This is done by sharing useful and interesting content, integrating with social media sites, using analytical tools, blogging, podcasts and newsletters.
If used correctly inbound marketing can play a huge role in drawing a positive amount of traffic to your website, which in turn will help your business grow to it’s maximum potential.
Listed below are a number of helpful tips to help you understand the concept of inbound marketing and how to utilise it to help you grow your business.
If you going to write interesting content then you must know what you’re talking about before you post, Irrelevant content means zero visitors, so before you start you must do your primary research and take a number of factors into consideration:
If you’re writing content for a fashion website, for instance, it is essential you keep up with current trends and fads, keep in mind change happens constantly so keep informed at all times, this ethic applies to all industries.
You can write some of the most interesting and engaging content on the web but it will all be in vain if people can’t find it, make sure to do your SEO correctly, get to the top of those rankings and watch your inbound traffic stack up.
Many businesses become lazy when it comes to maintaining and updating their website content and rarely bother with SEO at all and then they wonder why their website is buried down within the bowels of Google’s search rankings. The answer is simple: good SEO is crucial in ALL digital marketing mediums.
OK, it’s time-consuming and downright frustrating a lot of the time but if you put in the work, research and apply the right keywords, use the right analytical tools and keep it consistent then you can then sit back and watch your ranking and quality score rocket.
We humans are easily bored, it’s in our nature and we can’t help it, so as a result, if we read something that doesn’t appeal to us and bores our socks us then we are more inclined to lose interest and trail off instead of finishing reading the content.
Do NOT let that happen to your website, make sure to provide good consistent quality content, always give the customer what they want and keep it fresh and new each time, no one wants to read something they’ve seen time and time again.
Make sure you NEVER steal ideas from other sites, keep them original and you’ll be amazed at how popular and talked about your site will become.
Some industries are harder to write fresh content about so try to stay ahead of the game at all times, Do this through your market research, let’s say a new smartphone model has just come out and you’re still writing about last year’s model, are people going to be interested in your content? The answer is a definite NO! So play it smart and move with the times.
It’s no surprise that social media is a massive part of inbound marketing, it’s the number one method of peer-to-peer conversation surpassing text messaging and email, there’s a ready audience out there waiting to be converted and if you’re clever about it you can take full advantage.
Set up a social media presence by creating a Facebook, Twitter and Instagram account and linking them to your website, sharing posts, news and information from your site via these channels, using accounts on blogs and forums such as Reddit, Digg and Pinterest are also useful.
When these channels are created it is important to provide constant engagement with the customer and share details about events, news and promotions daily, another fantastic way of interacting with your audience is through liking and sharing competitions and re-tweets.
Doing this provides the audience with a call to action to visit both your social media channel and ultimately your website.
Picture the scene, you visit a website and the first thing you notice is how grey and soulless the theme is, more to the point the site features look like they haven’t been updated since the 80s! So what’s your initial reaction? Bounce! You would be surprised at the number of people who have left a website purely due to its general appearance, people tend to trust what they see the first time instead of scratching under the surface.
Think about it, you have done all the SEO, crafted beautiful content, and set up your social media channels while all the while you have neglected the overall appearance of the website, then you start experiencing a high bounce rate and you don’t understand why!
Put the effort in, develop or purchase a theme that suits you, Don’t just throw any old stuff together, much like SEO website maintenance is time-consuming and drawn out but do it right and you’ll reap the rewards.
Quick inbound marketing tips for SMES
By Matrix Internet
By Irene Hislop