If they were lucky, they could get their mitts on an exact match domain name. But to dominate across multiple keyword categories and ensure the best rankings, link building was required. Forums, blog comments, bookmarking sites, directories and article sharing were some favorite link building opportunities.

The Journey to the Present

Google has launched many updates since 2009, each looking to overcome its major shortcoming – rewarding bad content. Back then, major search engines didn’t really have a good way to identify high quality content because they relied on an algorithm designed mostly around factors that had nothing to do with the quality of the content published.

In theory, PageRank was supposed to give Google the ability to identify good and relevant content. If a web property had a robust link graph, it meant their content was good enough to attract inbound links from other websites and blogs.

Once SEOs figured this out, the algorithm manipulation was on. After nearly a decade of spammy link building, Google finally figured out how to combat it.

How Google Fixed 2009-Era SEO

Today, Google relies on many updates since its 2009 algorithm to ensure better and more relevant content is displayed on its results pages. For the most part, these changes have allowed good, prolific content creators to flourish online. While these changes aren’t perfect, they certainly have led to content quality improvements on search engine results pages.

Below are some of Google’s most noteworthy launches, algorithm and indexing updates since 2009:

• Google Caffeine – Made Google’s indexing dynamic as opposed to stratified
• Caffeine Update “Freshness” – Rewarded the newest content
• Social Signal Integration – Factored in social media buzz around a brand
• Google Panda – Helped identify poor quality content in its index
• Google +1, Google+ – Provided full social visibility within its own social environment
• Google SSL Implementation – Limited availability of keyword search query data
• Google Penguin – Helped identify spam in a site’s link graph

Here are some likely algorithm changes to come (may already exist):

• AuthorRank – Factoring in a content author’s online authority
• Transition Rank – Placing search engine results in a temporary random position for up to three months, before placing it where it rightfully belongs

The Bottom Line

It’s likely that many marketing departments around the world aren’t fully aware of the implications of the above. This is evident by the sheer number of current requests seen for the old tactics. Deploying 2009 SEO can actually hurt a web property’s visibility today.

To succeed on search engines requires a commitment to producing great, problem-solving content over time and executing a true earned media strategy. SEO in 2013 looks more like inbound marketing and PR than the SEO of yesterday. For help getting your inbound and content marketing ramped up download this blog optimization guide.

Inspired by Jay Berkowitz and his presentation: Top 10 Reasons Your Search and Social Media Suck.

Image Credit: Calypso Dragon 13

With all of these incredible talents, what would happen if Chuck Norris was an Internet Marketer? Below are 12 possibilities.

1. Chuck Norris doesn’t need to track click through or conversion rates. His are always 100 percent.
2. Twitter doesn’t have a 140 character limit. . . that’s just how many characters Chuck Norris allows.
3. When Google has a question they “Norris” it.
4. There is no search engine algorithm. Just a list of websites Chuck Norris allows to rank.
5. Chuck Norris can leave a comment on your Facebook wall using MySpace.
6. Chuck Norris will never be flagged by Google. Google isn’t nearly foolish enough to de-index him.
7. Chuck Norris doesn’t read blogs. He stares them down until he gets the information he wants.
8. Chuck Norris does not need Twitter. . . he is already following you.
9. Chuck Norris wrote a blog post and it got over five million tweets. Before it was published.
10. Bill Gates lives in constant fear that Chuck Norris’s PC will crash.
11. Chuck Norris once used MySpace. That’s why there are no signs of life.
12. Chuck Norris’s computer has no “backspace” button. Chuck Norris doesn’t make mistakes.

Chuck Norris jokes are like cat videos – they’re a guilty pleasure few admit to, but many consume. If you fall into this category, don’t be embarrassed to leave a Chuck Norris-themed Internet marketing joke below. . . because if you don’t, Chuck Norris WILL know.

Shortly after the incident, the Twittersphere lit up with marketers and others demanding that brands turn off their promotional tweets out of respect for the victims and to avoid accidental gaffes. This felt like the appropriate thing to do and marketers throughout the country followed suit.

However, hours later, that decision started to raise many questions in my mind – questions I didn’t have any answers for. For example:

• Is Twitter the only marketing channel that should be shut off?
• Why didn’t we shut off our lead nurturing and marketing automation?
• What about television and radio commercials?
• Do we cancel our sales meetings and trade show appearances?
• Are PPC ads targeted towards Boston Marathon searches inappropriate now?
• Should we stop blogging, too?
• What about all of the brands that sponsored the event? Do they pull their signage and swag?

I was truly torn when contemplating the answers to these questions. If the answer the first question is no, than where does it stop? Should all marketing and sales activities cease? If the answer is yes, then why just Twitter?

This opened up a rabbit hole for my analytical marketing mind. Each question seemed to bring up two or more questions – none of which I had a logical answer for.

• For how long should marketing and sales channels be shut off?
• Are we so desensitized to outbound marketing channels as a society that turning them off or leaving them on has no impact on our impression of a brand post-tragedy?
• Is the relative newness of social media the reason it’s targeted to be turned off?
• Is it the real-time nature of social media that makes it a target? If it is, should outbound calling be terminated as well?
• Why should this tragedy be treated this way, and not others?
• Does the size and breadth of the tragedy determine how many channels should be shut off?
• Is it just U.S. tragedies, or should brands be globally concerned?
• Who determines these things? Communities, brands or individual marketing professionals?

You’ll notice the words “logical” and “felt” above are both in italics. That’s because there doesn’t seem to be logical lines in the sand for determining the answers to any of the questions above. The only barometer for making decisions to shut off one or more marketing channels seems to be feelings.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the answers to the questions above. I’m interested in hearing how you would answer the questions above? What do you believe is marketing’s post-tragedy obligation to society, if any? Should I continue to rely on my gut and social media chatter for making these decisions? Is there a better way?

Image Credit: Mark Z

If you’ve seen his films you certainly know he has a knack for using swear words. I purposely did not include them in the quotes below. However, part of the fun is to read the quotes in his voice and guess what colorful language he might include. If that doesn’t work, the links provided for each quote go to the scene in the actual movie where he speaks these memorable, unedited lines. Enjoy. . .

The pontification goes like this:

10. “Internet troll, be cool!” – Pulp Fiction (1994)

9. “LinkedIn PPC. The very best there is. When you absolutely, positively got to reach every persona in the target demographic, accept no substitutes.” – Jackie Brown (1997)

8. “Hey, MySpace may taste like pumpkin pie, but I’d never know ’cause I wouldn’t use the filthy social network.” – Pulp Fiction (1994)

7. “Bring me my iPad. It’s the one that says ‘Magnificent Internet Marketer!’” – Pulp Fiction (1994)

6. In reference to spammers: “Yes they deserve to die and I hope they burn. . !” A Time To Kill (1996)

5. After being asked by IT where his missing MacBook was: “Geek, I smoked the MacBook!” – Jungle Fever (1991)

4. “Just ’cause you pour dollars into PPC doesn’t make it inbound marketing!” – Juice (1992)

3. To a designer: “If my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions.” – Pulp Fiction (1994)

2. “Say ‘what’ again. SAY ‘WHAT’ AGAIN! I dare you, I double dare you, content marketer! Say ‘what’ one more time!” – Pulp Fiction (1994)

1. “Enough is enough! I have had it with these annoying trolls on this annoying social network!” – Snakes On A Plane (2006)

Hope you were as entertained reading these quotes as I was crafting them. If you’re not a Samuel L. Jackson fan that’s okay, because there are some real marketing lessons to be learned above. If you’re an Internet marketer and a fan feel free to leave your favorite marketing version of a Samuel L. Jackson quote below. I trust you’ll keep it clean. . .

Each step in the below checklist can serve as a building block for creating a website launch timeline and making sure it’s inbound-ready. Every step might not be required for every website project. However, customize this list as required, build a realistic timeline and use these self-imposed deadlines as leverage for moving a new website forward and avoiding the endless website project.

1. Copywriting and Editing

2. Design

3. Development

4. Testing (mobile, browsers, etc.)

5. Offer Creation (whitepapers, guides, ebooks, etc.)

6. Landing Page Design and Development

7. Call to Action Design

8. Blog Migration (if prudent)

9. Marketing Automation Integration

10. Analytics Integration

11. 301 Redirect Mapping (if prudent)

12. Lead Nurturing/Scoring/Intelligence Created

13. Email Templates Designed

14. A/B Testing Round One Established

15. New Social Profiles Established (if prudent)

16. On-page SEO Audited/Established

17. Interactive Graphics Created (if prudent)

18. Event/Behavior Tracking Implemented

19. CRM Integration

Steps one and two above are the biggest culprits for endlessly pushing website projects passed their deadline. Be cognizant of this and make sure the proper resources are in place to adequately expedite them. Also, avoid creating websites by committee whenever possible. The more cooks in the kitchen the messier it will get. Seek out one or two final decision makers.

With the 19 steps above fully implemented the resulting website will certainly be inbound-ready. It will be prepared to reap the maximum benefits from content marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimization and digital PR.

Image Credit: gertcha

Most inbound marketers are well aware of the value of earned media. They’re even cognizant of the benefits of online media outlets linking to and writing about their content and brand. However, few spend the purposeful time to construct and deploy a digital PR strategy that optimizes potential earned media coverage and earned content placements.

Below are the seven benefits realized for the few who purposely and successfully use true digital PR to optimally earn their media.

1. Website Traffic and Conversions

Earned media containing links to owned web pages and landing pages help drive traffic and conversions. The incremental increase is proportionate to the size and scope of the publisher’s online community. For example, an op-ed written for the New York Times that links to a branded whitepaper could drive over 100,000 unique visitors and tens of thousands of conversions for years after publication.

2. Social Media Buzz

Content that is published by reputable online media outlets is often consumed, cited and shared by industry influencers. It’s these influencers who will help grow and multiply the brand’s social graph.

3. Search Engine Optimization

Earned media with the appropriate link attribution from trusted sources is the most powerful, Penguin friendly, off-page SEO around. Couple that with the social graph buzz above and earned media will certainly grab the attention of the search engines.

4. Opt-in Email List Growth

It’s amazing how much of an effect earned media can have on email list growth. In only two weeks one earned media link increased site-wide email conversion rates from 3.9 percent to 9.4 percent while driving over 800 new email addresses.

5. Retargeting Audience Acceleration

Online ad retargeting is a popular nurturing tactic deployed today and usually starts with a visit to an owned web property. Once a new visitor arrives a cookie is dropped on their browser and ads related to the content consumed are served up on other web properties – nurturing through relevance and context. Earned media click-throughs can drop hundreds of thousands of cookies on browsers over time.

6. Online Community Building

Earned media, for many, represents a content consumer’s first impression of a brand. It is also a gateway and/or introduction to the brand’s online community. Expect incremental community growth over time if a brand’s content is good and prudent enough.

7. Brand Awareness

Kai Ryssdal of NPR’s Marketplace recently reported on how one earned media placement can be a game changer for a business. An article written by Farhad Manjoo of Slate.com – This is the Greatest Hoodie Ever Made – tells the story of a San Francisco-based apparel startup called American Giant. Manjoo’s article drove so much traffic and so many conversions that the company was forced to increase manufacturing output 20 fold to meet demand. How’s that for earned media’s effect on brand awareness?

Rather than earned media being a cross your fingers and hope we get some type of strategy, inbound marketers should set measurable digital PR goals, develop a strategy and deploy tactics. The rewards highlighted above are too great to ignore. Just look at what earned media did for American Giant. Earned media doesn’t have to be a derivative of luck. It should be an active component of any inbound marketing deployment.

To see how earned media can create huge spikes in traffic and conversions download our latest case study.

Image Credit: Jason Pier in DC

Content production can be outsourced. However, leveraging your internal employees may produce the best results. Here are nine ways to get your internal employees contributing expert, problem-solving content on a regular basis:

1. Culture – Establish a culture that embraces blog writing. Bestow the secondary title of online brand correspondent to all employees.

2. Training – Provide adequate training and share best practices.

3. Software – Use one of the many SaaS solutions to submit, manage and publish blog posts.

4. Goals – Establish clear analytical goals for metrics like traffic and conversions.

“If you’re havin’ marketing problems I feel bad for you son. I’ve got 99 problems, but content marketing ain’t one.”

5. Mentorship – Encourage your best bloggers to mentor and coach others.

6. Feedback – Share blog performance metrics with the authors so they know how they’re doing.

7. Priorities – Let staff know that creating great content consistently is a top priority company-wide.

8. Editing – Bring on a professional editor or editors responsible for quality control.

9. Awards – Don’t be afraid to recognize and reward success. Trophies and plaques are inexpensive and go a long way in helping to create excitement.

The above nine tips have been used to enlist over 65 unique employee content contributors for this blog in 2012 alone. It has led to an average of 12 new blog posts published per week and resulted in a 115% increase in organic search traffic, a 44% increase in referral traffic and a 49% increase in direct traffic – all in less than five months. Lead capture per month has more than doubled in the same time frame.

If the these numbers look desirable than it’s time to rally your company using the steps provided and start publishing more blog posts. For help with training and best practices for producing content, download our blog post optimization guide in Kindle or PDF format.

A. Little. History

According to Wikipedia the 1950’s ushered in the recommendation of 1.5 spaces which persisted until at least 1996. Since most typewriters and computers didn’t offer that as a spacing option people continued to teach and use the double space. Typewriters and early computer fonts used monospaced type – also known as fixed-width font because each character occupies the same amount of horizontal space.

Double spacing allowed for sentences crafted using monospaced fonts to be clearly identifiable. Today’s modern fonts alleviate the need for double spacing because their widths are dynamic, as opposed to fixed.

Farhad Manjoo of Slate.com says that “Every modern typographer agrees on the one-space rule” and that “Every major style guide prescribes a single space after a period.”

Internet User Experience

Since most web fonts are dynamic in width (Courier is the only exception) there is no practical need to double space for sentence delineation online. Unfortunately, studies done this century on the impact of sentence spacing on readers have been inconclusive.

However, anyone with the knowledge that double spacing is wrong will undoubtedly have a negative user experience and brand perception if they land on a website full of double spaced sentences. Manjoo also cites aesthetics as the main reason typographers prefer one space over two. If double spacing is ugly on print it will also be ugly online.

Excuses, Excuses

Most double spacers blame their teachers for their bad habit – and rightfully so. However, some webmasters actually blame their website’s cascading style sheet (CSS). If the formatting on a website requires sentences to be double spaced for readability then fix the CSS.

It’s time to stop making excuses and force yourself (and web content contributors) to use single spacing. Many years ago I made the conscience decision to stop double spacing. It took nearly 12 months to completely eliminate that bad habit. Now that it’s gone consumers of the content I create won’t think I’m an idiot (at least not for double spacing) and visitors to our website can have a consistent and proper experience with our brand.

Image Credit: Hauker H.

The benefits are well documented, so why isn’t digital PR or earned media more top-of-mind for brands and agencies seeking to aggressively move the marketing needle? Simply stated – because it’s too hard.

Marketing Groupthink Props Up Silos

Unfortunately, content creation, social media, search engine optimization (SEO) and public relations are generally considered separate disciplines and reside in organizational or departmental silos. As a result, getting prime placement of content on relevant and highly traveled online media outlets is, at best, a tertiary consideration.

To truly earn highly valued content placement requires the aforementioned silos to crumble, goals to be established and appropriate tactics deployed. Effective digital PR requires these disciplines to work in concert. Each has specific roles and responsibilities similar to their everyday tasks. Below outlines some of them.

Content Marketing

All earned, owned and paid content should be produced by the content marketing team. This includes blog posts, eBooks, advertorials, etc. However, this role can be further leveraged in the digital PR process.

• Research – Aside from the typical research done to create content, this team should identify and take note of what content and topics are most popular on highly traveled and relevant online media outlets.
• Promotion – For many online authors their personal brand can earn regard amongst industry thought leaders. This represents an important networking opportunity because it’s the thought leaders and their organizations that will be approached for content placement.
• Conversion – All content created for placement should contain a relevant link back to a germane landing page containing applicable white papers, guides or eBooks – it should appear natural and prudent.

Social Media Marketing

This team is uniquely positioned in a marketing organization because their job is to network, broadcast and listen. Their fingers are on the pulse of what’s popular and relevant today.

• Research – Similar to the content marketing team, the social media team can provide valuable insight into what topics, content formats and web properties are being shared and talked about the most.
• Promotion – Since networking is part of this team’s role, targeting influential online authors and media outlets should come natural. These relationships should be nurtured for earned media placements over time.

SEO

This team is comprised mostly of “Math Men,” as opposed to “Mad Men.” Their skills come in handy when determining what to write about and for defining the potential value of an earned media opportunity.

• Research – Keyword research is a hallmark for practitioners of SEO. This research helps inform content marketers as to what words and topics are most often searched for – thus, in demand.
• Promotion – SEO professionals generally have access to a multitude of online tools that empower them to analyze and report on various aspects of a web property. This data can easily translate into a list of websites to target for earned media placements.

Aligning content, social media and organic search marketing to better facilitate the earned media process is not easy – it’s not impossible either. For serious marketers, it’s time to move earned media from the doldrums of tertiary consideration to an active, continuous process with established goals, an outlined strategy and defined tactics. For eye-opening digital PR results download our latest earned media case study.

Below represents an alternative to the traditional structure of a B2B marketing department and is based on the inbound marketing campaign process developed by Mike Ewing of HubSpot. This structure is built not only to win at inbound marketing, but to win at all marketing.

Offer Team (Content Marketers/Brand Journalists, Statisticians)

Every online initiative that marketing takes on should start with an offer – which generally takes the form of gated content. This is because marketing’s job is to produce sales qualified leads. Website visitors who fully engage with the offer provide information that is critical to the lead scoring process and for determining how qualified they are. Below are some example offers:

• Top of the Funnel Offers – white papers, guides, eBooks, videos, checklists, etc.
• Middle of the Funnel Offers – webinars, case studies, free samples, catalogs, FAQ sheets, brochures, etc.
• Bottom of the Funnel Offers – free trials, demos, assessments, consultations, estimates, coupons, etc.

Marketing departments account for the importance of offers by dedicating at least one staff member to their research, creation, management and retirement. Robust departments can devote an entire team to this initiative and segment the team based on the sales funnel. It is also beneficial to include a statistician on the offer team.

Landing Pages & Calls to Action Team (Web Designers)

Since offers need to reside behind a form on a landing page, it’s ideal to have a web-savvy designer responsible for this unit. The offer team will hand off their written content and concepts for design.

When the design of the offer is complete, the creation and implementation of the landing page and applicable calls-to-action occurs. This team is also responsible for establishing, setting up, deploying and tracking A/B testing for both. When the designer or design team isn’t working on deploying offers or conversion rate optimization, they backup the other units with graphic design support.

Lead Nurturing Team (Marketing Automation Administrator)

According to HubSpot, nurtured leads produce, on average, a 20 percent increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads. As a result, this person or team is critical to a marketing department. They are also known as ‘closed loop marketers’ because they work within marketing’s automation software and sale’s customer relationship management software.

The job of the lead nurturing team is to create, deploy, track and adjust lead nurturing based on data and direct feedback from sales – in order to deliver the most sales qualified leads as possible. Every offer that is created should have a custom designed lead nurturing campaign deployed.

Email Team (Email Marketers)

This team is responsible for reengaging the leads database anytime a new offer is created. They don’t click and blast. Instead, they meticulously curate targeted segments from the database based on the relevancy of the offer and lead score in order to deliver the right content to the correct person.

This team will work closely with the lead nurturing team because lessons learned in either department can provide value. While the teams are similar and crossover does exist, the email marketing team doesn’t typically work as closely with sales.

Blog Team (Content Marketers, Digital PR Specialists, Editors)

Both earned and owned media creation resides in this department. The content marketers are responsible for developing and deploying blog content with topics similar to the original offer. Editors write, edit and curate owned, earned and paid media, but will spend the vast majority of their efforts on owned blog posts.

Digital PR specialists create content, too, but aim to have it published on other web properties and online media outlets. Their content links to and is similar in context to the offer. They do much more targeted networking to accomplish this task.

Social Media Team (Community Managers, Social Media Marketers)

Distributing content (offers and blog posts), listening, responding and nurturing relationships are the responsibility of this team. They’ll also manage the deployment of any specific campaigns, contests, sweepstakes or giveaways. Ultimately, their success is measured by conversions, sales and satisfied customers.

The structure above works like a machine. Once it’s fully operational web traffic, conversions and sales all start to increase. However, marketing is still responsible for other forms of marketing like trade show execution, pay-per-click advertising, media buys, television, billboards, etc. In many cases these responsibilities can be assumed as an additional team duty. In addition, developers can be included on any of the teams mentioned above.

Each team will work closely together, but the entire department is built for the deployment of offers on a consistent and frequent basis, promoting the offer online to the largest targeted number of people possible and for measuring results.

The management within the department should have analytical visibility of every aspect above in order to identify and take advantage of real-time analytical trends. They should also be able to track real revenue generated by each team within the department.

Implement the above team structure if you wish to create an inbound marketing machine that drives leads and sales in the most efficient manner possible.

Image Credit: woodleywonderworks

The aforementioned are content delivery channels at their core and are only as good as the content delivered on them. Type and quantity of content contribute to the success of the individual channels. However, the quality of the content makes or breaks campaigns.

Content vs. Channel Analogy

Stumbling across a good blog post to read is like receiving a new mp3 player delivered by FedEx. If the mp3 player is an iPod the level of anticipation and excitement is probably much greater than if it were a Magnavox. In fact, the recipient of the iPod, as opposed to the Magnavox, is probably more likely to share the fact that they acquired one.

Does the recipient really care if FedEx delivered the package, as opposed to USPS or UPS? FedEx does, but consumers don’t care as long as the price and delivery time remain the same and the package arrives unharmed. They just want their packages delivered to the front door.

The point is that consumers don’t get excited about the channel content is delivered on. They get excited about the quality and type of content they receive – whether it solves their problems and/or entertains them. Demonstrate publishing frequency and consistency and excited content consumers will demand more.

Content consumers choose which channels to frequent because they perceive they will receive valuable content that’s important to them. Providers of the best content get the most visibility across all prudent channels.

Takeaway

If marketers spent the same level of energy and resources crafting amazing blog posts, whitepapers, guides, ebooks, videos, case studies and so on, as they do channel tools and services the web would offer a better consumer experience than it does today.

Marketers don’t have to sacrifice content production resources at the behest of individual channels. Good content is organically distributed across all channels – which cost nothing.

For help creating powerful content that gets organically distributed across multiple channels access the blog post optimization guide.

More and more traditional forms of media and their delivery counterparts are competing for the attention of consumers in a social, mobile and online world – and losing. This is due to a recent fundamental shift in consumer behavior. Technological advancements, Internet accessibility and consumer protections have given people the ability to opt-out of phone calls, decline or throw away phone books, fast forward commercials and generally obfuscate or avoid brazen interruption-based advertising.

Enterprise brands to mom and pop boutique shops are shifting their marketing budgets to reflect this new reality. As a result, some traditional outbound marketers, marketing departments and agencies that aren’t pivoting fast enough are experiencing poor campaign results, layoffs, declines in profit and, in some cases, looming bankruptcy.

Why the Golden Age?

The Greek poet Hesiod identified The Golden Age as the time man lived among the gods and mingled freely with them. Harmony and peace were used to describe this time and people did not have to work to feed themselves because of the abundance of food the earth provided.

Today brands and people mingle freely with each other on social networks, the blogosphere and online communities. These interactions are generally free of the brazen, interruption-based sales messages of traditional bottom of the funnel marketing. For the consumer this must represent a new-found peace and harmony.

The Internet also provides consumers the ability to find solutions to their problems quickly because of the abundance of information it offers. Answers to their questions are just a Google search away.

Kevin Bailey explores this new age of marketing in further detail in his 12-21-12 Marks the End of a Marketing Age.

The Takeaway

As more and more consumers experience the interruption-free peace and harmony delivered by inbound marketing they are likely to have an increasingly negative attitude towards traditional forms of outbound marketing. A revolt and backlash has already begun and its tipping point is near.

For help getting your inbound marketing campaign optimized or started download this blog optimization guide in PDF or Kindle format.

1. Referring Traffic

Advanced online marketing departments know how many visitors it takes to get a conversion and how much the conversion is worth. This makes tracking the number of visitors from a backlink a way to measure its business value.

2. Number of Conversions

Similar to referring traffic, the number of conversions acquired from a backlink measures real business value. It also identifies what type of content or topics resonates with the patrons of the referring site. This data can significantly help with the content marketing planning process while leading to referral traffic optimization.

3. Conversions per Link

This is a measure of efficiency. Companies that deploy robust content marketing initiatives often see their content syndicated. These syndication relationships can lead to dozens or even hundreds of inbound links from a single domain. By looking at the number of conversions per link a marketer can normalize the value of each individual link. This data comes in handy when deploying strategic earned media or digital PR campaigns.

4. Visit to Conversion Ratio

Just like the above, the visit to conversion ratio is an efficiency measurement. High ratios should be deliberately targeted for guest posting or media coverage. Linking domains with high visit to conversion ratios should be identified and exploited because they provide real and efficient business value.

5. Average/Total Sale

This measurement is very important for B2C brands – especially ecommerce. On the other hand, it may not be a good measurement for B2B brands with small client portfolios. Ecommerce marketers will want to know the average and total sale from each linking domain and individual backlink. This information is critical for making future strategic outreach profitable.

Instead of tracking metrics devoid of real business value, like PageRank or mozRank, consider the above five metrics when measuring the value of an inbound link. These metrics empower marketers with the knowledge to accurately target those websites that drive the most business value with earned media outreach and digital PR.

To begin tracking the success of all of your marketing efforts, download our Marketing Scorecard template today!

Image Credit: RambergMediaImages

Quality

Successful inbound marketing campaigns consistently produce content of the highest quality by industry experts or practitioners. This content can be in the form of the written word, video, graphics, podcasts or others. Whether or not content is considered high quality isn’t just in the eye of the beholder, either. It’s also in the eye of the analytics.

Some key quality performance indicators include traffic, conversions, social shares and natural inbound links earned. People only consume, reference or evangelize content that provides value. As a result, it’s pretty easy to determine what content resonates and can be considered high quality.

Frequency

There’s a reason most successful news outlets publish or air on a daily basis. Frequency in content publishing communicates expertise and passion – both of which are desirable brand attributes. If one or both traits weren’t present, frequency in quality content publishing couldn’t occur.

Each time content is published represents another opportunity to drive new traffic, conversions and more customers. Frequently publishing content online not only creates more opportunities for success, but it creates them more often. Over time, positive analytical momentum builds and directly impacts the bottom line.

Consistency

Consistency in content publishing is a sign of reliability. In business, reliability can sometimes trump cost or value when making purchasing decisions and is a powerful brand attribute. Consistency should be reflected across the quality, schedule, tone, expertise and topics of the content being published.

A brand’s online content is one of the few ways it can communicate directly with the public. Eliminating consistency from an inbound marketing campaign represents a lack of commitment to public discourse at best, and at worst it can communicate disdain or indifference.

Not a single reference to social media or search engine optimization was presented above – and for good reason. Both represent distribution channels for content. If the content created as part of an inbound marketing campaign is not squared away the channel it is distributed on is irrelevant. Distributing poor quality content infrequently and with little identifiable consistency is a recipe for online failure.

For help improving the quality of your own content, download our Guide to Enterprise Blog Post Optimization.

Image Credit: sillydog

1. Rankings are indicative of successful SEO

Personalization based on browser history, geography, the social graph, being logged into search engine products and others have a major impact on what is actually displayed in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Just because something ranks number one for one person doesn’t mean it ranks number one for another. Rankings are actually a trailing indicator of good content marketing.

2. Number of inbound links is an SEO key performance indicator (KPI)

There was a time when this was an important KPI. However, the social graph becoming an algorithmic factor and Google Penguin have successfully eliminated the need to track the quantity of inbound links.

It’s a sign of manipulation and an algorithmic red flag if the link graph isn’t appropriately proportionate in size and breadth to the website’s social graph. Too many poor quality links without social proof is a recipe for search engine ostracization.

3. Ranking for fat-head vanity phrases is the name of the game

It might feel nice to an SEO’s ego to rank for a very popular and highly searched two-word phrase, but it’s a vanity exercise only. While some SEOs are targeting 20 or 50 fat-head keyword phrases, today’s SEO professionals are deploying aggressive content marketing campaigns that drive organic traffic from thousands of phrases – from the fat-head to the long tail.

4. SEO and content marketing are mutually exclusive

No longer can SEOs create, spin or curate content for the sake of keywords in the pursuit of rankings. Google’s Panda algorithm update has substantially squashed these tactics. Maximum visibility in the search engines today requires creating thoughtful, problem-solving or entertaining content that real people love, not sculpted keyword babble written to trick search engines.

Impactful and lasting SEO cannot be deployed without content marketing.

5. Exact match anchor text is good

Exact match inbound anchor text is a red flag that algorithm manipulation may be occurring. Exact match brand names are one thing, but 1200 inbound links with the exact same primary keyword phrase as anchor text is probably spam. SEO’s face a post-Penguin and EMD reality today – copious amounts of exact match anchor text is NOT good.

6. Content is a commodity

When content is treated like a commodity it lacks passion, persuasion and punch because it’s not about quality, but rather, quantity. It’s about getting the most words for the least amount of money, rather than helping people solve their problems.

Cheaply bought content published with the sole purpose of growing search engine visibility helps no one and will not be consumed or shared on social channels – negatively impacting search engine visibility.

7. Duplicate content is always bad

This has been the SEO’s mantra for years. However, Google states:

“In the rare cases in which Google perceives that duplicate content may be shown with intent to manipulate our rankings and deceive our users, we’ll also make appropriate adjustments in the indexing and ranking of the sites involved.”

The Internet is full of high quality sites that publish both original content and curated content on a regular basis. The curated content is duplicated from other websites, but isn’t published to manipulate the search engines. Often times, the curated content organically outperforms its original counterpart.

8. Conversions don’t matter to search engines

Most SEOs would agree that time on site matters to search engines. If someone arrives on a website and leaves right away what does it say about the quality of the content and user experience? Websites that find themselves in this position typically have poor search engine visibility.

A conversion on a website is recognition by the visitor of perceived value – the more conversions, the more perceived value, the more time spent on the site. These are the websites Google wants to serve up in its SERPs.

9. Organic search is the most efficient inbound channel

Efficiency is not measured via traffic, but rather conversion rates and cost per conversion. A consistent and frequent web publishing schedule realized through content marketing can easily drive referral conversion rates into the double digits.

Organic search for non-branded keyword phrases can drive lots of traffic, but conversion rates tend to hover around the one percent mark.

10. SEO is a math problem not a people problem

This is the pivot point that separates yesterday’s SEOs from today’s. In the past, SEO was a competition between an algorithm and a person or team. This scenario demanded people with the technical and math skills required to navigate an algorithm.

However, today the algorithms are so advanced that the time, money and effort required to battle them are better spent on helping real people solve their problems with thoughtful and amazing content. This ultimately leads to greater and more qualified organic traffic.

Don’t be misled by the pervasiveness of the old ways. The realization that SEO is a people problem, as opposed to a math problem, is the key to moving forward in this new search reality. Marketers should guard their budgets when approached with a search engine rankings proposition because winning at search today means winning at social media and content marketing first.

For help getting your content marketing program off the ground download this Guide to Enterprise Blog Post Optimization.

Image Credit: intheozone

What is Earned Media?

Earned media is analogous to product placement in a sitcom or television show. Sometimes product placement is purposeful, but other times it’s an accident. Seeing Coke next to a judge on American Idol is purposeful placement and paid for – it’s also very obvious. However, seeing a Tornado foosball table on the set of Friends is not – it feels normal and natural.

Content is the product being pushed by brands online. Some brands create such amazing content that it’s featured, discussed or mentioned (product placement) on other blogs and online media networks – driving website traffic, conversions, Internet chatter and social buzz. It doesn’t feel contrived, paid for or abnormal. It’s true inbound marketing.

Good digital PR professionals amass networks of online media outlets that crave amazing, problem-solving content from industry thought leaders and brands. By tapping into these networks brands can actively (and naturally) get their content featured on some of the most traveled websites in the world. While this is purposeful, it certainly doesn’t appear so to the reader. This is earned media.

800-Plus Reasons

On January 16^th Slingshot SEO deployed an earned media campaign with a syndication partner. It immediately had an impact on website traffic, but more importantly, it catapulted January’s lead total 82 percent higher than the previous month. This large growth in leads is reflected below.

The earned media campaign’s impact on web traffic was significant, but the effect was more impactful to the site-wide conversion rate. Prior to the campaign launch the website was experiencing a 3.9 percent conversion rate. Post-launch it grew to 9.4 percent in two weeks and hit its highest one day total at 19.9 percent.

In total, the earned media campaign drove 2,251 unique website visitors and 859 conversions in only the first 14 days of deployment. That’s over 800 reasons why earned media is the new advertising. It’s also very likely to continue to drive incremental traffic and leads for years to come.

One More Reason

Earned media and digital PR empowers brands to market like a magnet by attracting people who have problems they can solve. It provides relevance and context to interested content consumers and eliminates the inherent inefficiencies of outbound marketing. This stands in stark contrast to marketing with a sledgehammer – traditional advertising. It’s for this reason that earned media is the future of successful advertising.

For help improving your owned media and content marketing download this Guide to Enterprise Blog Post Optimization.

Image Credit: adambowie

Should brand community managers or individuals accept spam as a cost of social media marketing on Twitter? Will reducing the number of accounts being followed by thousands have a negative impact on reach, influence and branding? Is eliminating direct message spam worth the effort?

A Look at the Numbers

Over a three day period (1/19 – 1/21) more than 15,000 Twitter accounts were unfollowed by my personal account. Many of the accounts unfollowed were obviously connected to some sort of automation software because over 600 unfollowed me immediately. However, on the third day (see below) the attrition rate dropped dramatically to only 61 in 24 hours.

In total, unfollowing 15,000 Twitter accounts led to a 2.9 percent follower attrition rate over three days. It also dropped the number of lists my account was on from 913 to 904 – a one percent decrease.

However, when normalizing the attrition over the last 30 days the damage is very minimal – only losing 205 followers or .9 percent. That’s a small price to pay in the battle to eliminate spam.

Real Feedback

Surprisingly, out of every account that was unfollowed only two negative tweets were sent my way (see below). On the other hand, five tweets were very positive in nature. It’s safe to say that any negative impact on my personal brand was negligible.

@cpollittiu Sorry, but you unfollow me. I will do the same. Let me know.

— Juan G Garcia (@juan11637) January 20, 2013

@cpollittiu In that case, I’ll unfollow you as well. I’ll be back when you are.

— Stefan Brandes (@stefanb_) January 20, 2013

Takeaways

Accepting spam on Twitter is not a cost of doing social media marketing – community managers can do something about it. Additionally, impacts on reach, influence and branding are negligible at worst. Now the hard work of scouring my Twitter lists for people I know and trust to re-follow begins. However, the elimination of direct message spam in my inbox makes it all worth it.

Image Credit: Vince_Lamb

Deploying a continuous content marketing campaign can be a daunting task for some companies. However, with the right plan in place it can be efficient, fun and profitable. For this to happen, marketing departments must scale content production to allow for maximum throughput and employee contribution without sacrificing quality or brand standards.

To do this requires three things – people, process and software. All of which must work together synergistically to get the most out of content marketing.

People

There are five content contributor personas that can be leveraged by brands. They include employees, ghost writers, brand advocates, experts and professional copywriters. Leveraging the employee persona in a robust fashion organically grows industry thought leadership from within without blowing up the budget and is the most critical contributor to the persona mix.

Every company should experiment to find out which persona mix works the best for production, quality, engagement, traffic and conversions.

Process

Crafting a process for creating, editing, publishing and tracking content is critical for campaigns to remain efficient and profitable. Many content marketing deployments fail, not because there is no process for editing, publishing and tracking, but because there is no process for creating content to begin with.

The process for creating content should include guidance on article titles, structure, optimization, repurposing and content governance.

For a deep dive into content marketing process download The Enterprise Blog Post Optimization Guide in PDF or Kindle format.

Software

There are many software platforms that can empower brands to efficiently create, edit, publish and track content. HubSpot, WordPress, Kapost, Joomla and Compendium represent possible software solutions for companies to deploy and manage their content marketing.

The best solution will depend on the goals of the deployment and the content contributor persona mix. Some solutions offer turn-key guest contributor features while others may not.

Scaling content marketing requires the appropriate mix of people, process and software. Understanding this enables brands to properly plan, deploy and track their inbound efforts. The more efficient companies can be when deploying content marketing the lower the customer acquisition cost (CAC) becomes. The company with the lowest CAC has a major competitive advantage in the marketplace.

The Enterprise Blog Post Optimization Guide in its entirety is available for free in both Kindle and PDF format.

However, the below attributes remain consistent regardless of an inbound marketer’s background. Look for these 12 traits to determine whether your inbound marketing candidate is extraordinary or not.

1. Able to utilize both sides of the brain effectively, but left-brain dominant

2. Writes blog posts prolifically

3. Reads blogs prolifically

4. Naturally displays a high level of passion for their work

5. Maintains a real-world network of other inbound marketers who are just a phone call away

6. Are well respected online community members

7. Working knowledge of HTML

8. Working knowledge of Photoshop

9. Data driven – able to parse through analytics to develop action items

10. Possesses acute personal and company brand-awareness

11. Understands the sales funnel and how it translates online

12. Workaholic – does inbound marketing at home, in the office and on the go

Until the inbound marketing career path matures and the role is better defined, Marketing Directors, VPs of Marketing and CMOs will continue to struggle in their pursuit of highly skilled inbound marketers. Paul Roetzer, author of The Marketing Agency Blueprint, does a great job shedding light on the future of this hybrid marketing professional. In the meantime, look to the above 12 attributes for identifying an inbound marketer extraordinaire.

Image Credit: Troels Dejgaard Hansen

Building Links Today

Google still uses links in its algorithm. However, they are much more particular as to the ones that matter. With so many potential pitfalls how is an SEO supposed to build links now?

The answer is – they shouldn’t. Number of links built shouldn’t be a key performance indicator (KPI) or goal for an SEO campaign at all. SEO KPIs should include high level metrics like number of keywords driving traffic, total traffic from organic search, conversions from organic search, etc.

Traditional SEO success metrics like rankings and number of inbound links are either a trailing indicator of success or no indicator at all. This fundamentally changes what it means to win at search today.

Owned Inbound Marketing

Winning at search today requires creating quality content consistently that people want to consume and share. By doing so, blogs and online media outlets will naturally link to the owned content. This is the cornerstone of using inbound marketing for SEO success. However, the above description represents an owned media approach to inbound and SEO.

Earned Inbound Marketing

The same principles that make owned inbound marketing so impactful on today’s search metrics can be deployed on the earned side of inbound marketing. This earned approach represents a peculiar marriage between traditional link building and public relations. The below are 14 steps to deploy an earned inbound marketing campaign that is Penguin-approved.

1. Network with known, successful blogs and online media outlets that align with your industry via social media and phone. Build REAL relationships with community managers, editors-in-chief and popular contributors over time.
2. Probe them to find out what type of content, case study or survey data would be prized by their communities.
3. Suggest you do the leg-work and research to create the white paper, ebook, guide, etc. Ask if you can interview them as a subject matter expert for the advanced content.
4. Create the advanced content. The quality and value of the content should be unquestionable. It should be professionally designed. Your contacts should be wowed by the effort.
5. Create an owned landing page to download the advanced content on your website or blog.
6. Create a lead nurturing campaign for landing page conversions.
7. Offer to give the most popular blog or online media outlet exclusive first-time publishing rights to an article that presents some of the core takeaways of the advanced content.
8. Write the article. This should be easy if you created the advanced content yourself. Make sure there’s a strong textual call to action in the middle of the post and at the end that points to your landing page. Don’t include ALL of the takeaways from the advanced content.
9. Deliver the article. Get agreement on a publishing date.
10. When published, socially promote.
11. Analyze the data and adjust the landing page accordingly.
12. Offer the other blogs and online media outlets articles that present secondary or tertiary takeaways from the advanced content. Make sure these other articles are unique and equally valuable. Some media outlets will prefer to write their own articles about your content. That’s okay, too.
13. Repeat steps eight through 11.
14. Watch your referral and direct web traffic soar, your sales funnel fill up with leads and your bounce rates drop. Increased organic visibility follows.

Here’s what the above 14 steps look like successfully deployed:

The above earned inbound approach is best deployed in the midst of an ongoing owned inbound campaign and acts as Internet nitrous for driving traffic, conversions and online community. However, it’s also a great tactic for brands just getting started with inbound and content marketing because it expedites the success curve and provides new outlets for brand exposure.

The major value proposition of the above is not search engine visibility. It’s the referral traffic and conversions it provides. However, one of the secondary effects of a successful deployment is valuable, Penguin-approved, links that soundly communicate to Google your digital relevance for its search engine.

For help with the valuation of your current referral traffic download this Valuing Digital Marketing Channels with Attribution Models ebook.

Not all content is created equal. Each piece should speak to one of the three types of content consumers while mirroring the sales funnel in production prioritization – top of the funnel (TOFU), middle of the funnel (MOFU) and bottom of the funnel (BOFU).

“T” is for Top Not Bottom

TOFU content consumers represent the vast majority of website visitors, and have no intention of buying anything at first. They work toward solving problems themselves and pursue content that empowers them to do so. According to HubSpot, 96 percent of first-time website visitors aren’t interested in buying. These are the content consumers that make up the TOFU and typically consume blog posts, articles, ebooks, guides and how-to’s.

“M” is for Middle

Content consumers who reside in the MOFU may have an inkling that a brand or company might be able to provide products and/or services that will help them solve their problems and be willing to pay for it. However, they’re not sure, need to learn more and hover in the interest to evaluation stages of the buying process. MOFU consumers want webinars, case studies, free samples, catalogs, FAQ sheets, spec sheets and brochures.

“B” is for Bottom Not Top

BOFU content consumers are interested in solving problems, too; but their problems center on the need for specific information or incentive to do business. While small in number, BOFU visitors want to consume pages containing free trials, demos, assessments, consultations, estimates, quotes and coupons. The contact us page on a website is a commonly used BOFU page.

Two Reasons

People only go to the Internet for two reasons: to solve a problem and/or to be entertained, quickly. Most brands are in the business of solving problems, so it’s important to identify the problems experienced by the personas that represent current and future customer bases, and communicate solutions to them. Divide each persona into its respective funnel position and create content for all three levels.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line is that the most effective content marketing plan focuses on the buying cycle of potential customers. This means somewhere between 90 and 96 percent of the branded content created should be in the form of blog posts or helpful web pages to generate traffic. The next area of focus should be on advanced content like whitepapers, ebooks, and other advanced content (TOFU content) to generate leads from the blog traffic. MOFU content for generating prospects–and BOFU content for generating sales and qualified leads–should follow in the production prioritization and represent only a small portion of total content created.

Where most brands and companies fall short is that their content production and publication is out of alignment with the funnel. Most prioritize from the bottom up instead of the top down. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to convert someone to a customer efficiently that way. Don’t flip the funnel with content marketing – that’s an outbound marketing tradition.

For more content creation tips, check out our free guide: The 5 Ws of Content Creation.

Content Marketing and Rankings

While Google was implementing wholesale changes like Panda, Penguin and Freshness, and personalization to its algorithm, content marketing became in vogue as an Internet marketing tactic. Shortly thereafter, bloggers, marketers and some search marketers began sharing anecdotes of an apparent diminishment of correlation between rankings and maximum organic traffic.

Many search marketers — including myself – began to understand that through content marketing (publishing lots of owned and earned media), tracking keyword rankings didn’t forecast well and wasn’t a good indicator of future traffic, conversions or customers. However, the number of keywords driving traffic month over month gives some indication as to the search success of a continuous content marketing campaign. This fundamentally changes what it means to win at search today.

Google’s Author Stats Sheds More Light

Google Webmaster Tools provides attributed author analytics on published content, regardless of the publishing source. The authorship tool generally reports on an individual’s content marketing activity with regards to search. Below are the top 34 blog posts with 10 or more SERP click-throughs over the course of a month. They’re grouped by first page rankings versus second page and beyond.

It’s commonly accepted that the higher a page ranks, the greater the number of impressions and subsequent click-throughs. The data above shows blog posts that reside, on average, on the third page of Google actually provided more impressions than the 17 blog posts that reside on the first page. But the number of SERP clicks on first page blog posts is slightly higher. This seems to fly in the face of what’s generally accepted by search marketers – the second page and beyond is rarely traveled.

The number of clicks seems only to slightly bolster the value of first page rankings. However, if you factor in the 341 other blog posts with one to ten click-throughs that don’t reside on the first page of Google, the value proposition of using rankings as a KPI comes into question. Impressions and clicks for later ranked posts are much greater in number than first page posts.

By no means does the above represent an adequate sample set to make sweeping conclusions; but it does shed some light on content marketing’s impact on search measurement – it devalues rankings. Here’s a much more thorough example of rankings versus traffic from a highly traveled blog.

What Does This Mean?

As mentioned above, Google has many ways in which it personalizes SERPs. This personalization is reflected to some degree in the average SERP positions in the above chart. Just because a web page appears to rank number one in the SERPs doesn’t mean it will appear there for everyone – likewise for SERP results on the second page and beyond.

It’s not that being number one on Google is valueless. It’s that search marketers have no tactical way to optimize for personalization. All of the hard SEO work done to acquire consistent rankings in the past can now be shuffled all over Google’s SERPs.

The only way to truly optimize for personalization is to build an online community by creating great problem-solving or entertaining content that people want to consume and evangelize across the Internet. That’s called content marketing.

Personalization and Content Marketing

The more people that consume and evangelize a blog’s content, the more likely it is that personalization will serve up additional content in subsequent searches.

For more than six months, the term Facebook Like drew 100+ unique visitors per month for a client site. The site didn’t rank on the first 10 pages of Google for that term. Personalization relevancy from consistent, quality content marketing drove the traffic, not rankings from SEO. By the way — it converted at 2.5%, too.

The Mighty Long Tail

The above ranking data is an average of multiple search terms to the same page, to include the long tail, chunky middle and fat head. All of which have an impact on the average ranking of a URL.

Long tail search rankings on the second page and beyond can help drag down reported average rankings for URLs in Google Webmaster Tools. This attributes to a perceived devaluation of rankings.

With a daily publishing routine, content marketing can massively grow long tail keyword traffic and push down the average ranking of a URL. However, the end result is more traffic, conversions, and, ultimately, more customers.

Over time the long tail traffic will start to positively impact the chunky middle and fat head terms, too. This is reflected by the 556 percent growth in the number of keyword phrases driving traffic over this 26 month study using content marketing.

The Takeaway

Content marketing has eliminated the need to track rankings in a meaningful way. Consistent blog publishing dilutes the metrics associated with average rankings because of a large influx of long tail traffic over time. However, the tradeoff is a growth in the number of keyword phrases driving traffic, increased unique visits and conversions.

Content marketing also takes advantage of Google’s personalization and serves up popular content on keyword phrases it might not have otherwise shown. Finally, expect to see conversion rates grow because personalization, by its very nature, serves up the most relevant content.

Image Credit 1: Peej
Image Credit 2: chris.corwin
Image Credit 3: Franco Folini

1. Community Managers get burned when they realize one or more of the RSS feeds they syndicate via a branded Twitter account have advertisements.

2. Closed-loop marketing pros figure out their CRM API connection has reached its daily limit every day for over a month. Thousands of new leads are sitting in a queue and have not been reported.

3. Marketers come to the realization that none of their email marketing campaigns are mobile friendly or link to a landing page with a mobile version. Oops, they’ve just potentially eliminated 36 percent of their opens.

4. Digital PR folks struggle to decide where to place their homerun piece of earned media – The Wall Street Journal or Entrepreneur?

5. Designers asking themselves, “Is this infographics too long, long enough or too short?”

6. Conversion Rate Optimization professionals second guessing whether 97, 98 or 99 percent certainty is good enough for their A/B testing program.

7. Content marketers with tens of thousands of blog subscribers get burned when Google unplugs Feedburner.

8. Marketing thought-leaders struggling to decide between speaking at Blog World or PubCon.

9. Chief Content Officers having to tell their CEO that his or her blog post doesn’t meet the editorial requirements of the brand’s inbound campaign.

10. Finding the budget to pay Facebook after it starts charging companies per post to even be considered by its EdgeRank algorithm.

Seen any of these yet? If you haven’t, expect to in the New Year. The use of technology and big data is exploding in agencies and marketing departments throughout the first world. This trend is not going away — and if you’re a marketer on the front lines of this evolution, attention to detail will help prevent some of the above. If you’re leading the charge with a team of inbounders, be aware of the above and ask the right questions in 2013.

Image Credit: Ludie Cochrane

Expertum Social Medium has probably spoken at a few Chamber events and helped out several small businesses by setting up their social media accounts and coaching. Some have even graduated to work on real social projects with big budgets behind them. These campaigns generally rely on some wishy washy metrics in lieu of real ROI.

RIP Social Media Experts

In reality, Expertum Social Medium doesn’t understand the role content marketing plays in social media, let alone search. He’s very adept at being a community member, but not at monetizing a community or driving qualified traffic to it. Business concepts like lead capture, nurturing and the sales funnel are foreign to him.

Michael Brenner said it best in his post The 2013 Marketing Predictions Post: Content Marketing And Social Business:

“Content marketing has become a huge buzzword in marketing lately as people have mastered the mechanics of social media channels but are finding that they aren’t seeing any results.”

“Marketers are beginning to understand that the road to success in the social business world is paved with valuable content that customers want.”

Introducing the Inbounder

Social media isn’t the only channel that requires good community-building content. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) does, too. Google’s updates over the last two years have solidified this reality.

In order to monetize, social media marketers need to embrace strategic content marketing for community development, demand generation, conversion and nurturing. Maximizing search traffic requires the same thing.

The convergence of social, search and content marketing, as described above, should, for the first time, be recognized and generally accepted across the business spectrum in 2013. Expertum Social Medium will be displaced by the Inbounder when this happens.

The Inbounder understands monetization, the sales funnel and the role of quality content, conversion and community. They’re experts in all of the inbound marketing channels, lead capture, lead nurturing and customer acquisition.

What this Means for Brands in 2013

The strongest brands of tomorrow have started building their online communities already. The Inbounder skill set is required to build and properly monetize an online community that consumes, shares and contributes valuable content.

This skill set will be highly sought after and difficult to find. However, the reward of creating inspired, community-driven consumers should motivate brands to seek out The Inbounder, while simultaneously driving Expertum Social Medium to extinction.

In actuality, they provide something much more powerful than generating demand for products and services. They generate the demand to join a brand’s community and cause. They also generate demand for more content.

Content developed for lead nurturing is what creates robust demand for products and/or services, regardless of channel – not content developed and distributed for demand generation.

According to HubSpot, 96 percent of website visitors aren’t interested in purchasing anything the first time they visit. The demand generation content mentioned above only has a chance at influencing four percent of new website visitors. What about everyone else?

The Golden Circle of Demand Generation

Simon Sinek, in his How Great Leaders Inspire Action TED Talk, explains, “People don’t buy what you do. They buy why you do it.” He illustrates this point in a simple graphic he calls The Golden Circle. Below is Slingshot SEO’s interpretation of his Golden Circle with a demand generation and content twist.

The why, how and what model above is articulated by Simon using Apple as an example below:

“If Apple were like everybody else a marketing message from them might sound like this: We make great computers [what]. They’re beautifully designed, easy to use and user friendly [how]. Want to buy one[why]? . . that’s how most marketing is done. . . it’s uninspiring.”

“Here’s how Apple actually communicates: Everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo, we believe in thinking differently [why]. The way we challenge the status quo is by making our products beautifully designed, simple to use and user friendly [how]. We just happen to make great computers, want to buy one [what]?”

In other words, most marketing campaigns start with the what and go from the top of the golden circle inward. This sets the expectation that demand generation should generate demand for products and/or services. However, inspiring demand generation campaigns start with the why and go from the bottom out. This generates demand for community membership [why] and more content [how].

Over the long term this will lead to greater demand for products and/or services [what].

“The goal is not to do business with everybody who needs what you have. The goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe.”

Creating content that generates demand for community membership and more content (marketing from the why to the what) allows brands to identify who believes what they believe and creates inspired consumers, as opposed to uninspired ones. It also accomplishes the goal of doing business with people who believe what you believe.

He further explains that this way of thinking is rooted in the biology of the human brain. The neocortex is responsible for language, rational and analytical thought – the what. The why and the how are controlled by the limbic portion of the brain which is responsible for feelings, trust, loyalty and decision-making.

Marketing campaigns that work from the top down influence the neocortex part of the brain. However, campaigns that start with the why and work their way to the what speak directly to the limbic part of the brain that controls behavior.

Below is Simon’s full TED Talk:

Good demand generation should produce content that speaks directly to the limbic part of the brain – the why and how. This will create demand for community membership and more content. Ultimately, it allows people the opportunity to believe what you believe and creates inspired consumers over time.

Through the use of multi-channel lead nurturing and behavior based lead intelligence, demand generation for products and services will occur over time and help brands identify who believes what they believe. It also gets easier as more and more people join the community and evangelize a brand’s why and how. That’s because “People don’t buy what you do. They buy why you do it.” This is the approach marketers should use when deploying online demand generation using content.