Inbound Marketing For Australian SMBs

How Important is SEO for Inbound Marketing Success Today?

Stacie Chalmers — Wed, 30 May 2012 12:23:00 GMT

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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as been a major focus for marketers over recent years. Implementing the tactics to get on the front page of Google for keywords has been key. But with all the changes to Google’s algorithm, and the increase in social media – how important is SEO for marketing success today?

Showing up in search results for your keywords is just as important today, as it always has been. What has changed is Google’s ability to reward valuable sites and penalize the sites using ‘black hat’ tactics trying to scam or pay their way to the top of searches, with schemes like “link farms”. Thankfully those days are over!

SEO today is about the user experience – your prospects, leads and customers. Here are a few simple tips to remember:

1.   Write content for your audience, not the search engines.
2.   Use keywords your audience uses.
3.   Publish content your audience will want to share.
4.   Publish content on your website regularly – weekly at a minimum.
5.   Make it easy for your audience to share content with their network.

Over the years Ive written several articles on SEO, the most recent covering the latest updates from Google. To make it easy for you Ive compiled a list of my top 5 articles - see list below.

Do you have any questions about SEO and how it can help your marketing? If so please use the comment section below.

SEO Resources for Marketers Who Want to Do It Right!

4 Step SEO Action Plan for Small Business Marketing

Google Changes SEO: What Small Business Need To Know and Must Avoid

26 SEO Tips To Help Small Business Marketers Get More Traffic

SEO For Traffic and Leads

Inbound Marketing: Why Keyword ‘Rank’ Shouldn’t be Your Goal

Where Does Social Media Fit In The Marketing Process?

Stacie Chalmers — Wed, 23 May 2012 12:01:00 GMT

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What part does social media play in your marketing? Do you have a Facebook Business Page because everyone else does? Are you seeing results? Do you know how to determine whether social media is working or not?

The internet and social media have changed consumer behavior. The consumer is now able to do a lot more pre purchase research, which means they are better educated buyers. And consumers are connected to more people than ever before – making it easier to get reviews, recommendations and feedback. Having a presence on social media is important for marketing, but to be successful at social media marketing its important to understand what role social media plays in the bigger picture, and how to best leverage it to achieve your end goal.

Consider marketing in this simple 3 step process:

Get Found: Make sure your prospects know about your business. Do they know what you do? Do they know how you help them?
Get Leads: Make it easy for prospects to tell you they’re interested in your company, product or service. Provide the additional information they’re looking for and get them sales ready.
Get Customers: Make sure your customers know what to do, whether that is to buy online, book a consultation, or visit an online retail store.

So where does social media fit in?

My recommendation is that social media should be at the beginning of the marketing process. Social media sites are the perfect platform to build targeted connections, whether its Facebook ads, LinkedIn Groups or the Twitter advanced search function. Allowing you to build rapport and trust – and educating your network about your company, who you are and what you do. The content you share on social media sites tells a story about your company’s personality, values and people. Let it shine through. Share client testimonies, company news, publish blogs, answer questions, publish relevant data, speaking engagements and events.

This is not to say that social media doesn’t have its place for lead generation or customer acquisition but this generally comes after you’ve built a strong network of people who love you.

Over the years Ive published several articles on social media marketing and I thought it would help you if they were all in one place, so I compiled one list, see below.

If you have any questions about social media marketing for your business share them in the comment section below.

Social Media Marketing Resources

9 Social Media Tips To Help Small Business Marketers Generate Leads

5 Steps To Help Small Business Switch To Facebook’s Timeline

Social Media Marketing For Small Business [#SMSS11]: LISTEN

How to start Social Media Marketing in 1 hour a day

Does Social Media Confusion Have You Paralyzed? Want Solutions?

What Does "It's a People Driven Economy Stupid" Mean To Inbound Marketing?

My Top Inbound Marketing Articles on Social Media Optimization

Your Social Media Marketing Efforts Are Key To Your Future Success

How Small Business Can Benefit From Social Media Marketing

Learn How To Create An Inbound Marketing Plan [free ebook]

Stacie Chalmers — Wed, 16 May 2012 20:18:00 GMT

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The internet and rapid growth of social media coupled with a tough economic climate have many business owners asking – Where are my customers? Their traditional marketing methods are not nearly as effective as they used to be, and they need sales, NOW!

In an attempt to transition with technology, many have websites, but still do not see the desired traffic or leads. Some are testing the waters with social media, but find they are only wasting their time and not seeing any tangible results. Yet others are stuck, overwhelmed and not sure what to do.

In order to survive the volatile economic climate, many companies have pulled in the purse strings, cut back on staff, and are wearing many different hats.

What if there was an answer, a solution?
What if you could increase leads, qualified leads?
What if you could increase conversions?
What if you could reduce your overheads and cost per lead?
What would all that mean to your bottom line and viability of your business?

Recently I published an ebook to help small business create an effective plan to help with effectively marketing their business. This ebook will take you on a journey to explore your business through the eyes of your target audience, leveraging the Inbound Marketing Methodology:

Get Found
Get Leads (Convert)
3. Analyze

Download the ebook, link is below and let me know how it helped your business.

4 Step SEO Action Plan for Small Business Marketing

Stacie Chalmers — Wed, 09 May 2012 13:14:00 GMT

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In recent months Google has introduced changes to their algorithm to penalize sites trying to “trick” the search engines, and reward the sites who are focused on the customer experience and publish quality sites.

Ive published many blog articles on choosing keywords so I won’t go over that again, at the end of this article you’ll find links to those articles. So lets assume you have your list of keywords, you even know where and how to use your keywords, but you’re struggling with the implementation. How do you make it happen?

Here are 4 steps to help small business marketers with their SEO

Don't forget to download the content calendar the link is at the end of this article.

Write 2-3 blog articles per week. Google looks for frequently updated websites, new content – blogging is the perfect tactic for this. If you don’t have the time for 2-3 blog articles, just write one and be consistent. The key is to have a calendar with topics so you can write ahead of schedule. Ive included links to helpful articles on how to come up with blog titles, and content calendars below.
Write a press release once a month. Hyperlink keywords in these articles that link back to the relevant page on your website. Write about product launches, new clients, industry trends, company news. If monthly isn’t realistic for you try quarterly.
Write a guest article for an industry site, or local news site, monthly. This maybe easier said than done. Take some time to research the sites your target audience would frequent and if they have a blog approach them about contributing an article once a month.
Publish a link on each of the social media sites you use for your business, daily. Keep your audience engaged and interested in your articles – the links should be from your company and other sources. Make sure that a couple of the links point back to your website, either your blog, a specific landing page or web page.

Additional resources to help you with SEO

26 SEO Tips To Help Small Business Marketers Get More Traffic

4 Content Marketing Templates To Plan 90 Days of Marketing

7 Tips To Help You Discover The Keywords That Will Generate Leads

Download this content calendar to help you plan and manage your content

Google Changes SEO: What Small Business Need To Know and Must Avoid

Stacie Chalmers — Wed, 02 May 2012 20:15:00 GMT

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The number one request I get as an inbound marketing consultant is to help companies rank higher in search results to drive more traffic to their site. So the question begs; “how do we do this the right way?” Thankfully Google is committed to returning search results that are highly relevant to searchers’ requests. They do this by updating their search algorithm, the way they rank web pages and return results to the searcher, to penalize sites that use tactics that cheat the system, known as ‘black hat’, ‘keyword stuffing’ and ‘webspam’.
"The key takeaway is that Google is changing it’s algorithm to reward quality sites – so stay focused on publishing quality content."

Here are 5 SEO tactics to avoid:

Don’t write for the search engines - stay customer focused when writing your blog articles or web copy.
Don’t over use keywords – sites that over use a keyword will now be penalized.
Don’t try to trick Google with hidden links, sneaky redirects or irrelevant keywords.
Don’t listen to marketing consultants that say they can guarantee you top position – it’s just not that easy.
Don’t get involved with any link exchange or link farming. Rather, build organic links back to your site by producing valuable content that people will want to link to.

Google articles to understand white hat SEO

Finding more high-quality sites in search

Another step to reward high quality sites

Webmaster Guidelines

How can we help you grow your business?

As an inbound marketing company we do more t han help companies get more traffic to their site. We help them drive qualified trafffic that turns into leads. To learn more book in a marketing consultation today.

9 Social Media Tips To Help Small Business Marketers Generate Leads

Stacie Chalmers — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 13:47:00 GMT

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While your end goal for might be sales, the secret to success for lead generation with social media is to know where it fits into the buy cycle for your business. My view is that it's at the beginning, and should be utilized to build reach, awareness, rapport, trust and authority. So here are my 8 social media tips for small business owners and marketers:

Choose a couple of sites - if you have limited time don't spread yourself thin trying to manage too many sites. Choose just a couple that will benefit you the most, and focus on doing them well before introducing other social sites.
Optimize your social media profiles - look for opportunities when setting up your profiles and pages to include hyperlinks back to your website or conversion landing pages. For example: Facebook Timeline allows you to do this in the About section. LinkedIn gives you three links in your profile that you can customize. Use keywords and words your audience uses in descriptions and bios.
Use images for profiles wisely – choose company logos and/or names that people will recognize, or that you want people to recognize.
Mix up your content - publish a variety of content from your company and other industry influencers, that is both helpful and entertaining. Here are some ideas: link to your own blog, link to industry news and bloggers, publish self help tips, product pictures, product videos, team videos, ask questions – think outside the box about what interests your target audience and get creative with your posts. What works best for me is to plan out my social media by creating a theme for each day of the week day eg: Monday=blog, Tuesday=tip, Wednesday=video/picture etc.
Make sure your social media links are everywhere - to help you build reach. On your website make sure they are on your; home page, contact us page and blog. Place them in your email signature so they are on every email you send out. Printed material; business cards, brochures, flyers, advertisements.
Invite people to join your network - send an email to your friends, colleagues and employees inviting them to join your network and to also invite their friends. Cross promote, invite your LinkedIn connections to join you on Facebook, or Twitter followers to join you on LinkedIn – you get the idea.
Create sharable content – publish content that people will want to share with their network. An entertaining video. A funny picture. A valuable self help ebook or how to guide. Make sure you have the social share buttons your on content; web pages, blog, ebooks etc to make it easy for your network to share.
Monitor your analytics - weekly to see what article or post received the most shares, comments or view. Learn from your analytics what your audience likes. Don’t be afraid to test and measure new ideas.
Publish lead generation offers - after you've earned the trust of your network the next step is lead generation. The recommendation is 80/20. 80% giving, 20% receiving. Giving means sharing content that is of value to your audience, sharing others’ content, providing value. Receiving means promoting a special, ebook, webinar – these are of value to your audience too but they fall into the category of self promotion so try not to be too self promotional.

Did this help? What are your questions, concerns, frustrations with social media marketing? Please share them in the comments section below so I can write about the solutions you need to market your business better - thank you.

Here are some useful resources to help you with social media marketing

5 Steps To Help Small Business Switch To Facebook's New Timeline

Learn Inbound Marketing for free with our free Inbound Marketing Coach Series

Plan and manage your social media and content with this free 90 day calendar

26 SEO Tips To Help Small Business Marketers Get More Traffic

Stacie Chalmers — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 13:01:00 GMT

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This article has been written for small business owners and marketers who want to understand enough about SEO to get results but not to qualify for a Masters in SEO. Use this article as your quick guide to finding the right keywords and knowing what to do with them.

Choosing the right keywords

What keywords do your prospects use to describe their need or painpoint?
What keywords do your prospects use to describe your product/service - the solution?
What keywords are driving traffic to your site?
What keywords are converting traffic to leads?
Look for keywords that have a difficulty rank (which means they're easy to rank for), and within that list look for the keywords with the highest search volume. Relevance is key so keep this in mind at all times. Ask yourself, "Would my prospects use this keyword?"

Where to use your keywords

Identify one keyword per page.
Page url.
Page title.
Page Description.
Page; main heading and sub headings.
Blog title.
Blog copy.
Links in your blog articles to web pages and landing pages.
Links in your press releases to web pages and landing pages.
Descriptions and tags for; images, documents and videos.
Social media updates
Social media profile descriptions and links.

Some tips

Although place for your keywords is important don't overdo it or sound repetitive. Write for your prospect, not search engines.
Set up all your social media profiles: Google+, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube.
Google+, this does help with search so if you're limiting your social media profiles to a couple make sure this is one of them.
Use social media daily, post updates, and engage.
Search for relevant directories and upload your site; industry specific, local, networking etc
Sign up to Google Webmaster and stay up to date with changes in Google and search.
Submit your sitemap to Google; here's the link: Submitting Sitemap to Google
Check your analytics weekly to know what keywords are working for you, make changes as needed.

No.26 - this is important!

Focus on creating a lot of valuable content your prospects can't live without. Blog articles, self help guides, how to guides, ebooks, whitepapers, videos, images. Use a keyword in their title and description and publish it everywhere; Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube, Pinterest, Google+, press releases, presentations and blog articles. Then make sure its shareable (include social media share buttons) so your network with share with their network.

Here's some useful resources on keywords and seo

7 Tips To Help You Discover Keywords That Will Generate Leads

10 Ways To Find The Right Keywords

Need more help? Sign up for Inbound Marketing Coach Series - its free! Learn Inbound Marketing In 15 Days

A Marketer’s Intro To Understanding Your Facebook Timeline by @chris_lou

Stacie Chalmers — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 13:04:00 GMT

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How are you adjusting to the new Facebook Timeline? The more I learn about it the more I love it, especially for marketing.

This article includes 9 important features to know about your Facebook Timeline and 7 creative examples. I recently signed up for a 4 part webinar series with Facebook’s Head of Global SMB Marketing, Chris Lou [@chris_lou] and Hubspot’s VP of Marketing Jeanne Hopkins [@jeannehopkins]. If you’re interested here’s the link – they’re only one webinar in and you can watch the first one on demand, so it's not too late. 4 Steps To Achieving Business Success With Facebook

In the first webinar Chris went through 9 important parts to your Facebook Timeline – this is where your Facebook marketing begins. Below this list are 7 creative examples of how businesses are using their Facebook Timeline – just in case you’re looking for some inspiration on what to do.

9 Important Features To Your Facebook Timeline by @christ_lou

Cover Image - some great creative examples are below.
Profile Image - branding opportunity, make sure the image you choose is recognizable by your audience.
Timeline - go back in history and update important dates and milestones for your business.
Pin - important stories to the top of your timeline.
Post daily - use your Timeline to engage and communicate with your audience daily.
Respond to personal messages - this is a new feature which is great for real time customer service.
Apps - below the cover image you have a row of apps, the first one is photos and after that you can customize your apps. Ive included some examples of what you can use these for below.
Star - highlight important posts – to expand posts the full width of the page.
Claim your vanity URL this is a personalized url for your Facebook Timeline. To do this go to Facebook.com/username

I spent some time searching through Facebook to look for companies who are all using these new Timeline elements well, here are some good creative examples to inspire you.

CocaCola - great cover image that captures the essence of their brand and creative use of the customizable apps - check out their page and click on the apps "home" and "your stories" to see how they're using these apps to engage customers.

Hubspot - have used their cover image to communicate their product and the profile image for branding. And their apps for lead generation tools with the "try Hubspot", "events" and "ebook".

PR2002 - have used their cover image to show their team - I think this is a great idea, especially for smaller businesses to show the people behind the company.

Starbucks - even though Starbucks is a large company this cover image of their team works well - and their logo is internationally recognized so this works well for branding as their profile image.

This next image is to show you how to use the Timeline to set up historical milestones for your company.

This image is showing what happens when you "star" a post - it expands the post the width of the Timeline.

When you "pin" a post it puts an orange flag on the top right of the image to pin it to the top of your page.

If you're wondering how to do any of these tasks read my earlier article 5 Steps to Help Small Business Switch To Facebook's Timeline

What do you think of the new Facebook Timeline? Share any questions you have about Facebook Marketing and the new Timeline you'd like answered in the comments section below.

If you need help developing an effective Social Media Strategy let us know - we can help. Inbound Marketing Inquiry.

4 Content Marketing Templates To Plan 90 Days of Marketing

Stacie Chalmers — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 13:38:00 GMT

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How was your first quarter of 2012? Did you achieve your lead, customer and revenue goals? Did you get through all your tasks?

Staying on top of your inbound marketing; (content, social media, blogging) is key to building marketing momentum and a sustainable business. But often, with lack of time and resources, it's difficult to stay on track. I know, I'm guilty of it myself.

What works for me is if I plan out my content ideas and put it in a calendar, every 90 days, or quarter. As we have just started the 2nd quarter I thought this would be the perfect time to share how I plan out my content and brainstorm ideas.

The Content Marketing 90 Day Planner includes four templates for you to use as a starting point or for inspiration - whatever works.

7 Steps To Planning Your Content for 90 days

Firstly set aside 4 hours.
Next, spend 30 minutes reviewing past results - what keywords, blog topics, social media posts were successful.
Know your buyer personas - what's important to them, what would they be interested in reading.
Then, write down your goals for the next 90 days. What are your monthly revenue targets? How many customers does that equate to? How many leads will you need? And finally how can you expand your reach to generate these leads? Use the first tab in the Content Marketing Planner, "Goals-Progress" for this.
To plan out your quarterly or monthly lead generation offers (ebook, guide, webinar etc), blogging and email marketing use the 2nd tab in the Content Marketing Planner, "90 Day Planner".
The 3rd tab in the Content Marketing Planner, "Editorial Calendar" is where you can brainstorm blog topics (Ive included some suggestions to help you get started), and plan out all your content marketing.
And finally, the 4th tab in the Content Marketing Planner, "Social Media Plan", is a complete calendar for the next 90 days. Across the top I have suggestions for social media posts - you can change this to whatever you like. Basically the way it works, is you put the themes across the top use each theme once a week (blog of course should be daily). This takes the most time to plan out but if you refer to points 2 and 3 above this will help. And all you really need to do is come up with 13 posts for each theme. At the end you'll have your social media posts all planned for next 90 days. (Note: because of the way Facebook's EdgeRank algorithm works I would suggest manually posting these each day. But if you need to post date use either; Hootsuite or Hubspot's Social Media Publishing App.)

So there you have it 7 steps and 4 great content marketing templates to help you plan out your next 90 days of content marketing. What did you think? Did you find this helpful? Do you have something to add? Please let me know in the comments section below.

If you know someone who would benefit from these templates, then please share by linking back to this blog article. Thank you.

Download the Content Marketing Templates and Calendar here

5 Steps To Help Small Business Switch To Facebook’s Timeline

Stacie Chalmers — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 14:28:00 GMT

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It's easy to get overwhelmed with all the changes to the internet, social media and specifically Facebook. Especially when you're trying to run your business and just keeping up with technology is a job in itself.

With Facebook switching all Business Pages to the new Timeline format this Friday March 30th, I thought I'd share what's important to do and understand before Friday. Here’s a 5 step quick intro to help you get started.

1. Choosing your cover photo

The first thing you’ll want to do is make sure you have your cover image and profile picture set up before the change over. Choose a picture that represents your brand/company, Ive seen companies use photos of their team, their office and nice scenery shots - be creative.
The recommended size is 850 pixels wide by 315 pixels high.
There are some rules on what can and can't be on your cover image eg: you can’t include any calls to action, specials or offers. For guidelines click here

2. Profile picture

This is the image that will show up in other parts of Facebook like News Feeds – so use your company logo here.
The size for your profile picture should be 180pixels.

3. Highlight section

The next section of your timeline has a series of boxes; About, Photos, Likes, Notes, Events etc.
You can include links in the About section – so be sure to include a link to your website here.
After the Photos box you can prioritize the order by hovering over the box and clicking on the box.

4. Your Timeline

What I really like about the timeline is the ability to add events – click on the center line, and when the cross + appears click on that to add to your timeline.
To make a story wider: hover over a story and click on the star.
To pin a story to the top of your page: hover over a story and click on the pencil.
You have the choice to either hide or delete stories entirely.

5. Other

The admin panel looks great and keeps everything in one central place. I need to play around with this some more to provide more feedback.
Messages: This allows you to reply privately to messages – I love this new feature.

Stay tuned as I learn more, I'll share it with you.

If you have any questions or comments please use the comments section below.

We help companies learn and implement marketing tactics that growth their business. Including strategy, process, software, consulting and impelmentation - learn how our Inbound Marketing Solutions can help you.

Photo Credit: Mashable

7 Steps To Help Small Business Plan Content Marketing

Stacie Chalmers — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 12:13:00 GMT

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If you are in charge of marketing and generating leads and customers for your business then understanding content marketing, if you want to be successful, is important. "But why?" I hear you ask.

People today consume more information than ever before in history. Emails, Facebook posts, LinkedIn discussions, Blogs and the Internet in general. To learn something, or to solve a problem, people turn to the Internet to start their research. So the question that should be on every marketers' mind is,"How can we make sure our target audience finds our company when they search online?" And I would like to make an important point that this is true across all businesses; B2B, B2C, professional services, contractors, retailers etc....

The answer is .... CONTENT! Content includes; blog articles, web pages, emails, ebooks, press releases, images, presentations and videos. The problem with this is that many marketers get overwhelmed, and with good intentions start, but aren't consistent and run out of ideas. The following 7 steps steps will help you plan your content marketing so you have a consistent flow of fresh content publishing weekly.

7 Steps To help You Plan Your Content Marketing

1. Set aside 4 hours each quarter to plan your content marketing for the next 13 weeks. This might seem to be a lot of time but when you're planning an entire quarter of marketing content it will actually save you time in the long run.

2. Identify your buyer persona. Make sure you know your buyers, their need, frustration and how you help. Don't guess make some calls if you have to and talk to people, (I've included some links below under resources to help you through the buyer persona process).

3. Understand the buy process of your customers and the information they need to know before they convert to a customer. Awareness. Trust. Credibility. Action. What information can you publish that covers theses four key elements of the buy process? Information kits. How to guides. Instruction videos. Thought leadership Ebooks. Educational presentations and webinars. Calls to action like, free trials, consultations, specials and discounts, including a prominent telephone number, email, or inquiry form, so they know how and where to take the next step.

4. Now list 13 topics you can write about to; answer questions, provide updates on news and relevant research, explain your product or service, introduce your team, highlight your expertise and achievements and anything else you know is important to your target audience.

5. Once you have the 13 topics, work out what format each topic will take. Repurpose each topic into 2-4 formats. Eg, blog, press release, video, how to guide. You should now have new content to publish every two to three days for an entire quarter.

6. Use a Content or Editorial Calendar to list the various topics with a reminder 1-2 weeks prior to get started with writing the content and not miss a deadline. When it comes to writing, chances are you have a lot of information already on file so take some time to review your current documents and emails.

7. After you have completed your article , write 2-3 calls to action that can be posted on social media sites that will compel people to want to read your content, watch your video, sign up to the webinar (or what ever you're publishing). Keep these calls to action to 100 characters so they can be easily tweeted, allowing room for the link and retweet ref.

Do you have anything to add? Or do you have questions? Please use the comments section below, I'd love to hear from you.

Additional Resources

Download The Content Calendar here

Small Business Marketers: Learn How To Use Your Blog To Generate Leads

Learn about Buyer Persona's for Inbound Marketing here

Small Business Marketers: Learn How To Use Your Blog To Get Leads

Stacie Chalmers — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 13:03:00 GMT

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The term “leads” in the title means “qualified leads” – read this article to learn how to attract qualified leads into your marketing funnel with an effective blog.

In my recent articles on blogging I write about how to use your blog platform to educate your audience. It may seem like you’re giving a lot of expertise and knowledge away to your competition but he truth is the benefit far outweighs the risk and here’s why.

Firstly, by sharing valuable content your audience is interested in and will share, helps to keep you top of mind, establishes you as an authority, builds credibility, educates prospects on your product and gives people a reason to share your product.

Secondly, if you focus on pushing out valuable content your audience will come to enjoy your articles, look forward to reading them – building rapport and trust. Once you have rapport and trust with your prospects they are more likely to convert to a lead and customer.

So now you have...
Awareness, expertise, credibility and trust.

The next step is lead generation!

To increase leads, make sure you have an offer on the side of your blog, just like I have the ebook and coaching series offers on this blog. Personally, I hate being “sold to” or “pushed” and what I love about this approach to lead generation is that the education has been done on your prospects’ time and on their terms – without a pushy sales process to scare them away.

The art of lead generation and nurturing is to continue this added value as they move their way through the lead – buy process. Always giving the lead an opportunity to convert into a customer when they are ready.

A lead generation offer is an offer of information that the prospects want, in return for their contact information. What contact information you ask for needs to reflect the value of your free offer. Eg: A detailed research report is more valuable than a 2-page how to guide, so for the report you could ask for more than just the email, company name and contact name. You could ask for phone, company size or type or any other information that is valuable to you.

I’ve included links below for blogging and lead generation.

If you have any questions at all please use the comment section below. Happy blogging and lead generating.

Check out these blogging and lead generation resources:

9 Tips To Increase Leads From Your Landing Pages
Improve Lead Generation: How To Understand Your Prospects Needs
Blogging Made Simple: Learn How To Write About What You Know

10 Ways Small Business Marketers Should Use Videos In Blogs

Stacie Chalmers — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 13:35:00 GMT

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This article is a follow on from last week’s post 11 Marketing Strategies For Which Small Business Should Use Blogs. Assuming you’ve had the chance to read that article, I thought I’d share how to use video in your blogs and communication.

It’s great to mix up the format of your blogs with video, written word and images. As well as the style – entertaining, funny, educational and informative. Using different formats like video and presentations can help communicate an important message that the written word, alone can’t. Like bringing personality and life to your company and products. Here’s a few ideas on how to use video to keep your blogs interesting and valuable.

10 Ideas for using video in your blogs

Q+A with your CEO.
Interview with a client.
Interview with an industry thought leader.
Showing the service process.
Explaining how to use the product.
Introduce your company personnel.
Production facility.
Highlight quality of product, QC.
Turn an existing presentation you presented into a slide show.
Create a presentation to communicate your message and turn it into a slide show.

If you still have questions, not sure how to start or just don’t have the time – learn how The Inbound Marketing Company can help.

Additional resources to help you blog successfully 

Blogging Made Simple: Learn How To Write About What You Know

Inbound Marketing For Lead Generation

6 Benefits and 8 Stats You Must Know About Business Blogging

11 Marketing Strategies For Which Small Business Should Use Blogs

Stacie Chalmers — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 12:38:00 GMT

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Blogging is a communication tool that provides small business marketers with the unique opportunity to achieve a range of marketing strategies and tactics that were once left up to professionals, or only those with deep pockets. The internet and social media have leveled the marketing playing field and small businesses should take advantage of this opportunity.

Here are 11 marketing strategies you can use blogs for:

Announce product or company news.
Answering questions that may be barriers to prospects converting.
Building authority with your target audience.
Brand or company awareness.
Regular touch points that are of value to the prospect, keeping your company top of mind.
Education – about your company, service or products.
Product knowledge.
Distribution processes.
Promoting specials.
Establishing your company as an industry thought leader.
Building referrals.

Building referrals – this is an important point for small business marketers, enabling your ‘fans’(network, prospects, leads and customers) to share and talk about your company is a cost effective, scalable way you can build a team of influencers. There are many tactics to doing this well, blogs are just one.

Use your blog platform as a tool to communicate points 1 – 10, with a focus to provide valuable content to your audience, valuable content they can share with their network. Now you have expanded your reach beyond your own network. The added value is that now someone else is sharing and talking about your company, not you. I read recently that people are more likely to be influenced by a friend of a friend on Facebook (someone they don’t know personally) than an advertisement.

So I challenge you to think about the time and money you might spend on writing copy for an advertisement, press release, printed brochure, sign, banner etc and put those resources into publishing valuable content that you own and your fans can share.

Oh so here’s the big one – the lifespan of a blog is forever. Once it’s posted on the internet it’s there forever. Unlike traditional advertising that has a limited life and readership.

Next week’s article is called 10 Ways Small Business Marketers Should Use Videos In Blogs. Make sure you subscribe, links above, to receive these small business marketing articles direct to your inbox or RSS feed.

What are you waiting for? Below is a list of additional resources that will help you get started with blogging. If you have any questions or comments please post them in the comment section below – I’d love to hear from you.

Blogging Resources

Blogging Made Simple: How To Write About What You Know

Download Inbound Marketing Calendar for Blogging

Inbound Marketing + Blogging For Lead Generation: Why, How, What To Do

6 Benefits and 8 Stats You Must Know About Business Blogging

Stacie Chalmers — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 02:32:00 GMT

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We keep hearing it from the "experts" blog, blog, blog. But why? When I talk to business owners this seems to be the hardest task for many. But why?

As a marketer or business owner if you knew that blogging would help you grow your business would you find the time?

Im not sure what you already know or have heard about blogging but here are some Answers - cold hard facts - to the "But Why" question.

Blog articles are content, and must be part of your content marketing strategy. Here are 6 compelling benefits to publishing blogs on your website.

Blog articles add pages to your site - Google loves sites with lots of pages.
Blogging gives you a reason to be adding new and fresh content to your site - Google loves fresh content.
Valuable content will position you as an industry thought leader and give your company credibility over the competition.
Valuable content will be shared by others - Google has started adding social to search results.
People link to valuable content - Google loves links - this is what gives your site/content authority.
If Google loves your content and your audience is sharing, commenting and linking to your content you will get more traffic to your site. More traffic generally means more leads, and more leads means more customers - but this is really getting into lead conversion strategies which is a topic for another article.

Here are some slides from Hubspot's 100 Awesome Marketing Stats, on blogging.

1. It's a growing trend, its the way many now consume information!

2.Reading blogs is becoming a daily task

3. Chances are your competition is blogging. If not, you have a chance to get ahead of the competition, it's only a matter of time before they catch on.

4. If it's working for others it will work for you too.

5. Make sure your prospects can find your blog when researching.

6. More traffic = more leads = more customers

7. If you want more leads, you'll need more web pages!

8. If you want more pages you'll need to publish blogs.

If you're now convinced of the need and importance of blogging for your business for both thought leadership and lead generation, but you're still stuck, I have written a few articles with practical tips that will help:

BLOGGING RESOURCES

Blogging Made Simple: How To Write About What You Know

A Content Calendar To Plan and Manage Blogs: Download Here

Download Inbound Marketing Content Calendar For Blogging

Stacie Chalmers — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 13:06:00 GMT

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If one of your problems with blog writing is the planning and scheduling, you're not alone! I see questions on forums and LinkedIn groups around these topics all the time.

Over the Christmas / New Year break I decided to sit down and plan out my blog topics for the year – I didn’t know what I was going to write about but once I started planning the ideas kept flowing.

The first thing I did was to think about how my service helps small business owners with their marketing and lead generation and then I worked it back into a logical sequence of events. Each event then became a topic for a month and from there I created a bunch of blog titles that relate to the monthly topic. So far this has worked well for me – so I thought I’d share it with you.

There is a link in today’s blog article to download my content calendar. I have included descriptions for what to do and examples to help you get started.

If you have any questions you can ask them in the comment section below or on my Facebook page – Inbound Marketing Solutions.

Last week I wrote an article about how to turn what you know into blog articles – you may find that helpful too as you’re working on your content calendar for the year - so Ive included a link for that article in this article too.

Good luck with your blog planning!

Resources Links

Blogging Made Simple: Learn How To Write About What You Know

Download the Content Calendar here

Blogging Made Simple: Learn How To Write About What You Know

Stacie Chalmers — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:19:00 GMT

f84e88840b744acf9a975054184eda47Blogging is one of the best inbound marketing tactics. It helps with search marketing – helping you get found, and it helps with lead generation – helping you get leads and customers. But for many, knowing what to write or how to write is just a task that seems overwhelming. The truth is you know your product (or service) and customers better than anyone. You have the knowledge, it’s just a matter of learning how to turn a phone conversation, email or networking discussion into a blog article.

The purpose of this article is to show you how to turn what you already know into effective blog articles.

Once a month or quarter set aside 1-2 hours and sit down with your sales and/or management team (or yourself if you are the management team) and write down the answers to the following questions:

Why do people need your product or service?
What is their problem, need or pain point?
Why should they buy from you?
What are the problems if they buy the wrong product or service?
What should they know before making a purchasing decision?
What questions do customers ask before buying?
What questions or reservations do people who don’t buy ask?
Why don’t people buy from you?
What do people want to know about your company before buying?

Answers to these questions are all blog topics or even a series of blogs.

Other useful tips for brainstorming blog topics are to write down:

Conversations at recent networking events.
Recent email topics, check your inbox and outbox to see what you're already writing about.
Any new legislation or industry changes coming soon.
The latest industry trends, stats or research.
The latest innovations or technology changes to your industry.
Latest company news: new product launch, new customers, projects.
Your top industry news/articles of the week: include snippets and links to the top industry articles you read during the week.
List content you already have like: presentations, webinars, seminars, case studies and repurpose these in to blog articles.

Now you have a list of blog topics, the next step is to brainstorm different ways you can write about each topic.

Here are some popular blog styles to help you get started.

Anything numbered is popular; Top 10 ways to…, 5 things not to do…
Top 10 lists; your top 10 suppliers, vendors, examples
How to articles
Hot Topics – can you relate your product or service to anything newsworthy, stories in the news, an upcoming holiday, season or event.

When you're writing remember the following tips:

Put yourself in your audiences' mind - what are they interested in?
Blog articles should be educational so write more like a teacher than a marketer.
People are busy there's no need to write long articles - keep them relatively short 200-400 words.
Make sure the article is easy to read as people often scan - bold subheadings, use lists and keep the wording simple.

I hope this helps you plan out your next month or quarter of blog articles. If you have any questions or anything to add please use the comments section below – I’d love to hear from you.

Happy Blogging!

Additional resources to help you on the road to successful blogging

Inbound Marketing and Blogging For Lead Generation

17 Ways To Use Your Blog For Inbound Marketing And To Get More Leads

10 Inbound Marketing Tips To Help You Blog More Effectively

7 Tips To Help You Discover The Keywords That Will Generate Leads

Stacie Chalmers — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:22:00 GMT

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One of the key steps in marketing on the internet and social media is to use the right words – keywords - in your marketing content and communication.

The value of using the right keywords is that they are the words your prospects use to describe a problem, need or solution.

Therefore the goal of keyword research is to find out what words your prospects use. Not guess, but know! So how do you do that?

Here are 7 tips to finding the right keywords:

Listen to your target audience: Have conversations with your target audience and learn what words they use. Networking groups, industry events, trade shows, local business groups, Chambers are all good opportunities for you to listen to your target audience.
Check out conversations on LinkedIn: In the top right corner of LinkedIn is a search feature, use the drop down arrow to select Answers. Then use the Advanced feature to better target your search, using words you believe are what your target audience uses. Look for ways they use keywords in phrases and sentences.
LinkedIn Groups: Conduct your own research in targeted LinkedIn groups and either start a discussion or use the Poll App to learn more about the words your prospects use.
Twitter Research: Use the search feature on Twitter to search for people that represent your audience, the geo location of your audience or keywords.
Google Search: Do a Google search for keywords that represent your company, competitors, products, brands, and people to get ideas on other keywords, and phrases.
Keyword Apps: Use tools and apps to expand your keyword selection and to sort out which keywords have high volume and low competition. Two good apps are: Hubspot’s Keyword Grader and Google Adwords. – Keyword Tool.
Focus on the right keywords: When choosing keywords don’t always go for the ones with the highest volume. Focus on relevancy and low competition (or difficulty). Often a keyword with a lower search volume which has a lower difficulty that is highly relevant will yield higher lead conversions.

What are your suggestions on finding the right keywords? Do you have any questions on how to find the right keywords for your business? If so please share all your thoughts, comments and questions below.

Here are some additional resources to help with your keyword research:

Why Keyword Rank Shouldn't Be Your Goal
10 Ways To Find The Right Keywords
Learn about the Inbound Marketing Coach - we cover keywords in step 2

Buyer Persona + Inbound Marketing = Success: Learn why and how here

Stacie Chalmers — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:20:00 GMT

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Understanding your target audience is one the first things to do when developing an Inbound Marketing Plan – its marketing 101. It’s where I start with all my clients so I can provide marketing tactics that align with their target audience values and needs, and business objectives. To understand your target audience, you MUST know your Buyer Persona.

The purpose of this article to share the importance of accurately knowing your Buyer Persona and how to do so.

Some background….

Knowing the personality and character of your potential audience will give you the insight to craft your marketing message to speak directly to them, to their values and frustrations. It takes a lot of the guess work out of marketing and increases results, yielding a higher ROI. It also puts you ahead of the competition – giving you a true competitive edge.

But why are buyer persona’s so important?

Different from a customer persona a buyer persona is about the “person” who should or needs to buy your product or service. This is an important piece of the marketing puzzle – because very often we focus on who’s buying the product – customers. And not the missed opportunities, opportunities to grow your market share or grow the market size – reaching, educating and converting those who should be buying but aren’t. There are many great companies out there that often struggle, or go under, because they didn’t take the time to learn about their buyer persona; how to reach them, how to communicate to them, how to build a rapport and how to convert them.

So how do we learn and develop accurate buyer personas?

Create a list of people to whom you wish to speak – build a list of target contacts from virtual sites like LinkedIn and face to face events like local business networking groups, seminars and trade shows.
Read Adele Revella’s teachings – she has a great blog, ebook and templates to help you get started – Ive included links to her resources at the end of this article.
What skills or training do you need to work on? Adele talks about the skill of an interviewer being to uncover perceptions not to change them. So spend some time reading and learning this art so your time is well spent.
Adele goes on to say that 5 or 6 interviews at 20 minutes each should suffice and give you the qualitative information you need. Work out how you can fit this into your schedule.

So what are you waiting for – let’s get started!

Buyer Persona Resource Links

Download Buyer Persona Marketing ebook here
Download Buyer Persona Templates here

90 Day Planner + Tips To Help You Plan Your Inbound Marketing for Q1

Stacie Chalmers — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 03:30:00 GMT

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As you start a new year full of motivation and drive determined to achieve your revenue targets 2012, the key to success is to break it down into achievable tasks with an actionable timeline.

The purpose of this blog is to help you determine your goals and tasks for Q1 2012 and get organized with a plan and timeline.

Download the Inbound Marketing 90 Day Planner here – and use the suggestions below to plan out your activities for Q1 2012.

Start by breaking down your annual revenue goals into quarters, and let’s tackle the first quarter now!

SETTING GOALS

What are your revenue goals for the first quarter?
Where does your revenue come from? (new clients – growing your reach, revisiting old clients and leads, or existing clients – recurring, up selling)
What are the revenue sources for each “customer” category?
What is the average revenue per customer category?
How many leads = 1 customer?
How many leads do you need?

COMMUNICATION

How will you increase your reach?
How will you communicate with your customers, opportunities and leads?
How will you nurture them?

Here are some ideas to get you thinking…

Email - think about creating a strategic email campaign that is closely aligned with your customers’ and leads’ needs and values. Offer information that is of interest to them, to help establish your reputation as an industry thought leader.
Blogging – executed correctly, this will help with SEO, lead generation and building reach. Create a list of 12 topics (that’s only 1 per week, if you can come up with more then great). Think about what’s happening in your industry, the news, hot topics, information that your prospects need to know about you, your product(s) or service. For more tips on blogging I’ve included some links at the bottom of this article.
LinkedIn – set up a profile on LinkedIn and make sure you’re active in 5 relevant groups. Answer questions and get involved in discussions on a daily basis – set aside 15 minutes per day as a priority.
Lead Generation – make sure you have something to offer your prospects that will tell them more about your company, product or service to pull them into your marketing funnel. Just one offer for the next 90 days something like a how to guide that will help them with the presale research phase - some ideas are - (10 Questions to ask a web designer to help you find the right one, 10 Step process to finding the right dentist or Don’t be ripped off – 10 secrets to finding the right auto technician).
Tips – write a list of 12 tips that you can Tweet or Email on a weekly basis – offer this as a “newsletter sign up” eg: Sign up for weekly tips on how to stay healthy in 2012.
CTA Buttons - create a button each for the offer and tips and place these buttons on your home page and blog, and any other relevant internal pages.
Create a landing page for the offer and tip – see my links below for examples on best practices.
Pricing and specials – can you offer any discounts, special pricings, limited time specials? These also work well as an offer, maybe this could be your Facebook exclusive – “join our Facebook community to receive exclusive specials”.
If you have the budget to run ads on Google Adwords, LinkedIn and Facebook to your target audience – link to the specific landing page not your home page.

I realise this list is missing other effective inbound marketing tactics, this article is intended to highlight the most important tasks and show you how easy it is to plan and stay organized - feel free to add to the Inbound Marketing 90 Day Planner to suit your specific tasks for Q1. Use the 90 Day Planner to help you organize your ideas and stay on track for 2012. It also includes some quick tips on managing social media in under one hour a day.

If you have any questions or comment about planning out your marketing tasks for Q1 please share them in the comments section below.

Here are some additional resources for blogging and landing pages

Inbound Marketing + Blogging For Lead Generation: Why, How, What To Do

17 Ways To Use Your Blog For Inbound Marketing and To Get More Leads

9 Tips To Increase Leads From Your Landing Pages

5 Ways Inbound Marketers Should Enjoy The Holidays

Stacie Chalmers — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 18:04:00 GMT

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This time of year is so much fun - there's parties, shopping and baking.. oh my!

Just keeping up with all the tasks to do before the holidays is hard enough, without having to plan the new year. So here's my tips on how inbound marketers should be enjoying the holidays to be fully recharged and ready for 2012.

Relax - The year is full of 'to do' lists, planning and doing. It's exhausting and often we get burned out. Take this time to fully enjoy the Holiday's with family and friends, take some time off from work and recharge those brain cells - you'll need to be firing on all cyclinders in 2012 to achieve your marketing goals.
Eaves Drop - Pay attention to what's happening around you. Conversations, people's reactions, advertising. Take this time to do some market research to identify how people spend their time, what they talk about, how they make buying decisions. Do they still believe marketing and advertising, or are they asking their friends? What do you personally respond to and why?
Take Notes - Make sure you document what you learn so when you return to the office you can refer to them for inspiration for your 2012 strategies.
Be a Kid - The holidays are a time for magic and believing - capitalize on this time to get your creative juices flowing. Think like a kid, think out of the box and get creative with your strategies for 2012. Don't be afraid to push the boundaries and stand out.
Enjoy - You are at your best when you are happy. So take this time to thoroughly enjoy the holidays, your friends and family.

Happy Holidays to you and your family. I sincerely wish you a very safe and enjoyable Holiday Season and every success for 2012.

5 Must Read Inbound Marketing ebooks from @Hubspot

Stacie Chalmers — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 19:48:00 GMT

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As the festive season draws closer so does the end of another year. As you sip on your eggnog dusted with nutmeg or sing Christmas carols on your way to work (or am I the only one who does that?) the end of year also means a new beginning. A chance to reset goals and start with a clean slate. So as you review your achievements for 2011 and set goals for 2012 - Do you know what you need to do?

As a starting point for direction and inspiration you should check out these quick reads from Hubspot. Each ebook book covers an integral part of any marketing mix; learn how to reach your market on the web, how to turn your traffic into leads and how to analyze your results to increase your leads and customers.

And if you're wondering how to pull all this together sign up for the free Inbound Marketing Coach: 15 Day Quick Start To Inbound Marketing starting in 2012.

Happy Inbound Marketing Planning...

7 Reasons Smart Marketers Are Learning Marketing Automation Skills

Stacie Chalmers — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 13:57:00 GMT

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Marketing automation is a hot topic for marketers right now – terms related to marketing automation are lead nurturing and email marketing. If you’re a subscriber to my blogs you know I often write about lead nurturing and how to nurture your leads to get them sales ready. So when I heard about the 10 Commandments of Marketing Automation I was curious to learn more.

Marketing automation by definition enables you to trigger messages based on a visitor’s actions on your site, ideally sending messages when they are most relevant.

So what did I learn reading the 10 Commandments of Marketing Automation?

Firstly, I learned that marketers need to be smarter. They need to change their strategies to be better aligned with their prospects, leads and customers needs.

Here are 7 key messages I took away from the ebook that will influence my marketing strategies for 2012.

Gartner Research projects that by 2020 customers will manage 85% of their relationships without talking to a human.
The role as marketer should be to help customers get all of the information they need and ease their decision process.
Many marketers stop targeting communications after the lead has converted into a customer, missing opportunities to deepen the customer relationship and drive repeat purchases and up grades.
Marketing should continue to personalize communications based on customer experiences.
Marketing should provide leads and customers with exactly what they need and nothing more. It should be interesting, relevant and useful.
Marketing needs to match the expressed interests of the recipients.
Marketing isn’t about rushing your leads or moving them into another topic area before they’ve demonstrated interest in it.

Secondly, I learned that marketing automation is a tool that can help marketers get better results. A successful marketing automation strategy will - reflect the changing and evolving customer, and enable you to run the type of marketing programs that won’t make you feel slimy. However, without smart, tailored, useful content – marketing automation is just an intelligent spamming tool.

And finally, The 10 Commandments of Marketing Automation provided me with the guidelines and tactics needed to implement a successful marketing automation. If you want to be a better marketer, and grow your business based on providing value and happy customers then I strongly recommend you download 10 Commandments of Marketing Automation ebook.

Read These Related Articles

Inbound Marketing Tactics For Lead Nurturing Success

Learn the Inbound Marketing Approach To Meaningful Engagement

5 Ways To Help Small Business Nurture Leads and Get Them Sales Ready

5 ways to help small business nurture leads and get them sales ready

Stacie Chalmers — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 13:07:00 GMT

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This week’s article follows on from last week’s 3 Ways To Help Small Business Get Leads From Social Media. So now you have your leads, the next step is to nurture them to get them sales ready.

The purpose of this article is to help you determine the goals for your lead nurturing tactics and give you ideas to help you get started.

Once you have a lead look after them and give them want they want/need when they need it and it will be you they think of when they’re ready to buy. The best way to nurture these new leads is via email marketing and social media. Below are my 6 goals for lead nurturing and 5 ideas to get your leads sales ready.

Here are my 6 goals for lead nurturing

Trust
Credibility / thought leadership
Education
Staying top of mind
Connection- give them a reason to connect with you on social media, subscribe to your blog or sign up for a monthly newsletter
Sales - and finally identify who is sales ready, present an offer like a consultation or limited discount to see who is ready to speak to a sales person

And here are are my 5 ideas for nurturing your leads and getting them sales ready

Share helpful information – share a recent blog article and ask them to subscribe to your blog.
Maintain a consistent presence on social media – engage and share information that is interesting and valuable. Ask questions and encourage your network to engage, retweet and share. Let your personality shine through so your network gets to know your company on a more personal level.
Give something else away for nothing – is there a free tool, calculator, analysis tool or something that will help them qualify your service/product? Give this to them to use as a ‘thank you’ or Facebook exclusive.
Share additional information to help them trust your company something like: a case study, company video showing the staff, explain your value proposition, quality of work or qualified team.
And finally give them a compelling reason to want to talk to a sales person – discount, free analysis or limited time offer.

Do you have something to add to the list? Please share your thoughts or questions in the comments section below.

3 Ways To Help Small Business Get Leads From Social Media

Stacie Chalmers — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 12:07:00 GMT

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If you’re wondering what the business value of social media is for small business or B2B – you're not alone, I hear this all the time from business owners. The purpose of this blog article is to show you that social media is working and growing as a lead generation source and provide insight into how it fits into the overall lead-customer sales cycle.

Reviewing my analytics recently I noticed a consistent growth in traffic and leads from social media. Leads generated for my business represent 30% of my total leads. After looking at one of my client's analytics I noticed 70+% of their leads come from social media - they are B2B. One of the reasons this client is doing so well, compared to others, is that they make the effort. They follow the recommendations and best practices – are actively involved in groups, post regular updates and answer questions.

#marketingtakeaway – small business gets leads from social media.

And I'm sure you’re wondering...

how do you generate leads from social media?
are they quality leads?
or how do you convert them into a customer?

First, let’s look at how to generate leads from social media.

Don’t use social media as a sales channel use it to build reach with your target audience, connect, engage and share. Share not only your own content but other people's valuable content too.
Create content that is of value to your target audience and share it via your blog, website and social media updates. Create lots of valuable information and share it for free before you ask for their personal contact details in return. This will help establish trust and credibility so that when you do promote something like an ebook or webinar your audience is more likely to convert.
Give your audience a compelling reason to give you their lead information, create a self help guide, this can be as simple as a two page pdf document, or more involved like an ebook or webinar.

This is a win/win situation for all. Your prospects (now leads) are happy because you helped them out with some valuable content and you’re happy because you now have their email address and can email them to sell your services – right? No! And this where many people get social media wrong – social media is not a sales platform.

Think about where this new lead is in the buying cycle. They’ve indicated a need and expressed some interest in your company and information. But chances are they don’t know enough about your company to take your sales call or hand over their credit card. This is where you need to know the length of your sales cycle and what information a lead needs before they’re ready to buy. What are the typical questions you, or your sales team get asked by prospects, what reservations do they have? Its important you address all this ‘important’ information through a series touch points (email, blog, social media) before getting them on the phone.

Now you have your leads, you want to get them sales ready – to make sure you don’t miss out on next weeks blog – 5 ways to help small business nurture leads and get them sales ready. - subscribe via email or RSS – links are at the top.

What do you think? Do you agree or disagee? Have you been successful on social media or not? Please share your thoughts and comments below.

Inbound Marketing For Australian SMBs

How Important is SEO for Inbound Marketing Success Today?

SEO Resources for Marketers Who Want to Do It Right!

Where Does Social Media Fit In The Marketing Process?

Consider marketing in this simple 3 step process:

Social Media Marketing Resources

Learn How To Create An Inbound Marketing Plan [free ebook]

4 Step SEO Action Plan for Small Business Marketing

Here are 4 steps to help small business marketers with their SEO

Additional resources to help you with SEO

Google Changes SEO: What Small Business Need To Know and Must Avoid

Here are 5 SEO tactics to avoid:

Google articles to understand white hat SEO

How can we help you grow your business?

9 Social Media Tips To Help Small Business Marketers Generate Leads

Here are some useful resources to help you with social media marketing

26 SEO Tips To Help Small Business Marketers Get More Traffic

Choosing the right keywords

Where to use your keywords

Some tips

No.26 - this is important!

Here's some useful resources on keywords and seo

A Marketer’s Intro To Understanding Your Facebook Timeline by @chris_lou

9 Important Features To Your Facebook Timeline by @christ_lou

4 Content Marketing Templates To Plan 90 Days of Marketing

7 Steps To Planning Your Content for 90 days

5 Steps To Help Small Business Switch To Facebook’s Timeline

1. Choosing your cover photo

2. Profile picture

3. Highlight section

4. Your Timeline

5. Other

7 Steps To Help Small Business Plan Content Marketing

7 Steps To help You Plan Your Content Marketing

Additional Resources

Small Business Marketers: Learn How To Use Your Blog To Get Leads

The next step is lead generation!

Check out these blogging and lead generation resources:

10 Ways Small Business Marketers Should Use Videos In Blogs

10 Ideas for using video in your blogs

Additional resources to help you blog successfully

11 Marketing Strategies For Which Small Business Should Use Blogs

Here are 11 marketing strategies you can use blogs for:

Blogging Resources

6 Benefits and 8 Stats You Must Know About Business Blogging

Here are some slides from Hubspot's 100 Awesome Marketing Stats, on blogging.

BLOGGING RESOURCES

Download Inbound Marketing Content Calendar For Blogging

Resources Links

Blogging Made Simple: Learn How To Write About What You Know

Additional resources to help you on the road to successful blogging

7 Tips To Help You Discover The Keywords That Will Generate Leads

Here are 7 tips to finding the right keywords:

Here are some additional resources to help with your keyword research:

Buyer Persona + Inbound Marketing = Success: Learn why and how here

Buyer Persona Resource Links

90 Day Planner + Tips To Help You Plan Your Inbound Marketing for Q1

SETTING GOALS

COMMUNICATION

Here are some additional resources for blogging and landing pages

5 Ways Inbound Marketers Should Enjoy The Holidays

5 Must Read Inbound Marketing ebooks from @Hubspot

Beyond the Facebook Business Page: How To Generate Traffic and Leads with Facebook

In Introduction To Lead Nurturing

An Introduction To Inbound Marketing Analytics

An Introduction to Business Blogging

An Introduction To Effective Calls To Action

7 Reasons Smart Marketers Are Learning Marketing Automation Skills

Here are 7 key messages I took away from the ebook that will influence my marketing strategies for 2012.

Read These Related Articles

5 ways to help small business nurture leads and get them sales ready

Other articles you might find interesting

3 Ways To Help Small Business Get Leads From Social Media

Other articles you may also be interested in:

Additional resources to help you blog successfully 