Why we use social media and inbound marketing for our clients.

By: Gayle Davies

We use social media tools and inbound marketing techniques because we have to! And because we would be doing a great disservice to our clients if we ignored the growing social media landscape.

It seems like just yesterday that a new business client would come in and request the standard business advertising and ID package. Brochure, business cards, stationery, logo, direct mail postcard and maybe a magazine and newspaper print ad. Of course, radio and TV ads for the larger companies. Website development requests started popping up now and then and soon enough they were a corporate identity package staple.

Zoom to the present and we are also discussing Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, Linkedin profiles and blogs. Very often clients save on their advertising expenses when we suggest they allocate a larger percentage of their budget to inbound marketing techniques. This is because once we set up the social media map, their employees can participate in creating authentic content relatively inexpensively. They can also monitor their own progress using the proper social media tracking tools.

We have found that the key to success is integrating both the old, proven methods of outbound marketing into the newer inbound marketing methods.

Download this pdf to read some interesting statistics on social media. For example did you know that there are about 126 million blogs on the internet? Are you there yet?

Oh, and one more thing. Please take a small portion of that money you have saved on media buys and use it on professional, high- quality copy and graphics. The more informal social media tools you will be using still have to present your company in an impressive manner.

(Thank you HubSpot for compiling this information.)

Marketing Communications. Write Right Tip #4: Over There

by Cathey Tarleton

"Over There," is a great patriotic song written by George M. Cohan in 1917 right after the U.S. declared war on Germany. He was riding on a train, perhaps with soldiers on their way to war over there in Europe. They're the inspiration for the song.

There, their, they're. I'm over "there."  I mean I'm over trying to ignore it when there is supposed to be they're or their. From now on, I'm going over there to bust that otherwise insightful blogger or creative copywriter, and tell them they're not as smart as their fifth grader when it comes to writing right. Marketing communications are supposed to grab attention, engage readers, inspire confidence and curiosity, urge them to explore further and convert from a visitor to a lead and a customer.  It's not supposed to annoy them. Or me. (Of course you can bust me too.)

Good "content," means good writing. And good writing means taking the time to re-read your posts before you "publish," whether they're 140 character Tweets, professional blogs, Facebook notes to your friends and their friends or a hundred other venues out there on the world wide web.

There, there. Am I being too critical?  

There, they're, their. This is how it works:

THERE is a place. "Over There" is a song about a place, Germany. (Hint: "Here" is also a place, and it's right there.)

THEIR is a possessive pronoun. That's not a criticism; it's just how it is with possessive prounouns. None of them have apostrophes (my, mine, your, yours, his, hers, their, theirs, our, ours, whose). Why?  Perhaps they were lost in the war. (Hint: An "heir" inherits somebody's possessions, and it's in their.)

THEY'RE has an apostrophe. It takes the place of a space and an "a"--no doubt over there with their comrades. They're means "they are."  

Spellcheck may or may not help you with this. It's moody. You have to put your own eyeballs on the page and defend your territory against grammatical artillery. If you get confused, try to remember the song. "Over There" makes sense. "Over They Are" sounds like Yoda. "Over Their" begs the question, "over their what?"

Write right. And don't come back till it's over, over there.  

Increase cost effectiveness of advertising dollars

by Claudia Hafner

Specialized landing pages and calls-to-action reduce costs by increasing the value of your prospects.

When a visitor clicks to your site from a paid search (pay-per-click) or banner ad, it has already cost you the price of a click to get them there. If the page they landed on is specific to the ad, you may have increased the value of that click in several ways.

1. Google likes to see content that matches the Google ad your visitor clicked on. In such cases, Google actually charges less for that click than it would have otherwise.
2. If the visitor sees what they are looking for as soon as they land on your page, they are apt to stick around and read it...and maybe even take some form of action.
   
3. If you offer your visitor something compelling (a call-to-action) in exchange for their contact information, this person has become a lead, which, over weeks, months and years, can potentially bring continued revenue.

As you move your advertising dollars away from interruption marketing to inbound marketing, you want to keep giving your visitor more of what they are looking for through specialized landing pages and calls-to-action.

Think about the different traffic streams through which your visitors are reaching your site. Can you provide more focused content through a landing page designed to give them what they are looking for? Give this some thought and leave comments about the challenges you are facing in this regard.

Start creating your specialized landing pages with this downloadable worksheet.

Download our Landing Page Worksheet.