3 Inbound Marketing Resolutions for 2012
by Dave Maloney
Did you make any inbound marketing resolutions to help your business this year? Now that the ball has dropped and New Year's Eve is over, it's time make all those life-changing "gonna-dos" happen...or not. We're back to work and reality, and the feeling that your list seems a little too ambitious starts to kick in: "Tackling our inbound marketing is a huge job; maybe we'll have more time, funds, personnel, etc, next year..." Before you file your resolutions away for another year because they're too grand to handle, are there any parts of them that you could focus on this year?
Are any of these your Inbound Marketing Resolutions this year?
1. This is the year we're going to get our business blog up and running! We're going to post every day, something for everyone!
Great idea, but even with a staff of 100 writers, coming up with interesting stuff to write about every day is going to get tough. A blog with no new posts in a couple months isn't going to help your site's SEO. It's much better if you can post once a week, even once a month, as long as it's consistent for your readers. And who are they? Having an idea of who your ideal client is will help you come up with more relevant subject matter to blog about.
2. We're going to be all over Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, GooglePlus, YouTube, and Everything Social!
Social networking is an awesome way to spread your company's word, but most undertakings, the all-or-nothing approach isn't the best way for you. Like with your blog, think about who you are trying to reach, and that will give you some idea on the best way to engage them. Depending on your type of business, a Linkedin group may be a more valuable place to spend some time establishing your company than a Facebook business page. Setting up profiles everywhere and not using them is a waste of time. Why not focus on one and see what happens? Make sure you link back to your site and SEO everything!
3. Our website is going to become a Lead-Generating Machine!
Do you have a special offer for your website visitors that they can only get by filling out a form? Is it really worth surrendering their contact info for, or is it something they can just go look up somewhere else? Try to come up with one Valuable! offer this year: a unique ebook, slideshow, webinar, free product demo, whatever. Promote it with calls to action on your site, link to it from the social network you're establishing yourself in, even email a link to it to your existing customers. Next, unless you know the lead is junk, don't skip this part: when someone does sign up, make sure you follow up with them to "nurture" the lead; some content management systems like HubSpot help you automate this, but at least do it manually if you have to.
Make 2012 the year you started fulfilling your inbound marketing resolutions - Happy New Year and good luck!
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