The speaker, Paul Roetzer, quickly went over several strategies to Content Marketing.
New information for me, was in order to understand your customers better, take a look at the editorial calendar in magazines, trade journals... in your clients industry to see what topics are most likely important to your customers. The editorial calendar is created by people that have a lot of insight into your clients needs.
Taking that same approach, when you are writing content for your website, create your own editorial calendar. And take it a step further and create abstracts for each of your writing topics.
The big decision when getting content on your site, is how to do it. Do you outsource it? Do you do it internally? Doing it internally will require time, but you can draw on all the resources of your company from marketing, sales, executives, and the people in the guts of your operations - the worker bees in the operations department.
When outsourcing your content, it can get expensive. Traditionally content writing was a dollar a word, so for an average 500 word blog post - it could cost $500.00 at that rate. Currently outsourced content writing is like the wild west. There are new companies that desperately want the content writing business and they slash their prices in an effort to grab clients. You also have something called the "Content Flood" which is a group of editors, copywriters..., that are hired at a penny a word to create content on specific topics. While this content can rank well, it is usually not well written, and is what you get at a penny a word.
Regardless of whether you have your content written internally or you outsource it, having an editor is absolutely necessary.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Where is Inbound Marketing Headed? Panel Session
We were lucky enough to have industry superstars available for an open question and answer session to discuss the future of inbound marketing. On the panel were David Meerman, Chris Brogan, Dharmesh Shah, and Ann Handley.
Question: What is the best way to measure ROI?
Dave's Response: When analytics just can't do it it's best to see your area of influence. How many followers do you have, who is talking about you, who is retweeting your posts?
Question: Is it best to keep content on your site or post it in other locations?
Ann's Response: Yes. It should be on both you need to give your content both wings and roots.
Question: What is more important volume or quality of content?
Brian's Response: Both. The more youdo the better you get kind of like running. You start off running 6 telephone polls one day, 8 telephone polls the next day, then you all of the sudden do 12 telephone polls one day when you really shouldn't but you saw a pretty girl and you didn't want her to see you stop running. He thinks the same way about blogging. He just wants a pretty girl to see his blog posts so he keeps posting.
Question: Should you sensor blog comments?
Panel Cumulative Responses: No don't sensor and don't moderate the comments. It can hinder good open conversations and discussions about the topics. If all comments are good people can lose trust in your site that it is being moderated. Brian jokingly recommended hiring people to hate you so you could build trust. If it is a good negative argument that gives another aspect of the topic consider promoting it on twitter or facebook because it can help build trust that you are open to other points of views other than your own.
Question: How should companies/people handle a username that was created while the person was at the company should the time come that they leave or are fired fromt he company?
Panel Cumulative Responses: Well they are followers not sales leads. It mainly depends on whether the username included a tie to the company and the nature in which it was used. The I vs. We decision. If the posts were primarily I oriented meaning "I think ...." then it should stay with the person. If they were primarily We oriented "We think...." then it should stay with the company. It would be much easier if a written agreement is written out prior to the departure or creation of the account to establish ownership of its influence.
Question: Should content be recycled or customized for use in different areas/websites?
Ann's Response: She thinks its good to have a presence everwhere but suggests tweeking the content.
Brian's Response: He hates autofeeding content to several places. He thinks that it disrepects your audience that follows you on several places. You definitely should change it or fluff it up a little before posting in new places.
Question: Should you block your competitors from following you on twitter or your blog?
Panel Cumulative Responses: Let them follow you. If you know it is them making a comment respond to their comment by thanking them for taking the time to follow your blog/twitter account. They shouldn't be able to get any type of trade secrets from your blog or twitter accounts anyway.
They ended up the Q & A session by letting the panel give some parting advice.
Brian: Be a leader not a follower.
Ann: With content, focus on quality to differentiate yourself not quantity.
David: Do what you love.
Dharmesh: Marketing is not just about leads it is about building and asset or a brand so it can be worth something someday.
Overall it was great to get all their different points of views and gave unique input to several industry quandaries.
Question: What is the best way to measure ROI?
Dave's Response: When analytics just can't do it it's best to see your area of influence. How many followers do you have, who is talking about you, who is retweeting your posts?
Question: Is it best to keep content on your site or post it in other locations?
Ann's Response: Yes. It should be on both you need to give your content both wings and roots.
Question: What is more important volume or quality of content?
Brian's Response: Both. The more youdo the better you get kind of like running. You start off running 6 telephone polls one day, 8 telephone polls the next day, then you all of the sudden do 12 telephone polls one day when you really shouldn't but you saw a pretty girl and you didn't want her to see you stop running. He thinks the same way about blogging. He just wants a pretty girl to see his blog posts so he keeps posting.
Question: Should you sensor blog comments?
Panel Cumulative Responses: No don't sensor and don't moderate the comments. It can hinder good open conversations and discussions about the topics. If all comments are good people can lose trust in your site that it is being moderated. Brian jokingly recommended hiring people to hate you so you could build trust. If it is a good negative argument that gives another aspect of the topic consider promoting it on twitter or facebook because it can help build trust that you are open to other points of views other than your own.
Question: How should companies/people handle a username that was created while the person was at the company should the time come that they leave or are fired fromt he company?
Panel Cumulative Responses: Well they are followers not sales leads. It mainly depends on whether the username included a tie to the company and the nature in which it was used. The I vs. We decision. If the posts were primarily I oriented meaning "I think ...." then it should stay with the person. If they were primarily We oriented "We think...." then it should stay with the company. It would be much easier if a written agreement is written out prior to the departure or creation of the account to establish ownership of its influence.
Question: Should content be recycled or customized for use in different areas/websites?
Ann's Response: She thinks its good to have a presence everwhere but suggests tweeking the content.
Brian's Response: He hates autofeeding content to several places. He thinks that it disrepects your audience that follows you on several places. You definitely should change it or fluff it up a little before posting in new places.
Question: Should you block your competitors from following you on twitter or your blog?
Panel Cumulative Responses: Let them follow you. If you know it is them making a comment respond to their comment by thanking them for taking the time to follow your blog/twitter account. They shouldn't be able to get any type of trade secrets from your blog or twitter accounts anyway.
They ended up the Q & A session by letting the panel give some parting advice.
Brian: Be a leader not a follower.
Ann: With content, focus on quality to differentiate yourself not quantity.
David: Do what you love.
Dharmesh: Marketing is not just about leads it is about building and asset or a brand so it can be worth something someday.
Overall it was great to get all their different points of views and gave unique input to several industry quandaries.
Hubspot User Group - Introduction
After the fun opening video of the Alanis Morissette remade by Hubspot employees with lyrics made relevant to the Internet Marketing community, the moderator began with Mike Volpe delivered an overview of Hubspot. It was impressive to hear that over 20% of their growth is directly attributed to Hubspot resellers. An interesting statistic was that the audience was an even division of men and women (women represented 49% of the audience and men 51%).
Hubspot seems to be looking more to hear what their customers are saying about both their products and services, and then changing things to meet customer expectations and needs. http://ideas.hubspot.com/ is a website that is dedicated to hearing what their customers would like to see included in the Hubspot platform.
Mike Volpe then introduced Brian Halligan (Grateful Dead enthusiast and co-author of a new book about Grateful Dead book). The great thing about Brian Halligan is that he's not only a co-founder of Hubspot, but he also uses his tool - which really puts him directly in touch with both the strengths and weaknesses of his tools.
Brian Halligan discussed how there is indeed a big press to hear customer feedback and after a large survey four main points were made about the products:
1. New Bugs
2. Old Bugs
3. Usability issues
4. Speed
With every new app created for the hubspot platform one or more bugs are introduced, some of which can be worse than others. As a remedy Hubspot is dedicating time and energy to create a plan to introduce new features to apps, while limiting the number of bugs that can make it into the production version of the application.
There are older bugs that are still in the system, and because of that a lot of version 2 apps will be coming out, that have been retooled without the bugs that were in the first version of the applications.
The are also consolidating and restructuring some of the features of the Hubspot platform, to make the product more usable and less time consuming to find the information that you need.
Several senior product developers have been pulled off of their current projects to focus on improving the speed of the tools over the next few months.
Besides product focused feedback, they also received customer service feedback such as:
1. People are frustrated with success.hubspot.com and due to that a version two of this is being created to make this tool more useful.
2. Communications from Hubspot can take on a "holier than though" feel which turns off the customers. Hubspot is working on reorganizing in order to address this issue and take on a better customer service approach, which also includes reducing the wait time to talk to a Hubspot customer service representative (In june the average wait time was 4 minutes, currently the average wait time is 2 minutes, and the goal is 1 minute. They are not going to try to go under a minute wait time, because they'd rather shift money into Research and Development versus customer service calls).
Hubspot seems to be looking more to hear what their customers are saying about both their products and services, and then changing things to meet customer expectations and needs. http://ideas.hubspot.com/ is a website that is dedicated to hearing what their customers would like to see included in the Hubspot platform.
Mike Volpe then introduced Brian Halligan (Grateful Dead enthusiast and co-author of a new book about Grateful Dead book). The great thing about Brian Halligan is that he's not only a co-founder of Hubspot, but he also uses his tool - which really puts him directly in touch with both the strengths and weaknesses of his tools.
Brian Halligan discussed how there is indeed a big press to hear customer feedback and after a large survey four main points were made about the products:
1. New Bugs
2. Old Bugs
3. Usability issues
4. Speed
With every new app created for the hubspot platform one or more bugs are introduced, some of which can be worse than others. As a remedy Hubspot is dedicating time and energy to create a plan to introduce new features to apps, while limiting the number of bugs that can make it into the production version of the application.
There are older bugs that are still in the system, and because of that a lot of version 2 apps will be coming out, that have been retooled without the bugs that were in the first version of the applications.
The are also consolidating and restructuring some of the features of the Hubspot platform, to make the product more usable and less time consuming to find the information that you need.
Several senior product developers have been pulled off of their current projects to focus on improving the speed of the tools over the next few months.
Besides product focused feedback, they also received customer service feedback such as:
1. People are frustrated with success.hubspot.com and due to that a version two of this is being created to make this tool more useful.
2. Communications from Hubspot can take on a "holier than though" feel which turns off the customers. Hubspot is working on reorganizing in order to address this issue and take on a better customer service approach, which also includes reducing the wait time to talk to a Hubspot customer service representative (In june the average wait time was 4 minutes, currently the average wait time is 2 minutes, and the goal is 1 minute. They are not going to try to go under a minute wait time, because they'd rather shift money into Research and Development versus customer service calls).
Monday, October 4, 2010
2010 HubSpot HUG Conference
So I would say that tonights welcome reception was a huge success. It started off with getting great HubSpot gear that included a couple HubSpot t-shirts and an awesome coffee mug. We were then offered a tour of the new HubSpot facility. When you walk into their building there is a great courtyard area with a skylight that during the day i'm sure lets in wonderful sunlight. They have some walls of their office painted with dry erase paint so you can brainstorm, draw, or write whatever you'd like on the walls.
They have several conference rooms of which any hubspot employee can participate in any meeting. Instead of an org chart they have a huge wall that is an influence chart. It not only connects people who work for each other but it also connects people that influence eachother. They have the developers in a more quiet work zone and a different area for their sales marketing team that tends to a bit more noisy and boistrous. They even have a bocce ball area. This is just the tip of the iceburg but needless to say it's an impressive work environment.
Upon going downstairs to the courtyard they were recording a live broadcast of HubSpot TV where Karen and Mike were able to get some of the guests involved with answering and asking some questions. It was a bit hard to hear at times because of a slight echo but I could tell that they were having a great time. Meanwhile as you can imagine some great networking oportunities were developing as all sorts of marketing industry folks were co-mingling and talking about their experiences with HubSpot and raving about their personal representatives. It is really great to see a company that is so involved with their users/clients and seems to appreciate their input as much as HubSpot. I can't wait to see how the conference goes tomorrow!
They have several conference rooms of which any hubspot employee can participate in any meeting. Instead of an org chart they have a huge wall that is an influence chart. It not only connects people who work for each other but it also connects people that influence eachother. They have the developers in a more quiet work zone and a different area for their sales marketing team that tends to a bit more noisy and boistrous. They even have a bocce ball area. This is just the tip of the iceburg but needless to say it's an impressive work environment.
Upon going downstairs to the courtyard they were recording a live broadcast of HubSpot TV where Karen and Mike were able to get some of the guests involved with answering and asking some questions. It was a bit hard to hear at times because of a slight echo but I could tell that they were having a great time. Meanwhile as you can imagine some great networking oportunities were developing as all sorts of marketing industry folks were co-mingling and talking about their experiences with HubSpot and raving about their personal representatives. It is really great to see a company that is so involved with their users/clients and seems to appreciate their input as much as HubSpot. I can't wait to see how the conference goes tomorrow!
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