Syndicated from http://blog.hubspot.com – HubSpot Inbound Marketing Blog

How Marketers Can Use Twitter's New Locations Feature

 

After an announcement in November 2009 and a couple of fits and starts, it appears that Twitter has finally rolled out a geo-location feature. 

Here's how the feature works: After agreeing to share your location information in your settings, a small location icon will appear next to each tweets byline.  Clicking it will bring up Google Maps, displaying your location.  

So, how could this feature be of interest to marketers and business owners?

Imagine that you are in Cambridge, MA, and you're trying to find a place to eat.  If a local eatery was following the geographical tweets, they could send an offer to the folks in the area to visit their establishment.

Or, if you are at a conference, and you want to find out where HubSpot's Mike Volpe is speaking, his tweets about his location would allow you to find the right room quickly and get a seat.

In another example, think about trying to meet someone in an area you both don't know well, such as an airport.  Using Twitter's location features could allow you to save time traveling up and down terminals at O'Hare. 

Here's an example of Chris Haddad, one of our Inbound Marketing Consultants, trying out the feature.  He says, "I like the drop-down that lets me pic how specific I want to get with my "auto-guessed" location - I could say I was tweeting from MIT instead of "Kendall Square".  

Do you think the Twitter locations feature will have any value for marketers?  Will you use it?

Live Webinar: The Science of ReTweets With Dan Zarrella

Join Dan Zarrella, HubSpot's Social Media Scientist and author of the Social Media Marketing Book for a 30 minute overview of the Science of ReTweets! Date and time: Friday, March 19, 2010 at 1:00pm ET  Reserve your spot now to learn what makes tweets contagious and how to create tweets that will go viral and increase your reach and authority..

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4 Ways to Get Your Business Found by Local Searchers

If you are like most small businesses, the success of your company is dependent on attracting local customers, whether they are in your region, state, county or even town. While it's great to see that your website is pulling in visitors from around the country and maybe even around the world, you don't want to waste the time or resources worrying about leads and inquiries that you can't possibly follow up with. So, how do you ensure you are doing everything in your power to pull in those valuable visitors from across town? Check out this list:

1. Optimize your site for geographic-specific keywords.

Depending on the competitiveness of your geographic region and industry, this is a quick and easy way for you to start ranking for various keywords that local shoppers are using to search in Google, Yahoo! and Bing. To do this, make sure that the Page Title, URL, H1 tag and page content of your web pages include your geographic keyword phrase and that you are consistent across all elements. For example, check out this page, which illustrates geographic keyword optimization done right. By doing this, this company is more likely to pull in consumers in Newington, CT who are looking for replacement windows and siding. Remember, if you have multiple pages for each town/city you service, make sure they are different enough so the search engines don't tag them as duplicate content!

2. Blog!

A blog is a great way to talk about your local services and commitment to your local market. Share case studies or success stories of work you've done in the past in each town, city or county. Customers love being in the spotlight, so use your blog as an opportunity to showcase them and highlight your great work. Remember to use the geographic location in your blog title and URL and promote your blog to generate inbound links!

3. Engage with local bloggers and city-specific websites.

When you engage with local bloggers from your area and share your knowledge and expertise, you begin to establish yourself as a great resource and expert in your industry. You'll be getting your name and company in front of local readers and begin to develop relationships with influential bloggers who may be more likely to do feature stories about you in the future. While HubSpot doesn't pull customers in from any one specific geographic location like your business may, we frequently engage in conversations on the Boston Globe's website, Boston.com, as well as with local technology and business bloggers, Mass High Tech and the Massachusetts Innovation & Technology Exchange (MITX). See what's in your local area, and start interacting.

4. Sign up for accounts on ratings & review sites.

As we have seen, consumers are more and more likely to start their research process online for a local vendor, handyman, car mechanic, doctor or marketing professional. Armed with that knowledge, you need to make sure your business is listed on the major websites that provide ratings and reviews for various services. Here are a few to check out:

• Google Local (Free)

Google requires you to register your business online, then verifies that you are the owner by either calling you or sending some snail mail to your address. Once you are registered, you benefit by having the opportunity to appear in Google's Local Business Results for a given search term. Your ranking inside the Local Listings is based on Google's ranking algorithm that awards well-optimized pages and inbound links to your website from other websites.

• Yelp (Free)

Yelp has been around for several years now and is the gold standard for getting information on local restaurants, shopping locations and entertainment venues. However, now they're starting to see a wider variety of businesses listing their companies on their site, including those in real estate, event planning, financial services and medical service providers. This is a great place to encourage your happy customers to leave some feedback. If you receive negative feedback, it's a good chance to engage with that consumer and turn their experience around with a heartfelt note or follow up. Read more about how to supercharge your business' presence on Yelp.

• Angie's List (Free for Companies, Paid for Consumers): 

Angie's List is an aggregator of sorts that pulls in reviews of local businesses and contractors. Angie's List attempts to circumvent fake reviews by charging consumers a monthly fee in order to browse their listings and review businesses. Check it out and see if it's right for your business.

Now get out there and start rocking local search!

 

Search Engine Optimization Kit

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What Do Coke, Pepsi, Pampers, Dominos, Google and Facebook Have in Common?

Are audiences more interested in understanding what the big brands are doing?  Do we look up to Coke and Pepsi and other great brands for inspiration?

At HubSpot, we love to measure everything, and recently we completed a short study on how the use of brand names (including Coke, Pepsi, Dominos, Google, Pampers, Facebook,etc.) in article titles had an impact on blog article performance.

The results were astounding.  Out of the approximately 100 articles published over a period of 50 days, just over 20% of them had major brand names in the title. 

As you can see in the graph below, the articles that had a major brand name in the title generated 60% more page views on average than articles without them.

Also, we published 6 articles with Google in the title, and on average they performed 50% better than articles without brand names in their titles.

Surprisingly, while the use of brand names appeared to have an impact on page views and readership, it had little or no impact on comments (or conversation) and what appears to be a negative impact on inbound links.  The brand name articles got 3 fewer inbound links on average than their counterparts.

If you're wondering why we used such a short time frame for the study, it's because blog articles are like annuities. Over longer periods of time, articles continue to amass more and more page views, which would skew the study.  The top-performing articles in all groups were spread pretty evenly across the time frame used for the study!

Thoughts,  Observations and Takeaways

• Timing Your Article Publication is Key -- There was definitely a "news" factor to articles with brand names in their titles, and the timeliness of the publication coincided with the conversation about the brand on the Internet and in media.  (e.g. the Dominos and Pepsi articles).
• Visible Brands Serve as Case Studies -- People and marketers in general love hearing what major brands are doing and how they are conducting their business.  A lot of companies like to emulate and learn from big brands.
• Familiarity Has an Impact on Viral Effect -- People become bigger "sneezers" (per Seth Godin's idea virus) when it comes to bigger brands because they are more familiar with them and their products.

Have you noticed any interesting trends in how your blog articles perform?  Please share your thoughts in the comments!

Photo credit: Nikita Kashner 

 

Video: Blogging for Business

Want to learn more about publishing a blog on your business website? Watch the free video to learn how to create a thriving inbound marketing blog.

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Stop Delivering Mail: Build USPS 2.0

Last week the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) announced it is considering cutting Saturday delivery. It's about time. In fact, the mail doesn't need to stop being delivered on Saturday, it needs to stop being delivered completely.

In a recent TechCrunch article, entrepreneur Marc Andreessen suggested that traditional media outlets "burn the boats," meaning they should stop publishing print versions of their publications.  We need to do the same thing when it comes to sending mail.

The Problems with Mail

Mail kills 5.2 million trees every year.

Mail is wasteful and inefficient. News outlets that have been covering the story about the potential of eliminating Saturday delivery have been missing the point. This issue isn't about the impact no mail delivery on Saturday would have. Instead, it is about asking the question: Is mail a viable communication method anymore? We are a society that has long thrived on innovation. We have been willing to stop using methods of communication once they have become antiquated; consider the elimination of telegraphs.

Last year, Mike Volpe wrote an article about the waste and environmental damage caused by direct mail advertising. Today, let's think bigger.

While the United States Postal Service is self-funded, it operated at a loss of nearly 2 billion dollars last year. The 2009 operating budget for the United States Postal Service was 79.2 billion dollars. Think about the impact that nearly 80 billion dollars could have if it were directed at improving digital communications infrastructure like rural broadband Internet access or improved technology in pubic schools. As Americans, we have allowed printed mail to hold us back from more efficient and innovative communications opportunities.

In the last quarter of 2009 (October 1, 2009 - December 31, 2009), the USPS delivered 21,218,826 pieces of first class mail. First class mail consisted of less than half of all mail delivered during this time. If we think conservatively and say every first class piece was only one piece of paper and one envelope, then as Americans we wasted more than 42.4 million sheets of paper in only 90 days. This paper usage does not even begin to account for the 260,000 vehicles the postal service has on the road and the fossil fuels they burn every day.

Building USPS 2.0

Delivering messages has never been easier, and the content in them has never been more important. As a society, we don't need to kill the United States Postal Service. Rather, we need to transform it into United States Postal Service 2.0. In an economy built on innovation and intellectual property, the countries with the best infrastructures to support their growth will achieve economic success and stability. What if your mailman, instead of delivering mail every day, was trained to support the digital messaging systems and pipelines of the U.S.?

Imagine a world where 656,000 employees of the USPS were focused on issues like network stability and protecting citizens from spam and illegal content. The United States Postal Service is the second-largest civilian employer in the United States. Committing resources on that scale to digital communication would transform our society.

By creating USPS 2.0, the United States government (aside from the obvious environmental savings) could build a digital communication network supported by a purpose-driven organization that would position the United States far ahead of other nations.

Getting Back to Storytelling

The foundation of great inbound marketing is compelling content and great storytelling. In the world of direct mail and junk mail, our culture has lost the real reason people actually used to send letters -- to tell stories. In shifting away from printed letters, some of the team members of the USPS could be trained to help businesses and individuals better tell their stories. Imagine that a few years from now, instead of going to the post office to mail a letter, you take your daughter there to learn how to edit a video she will be sending electronically to her grandparents.

Think about a world where blue post office boxes are turned into wireless access points and post office buildings become places of storytelling and real-time information sharing.

Direct and junk mail that nobody reads is wasteful. Betting on a dying form of communication is just as wasteful because it robs America of an opportunity to lead a world driven by digital communication. Let's stop sending pointless direct mail ads that don't work and fail to prove return on investment. Let's stop flooding mailboxes with bills and statements that most people already view online. Let's band together and say "no" to mail and "yes" to USPS 2.0!

Who is coming with us?

Photo by: Ed Siasoco 

 

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Going to SXSW? Rate Speakers and Win an iPad!

Boring presentations suck.

Don't you hate it when you attend an event and feel like the speaker is completely wasting your time?

Conferences are expensive and networking time is too valuable to waste by sitting down and listening to a bad speaker. With South by Southwest Interactive (SXSW) coming up, our team wanted to solve this problem. 

Introducing Speaker Grader!

Speaker Grader is the newest free tool to join the Grader family.  It rates speakers at conferences via votes gathered from Twitter.

It is easy to get started with Speaker Grader. While attending a presentation, send a tweet that contains all 3 of the following:

1. The @speakertwittername
2. The #eventhashtag
3. Your vote, which is either #upvote if you think the speaker is doing a good job or #downvote if you are unhappy with the presentation. 

Optional: Any other feedback you wish to include in your tweet is fine, but make sure the first three items are also included.

So a sample tweet for SXSW would look something like:

"I #upvote @GaryVee for speaking with passion at #sxsw."

Using Speaker Grader is as simple as sending a tweet; no sign up or login needed.

Please make sure to check out Speaker Grader during SXSW to see who is being voted as the best and worst speakers from the event.

One more thing...

As a way to reward people who take the time to grade speakers during SXSW, we will be giving away Apple iPads.  More specifically ...

The most active Speaker Grader voter each day will win an iPad!

Note: Individuals are only eligible to win once. The most active grader at the end of each day (11:59 p.m. Central Time) of the conference will win an iPad. 

Get SXSW News:

HubSpotters will be live-blogging SXSW, covering the hottest presentations and announcements. For the latest HubSpot SXSW coverage, please stay tuned to http://blog.hubspot.com/sxsw.

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Chart of the Week: Marketing Budgets Shifting to Digital Tactics

Marketers are shifting their budgets away from traditional marketing channels and toward digital marketing channels. Econsultancy, in association with ExactTarget, surveyed more than 265 B2B marketers -- in companies of all sizes -- asking if they plan to spend more or less of their marketing budgets in 2010 on 14 different marketing tactics. While 46% of companies plan to increase their overall marketing budgets in 2010, 66% will increase their investments in digital marketing.

Digital channels make up the top 5 tactics in which marketers are investing:

1.       Off-site Social Media - 65%

2.       Search Engine Optimization - 64%

3.       On-site Social Media - 58%

4.       Email (acquisition) - 56%

5.       Email (retention) - 53%

All of these tactics work together to help you get found and draw prospects to you.

Leaving Traditional Marketing Behind:

We also see a trend in moving away from the traditional "push" marketing channels. The top 5 places marketers are looking to cut budgets:

1.       Radio - 50% decrease

2.       Television - 44% decrease

3.       Newspapers / magazines - 44% decrease

4.       Direct Mail - 30% decrease

5.       Telemarketing - 22% decrease

Marketers are getting smart and going where their buyers are -- online.  So where are you going to spend your precious marketing dollars? Pulling buyers to you by using inbound marketing or pushing your message out through traditional channels?

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What Star Wars Can Teach You about Inbound Marketing

In our busy, time-constrained world, it is harder and harder to generate a large amount of content in a short amount of time. One solution to this problem is what I like to call Storybook Marketing. The general idea is to use age-old archetypes and paradigms to do an end run around the requirement to process everything. One of the best known examples of using these storytelling methods is a little film you may have heard of -- Star Wars. George Lucas was greatly affected by the Joseph Campbell book, The Hero With a Thousand Faces. By using the "monomyth" idea presented in the book, Lucas was able to tell a story that people immediately engaged with and understood across many cultures because it was hard-wired into people's human experience. Imagine how much more powerful your business blog or tweets would be if they accessed people's core understandings of how the world works. But how might you do that?

Your Product as a Character

Think about your product or service as a character. Is your product the loveable rogue, such as Han Solo? Look again at your product or service's characteristics. Is it fun? Powerful? Efficient? Use those characteristics to discover who your "character" is. You must also understand where on its journey that character is. For example, if your service is new and groundbreaking, your character may be at the stage of "Crossing the First Threshold" where it "actually crosses into the field of adventure, leaving the known limits of [its] world and venturing into an unknown and dangerous realm where the rules and limits are not known." Certainly sounds like launching a new product or service, doesn't it? Use these characters and narrative structure to determine how to position your story.

What or who is your product's nemesis?

Discover what your product or service's nemesis is. Apple does this extraordinarily well. It is clear that Microsoft is the nemesis to be defeated. This gives them the ability to use certain shorthand when making comparisons and engages consumers who will frequently root for the "hero." That desire is coded in our humanity! Your nemesis needs not be a specific company or product. For example, it can be argued Google's nemesis
is closed and disorganized information. You probably know your mission, but defining your "nemesis" gives power to your mission and makes it easier to communicate.

Clear Goals for Your Product

Clearly set what your product must accomplish in order to win. You must have a goal for your consumers to pull for. Imagine trying to cheer for someone who is racing if you don't know where the finish line is! This doesn't need to be your final goal, just as an Olympian may ultimately be targeting a gold medal, but still has to win many races along the way. What races does your product or service need to to win? Setting those goals help consumers feel as if they are part of something and cause them to engage in the chase for it. Is it becoming the number one product in its niche? Is it helping 100,000 customers? Set this goal and communicate it. This also gives you fodder for frequent blog or Twitter updates -- the perfect excuse to remind people of your mission.

Use Symbols to Fill the Gaps

Think about what age-old symbols and other characters you can use to quickly fill in the blanks for your customers. One of the oldest examples of this is the snake. Simply using the snake as a symbol brings to mind evil and sneakiness. Symbols such as this can quickly fill in the blanks for customers and help set the right tone.  Imagine if you were selling a personal safety product. Simply place a photo of a snake at the top of your blog entry. Immediately this prepares your readers' minds as you write about sneaky threats to their personal safety or how danger can creep up without them being aware. Your blog entries become super powered with an emotional charge that only symbols and archetypes can create.

These four tips together can power your inbound marketing in new and exciting ways. These techniques will allow you to quickly communicate information to your customers, and emotionally charge it. Your product or service will cease to be simply a product or service, but rather take on a personality and character that can be cheered for and supported.

In a time-compressed world, people talk about that which they care about most. Given a generic product or your storybook-empowered product, you will hold their interest while your competition will fade from their mind.

Photo: Hawee

 

Webinar: The 2010 State of Inbound Marketing

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8 Common Mistakes in B2B Social Media Marketing

About the author: Tom Pick is an online marketing executive with KC Associates, a marketing and PR firm in Minneapolis, Minnesota, focused on B2B technology clients. He's also the award-winning writer of the Webbiquity blog, which focuses on B2B lead generation and Web presence optimization -- the fusion of SEO, search marketing, social media, content marketing and interactive PR. 

You've seen the statistics. Over 90% of B2B decision makers use social media somewhere in their buying process. Two-thirds of B2B marketers have caught on, using social media in their marketing mix. Social media has a direct impact on brand search. Social media is mainstream.

And yet, many B2B companies struggle to show results. Part of the problem is that it's difficult to measure ROI with any precision, and part of it is confusion over whether social media is a marketing or PR activity (or something else, like customer service).

But the biggest factor is execution: according to a recent MarketingSherpa report, "two-thirds of marketers who work for organizations that have not used any form of social media marketing or PR consider themselves 'very knowledgeable' or 'somewhat knowledgeable' about this emerging strategy. Their overconfidence in unproven ability can doom social media initiatives to failure."

Here are eight common mistakes B2B companies make when jumping into social media marketing. Avoid these, and you'll greatly increase your chances of success.

1. Using social media as a direct response vehicle.

Unless your product is a price-sensitive impulse purchase (e.g. a restaurant tweeting about today's lunch specials), social media doesn't work well for direct response. For B2B companies, social media is primarily about interaction and knowledge sharing. A hard-sell approach is not only ineffective, but it can also damage a firm's brand.

2. Expecting instant results.

Social media is not like an advertising or email blast campaign designed to produce immediate results; it takes time to develop relationships, build significant blog readership or attract a large Twitter following. Social media marketing can produce significant results, but not overnight.

3. Failing to invest sufficient time and effort.

As a consequence of #2 above, many social media efforts are dubbed failures before they have a chance to succeed. Blogs have a few posts written and are then abandoned. Twitter accounts sit silent with only a handful of followers. Facebook fan pages go without updates for months on end. The B2B companies achieving results with social media are those that set a clear strategy, adjust tactics based on results and experience, and maintain commitment to their social media efforts.

4. Focusing internally.

Social media is about listening and interacting. Focusing only on your own message -- our product this, our company that -- is as boorish as talking only about yourself at a business mixer or cocktail party. Of course, you can link to your own blog posts or other content on occasion, but these should be mixed in with links to external content, and in the context of answering a question or providing helpful information to solve a problem.

5. Not building networks or using syndication.

It's not enough to have great content. You need other people sharing it on your behalf as well. Use your blog, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts, and other social media tools to build a network of influencers who will amplify your content, and use RSS syndication sites to expand the reach of your blog.

6. Having unoptimized and inconsistent profiles.

For CEOs and anyone who represents the "face" of your company to customers, prospects or other stakeholders, every profile on LinkedIn or other social networking sites is a marketing opportunity. While obviously allowing space for originality, every profile should include a compelling and consistent brand message (as well as links to the corporate website, blog, Twitter account, etc.).

7. Not monitoring.

One of the most significant aspects of social media is that it empowers others to share your message (or contradict it). You can't control every conversation about your brand in social media, but you can help shape them, or at least be seen as responsive in participating in them. Social media monitoring is imperative for understanding what's being said about your products or services, thanking your fans and responding to critics.

8. Ignoring synergy between different media.

Social media, your corporate website, PR activities and even online advertising don't exist in isolation from each other; the impact of all of these programs can be magnified by linking them wherever appropriate. Press releases should link to related content on your website or blog as well as to the profiles of anyone quoted. Your corporate website, email newsletters, even employee email signatures should link to your blog and Twitter account. Product microsites can be linked back to the corporate site or blog for additional information. Cross-linking between these different sites and sources raises your profile in search, maximizing your Web presence within your industry and product space.

Avoid these common mistakes, and you'll greatly enhance your company's success with social media.

Photo by: Truth Went Trendy

Live Webinar: How To Monitor Your Social Media Presence In 10 Minutes A Day

Join HubSpot to learn tips and strategies to monitor your company's brand and engagement in social media in just 10 minutes per day! Date and time: Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 1:00pm ET Reserve your spot now to set up a solid routine to monitor your online presence!

 

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