One of the reasons why many people would think several times before taking the plunge is the high cost associated with Hubspot. They charge minimum of $ 200 a month and that too for a maximum of 500 visitors a month and less than 100 contacts.

Personally, I think they charge way more than they should. However, I am not sure about the cost they incur to maintain the whole platform and remain profitable. But it normally doesn’t concern us as consumers.

No matter if a solution takes 1 million to develop and maintain or just takes 100$, what we look forward to is affordable marketing solution.

But the price you are paying Hubspot is the price for convenience. You are lazy to use 3 or 4 different services. You want everything in one place and make it much easier for you. Now you need to pay the price for that!

Consider going in for Hubspot if

• You can afford the amount you need to Pay Hubspot each month (200 $ to several thousand dollars a month depending on your business requirements)
• You want a solution that will walk you through each and every step
• Your time is extremely valuable to you (Each hour you waste managing multiple services is going to cost you hundreds or thousands of dollars)
• After trying the demo, you are absolutely convinced that the system is going to work for you

Don’t go for Hubspot Inbound Marketing platform if

• You don’t have the money for it. They even have a 12 month contract and no backing out
• You are willing to use 3-4 third party applications instead of just getting everything from a single website (If you are using WordPress, you can to an extend get everything done from the same website)
• You think this is some magic tool. No, you have to work hard just as in any other platform to create engaging content. There are no guarantees that your business will succeed with Hubspot. It’s up to you and how you use the platform
• You want advanced data. You can’t get raw and detailed data you’d get from using third party tools such as Google Analytics. This tool is aimed at small business owners who are non tech savvy
• You would want to build a branded site. It’s difficult to customize and make your site look nice
• You thought all help was free. No. Even group coaching will cost you 300$. Any expert help will cost you several dollars per hour
• You want complete control over your site. Even though Hubspot says they will provide option to export data easily, I don’t see it anywhere to move my CMS if I chose to do so. Besides, any tracking, analytics is all gone if you switch from Hubspot to a new provider
• You are looking for cutting edge tools exclusive to Hubspot. It’s not there. You will find that Hubspot is simply many marketing applications bundled and integrated nicely into one platform

Concluding the Hubspot Review

Even though Hubspot maybe a bit pricey, I still think they are a good product if you have the money. You get a lot of tools integrated into one which is a potential time saver.

However, I will not recommend using Hubspot to my clients since the money they would need to fork out for a Hubspot plan can seriously affect their business if options are not carefully analyzed.

Have you used Hubspot? What is your experience with this platform? Share your thoughts in our comments section.

What’s SEOmoz?

SEOmoz, as most of you might know, is considered as one of the most reputed SEO firms out there. They had so much popularity that in order to keep project count under control, they charged 1000$/hr.

Now SEOmoz has moved from being a consultancy to a SEO product firm. They have a PRO subscription where you will find

• Pro webinars (Register for upcoming seminars as well as watch old seminars. You can’t download them though. However the PPT will be available for download)
• Pro Tool (The meat of the SEOmoz PRO subscription)
• Private Q&A (You can ask private questions directly to the guys at SEOmoz and get reliable answers directly from the PRO SEO’s)

What SEO Tools Does SEOmoz Pro Have?

There are a number of tools SEOmoz gives you. I personally use very few of them (Probably because I don’t have enterprise clients)

Tool #1: Open Site Explorer

This tool, in my opinion, is why most people have a subscription for SEOmoz.

Open Site Explorer is one of the best tools out there to analyze the competition and find out about their link building strategies. It gives you a host of metrics in a matter of seconds that will probably take you days or even months to figure out manually.

Tool #2: Keyword Analysis Tool

This tool gives a brief idea about the level of competition for the keyword based on the top 10 ranking pages.

While it’s a good tool to get an overall idea about the competition, I wouldn’t rely on any tool to completely predict for me whether I should go after a tool or not.

For e.g. if you see Wikipedia, EzineArticles etc. on the first page, chances are that the tool will report it as competitive based on the domain authority. However, in most cases, the presence of sites like ezinearticles and so on is a signal that the keyword ranking is achievable.

SEOmoz keyword analysis is smart in many cases. It simply does not take into account just the domains authority alone. It also looks at page authority and a host of other metrics to calculate competition.

Tool #3: Rank Tracking Tool

The tracking tool in action for my new blog

This is another useful tool in the PRO subscription. Their rank tracking tool updates every Tuesday automatically. If you have a lot of keywords to track, then this tool is really great.

Recently Google introduced many changes in the way their engine works which broke many online and offline rank checking tools. It’s also not possible to manually check a lot of keywords from our computer/network since Google will give a temporary ban if they detect scraping behavior.

Tool #4: On Page Optimization Tool

This tool will act as your personal SEO assistant for on-page SEO tasks. Simply give it a URL and keyword and it will grade your on-page SEO based on several factors.

The tool in action when I analyzed my "on page SEO" blog post

You will then be presented with a page where you can see where you need to improve on in order to be better at on-page SEO.

One thing I really don’t understand is why SEOmoz suggests that we remove the keyword tag if it’s there. Agreed that most search engines that matter does not use meta-keywords for rankings, but why ask to remove if it’s present?

In my opinion, less tech savvy audience might get confused with such suggestions. Overall, the tool is a great addition for your SEO arsenal.

Tool #5: Social Media Monitoring Tool

Monitor blogs, RSS, Twitter, and other social media sites for your keywords and phrases. This is a service similar to Topsy. The main aim of this tool is to get rid of all the clutter generated by social media and bring to you what’s important.

Tool #6: SEO Web Crawler

Crawl your site and see if there are any issues. I don’t really use this tool much since I use Google Webmaster tool and they provide the same service. The advantage of using Webmaster tools is that it helps see how your site appears to Google.

In some cases, you might not be able to use Webmaster tools (Where you may have to do SEO audit of sites). In such cases, you can use this SEO Web Crawler tool to get a general idea about the crawalibilty issues of your site.

Tool #7: Competitive Link Research Tool

You can check and compare your site with your competitor’s site. You can gain insight into which sites are linking to your competitors and whether you have acquired links from those sites to your website and so on.

I tried comparing Google with Blekko and Bing. A sample of the result is given below.

Tool #8: Linkscape Visualization and Comparison

If charts and graphs excite you, you are going to love this tool. What the Linkscape Visualization and Comparison tool does is compare two URL’s and give you some metrics in a graphical format.

Here I tried to compare Google and Bing.

Tool #9: Link Acquisition Assistant

This tool gives you an overview of how to get links by manually searching on Google. Instead of manually typing it out, you can fill in a few details and SEOmoz will generate a list of queries that you can simply click and search Google for possible link partners. Not a lot of fun, but saves you time with all sorts of queries you have to think and type on Google.

Tool #10:  Historic Pagerank Checker

As the name suggests, you can view the Page Rank change of a URL over time.

Tool #11: Term Extractor

This tool is something like a reverse on-page SEO analysis. When we give this tool a URL, it goes to the URL and comes back with terms that it thinks is relevant to the page.

Here is how the Term Extractor tool analyzed SEOmoz home page.

Extracts upto 3 words on the page according to the page content

An expanded data set on the on page elements

Other Perks of SEOmoz Pro

This SEOmoz review will not just focus on the tools. There is a lot more than just using tools for doing SEO. You also get access to PRO only webinars, private questions and the full access to the directories list.

Here is the list of the most recent PRO Webinars hosted

• Mining Social Data for Fun and Profit
• Understanding Your Audience Using Social Media
• Content for Local Sites & Local Search
• Future-Proofing Your SEO: 2012 Edition
• Everything You Don’t Know About Infographics
• Head-Smacking Content Strategies
• Why and How Startups Should be doing SEO
• Actionable Keyword Research for Motivated Marketers
• The End of Search Without Social
• Gamify it! Using Game Mechanics to Improve Your SEO, Social, and User Engagement

Even after doing SEO for these many years, there are some golden nuggets you’ll get from these webinars.

You can also use the SEOmoz add-ons for your browser and instantly analyze the quality of the site by browsing pages on the website.

The biggest perk is the ability to organize your SEO efforts via helping you group them via campaigns. Each site you work on can be made into separate campaigns and you can automate rank checking, link analysis and so on.

You can expert data and use Excel to work with the data as well.

Who is The SEOmoz Pro Subscription For?

In my opinion, not everyone requires a paid option. They have plenty of free resources available for beginners (Their blog, Q & A section, Beginners SEO Guide, Whiteboard Fridays and more).

Their plans start at 99$ a month. So, if you are on a budget and have to go into credit card debt for paying for a moz subscription, don’t!

You’ll probably make the best use of these tools if

• You can afford to pay 99$ a month without losing sleep over it
• You have basic SEO knowledge and want to go advanced
• You are an analytic geek. You absolutely love numbers and graphs
• You do SEO for multiple sites of yours, or you do SEO for clients or you do SEO for your own business website

If you are just starting out and have no real idea about SEO, save money by first reading their free beginners guide. Then follow their blog for a while and then after 5-6 months, start a PRO subscription.

However if time means money for you or you want some of the best SEO tools to analyze your competition right from the start of your SEO, you’ll simply love SEOmoz pro tools and resources.

Some SEOmoz Pro FAQ’s from A Users Perspective

This section will answer some of the questions you might have before going in for their pro subscription. I am not their sales person. So you can’t expect almost every question you have on your mind. However I will try to list some of the questions that I have before joining and how it got resolved.

What is SEOmoz (come again…)?

SEOmoz is a SEO company that provides tools for SEO professionals to help automate some of the SEO tasks and also save time on competition analysis, organizing campaigns and so on.

What does SEOmoz not have?

SEOmoz does not have a keyword research section found in most SEO tools. However, you can go ahead and use Google Keyword Tool for keyword research which is free.

Is SEOmoz a waste of money?

Looking at the price, you may wonder whether SEOmoz is really worth the money. After all, 99$ starting price is a bit scary to a few people (including me).

But the price is completely justified considering the resource you get. They have to pay for the bandwidth, the server resources they use and so on. If we were to get all the tools from individual providers, we’d probably spend many folds the price we need to pay SEOmoz.

Should I buy SEOmoz PRO?

It depends. Refer to my section “Who is The SEOmoz Pro Subscription For” and you will get a clearer idea.

Is SEOmoz a one-time payment product?

No. They have a monthly pricing plan with 99$ being the lowest plan.

Is there any SEOmoz discount codes?

I am not aware of any such discount codes. However if I get any updated regarding special offers they are running, I’ll update it in this post.

How does SEOmoz compare with SENuke or SENuke X?

Don’t even think about comparing. SEOmoz is a professional SEO tool which will help you get rankings in a legitimate way while SENuke and SENuke X are just spam tools.

Why are you writing this detailed SEOmoz pro review?

1. I love this tool and would like to share this knowledge with others
2. If you sign up via my link, I will be able to save some money off my PRO tools subscription

Is SEOmoz a scam?

No. It does what it is supposed to do. However, there are people who think that this is some magic tool to attain rankings. Fact is, this is just a tool and the usefulness of this tool is only as much as how you decide to use it.

Concluding SEOmoz Pro Review

Why not give it a shot?

I hope you gained some valuable insight into how SEOmoz tools work. If you are still not sure whether you want to invest in it or not, why not sign up for a FREE Trial?

You need to use a credit card (they do this to prevent fraud) and they’ll probably charge you 1$ or so for an entire month. If you don’t see value in the tool, go ahead and cancel the pro account and you will never be billed again.

Do you have SEOmoz pro account? Share your story in the comment section.

I used to blog about computer networking and had a fairly high traffic site (Around 5K-10K visitors a month). I did not actively manage it since I started it off as a hobby site and never pursued it further. But it sat there, drawing in visitors and earning me money via Adsense.

 Here are the offers I received while I managed that blog

1. Paid reviews of networking routers, switches, servers and so on (I did not accept them by the way since I was no real expert to post a review of such scale. Besides, selling links will probably get me in trouble with Google. As a SEO consultant, that was the last thing I wanted)
2. Interview requests to appear in trade magazines (Turned them down as well. The perception that I was an expert was just not enough in my opinion. Besides I was no expert in the topic)
3. All-expense paid trip to an industry conference that was to be held where the sponsor was going to launch a new high end networking product (I believe it was a PR firm hired by Cisco who contacted me)
4. A project that was worth several million dollars (A company sent me their VoIP network design requirements and asked me if I could implement it on their company premises. I was literally shocked. I couldn’t even make out what their several page PDF document meant. I forwarded it to my then team lead who also could not take up the project since it was very big and needed lots of resources)

Pay close attention to point #4. This is what I was referring to in the title.

Now, why am I telling you all this? To make you understand the power of content marketing (even though I just had content and barely did any marketing for that blog).

The blog had 47 indexed pages, was just over 1.5 years old and I spent no more than 100$ for its hosting and domain name. Yet it landed me some of the most lucrative offers if I were to concentrate on the networking industry.

That, my dear friend, is the power of content marketing.

I’m not saying that if you go and start a blog you’ll get all sorts of deals and business. The reason I received such offers might be due to various reasons

• I was lucky (Even though unknowingly content marketing played a role, I believe I was extremely lucky than most of my peers)
• I was good (compared to my peers I must say) at SEO and not many blogs on networking were implementing good SEO strategies (I’m not talking about A List Bloggers here, but rather the majority of those who blogged in my niche at that time)
• The content in most networking sites were either too technical or wasn’t something the readers were searching for (Example of poor keyword research)
• My content was extremely well researched, written with the newbies in mind and offered practical advice. In other words, none of the articles was aimed to sell anything. I just wanted to put out information I learned (If I had known about what was about to come, I would have heavily monetized it earlier or at least struck a deal with someone else)

It may or may not happen to you. If you use content marketing the right way, you could end you with opportunities you would otherwise have never imagined.

Why Content Marketing Rocks: Another Personal Story Related to Freelance Job Sites

I am planning on a new project which requires a lot of writing. So I went over to Odesk to hire some writers.

It’s been a long time since I hired anyone to write for me, so I decided to do a little bit of research about the current rates for content writers.

I saw a lot of posts which were quiet similar (Almost everyone offering a uniform rate of 0.075-0.01$ a word). But one job posting caught my attention. The job poster wanted 5 unique articles each of 500 words each. He had also specified his maximum budget for the job. Do you know how much the budget was?

5 Dollars. Yes, F.I.V.E Dollars and Zero cents. (And no, it’s not FIVERR).

I thought it must be a joke and went over to the detailed job description page. He wanted

• Perfect English
• 100% unique content and copy scape passed
• Work delivered in 3 days

Now, the next thing I did was look at the number of applications. I didn’t expect to find any. But I was surprised. Did you know how many applicants there were for this job within 5 hours of posting it?

23 applications!!! (Some of them even have a good work history over at Odesk).

The situation is almost similar for SEO jobs with people asking for 50 PR5 links for 25$, want complete SEO done for their site and rank #1 for 100$, 4 pages analyzed for on page SEO for 8$ and so on. What’s interesting is that there are numerous people who are ready to do this as well. I really have no idea about the results, but it’s not something I want to waste my time with.

What Does Low Freelance Rate Have To Do With Content Marketing?

Let’s rewind back to 2009 when I did freelance content writing. I did a lot of cheap writing in the beginning (Less than 1 cent a word which would have got me around 2 or 3 dollars for a 300 word article). It was a lot of work for a lot less pay considering the fact that I had to attend engineering college and do freelancing in the free time I had.

So I decided to change my approach a bit. I stopped using the sales section to offer my prices where I had to compete with dozens of other article writers always eager to outbid me even for a few dollars.

I decided to cut back and put my offer in my forum signature. Then what I did was just help out people in the forum (it had mostly to do about SEO and very little to do with content writing).

Soon, I started to receive writing offers from people who read my posts on the forum. The pay was almost 10X the rate I would get from the sales section in the forum. (Not 10X always, but in the range 5X-10X the rates I used to get)

I simply surveyed the people who sent me writing offers through Private Messages and I found out that almost all of them never go to the sales section for hiring writers. Another noteworthy point they made was that when they see people engaging in pricing wars, they assumed that the quality will go down.

That was a real “Ah-ha” moment for me.

How foolish was I to assume that my target audience always followed the traditional method to hire people for work.

If there is one thing that I learned from this, it’s that the golden opportunities are always not found where most people look for.

The best jobs are taken well before they are advertised. – Ramth Sethi, author of “I Will Teach You To Be Rich”, a New York Times Bestseller

I can vouch for this approach because I have landed some of my best SEO clients by using content marketing strategies. Many people found me through my blogs and wanted me to help them with their marketing efforts.

The most beneficial part was that the people who contacted me was highly targeted, had a specific problem which they thought we could solve (really helps with the sales process), and are really generous with their pay-outs.

I agree that it’s not always about the money. I am not talking about ripping off your clients by charging huge amounts of money either. (I came to Know form Warrior Forum about a case where a SEO firm was charging a client 6000$ a year for adding them to Google Places which is free!!!)

But the thing is that, when you make a living from it, and you have worked your ass off to master your skill and stay updated with the latest trends, you deserve some credit for it. That usually doesn’t come with jobs that pay you peanuts.

Uncovering the Hidden Opportunities Using Content Marketing

Content marketing is not just about writing articles or answering on forums.

It’s a whole new (or refined) way of marketing that you can use to uncover hidden opportunities in your niche. Whether you are in the SEO industry or you are a programmer, content marketing can certainly help you achieve your goals.

Which Industries Benefit from Content Marketing?

Content marketing works in almost all the industries. It’s just that you need to tweak your approach based on each industry and your audience.

Are you a programmer looking to land nice programming gigs? Why not build some open source application and release it. If it gets popular you are bound to get a few offers. (This has helped lot of people land a job in top companies). Even if it doesn’t work out, it’s a valuable asset to put in your resume.

What’s Holding Back Content Marketing Even With All the Perks?

The #1 reason most people fail to adopt content marketing or simply give up is because, content marketing takes time to produce results.

Now, we all know that human nature craves for quick fixes.

We all want free money, instant six pack abs and a good relationship. But, how many of us are ready to bust our ass trying to make it work? Not many. That’s what makes successful people different than most of us.

Coming back to my previous example of freelance job site, why do you think people post such crazy offers?

Since people are willing to work for crazy terms and conditions.

Why are people willing to work for such low rates?

Since they’d rather make a bit of money now than work several hours a day for months to reap the benefits a year or two later.

Now, I really can’t complain about people willing to work for low rates. Job market is not looking good and you really can’t afford to wait a year or more if you need to provide for yourself and your family.

So, How Can You Approach Content Marketing?

If you require, work part time, don’t quit your day job and start building your community on the side. This way you can put the pressure off yourself. Ramith Sethi has an excellent course termed as Earn Your First $1,000 On The Side where he preaches the concept of building a business on the side.

The goal is not to focus on content marketing from the start. Do what you need to do and embrace content marketing with a long term approach. In the long run, it will be worth every minute you spent on building your brand or giving away awesome content.

So, what is your content marketing story?