HubSpot's Inbound Internet Marketing Blog

10 Ways a Start-Up Can Use Social Media to Market Itself

Brian Halligan — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 07:30:00 GMT

This guest article is from Edward Boches, the chief creative officer at storied advertising agency, Mullen, who has a TwitterGrade of 99.95 and blogs at EdwardBoches.com.

On a personal note, I have been interested in what the crowd of "Mad Men" type advertising agencies were doing in the face of an audience increasingly efficient at blocking out their jingles and tv spots. Edward is one of the folks in his field that is truly embracing these changes. I hope you enjoy the article. - Brian Halligan

10 Ways a Start-Up Can Use Social Media to Market Itself
By Edward Boches

“How can a start-up with a few employees and a tiny marketing budget get its name out there?”

The question appeared perfect for a panel that included blogger and Twitter star Chris Brogan, Hubspot’s CEO and Inbound Marketing author Brian Halligan, and this blogger, who has worked on the launch of numerous companies and brands including Lotus, Monster.com, and Lending Tree, not to mention another dozen that never made it.

Interestingly, while we all agreed in principal with what a company should do -- embrace social media, take advantage of the platforms available, connect with influencers, and allow the community to play a role -- we disagreed somewhat on how much time it might take and who should do it.

Chris suggested that you could achieve a version of what he’s done – build a following, mobilize a community, turn content into business (my interpretation) -- in a couple of hours a day. I contended it would take a lot more time than that if you planned on generating quality content. Brian argued that anyone could easily start a blog, post something daily, learn to be Google friendly, and let search take care of the rest.

We each answered quickly and moved on to another question. But if we’d had more time, this is what I believe we may have collectively suggested that a start-up do to market itself:

1.    Craft a brand position rooted in a customer benefit.

An awful lot of young companies do a good job of describing a product's features rather than synthesizing them into a single benefit. A simple handle, either expressing what a brand stands for or declaring its point of difference, will serve you well in everything from appearing in search results to being remembered.

2.    Take your message and content to your consumer. Engineer your presence.

You may want a website where you fill orders, capture data, or simply demonstrate your product, but you shouldn't assume your customer will instantly come to you. Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, and YouTube are all basically free tools. You need to go where your consumer lives online. If your customers, prospects, and influencers are there, you should be there: listening, engaging, sharing, and helping them.

3.    Find inventive ways to create or gather content.

For starters, make your website into a blog. Fresh content, the ability to post comments, and pages that get linked to will add to your online visibility. No doubt it’s challenging and time consuming to generate enough content to populate your network and blog, but there are smart ways to go about it.

First, whatever you’re doing, write about it. Report on your progress. Second, come up with a daily question you'd want someone to ask and respond to it in a blog post or video. Third, save time by collecting content from others. Place your product or service, even in beta form, in front of people willing to blog, make videos, and tell stories about it. Aggregate this content to your blog or video channel. Fourth, conduct polls or ask questions about a related topic and turn these results into future posts as well as “news” you can release to both bloggers and press.

4.    Get on Twitter and use it actively.

It takes time to build a large Twitter following, but it’s a quick way to connect with industry influencers, bloggers, and press that might matter to you.

No matter what you sell, someone on Twitter is having a conversation about it. It's your chance to listen, respond, and engage with potential enthusiasts. More importantly, on Twitter there’s a willingness to help each other that you just won’t find anywhere else. Perhaps it’s because re-tweeting information is virtually effortless, or that people practically vie to share new finds, or that users feel a sense of obligation to those who follow and promote them, but for whatever reason, you’re likely to find people who are willing to help promote your brand on Twitter, presuming you learn Twitter protocols and give more than you take.

5.    Connect your customers and prospects to each other.

One of the best things you can do as a young company is to foster word-of-mouth conversations among your earliest customers. Whether you do it on Facebook or on your own site, it's important to invite your customers to talk to each other and share ideas. Allow them to guide one another on how they use your product or service. Not only will you have the opportunity to learn what people like and don't like about your product, you may end up with a bunch of people you can ask to help you.

6.    Develop relationships with the right bloggers.

Every start-up in the world wants that article in the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. But the fact is, the right bloggers might be more influential for a number of reasons. They have loyal readers. Their references or links to your site will drive up your search results. And these days, it’s more likely that ideas will bubble up from the blogosphere to the mainstream press than vice versa.

7.    Start Crowdsourcing.

There is no shortage of services - companies like crowdSpring (design) or Tongal (video) -- to help you source affordable content from designers, videographers, writers, and others. But there's an even better reason to crowdsource. You allow your customers to participate in the creation of your brand. If you want a great example, take a look at how HBO seeded True Blood. Instead of advertising, HBO shipped samples of synthetic blood to popular videographers and bloggers, who, of course, couldn't resist making videos or posting pieces about the mysterious liquid. You may not have anything as cool as fake blood, but you can still learn to think this way.

8. Read Brian Halligan’s Inbound Marketing Book.

Even if you have a product with enough mainstream appeal to justify paid advertising, consumers today spend more time searching than watching. You want to be found. Inbound Marketing covers all of the basics you’ll need to know to make your content Google friendly.

9. Give stuff away for free.

Take a look at what HubSpot does: free tools (Twitter Grader and Website Grader); free webinars (How to use SEO, Blogging for Business); free eBooks (Facebook for Business, Getting Found Online). If you sell food, give away recipes. If you’ve invented a sleep monitor, offer free tips on better sleeping. Free content generates awareness, builds loyalty, creates newsworthy topics, and spreads word-of-mouth. Remember, in this day and age, what a brand does is far more important than what a brand says.

10. Make the time, build in the role, or hire the right partner.

As folks like Chris Brogan and Gary Vaynerchuk have proven, you can do all this yourself if you have the right time, energy and commitment. If you can’t muster that, give this role to one of your first hires. If you’re less than comfortable identifying that person within your own company, (hint: it’s not an intern or a kid right out of school; Digital Natives may know all the technology, but they often lack the strategic chops and the ability to create truly compelling content) retain the services of a public relations agency with real experience in social influence. Make sure that if you go this route, you ask for case studies as evidence that the PR team assigned to your business actually practices what it preaches.

When I started in this business, launching a brand was costly. You needed a significant marketing budget that covered an oversized booth at a trade show, a direct sales force or a Super Bowl commercial, and a good hunk of your money went into advertising and promotion. Now you might be able to get away with a laptop, an Internet connection, and some well-focused social media.

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The Rank Nazi: Your Content Is Not Worthy, No Rank For You! [cartoon]

Dharmesh Shah — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:18:00 GMT

Looking to get more organic traffic from Google? You need to create content that's worthy! (Yes, it's that simple. Not easy, but simple).

If you liked this cartoon, you can find more cartoons in the recently released book: Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs. The book's been a runaway success (I think it's because of the cartoons, but my co-author thinks its the marketing advice -- you decide).

By the way, if you're a Seinfeld fan, what's your favorite episode/scene? (I'm looking for more ideas for future cartoons).

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Study Reveals That Online Searches Affect Emotions, Memory

Shannon Sweetser — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:48:00 GMT

If you’re not creating great content to help your company get found online, you’re missing an incredible opportunity to legitimately connect with people searching for information related to your industry or product.

According to a new study from the University of Missouri, out of the 73% of American adults who use the internet daily, over half of them emotionally responded and remembered content that they found “searching” instead of “surfing.”

This data, published as “The Effect of Searching Versus Surfing on Cognitive and Emotional Responses to Online News” in the Journal of Media Psychology, should be an immediate motivator for any business interested in driving highly qualified leads through SEO. This study absolutely confirms that companies creating quality content that meet the informational needs of readers (rather than only their entertainment needs) have a greater chance of connecting emotionally to potential customers. Companies can then leverage this emotional connection to nurture leads and drive their customers to complete an action on their site.

Unfortunately, though the data presented in the study is very interesting, the marketing takeaway in the University of Missouri article appears to incorrectly recommend Outbound Marketing tactics instead of Inbound Marketing as a way to get found by people using search. In the article, Kevin Wise, assistant professor of strategic communication, says that site sponsors should “consider increasing their advertising on pages that tend to be accessed via search engines.”

You should not advertise on pages if you intend to get found in search. You don’t get credit for that traffic. Instead, you should create and search engine optimize your own content so your content can really get found.

The study also found that people remember and understand the information they discover when they conducted specific searches. When you create your content, be sure you create specific content that answers specific questions and use specific keywords that people (looking for answers within your industry) are searching for. This way you not only get found in organic search by the people you're looking to attract, but really make an impression in their memory.

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HubSpot TV - Facebook Halloween Horror with Guest Paul Dunay

Rebecca Corliss — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:06:00 GMT

Episode #64 - October 30, 2009
(Episode Length: 24 minutes, 43 seconds)

Intro

How to interact on Twitter: @karenrubin, @mvolpe and @PaulDunay with www.HubSpot.tv in your tweet.
Subscribe in iTunes: http://itunes.hubspot.tv

Guest: Paul Dunay

Book Giveaway! Go to Facebook.com/FBMarketingForDummies!

Global Managing Director of Services and Social Marketing for Avaya and author of Facebook Marketing for Dummies
Blog: Buzz Marketing for Technology
Question from @KirstenPetra - When I fan someone, I don't feel like I am actually their friend and that I don't actually get anything in return. How can businesses use take advantage of fan pages to make me feel like it actually matters?
Question from @mergenchuluun - What is your top takeaway from writing Facebook Marketing for Dummies?
Use Social Media to spot issues before they hit the Contact Center!

Headlines

Facebook Cans the Spam King

Facebook Continues to Can Spam
Facebook has been awarded $711 million in damages from Sanford Wallace, the notorious "Spam King". (Previously, MySpace has been awarded $234 million.)
Marketing Takeaway: Don't use spam; and keep spammers away from your customers.

Why Geocities Failed?

We don't want to built web sites, easy page makers or not. Making new pages, figuring out where or how to add them to the navigation - not cool.
Audience. Once, a long time ago, family and friends we proudly told about our site came to it. Then the incentive was gone and they didn't come anymore.
In the end, all we wanted to do is: Share some links to stuff we found cool (the "forwards"), Show our photos (the "kids & cats"), Show our videos (without figuring out codecs or embedding), Post status updates and comments (make "statements")
Geocities Closed by @ruudhein
Marketing Takeaway: Make things simple for your customers.

Are we measuring blog influence correctly?

The Trouble with Blog Influence Statistics
"I'm not a big fan of statistics when it comes to blog readership. Not because I'm not interested, but because I'm not convinced the average person understands exactly what a blog is."
"A recent study by Mediamark Research & Intelligence (pdf) found that 10.1 percent of U.S. adults reported to having read a blog in the last 30 days. And, if you think that number's small, only 3.4 percent of adults actually wrote a blog post in the same period."
If so few people are reading blogs, are they really that influential? Are we measuring the right stats? What about http://Blog.Grader.com?
Marketing Takeaway: For your blog, measure links, comments, readers and especially leads and customers.

Forum Fodder

On InboundMarketing.com From Kim Kolb: A customer of mine is a restaurant/bar. They use social media extensively and have a twitter account and Facebook fan page. They believe this is enough and they do not need a website. Do you agree/disagree?

Marketing Tip of the Week: Start a Facebook Business Page to grow your business.

Resources: Free eBook and Facebook Marketing for Dummies Book on Amazon

Closing

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You Don't Have to Be a Great Writer to Write a Great Blog

Brian Halligan — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 07:30:00 GMT

I am an engineer by training who had very little writing experience in my career until I started HubSpot. In the early days of the company, I could not write software, so I spent a lot of time writing articles for our Internet Marketing Blog and was pleasantly surprised by how well it performed. Today, the blog has over 20,000 subscribers and over 100,000 new visitors per month.

The good performance convinced me that I had been suppressing brilliant writing skills for the last 20 years! I was so excited that I sent a note to my eighth grade teacher, Tom Brown, who helped me learn to write, and thanked him.

Emboldened with my newfound writing confidence, I set out this year to write the Inbound Marketing Book with my co-founder, Dharmesh Shah. When we submitted the final draft to a real professional editor, I was confident that she would send it back mostly clean with some high praise for my writing skills. WRONG! The document she sent back had more redlines on it than anything I had ever seen in my life.

After a couple of laborious weeks of language crafting, we got it close to perfect; and it is now ranked #200 out of 8 million books on Amazon (including books by Dan Brown, Stephen King, etc.).

The lesson I learned is that you don’t have to be a great writer to have a great blog. You need to have remarkable ideas that spread. I also think you get a lot of credit on your blog for having an authentic voice.

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Sales Vs. Marketing: Whose Job is it to Generate Leads?

Pete Caputa — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:00:00 GMT

This article is an interview of Anthony Cole by HubSpot's Peter Caputa. Tony is a sales development guru and the founder of Anthony Cole Training Group. Anthony Cole Training Group (a HubSpot customer) helps individuals and companies drive consistent and predictable sales growth. Tony's blog is called the Sales Java blog and you can find out about his live webinar series here.

In marketing, we call it "generating leads." In sales, it's usually called "prospecting." Whose job is it anyways?

While salespeople have always been measured on their ability to generate leads, inside sales people are often measured only on their ability to turn a cold list into warmer leads for their outside reps. However, even outside sales people who do their own prospecting are measured on their ability to fill the top of their funnel based on what leads turn into sales at the bottom.

Great marketers generate demand for their sales teams. With online marketing, marketers are now being measured on their ability to do so. With measurement comes great responsibility.

As a marketer, are you up for the challenge? Is your sales team carrying their weight too?

To find out what it takes for a salesperson to be good at prospecting and generating leads, I turned to a sales training guru that I've been following for a few years, Anthony Cole:

Pete: How do you teach sales people to prospect?

Tony: Actually the real key is to hire people who can prospect (prospect qualification is a testable skill) and then help them improve their techniques. Prospecting effectively is a topic we help sales people with every day and maybe for the marketers out there, this may help you understand how to better support your sales teams. We coach salespeople that their attitude about prospecting will determine how successful their sales career will be. If they feel that prospecting is something they have to do, then they will view it as drudgery. They will resist it; they will find other things to do instead of prospecting. They will not improve their skills at it and their performance and success in sales will suffer. They must embrace prospecting. They must understand that prospecting is the job. They get paid a lot of money because they are willing to do what others won't - prospect.

Pete: Most people think that the best salespeople are the ones who are all about talking a lot and closing hard. In your experience, would you say that prospecting is the hardest thing for salespeople?

Tony: Those people in sales who are making the most money are not making the most because they are brighter or have better presentations, or because their product is better. They are making big money because they have figured out that the real job is getting in front of people or businesses that need, want and can pay for the product and services they provide. The moment they realize that prospecting is THE job, they have taken their first step to the best year in sales they've ever had.

Pete: Have you found that there are certain salespeople that are better at prospecting than others? Why?

Tony: Yes, there are people who are better prospectors and here’s why. They have less of a need for approval and can ask tough questions. Also, they recover from rejection quickly so not much gets them down. They need to have the attitude of prospects that ‘some will, some won’t, so what, next…’ Many salespeople have self-limiting beliefs that in turn limit their behavior. The first step to unlocking the locked mindset is to identify those beliefs. Here are some examples:

"I don't like prospecting."
"It's hard to get past gatekeepers."
"If a prospect asks me to send something, I usually send something."
"I'm uncomfortable asking for referrals."

Pete: How do you recommend salespeople get over these self-limiting beliefs?

Tony: Having the right attitude and beliefs about prospecting is the essential key that will unlock the skills they may have already, if they had just been able to overcome their own self-limiting beliefs. We tell them to take the limiting beliefs they've identified and turn them into positive affirmations. Below are a few examples:

"I don't like prospecting." --> "I love prospecting because it is the key to great prosperity."
"It's hard to get past gatekeepers." --> "Getting past a gatekeeper is what I do best when I prospect."
"People don't like to give referrals." --> "People are more than willing to introduce me to other people they know."

Pete: That's really interesting. Do you think marketers have self limiting beliefs about generating leads for their sales teams?

Well, I'm not the expert on that. But, I've listened to enough salespeople complain about their marketing teams to know that it's probably a good idea for marketers to reflect on it.

Maybe we should ask your readers to take a few minutes and identify some of the negative thoughts they might have about supporting their sales teams. Then, challenge them to turn them around to become positive powerful tools for their mutual success. I'd love to see more sales and marketing teams working more closely, and in unison, to grow their companies.

Feel free to share some self limiting beliefs that you (as marketers) have (or have seen) about generating leads for your sales team. Let's all work together to come up with some affirmations!

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Do You Have Digital Natives at Your Organization?

Brian Whalley — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 07:30:00 GMT

"Digital Natives" are a cultural subset of teens and young professionals that have grown up immersed in the digital world where the Internet, personal computers, and modern technology are a commonplace convenience.

In Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah's recent book, Inbound Marketing, they recommend hiring more Digital Natives, not Digital Immigrants ("speaks web with an accent"). Natives bring a modern perspective and prowess into their workplaces and it's important that employers looking to assure inbound marketing success hire these individuals to their organization.

However, identifying a digital native versus a digital immigrant can be tricky. So, here's a four-point guide that may help you make the distinction:

1) Natives are More Interested in the Information than the Machine

Digital natives grew up with computers around their house and friend's houses. They might have a preference for a specific operating system, but in general they can navigate any kind of computer you put in front of them. They are far more interested in what information they can get out of the machine than the tools at hand. If there’s something that they need to do but they don’t already know how, they’ll work to figure it out on their own.

What to look for:

Give them a task on an unfamiliar computer. If they sit down and say, "I don't know how to use Macs (or Windows)," they probably aren't a digital native. (-1 point)

However, if you give your subject a task and they are able to navigate a computer easily to accomplish the goal, give them a point. (+1 point)

2) Puzzles, Problems and Games

Digital natives hate asking for help. After all, you're talking to the video game generation: questions and unknown problems are puzzles and games waiting to be solved. In a video game, there is no "Help" system or "I give up" button. Puzzles are there to be beaten, and they learn from them. You may find that the digital natives never ask for help with anything. Be okay with that. Part of how they learn is through self-discovery, exploration, and by making mistakes.

If you turn their job into a series of puzzles that offer small knowledge rewards at the end of each section, which builds into a complete project, you'll find them burning night and weekend hours just to complete their goals.

What to look for:

You'll find that a Digital Native will usually steer themselves if presented with a puzzle. Give your potential native a complicated puzzle or task. Halfway through, offer your assistance. If they seem to be particularly focused on completing the task without your help give them (+1 point). If they seem relieved and relinquish the task to you, (-1 point).

3) Digital Natives Love Constant Communication, But Hate Phones
Digital natives are relentless multi-taskers. One thing that most regularly startles digital immigrants is how a native can listen to music, talk on instant messenger, watch TV and work on a project all at the same time. To a native, this is just part of their nature.

What to look for...

Most digital natives aren't big phone users; being multi-taskers means that they avoid activities that might prevent them from becoming single-threaded, like talking on the phone. They'd rather talk via email, instant messenger, or through other methods of communication where they can continue to work on other things while talking with you.

Ask your subject, "What is your preferred means of communication?" If you're talking to a Digital Native, they probably primarily use a cell phone for text messaging and accessing the Internet, and only use the phone function to call their mother (+1 point). If you're still not sure if they're a digital tourist or a digital native, ask them if they regularly use or have a landline (-1 point).

4) Digital Natives Tell It Like It Is

Another common trait across Digital Natives is that they are never afraid to speak their minds. They tend to want to logically break down arguments and strategies. This can lead to confrontations when their manager or other staff member wants something done. However, there are benefits to this personality trait. Natives are almost always analyzing problems and trying to find ways to improve their work. Companies can leverage this “always-on” mentality to refine their products, find faults in their internal processes, or discuss how to incorporate new trends into their business.

What to look for...

Ask them what they would change about their daily work flow, or your business processes if given the chance. A Native has already been thinking about this question and has an answer. (+1 point) Immigrants tend to punt or suggest trivial changes rather than speaking to real issues. (-1 point)

Do you have Digital Natives in your organization? How do you recognize them and incorporate them into your structure? Let us know in the comments.

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HubSpot's Inbound Internet Marketing Blog

10 Ways a Start-Up Can Use Social Media to Market Itself

Video: How to Use Social Media for Lead Generation

The Rank Nazi: Your Content Is Not Worthy, No Rank For You! [cartoon]

Study Reveals That Online Searches Affect Emotions, Memory

SEO for Lead Generation Kit

Top 5 Inbound Marketing Stories of the Week: Social Media Strategy

1.Developing a Social Media Marketing Strategy

2. Stop Building Microsites?

3. Twitter Lists: Journalism Becomes a Real-Time Job

4. How to Write a Blog Post That's Stickier than Velcro

Video: How to Use Social Media for Lead Generation

HubSpot TV - Facebook Halloween Horror with Guest Paul Dunay

Video: How to Use Social Media for Lead Generation

You Don't Have to Be a Great Writer to Write a Great Blog

Webinar: Blogging forBusiness

Sales Vs. Marketing: Whose Job is it to Generate Leads?

Inbound Lead Generation Kit

Do You Have Digital Natives at Your Organization?

How to Generate Leads for Small Business