This blog post an updated excerpt from my book, Marketing 2.0.

Measuring results is one of my favorite topics in marketing. Since the invention of marketing (I couldn’t find that date in Wikipedia), executives have wanted to measure the effectiveness of marketing dollars against sales in order to determine their return on investment, or ROI.

The reality is that in recent years, measuring marketing results, at least at the quantitative level, has become increasing sophisticated through tools and techniques. In addition to quantitative metrics, measuring qualitative results can be just as valuable.

Social media marketing measurement is very similar to measuring other web marketing results. First I’ll review the tools you can use. Then, I’ll offer ways you can use them to measure social media marketing results.

Conventional Wisdom

Let’s start with a look at the conventional web marketing metrics tools, beginning with some free tools. You may be familiar with some or all of these tools. As obvious as they are to me, I often meet marketers who are not harnessing them to their full potential.

Google Analytics—a free web analytics service that provides website owners valuable insight into website traffic details including visitors, sources of visitor traffic, pages visited, time spent on your website, keywords driving website traffic, geographic location of visitors, conversions based on a predefined goals, and much more.

Google Webmaster Tools—another set of free and powerful tools from Google providing another level of detail in studying traffic data for your website as well as keyword click-throughs and inbound links.

Google Alerts—another free service that will alert you by email or to your RSS reader each time Google finds a relevant result for a topic you’ve set up to track.

Google Blogsearch—a free search engine subset of Google’s search engine geared to display blog posts. When you search on a phrase, Google displays recent blog posts for that phrase.

Social Media Measurement Tools

As social media marketing has exploded, so has the landscape of tools and services designed to help companies measure and optimize their results. I’ll start with a partial list of free social media measuring tools. Note most free tools offer fee-based premium versions as well.

Blogpulse—a service from Nielsen Buzzmetrics that acts as both a blog search engine and blog tracker. Bloggers can track conversations taking place about topics of interest, as well as discover where their blog ranks in relation to others covering similar topics.

Trendpedia—a free service that functions mostly as a blog search engine. Its main feature involves helping people find the most popular trends in social media across a variety of topics and tracking the trend of the topic over a three-month period in comparison to other relevant topics.

Trendrr—a free service that adds a real sense of analytical measurement through its use of trending graphs. Trendrr lets anyone track, compare, and share trends on any topic across blogs and other social media.

Technorati—a free service that functions as an Internet search engine for blogs. You can track your blog content in Technorati.

Twitter Search – Whether or not your have a Twitter account, you can use Twitter’s search engine. Marketers should search relevant keywords to learn about conversations about their brand on Twitter.

The free tools listed above are a partial list of many tools available to track your content results. I encourage you to use as many tools as practical to measure and track your social media marketing results on an ongoing basis.

Staying on Course

However, tracking the reach of your content in social media is just a part of the measuring results secret sauce. You also need to gain insights so you can measure your progress and take action. A metaphor comes to mind. Social media marketing is like flying an airplane. The sophisticated cockpit constantly calculates the extent to which the plan has shifted from its course route and makes the necessary adjustment to get the plane back on its course. In social media marketing, you must similarly be tracking and interpreting in order to know when and how much you must adjust your content strategy and your tactics to stay on course.

In addition to the free tools listed above, there is an ever-growing list of fee-based tools to measure social media results. I will only list two because these are the two we use at Find and Convert and therefore I’m most familiar with them. Again, there are many other good tools available and you should do your own homework.

HubSpot – an inbound marketing software as a service (SaaS). HubSpot allows marketers to track keyword rankings, competitor’s web marketing presence, traffic analysis, leads and lead intelligence. Recently, HubSpot added social media tracking features allowing marketers to track the impact of social media on your desired goals (such as sales leads). In the screenshot below you can see the emerging impact of social media traffic.

ScoutLabs – a social media tracking tool that allows marketers to track mentions in blogs, bookmarking sites, Twitter, photos, video and more. We like the ability to track sentiment of keywords and the ability to chart trends. Below is a short video interview with Jennifer Zeszut, CEO of ScoutLabs.

Measuring Quantitative Results
There are many factors you can measure in your social media strategy. First, make sure you have clearly defined goals. Otherwise your metrics will not be meaningful and you won’t be able to measure success. Here are some quantitative metrics you can measure.

Subscribers – watch the subscriber count to your blog(s) and newsletter grow.

Followers – watch the number of followers on Twitter or Facebook grow as well any groups or communities your create.

Mentions – track the mentions of your brand and relevant keywords to learn about conversations and decide which conversations you should engage.

Sentiment – track the sentiment of your keywords to determine what (if any) changes you should consider in your content strategy and in the tactics you use. A negative trend on a topic may give you cause to back away from that topic or to change your approach to it.

Inbound Links – links are the currency of the web. Track the number of links you’re building and where they are coming from.

Comments – study the comments being made on your blog or your Facebook and Twitter accounts. Comments could give you reason to engage or add more content on a topic of high interest.

Connections – one of the greatest and measurable factors in social media marketing is the new doors that can open up. New connections can result in speaking opportunities, media interviews, guest blog or publication articles, key introductions and new sales opportunities.

Brand Equity – all businesses should care about brand equity. It’s not limited to large companies. Using any combination of tools described above you should study the trends in your brand. Is your company name a growing keyword driver of traffic to your website? If the trends are positive, correlate that to your sales results. If you have employees with a strong social media presence include them in your brand equity study. The relationship between your employees and your brand is tied more tightly than ever before. Take Mike Volpe as an example. His blogging, speaking, podcasting and overall content creation on the web has a positive impact on HubSpot, his employer. And, btw, both Mike Volpe (the brand) and HubSpot (the brand) benefit from his efforts.

It Takes Work!
If you’re thinking, man this sounds like a lot of work, you’re not only right, you’re onto something big! Measuring results properly is not just hard work. It’s time consuming. So, where are you going to get all this time? By eliminating non-performing marketing activities! Measure all your marketing activities. If you have losers in your marketing mix (assuming you’ve been at it more than six months) scale them back or eliminate them. Many marketers report cutting back on marketing activities such as direct mail and tradeshows after measuring success in their social media strategy. BTW, attending a tradeshow can be just as effective as exhibiting at a tradeshow at a fraction of the cost. While you’re at the tradeshow you should be posting to Twitter about the people you’re meeting and the content you’re enjoying, taking pictures and shooting video interviews with industry people and posting all this content on the web to keep building your footprint on the web. Of course when you tag this content you’ll create links and build more brand equity. And, you can measure that…

To measure your social media marketing results keep at it and measure. Keep at it. Measure. Keep at it. Measure.

Developing a Social Media Marketing Strategy
When I devoted an entire chapter in my book, Marketing 2.0, to developing a social media marketing strategy, my intent was to inspire marketers. In other words, I want marketers to avoid making the most common mistake, which is the mindset that you need a Twitter or Facebook strategy. You don’t. You need a social media marketing strategy!

Consider assembling the marketing team and your CEO and asking these questions:
•    Why do we think we need a social media strategy?
•    What is our objective?
•    What will the costs be?
•    What are the staffing requirements?
•    What are the risks?
•    What are the opportunities?
•    What are our competitors doing in social media?

Old School Meets New School
While Marketing 2.0 is a new-school marketing paradigm, there is no substitute for old-school research to gain valuable insights before you develop your social media strategy. Begin with research about your customers, target customers, competitors, resellers and influencers. Take no less than a few days (at a minimum) to study the landscape in your industry. Conduct searches in Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube for the names of the CEOs of any company in your industry that is relevant. Include your competitors, your suppliers, and any other relevant company, including analysts and publications. This research should provide valuable insight into where your customers and relevant community are spending time on the social web. You’ll learn what they’re talking about and what groups exist by topic or by company. You’ll learn what your competition is doing or not doing. Eventually, you will gain valuable insight that will drive your social media strategy.

Why Do We Think We Need a Social Media Strategy?
This question is somewhat akin to asking, what business are we in? When you consider why you need a social media strategy, you should take some time and revisit this question about your core business.  A social media strategy serves one simple purpose; it enables your company to engage in authentic conversations with your community so you can improve your ability to attract, retain and serve your customers.

So Begin Your Social Media Strategy by Listening!
On one hand, it’s obvious why we should be listening. It’s the same reason we should be reading industry news—to stay informed. But remember that News 1.0 came at you from only one direction. The people whose job it was to deliver the news wrote it, and you read it. That’s where it ended. In News 2.0, we are empowered to participate in the story. When you listen to the comments made by people who react to a news story, you are listening to your market in real time.

If your top competitors are actively producing content in social media, your risk may be greater if you choose not to. Your absence from online conversations may damage your brand. In short, competitive pressures may influence your decision to become a content producer.

What is Our Objective?
You’ve done your research, and you’ve identified why you need a social media strategy. Now, it’s time to clearly define your objectives. Your objectives should fall into one of these categories:
•    Competitive differentiation
•    Market share growth
•    Expansion of your brand

Competitive Differentiation
A competitive differentiation strategy requires you to increase your visibility on the social web in your market segment through online content commenting and new content creation. Identify the best sources of web-based content in your industry, including vertical industry media and associations. Task a member of your staff to monitor the content and the conversations in these online communities. Identify the subject matter experts in your organization who can get engaged in the conversations in these online communities or contribute new content. Consider a blog strategy if you have the staff to devote to it. Find a voice for your organization that can become a consistent voice in your market, delivering a consistent message on specific topics. Allow this voice to be active and free with ideas and valuable insights into the things about which the people in your industry care. Remember, this is not a direct sales strategy, though your management team may view it this way. Your differentiation goal is to allow the market to see how you think, how you serve, how you listen, how you respond, and generally how you add value to your market. Talking about your products in ways that interest your community is advisable. Shouting to them about features is not. Your goal is to make it easy for others to learn how your organization is different from your competitors.

Market Share Growth
In setting out to grow your market share, you must be committed to proper staffing and producing diversified content on the social web. You must do proper planning and be willing to experiment, even if it means taking risk and failing some along the way. The objective is to attract more of your community to your organization. To do this, you need a bigger footprint on the web. If your differentiation strategy was primarily based on a blog, you may need to expand your strategy. You might commit to producing videos. Groups are available in social networking sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook and can offer very easy ways to expand your reach. Similarly, you may find groups in industry-specific social sites where your staff can participate. This requires commitment, which carries with it some staffing implications. But this can be accomplished by adjusting your staffing requirements, cutting nonperforming marketing activities and reallocating staff resources to producing more social media content.

Brand Expansion
To expand your brand using social media requires a big commitment and carries some risk. The content strategy is the key to success in brand expansion! You’ll need to decide which social media platforms to use, who will create the content, and who will be the public face of your content. Presumably you’ve done your homework to find the audience you want to reach, and you’re committed to producing the content that will reach them. You’ll need to experiment to find the right mix of content and platforms to reach your desired audience. You may find that some content is more effective than others in expanding your brand. You’ll need to take some risk and measure results along the way to determine the effectiveness of expanding your brand through social media.

Let Your Content Go
The reality is that most businesses have more content than we know what to do with. We have white papers, news releases, websites, newsletters, and countless internal documents, not to mention the brilliant but often undeveloped content residing in between our ears. The power of social media marketing lies in letting it all go. Share your content with the world. So if you have good content for your community, share it, promote it, but most of all, just let it go.

Ready, Aim, Fire
Do your homework. Set your goals. Set your content strategy. Assemble the team. Cut non-performing activities to make room for a social media strategy. Then, get started. You’ll make some mistakes. But, with good planning you’ll make fewer and less costly mistakes and you’ll accelerate your results.

I’ll write a blog post soon about how to measure social media marketing results…

Billie Ginther: Marketing Manager and PR Optimizer

The two pillars of social media marketing are delivering excellent content to your intended audience and building great relationships. A crucial aspect of building upon these pillars is how you share your content with others. An effective content strategy has to include a well-thought-out bookmarking strategy to propagate your content.

1. It Is All About Them
Focus on your target audience. Joe Pulizzi, CEO of Junta42, a content vendor and project matching service preaches that delivering consistent editorial-quality content means that you must think less like a marketer and more like a publisher. This means your content should not be a thinly-veiled company brochure but must be consistent editorial-quality content that addresses your audience’s needs, offers value, and helps begin a relationship that may eventually make them customers and friends.

2.    Quality over Quantity
There are hundreds of bookmarking sites, such as Delicious, Digg, Diigo, Mixx, Propeller, Technorati, Newsvine and Twine, that reach broad audiences. However, bookmarking sites like Smallbusinessbrief, Sphinn, Kirtsy and Slashdot are tailored to more specialized audiences. Research and choose bookmarking sites that are relevant to your audience. A specialized bookmarking site with a smaller audience that is interested in your content may have more value than a mega-site where your content may not be as easily found or read. In most cases, six well-chosen bookmarking sites will generate more engagement than 24 randomly chosen ones.

3.    Content Propagation Means Sharing
Social media content propagation is more than just submitting your content to a variety of bookmarking sites. Effective content propagation requires being social. When you sign up for a bookmarking website, complete your profile, add friends that may already be members, and participate so that you build a network within the site. Most important, submit and vote up other people’s content that you find meaningful, interesting or funny. Don’t confine your participation to promoting only your content. Comment on articles, tweet and micro-blog about the content contributed by others.

4.    Bookmark What Is Meaningful
Be sure the content you submit is relevant to the community within the bookmarking site. Submitting “How to Toilet Train Your Cat” may be wildly popular in an animal or pet community within Digg, but it might get you deactivated in a SEO bookmarking website like SlashDot. Some bookmarking sites like Newsvine will deactivate you in a heartbeat if your content contains any self-promotion or advertising. Learn the boundaries of the bookmarking websites and stay within them.

5.    Don’t Be a Manipulative Cad
The objective of any good bookmarking website is to create communities that share valuable content organically. The more an article is read, commented on, voted, forwarded, emailed and shared, the more authority that content acquires. Sharing, voting and commenting are good. Setting up multiple profiles so that you can vote up your submissions is a black hat tactic and will get you deactivated.

6.    Anything Worth Doing…Is Worth Doing Well
Content propagation is time consuming. As long as you are generating high quality content, the results will justify your time. While automated bookmarking software can speed up the process,  I have not yet found a program that works well on all platforms or allows for sharing, commenting or any of the other aspects of being…social. Investing the time to participate the old-fashioned way yields the best results. That is not to say that you should not use the tools that are at hand. Using the bookmarking or share widget found on many blog sites helps build authority for the author of the article. Helping others gain authority on great content is another powerful way to build relationships on the web.

7.    Tag…You’re It
Be sure to tag your articles when submitting to bookmarking websites. Tags are keywords that help your audience find your content when they conduct a search within the bookmarking website. Tags need to be keywords your audience uses, not your company’s jargon. Think like a member of your intended audience and use tags that will help them find your content.

8.    Patience Is a Virtue…but  Devising a System Can Speed Up the Process
We work with many clients on their social media strategy and our browsers are often opened to dozens of URLs. Too often my browser does not automatically log me in when using the share widget feature within various blog sites. Setting up a separate login on your computer startup for your bookmarking project can save you time and simplify propagating your content. Set up your browser’s automatic login feature and only use the additional computer login for bookmarking. This small step will cut the time you spend bookmarking content.

9. Measure Results
Which articles resonate with your readers? Track your content, visitor traffic, traffic sources, content reach, clicks, sentiment and voice through Google Analytics as well as other marketing software systems, such as HubSpot and ScoutLabs. Discover which content has the most value to your audience and refine your content strategy accordingly.

10. Knowledge Is an Ongoing Learning Experience
Every bookmarking website has its own social network, rules and procedures. Learn the strengths and idiosyncrasies of each one.  And do not be afraid to make mistakes…it will eventually improve your bookmarking results. If you get deactivated from a bookmarking website, find out why, reread the rules and contact the website to get re-instated. And, of course, don’t do the same thing again!

Developing and taking the time to effectively implement a content propagation strategy that broadens your footprint on the web takes time but the results are well worth the investment.

Jackie Weber:  Inbound Search Marketing Analyst

There are 14 million Twitter users in the United States today. By the end of 2009, Twitter is projected to reach 26 million users worldwide.

Twitter is a very powerful tool. Used correctly, it can be extremely beneficial to a company of any size.

If you look at Twitter as a marketplace and choose a strategy that makes your presence nothing more than a series of automated sales offers, you’re missing the whole point of Twitter. You become the cocktail party guest who can’t stop talking about himself. Pretty soon, the room empties.

If you see Twitter as an opportunity to join a conversation and connect with a community of like-minded people and share content which is genuinely useful to them, you will find Twitter’s rewards.  You can become the graceful party guest who mixes listening with stories and draws a crowd or at least blends in harmoniously.

If you are ready to join the Twitter party, first set your goals.

Yes, Twitter requires a strategic approach. Without clearly defined goals, your business isn’t likely to make the connections or build the relationships that Twitter offers.  Don’t be like the video comatose cartoon people floating aimlessly in the Twitosphere.  Identify what your company wants to accomplish on Twitter.

Sample Goal:
“Reach out and engage with people in our industry and potential customers, monitor brand sentiment, provide product support, and spread content of interest to the community.”

Once you have defined your goals, you need to map out your plan of action.  Identify the actions needed to accomplish your goals. Define your community. Establish a content strategy. I find that mixing business and some fun makes for a more interesting content strategy.  Your plan should address staffing concerns like protocols and time demands. And most importantly, research, research, research.

It’s a good idea to bring all your key players together to brainstorm and identify your goals. The most important aspect of any social media effort (including Twitter) should be to build relationships.

In order to be effective on Twitter, your business needs to be real and be transparent. Set up your Twitter profile in such a way that anyone visiting your Twitter page gets a glimmer of your personality. Twitter backgrounds can also give your followers a sense of who you are.

There are several tools that can help you find the people to follow on Twitter. It will take time to identify and follow people of interest, and to find influential thought leaders in your community.

Two of my favorite tools for finding followers are WeFollow and Twellow. Another way to find followers is to do a topic search in Twitter Search. Twitter’s search function is very powerful.

If someone follows you, you should consider following them back! Yes, there are some people on Twitter who I don’t follow back. You know the ones who aren’t really people and who spam your Twitter stream with way too many posts. If they want to follow me, that’s fine. But I am not going to follow them.
If someone follows you and you find their content offensive, just block them using Twitter’s block feature. That way you don’t have to see their content, and you won’t show up in their follow list.

No Twitter strategy would be complete without the ability to measure results. How you measure and what you choose to measure depends on the goals you have set.

You can listen in to conversations about your brand and be in a better position to let customers know that they are important. You can measure sentiment about your brand by tracking positive and negative Tweets.

All of these goals turned to actions can be measured. Not only can you measure the number of followers your Twitter account has attracted, but you can also measure reach, geographic interest, SEO value and even brand sentiment.

Twitter works like most other social media: You get out of it, what you put in to it. For small and medium-sized businesses with clear goals, an effective plan, and the right metrics, Twitter can be full of rewarding relationships.

Bernie Borges

How many times have you heard the expression “ready, fire, aim?” This cliché is used often in business and sports when making reference to a plan that gets executed without much planning. It’s an oxymoron. Either a plan is a plan or it’s not a plan. You might as well admit that not having a plan is just winging it.

Unfortunately, many marketers have taken a “ready, fire, aim” approach to inbound marketing. Whether it’s not doing extensive keyword or competitive research for SEO, or not planning out effective PPC campaigns and ad groups, a lack of planning is sure to negatively impact your results.

We find this is especially true and prevalent in social media marketing. With such growth in popularity in social media platforms including blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn, many marketers have jumped in with one or both feet without a plan.

Ask yourself these questions: What is your content strategy? What is your content hub on the web? Does your content strategy have C-Level support? Are enough resources allocated to your content strategy? How are you measuring results?

I’ll introduce another very common expression – the 80/20 rule. I passionately suggest that 80% of a marketer’s success on social media is directly correlated to the strategy, in particular the content strategy. And, 20% is correlated to the web communication channels you choose to implement your content strategy.

Did you notice I just renamed blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn “communication channels?” Don’t allow that to get past you. If you buy into this 80/20 rule of planning versus execution, then you quickly understand that the social media channels you use are your communication channels.  You understand the importance of developing a strategy – a content strategy.

In developing your content strategy, focus on your target audience. Don’t limit your target to your most immediate target demographics. Expand that circle to include demographics that interact with your target audience. Depending on your industry, that may include analysts, consultants, resellers, etc. The point is to not limit your target too narrowly. Your content should engage people in your industry in a compelling way.

What happens when you don’t plan and you just implement (ready, fire, aim)? You might have some success. If you do, consider yourself lucky. But, you have a much greater chance of making some costly mistakes. You may attract the wrong people. You may not be prepared to direct people to the right place in your communication and create a wrong impression. For example, if most of your communications point people back to your website’s home page, and it’s not well designed to engage visitors in a way that is consistent with your social media strategy, you’ve blown it. Would you throw a party without preparing for the guests?

Marketers should avoid the temptation to dive into social media without a plan that includes research. Just as in creating any business plan, conducting research to determine whom you’re targeting, where they are, and what topics are of interest to them is crucial. Then, determining a content strategy that addresses your audience is the next step. Then, and only then, are you ready to use the popular social media tools to implement your social media marketing plan. Ready, aim, fire!

Dianna Kersey: Information Architect

Since the beginning of time, humans have been searching for ways to communicate.  From sign language to cave drawings to paintings, humans have been trying to tell their stories.

In fact, we humans have protected, copied and preserved the written word since its inception.  From Dead Sea scrolls to naval captain’s logs to newspapers to the blogs written by the world’s 70 million bloggers, people have been (and continue to be) obsessed with communicating what is important to them.

So, you say you are clean out of parchment, your hammer and chisel are dull and you don’t own a printing press?  How about we move into the 21st century and we learn how to communicate with not only other humans, but search engines as well, so those other humans can find the words on your blog that express what’s important to you.

So let’s start with the basics….

Loading the Rifle:  What is a Blog?  Here is a short video to explain:

There are 8 types of blogs that can be a part of how you choose to communicate what’s important to you.

Here are examples of each kind:

1.    Linkblog – Social bookmarking, such as del.icio.us
2.    Moblog – sending pictures from a camera phone or mobile device, e.g., Flickr
3.    Podcast – audio recording in MP3 through RSS feed – iTunes
4.    Videoblog/Vlog – video recording in MP4 through RSS feed – YouTube
5.    Microblog – short text message, popular with mobile users, e.g., Twitter
6.    Miniblog/reblog – content is mostly from a third party in a post versus creating original material,  e.g., stumbleupon
7.    Liveblog – covers a live event, such as a sporting event or press conference.  Engadget is an example.
8.    Blog – A collection that can include all of the above.

Once you choose which format is inspiring to you, it’s time to bring it to life and be found on the social web. When choosing a blog strategy, first you will want to choose a blog platform (such as WordPress or Blogger) and create a themed look and feel appropriate to what you want to talk about and what you feel will appeal to the type of audience interested in your same topic.

Now that you have a blog hosted and up and running…. now what?  You need great content. Period.  Your content must be interesting, informative, educational, or inspiring in a way that compels your readers to engage with you.  Most important, be creative and have fun with the voice of who you are.

Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz has written a great article that details 21 tactics to increase blog traffic, but we are going to cover just a few highlights.

Talking to Humans: Taking Aim at Your Target

Here are a few items to help keep your content fun, inviting and engaging to your audience:
-    Great content – first and foremost.
-    Link to your sources and data information. Don’t be afraid to link to resources valuable to your readers.
-    Invite guest bloggers to be featured on your blog.
-    Interview influential people who address the topic covered by your blog.
-    Use rich media – e.g., video, charts, images, graphs, podcasts, bullets, etc….
-    Use community sharing software such as ShareThis or Tweetmeme to allow visitors to share your content easily with others through Twitter and Facebook and many other bookmarking  platforms throughout the web.

Talking to Search Engines: Bulls-eye

Okay, so you have great content. Check.  Now it’s time to be found in the search engines and share your content with readers.  You have to socially broaden your footprint on the web and get your content out to communities that are interested in what you have to say.

How do you do that?

Here are some simple tips to help search engines identify and “read” your content and properly index it so that a person searching on the topic that you posted about can find your blog. By using these plug-ins (or many others like these), you can help tell the search engines what your posts are about.

-    Use a SEF (search engine friendly) plug-in, such as headspace2, to insert title tags, smart URLs and descriptions into your posts to help search engines index the posts for the right keywords.
-    Tag your content with keywords relevant to what that post is about.
-    Make it easy for someone to subscribe to you with RSS feeds or subscribe with email.
-    Use an interactive WYSWYG word processing plug-in, such as Tiny MCE Advanced, which allows you include images, video and a myriad of other functionality to make your content engaging.

You’ll be loaded for bear if do your research, choose the type of blog that’s right for what you want to communicate, educate yourself on your chosen topic, learn from other bloggers, create a community by broadening your web footprint, and use the 21st century tools to help humans using search engines find your blog content when they search on the keywords that are most relevant to it.

Good luck!

Podcast interview with Brian Halligan, CEO of HubSpot.

I interviewed Brian Halligan, CEO of HubSpot to discuss his new book, Inbound Marketing, Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs, which Brian co-authored with his co-founder and fellow MIT alumnus Dharmesh Shah. First, I asked Brian to briefly describe HubSpot. In full disclosure, Find and Convert is a HubSpot partner.

HubSpot is an inbound marketing software company which is about three years old now. HubSpot helps companies transform their marketing strategy from the ground up through a methodology which is implemented and managed on their web-based software platform. HubSpot software helps marketers run their organic search engine optimization, PPC and social media strategies with analytics and lead intelligence to measure results.

Inbound Marketing – The Book

Brian describes his new book as a cookbook for marketers that provides the transformation from old style marketing to the new inbound marketing. The book describes how marketing has changed over the past 5 years. In his book, Brian and Dharmesh outline the five steps in becoming an inbound marketing centric business.

1. Create lots of content
2. Optimize that content for Google and social media
3. Spread that content
4. Measure results
5. Convert website visitors to leads and customers

A New Mindset

If you’ve read my blog before or listened to any of my recent podcasts you’ve heard me say that the new marketing is a mindset. It’s a new way of thinking. It’s all about creating content and building relationships through your content. As Brian points out in his book, marketers need to make the shift away from interruptive marketing to inbound marketing. He says the modern marketer is half a traditional marketer and half a content creator. When a marketer creates “remarkable” content, other content producers will remark about your content. In fact others will link to your content. And, links are the currency of the web which will produce traffic to your website. In fact, Brian says the modern marketer’s content becomes a magnet to their website hub.

Not Your Father’s Marketing

I asked Brian how marketers can embrace inbound marketing? In response he takes us on a trip down memory lane (you may not be old enough to remember his story). He says that marketing hasn’t changed much over the last 50 years. But, during the past 5 years it’s changed a lot and will continue to change in the coming years. In 1965 television ads worked exceptionally well. People had to watch the ads. They had no choice. In fact, they had few choices in their media consumption. Today, consumers can block out ads across most media platforms including television, radio. email and web browsers. In short, consumers can filter out most advertiser’s interruptions.

Are You Worthy?

In years past any company with a healthy budget could advertise and sell products. Even bad products could be marketed and sold with a big budget.  Today, the friction is far less for great ideas with less money required to get the word out. Good products with good positioning and happy customers can sell by spreading the word around the web. Bad products (unworthy) can’t hide anywhere in the current marketing paradigm.

Measuring Results

A common question asked by marketers about inbound marketing is how do you measure results? Not surprisingly, Brian and Dharmesh devoted a chapter to this question. Their advice is to look at campaigns using the funnel metaphor. Study the flow of visitors to your website hub, the conversion to leads, to opportunities and ultimately to customers. Study all the web channels that filled your funnel and see which ones have produced the best results in the funnel. The ones that work best you should  “double down” on and nix or revise the ones that don’t.

What’s Remarkable Content?

I asked Brian how does a widget manufacturer produce remarkable content? One of the case studies in his book is Whole Foods. They are a natural and organic grocery food retailer. As part of their inbound marketing strategy one of their buyers blogs during his trips to France.  He blogs about his meals during his trips, and the cheeses he bought on his trips. He cites another example of a fishing rod manufacturer who creates lots of content about the industry, not about the product. The magic sauce of inbound marketing is not to sell your product through your content. He says marketers should turn their website into a magnet about your industry to attract people. Invite customers, analysts and others interested in industry topics to engage with your content. Allow your content to become a magnet and engage people in ways that can convert into leads. It’s a very common mistake when marketers jump on the web and create content all about their products.  Marketers can be very successful inbound marketers if they talk about industry issues and watch others link to your content.

Watch Your Competition

Marketers can easily watch their competitors in the age of social media and tools like Google Alerts. HubSpot created a series of tools under the Grader brand. Marketers can use Website Grader to measure their own websites, as well as their competitors side by side.  Other Grader tools such as Twitter Grader and Facebook Grader allow marketers to watch their competitors on a frequent basis with a lot of transparency. Marketers can watch the competitive trends. Startups can be very aggressive by watching competitors closely.

Why Now?

In this chapter Brian and Dharmesh stress that marketers should not wait to embrace inbound marketing.  The barriers to entry to beat the top content producers are high. The longer a marketer waits to become an inbound marketer the harder it will be to catch up. All the great content that marketers produce will generate links back to their website hub. The content becomes a permanent asset on the web.

Marketing Crystal Ball

I asked Brian what’s in his marketing crystal ball? To answer this question, he referenced the large old style marketers like P&G who have allocated big money to advertising over the past 50 years. This approach to marketing built Madison Ave. Brian predicts that in the next 50 years inbound marketing will flip Madison Ave on its head. Advertisers have fewer media outlets to turn to because consumers are watching less television and reading less print. Instead consumers are going online using Google, social media and blogs. Brian predicts the next group of companies that will become Google-size success stories are those who engage on the web through remarkable content. The next Coke will not be an interruptive marketer. The next Coke will be content producers with a great product. I partially disagree. I think this will happen in the next 5 or 10 years. It won’t take 50 years. Just look at Zappos.

Two Real World Examples

I asked Brian for two great examples of inbound marketing. But, I required that he describe his own company as one of them. You may think this was a softball. But, the truth is that HubSpot is a poster child for inbound marketing. I asked Brian to describe their success with HubSpot TV. He described the early days of HubSpot before the product launched.  He was actively blogging about inbound marketing several times each week.  He rapidly adopted the mindset of constantly creating content. So, it started even before HubSpot launched version one of their software product. This approach eventually led to the development of their free Grader products (great content) described earlier. One day one of HubSpot’s product developers, Karen Rubin, suggested starting a TV show! Though some people initially laughed, she convinced V.P. Marketing Mike Volpe, himself a prolific content producer. The rest is history. HubSpot TV is more than one year old now with a loyal and sizable audience. It airs live every Friday at 4pm eastern and is syndicated in iTunes ranking #1 for inbound marketing and other related terms. Shameless plug: I was a guest on HubSpot TV in August. I had a blast!

The other success story Brian told is from his book about a company called 37Signals. I learned that this company has long provided inspiration to HubSpot. They are a small software company out of Chicago with really great products. They created a wildly successful blog called Signal Versus Noise. This blog was once a top 100 blog. They also created a book, and their reputation spread very quickly. I pointed out (unknown to Brian) that we are a 37Signals customer. We use their Basecamp product in our client engagements. And, we learned about Basecamp through word of mouth. Proof positive that inbound marketing is for real.

At the end of my interview with Brian he said something which I believe is profound in its simplicity and its reality. Brian said “Inbound Marketing is not rocket science. The sooner you do it the better off you are!”

Brian, I couldn’t agree with you more…I wish you and Dharmesh success with your new book, Inbound Marketing which is available everywhere.

I’m writing a review of the new book Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah. I haven’t read the book yet.

There are two questions I need to answer before you read my review. First, why am I reviewing a book I haven’t yet read? And, why am I reviewing a book when I have a book of my own to promote?

Reviewing this book before I’ve read it is easy because I know a lot about this topic and about the author’s credentials.  In case you don’t know, Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah are the co-founders of HubSpot. In full disclosure, my inbound marketing agency, Find and Convert, is a HubSpot partner. In short, we are so aligned with every word that comes from HubSpot that endorsing this book site unseen is a no brainer. Let’s put it this way. If I didn’t align with this book it would call into question our own belief in inbound marketing principles.  And, nothing could be further from reality than anything short of full embracement of inbound marketing strategies from the founders of HubSpot.

As for the second question, even though I have my own book to promote, I’m not greedy. Inbound Marketing is a book that supports everything I stand for professionally.

In Inbound Marketing you’ll learn or gain further insights into why every business needs to become a magnet to its customers by being easily found on the web. You’ll learn how people don’t tolerate outdated sales messages and outdated shouting through outdated marketing media where the marketer has a one-way message mentality. You’ll learn how any competitor can out market another competitor through remarkable content. You’ll learn how social media is not an option for any business. You’ll learn how to produce leads and convert leads into customers through inbound marketing. You’ll learn how to build and retain your staff for an inbound marketing strategy.

Inbound Marketing, the book, is full of examples of companies who employ compelling content marketing strategies that attract buyers through the web.

Here’s a chapter breakdown of Inbound Marketing, the book.

Shopping Has Changed, Has Your Marketing?
Is Your Website a Marketing Hub?
Are You Worthy?
Create Remarkable Content
Get Found in the Blogosphere
Getting Found in Google
Get Found in Social Media
Convert Visitors into Leads
Convert Prospects into Leads
Convert Leads to Customers
Make Better Marketing Decisions
Picking and Measuring Your People
Picking and Measuring a PR Agency
Watch Your Competition
On Commitment Patience and Learning
Why Now?
Tools and Resources
Tips from the Trenches for Startups

In a few days I’ll launch a podcast interview with Brian Halligan discussing Inbound Marketing and its strategic impact on businesses around the globe. If you want to be notified of that podcast interview subscribe to my blog in the upper right.

Inbound Marketing is a book I’ll recommend to all our clients. I recommend you put it on your reading list.

Attorney 2.0 Brent Britton

One of the success stories in my book, Marketing 2.0 is about Brent Britton. Brent is an intellectual property attorney. Though he’s not that old, Brent has been on the Internet since the stone ages. He’s a former math and science nerd who graduated from MIT. He went to law school then went to Silicon Valley to practice law and help companies manage their intellectual property.

One of the Oldest Industries (not that one…)

Brent is definitely an exception, not the norm. Not too many lawyers use the social web. Brent is quick to point out that the legal field is a bit stodgy.  The legal profession in general is made up of technology laggards. If you ask most law firms “why don’t you use social media” most will say “that’s not where we get our clients.” But, Brent’s use of the web has been second nature. I give Brent a lot of credit for his personal branding. I asked Brent how he does it while being part of a law firm and complying with strict industry regulations.

Brent is Human Before He’s a Lawyer

What’s brilliant about Brent’s social media strategy is its simple logic. Brent’s use of the social web is nothing more than an extension of his personality. He points out that we are all social creatures. The Internet has become a communication tool for him.  And, since he’s been on the Internet since its commercial inception, it’s truly second nature to him.

Brent’s Social Media List

Brent’s blog is his primary communication platform on the web. But, he also podcasts, is active on Twitter and Facebook, LinkedIn and guest writes for publications. Brent is also a regular speaker at events. His witty personality has earned him several emcee roles at events and conferences.  Brent emphasizes that he has never been hired because because the client likes the firm he’s with. He is hired for him. Therefore, it’s important to allow his personality to be available and the social web is a natural platform for this.

Brent’s Advice to Lawyers Considering Using Social Media

Brent’s advice to other lawyers is simple. He says don’t obsess about getting on Facebook and Twitter every day. Just be natural. Brent posts as thoughts come to mind. He understands that our lives are mult dimensional but they can become one dimension on the web if you allow it. He advises to know who you’re speaking to when you blog, Tweet, or post on Faceook. Brent uses the same philosophy I advise in my book about your approach to using the web: educate, enlighten or entertain them.

Brent’s Blog Strategy

Many lawyers have not yet embraced social media. Brent’s blog strategy is very interesting.  On his blog, Brent discusses intellectual property. Lawyers must play by the bar rules. Brent’s blog is not intended to give advice. It is meant it educate, enlighten or entertain. He admits it does require a careful balance. But, he also knows that most business people don’t understand patents, copyrights and trademarks. Therefore, Brent’s blog takes a lay person’s approach to explain what it’s about. You won’t get legal advice on his blog, but you may learn something about these topics. If you want legal advice, you’ll just have to contact him. The blog is where Brent can communicate his knowledge through informational content. People who like his content call him for real legal advice. The blog also has his picture, his Twitter handle and other tidbits about him that humanize him. Imagine, meeting a lawyer who is actually normal and even likable?! This brings it full circle. Someone who calls him at his firm for legal advice that got to know him on the web has actually begun a relationship with him before they have met him. That’s what his strategy is about.

It’s All Organic

Brent does not apologize to say that all his activities have been done simply and naturally over time without much effort on the technology side of things. For example, Brent has ignored SEO and analytics best practices on his blog. He doesn’t measure anything other than he gets phone calls from people who have read his blog.

Which Social Tool Would You Use?

I asked Brent which social communication platform he would use if could only use one? Brent said he would choose his blog as the medium. The blog is where he can communicate his knowledge and generally portray his personality.  You just might say that a blog is the “mother” of all B2B social media communication tools.

For those in B2B who doubt the power of social media marketing, just ask Brent Britton. Or, listen to this podcast (above)…

Inbound Marketing Summit – Boston, MA, October 7 & 8, 2009

I have attended all three Inbound Marketing Summit events this year, starting with April in San Francisco, May in Dallas and October in Boston (Foxboro, MA). Following are my summary thoughts of all three events.

The Inbound Marketing Summit is organized and put on by New Marketing Labs (NML), headed by Chris Brogan and Justin Levy along with a small army of smart people who don’t share the limelight but deserve recognition. In general I am a fan of this event. But, so that you don’t think I’m a totally sold-out IMS groupee I’ll share my criticisms before sharing the many positives.

IMS Glass is Half Full

These events should have been attended by three or four times the actual turnouts at each event despite the state of the economy. In full disclosure Find and Convert was an event sponsor at all three events.  But in my opinion the number of people who missed out on the educational content is too many. Considering the cost of the two-day event is only $695 with $200 discounts offered, almost anyone could afford this event. While the Boston turnout was the best of the three (about 500), it still could’ve been better. The venues for each event were adequate. The Boston event was held at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, MA. While this venue is first class, the layout was very poor for the event sponsors due to the fact we couldn’t hear the speakers without leaving the sponsor area. This was not a problem in San Francisco and Dallas. While all the speakers were terrific, some of them (very few) think it’s perfectly okay to drop a dozen or two F-bombs during their presentations. Not…

Inbound Marketing is the New Vocabulary

With minor criticisms aside, these events truly offer marketers at all levels actionable insights into inbound marketing strategies including social media, new media, internet marketing, content marketing, measurement tools and contemporary marketing strategy in general. The pace of content delivery was terrific. NML organized an impressive list of speakers and panels, none of which exceeded 20 minutes. These short bursts of brain dumps kept the audience engaged at all times. Marketers walked away from each event with insights and ideas to act on. The agenda covered topics ranging from what is inbound marketing, to how to develop a social media strategy, to how to create viral video, to cause marketing. The range of topics enabled marketers to capture actionable ideas. In addition to the awesome content, there were plenty of networking opportunities before, during and after the event sessions. I found everyone, including all the speakers very affable.

The undisputed star of the Inbound Marketing Summit was Chris Brogan. 2009 has been a breakout year for Chris. His speaking demeanor gives you transparent insight into Chris the person, or as he would say “the human.” If you ask Chris Brogan what he does, his answer is “typist,” which is an obvious reference to his prolific content development on his blog, as well as his new book, Trust Agents, and his numerous speaking engagements around North America.

While I appreciate Chris Brogan’s insights and intellect on what I call marketing 2.0, there is another aspect of Chris which I have observed and admire very much. Chris has a big heart for charity. He is a regular guy. I have never met his family but I bet he comes from a close, loving family. I speculate that because Chris clearly loves other “humans.” He is not arrogant in any way (though some think he is). He simply loves to help people. In fact, his rise to fame is built on helping people by sharing his evangelical advice and counsel on various social media marketing topics.

But, Chris Brogan’s generosity is not limited to sharing his gray matter. Chris also shares his compassion for less fortunate people. In other words, he puts his money and influence where his mouth (actually his heart) is. Below are two video interviews I conducted with Chris at IMS events that illustrate my point.

In San Francisco, Chris explains why he shaved his head for charity.

In Boston, Chris explains how he is using his influence to build awareness for Skip1.org, a charity whose slogan is, “Skip something. Feed a child.”

The Inbound Marketing Summit is a conference chock full of great content, great people, great networking and opportunities for all marketers. I’m sure Brogan and Levy and all the smart folks at NML will put their heads together to make the events even bigger and better in 2010. I suggest you stay tuned.