Internet Marketing Course BLOG

Part of the 999 Internet Marketing Tips Series

By Dave Ingalls
February 14, 2011

Internet Marketing Tip #6: Concentrate your Internet Marketing efforts on INBOUND INTERNET MARKETING Techniques.

As you begin your Internet Marketing adventure, I strongly urge you to focus your Internet Marketing efforts on what has become known as INBOUND (INTERNET) MARKETING.

What is inbound marketing and why emphasize it?

Inbound Internet Marketing is focused on:

1) Creating quality, useful content that addresses the needs of your audience and then “distributing” that content both on your Web site and on other Web properties that link back to your Web site,

2) Search engine optimization of that content so it can be easily found by those prospects actively looking for it via search engines like Google, and

3) Participating in the online “conversation” about your products or services via the use of online social media (for most B2B Marketers, this last point will be focused on blogging).

Why these techniques? Because the average sales prospect, whether B2B or B2C, is inundated with “Outbound Marketing” every waking hour of every day.

These outbound marketing techniques include trade shows, seminar series, email blasts to purchased lists, internal cold calling, outsourced telemarketing, and traditional advertising (TV, radio, printed media, etc.).

» Continue reading “Internet Marketing Tip – Use Inbound Marketing Techniques”

By Dave Ingalls
B2B Internet Marketing Consultant
October 20, 2010

Great post by HubSpoter Emily Haahr!

You’re a small business owner who loves the concept of Inbound Internet Marketing, but only have a few hours each week to dedicate to it – how should you allocate your time?

The answer, in percent of time per Inbound Internet Marketing technique:

Blogging/Content Creation: 40%
Calls-to-Action/Landing Pages: 30%
Link Building: 20%
Social Media: 10%

To learn WHY you should split up your time in this manner, you need to read the full (but quite short) HubSpot blog post by clicking on the following link:

Breaking Down the Inbound Marketing Mix

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“Inbound Marketing – Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs”

By Dave Ingalls
B2B Internet Marketing Consultant
April 21, 2010

“Inbound Marketing – Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs”, by HubSpot founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah is THE seminal book on how to use the new concept of “inbound marketing” instead of the classic outbound or “interruption” marketing model to succeed in your online marketing efforts.

In fact, as far as I can tell, Halligan and Shah basically invented the term “Inbound Marketing” when they opened the doors at HubSpot, a marketing software company that helps businesses “get found”, and have now formalized the concept with the release of this book.

Even though the book is a quick read (a little over 200 pages), you’ll find yourself re-reading and “dog-earing” many of the pages!  It’s stuffed with incredible insights and useful tips on how to put those insights to work in your online marketing program today.

I won’t bore you with a section-by-section review of this very useful book. I’ll just leave you with this thought: the next time you buy something, anything really, think about the trusted sources you used to help you make that buying decision, and where YOU found those trusted sources. I’ll bet most if not all of those sources had some online aspect to them, and here’s the KEY point, I’ll bet YOU found them and not the other way around.

My advice – Buy this book Now! Here’s a link to the book on Amazon:

Inbound Marketing – Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs

Technorati Tags:Business, Internet Marketing, Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Web Marketing

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By Dave Ingalls
B2B Internet Marketing Consultant
March 30, 2010

I recently “discovered” the site SocialMediaB2B.com and now I’m more or less addicted to it!

What is “SocialMediaB2B.com”? Here’s how they describe themselves:

“SocialMediaB2B.com’s goal is to become the foremost news and discussion site on the topic social media’s impact on B2B companies, help drive social media adoption within B2B companies, and become a repository for advice and commentary from experts in the social media and B2B industries. The site is a group blog with editors and regular and guest contributors publishing articles on a variety of subjects related to social media’s impact on B2B companies.”

What I love about this site is the way the articles are so well crafted to the specific needs of B2B Internet Marketers.

Here’s an example of a recent article on pitching B2B stories to B2B bloggers:

“4 Things to Know When Pitching B2B Bloggers” by Karlie Justus

First, Karlie gave a nice overview of pitching stories to bloggers versus traditional newspaper, technical journal editors:

“Some points to consider:

• Actually read the blog. Whether you subscribe to it in a news reader or do a quick scan once a month, get a handle for the blogger’s tone, writing and opinions.
• Search for the term “pitch” and “pitching” among the blog posts. This may yield a post that details exactly how that blogger would like to be approached with ideas for content. Check the about page or other pages on the blog.
• Establish a baseline relationship by following the blogger on Twitter and commenting on his or her blog.
• Make sure the blogger has access to images, screenshots, link, etc. that will help him or her directly drop those into a post.
• Personalize, personalize, personalize. Put yourself in the blogger’s shoes – if you received this e-mail, would you immediately drag, drop and delete?
• Don’t attach a news release. If you can’t relate how your information is important to a blog’s readers in a paragraph or two, reconsider your angle.”

And then the article gets REALLY interesting for B2B Internet Marketers:

“What are some things that are different when you pitch a B2B blogger? When you have a story, product, person or example you think could provide great content for a B2B blog, here are some things to think about:”

Read the entire article by clicking on the following link:

4 Things to Know When Pitching B2B Bloggers

Technorati Tags:Business, Internet Marketing, Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Web Marketing

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By Dave Ingalls
Internet Marketing Consultant
February 21, 2010

Every now and then I get the opportunity to solve a Web site-related technical problem.  When that happens, I proudly don my “geek hat”, go under the hood and outline how I was able to solve that problem.  This time it has to do with WordPress and its use as a Web site and blog Content Management System (CMS).  I am doing this because I’ve seen several posts in forums wondering how to solve this particular problem.

WordPress is the first or second most popular open source blogging software on the Web.  Recent WordPress versions have added the ability to use the software as either a stand-alone blogging platform or as the back-end content management system for a Web site and a blog.

As part of the Web site/blog setup, WordPress provides a built-in mechanism to create a “static” Home page for the Web site and a separate “static” page that is used as the blog home page.  (I put the word static in quotes because there are really no static Web pages in WordPress – all pages and posts are created dynamically from content and graphics stored in an online database.)

Using this built-in mechanism is very straightforward – you end up with a Web site “home” page that mimics the standard “index” Web site home page and a blog “home” page that most folks name “blog”.  So far, so good.

Now, if you also structured this WordPress-based Web site so that all of the WordPress files are installed in their own sub-directory, you end up with the problem described below.

The problem: The BLOG RSS feed has an incorrect name (title) and the link to the blog “home” page is also incorrect.  (If you don’t know what a RSS feed is, please visit Wikipedia to learn about it.)

An example of what I’m talking about will be helpful.

Let’s say we named our WordPress-based Web site the “Internet Marketing Course”, and we named the  related blog the “Internet Marketing Course Blog”.  (Sound familiar?!)  When we look at the standard RSS feed created by WordPress based on the configuration described above, the BLOG RSS feed is named “Internet Marketing Course” and the Web page address it links back to is the home page of the Web site, not the blog. Oh oh!

The fix: Long story short, open the WordPress files “feed-rss.php” and “feed-rss2.php” in a text editor like Notepad.  (Both files are located in “wp-includes” directory in the WordPress installation directory.)  Then make the following changes to both files:

1. Add “echo ‘ Blog’;” in the location shown below to add the word “Blog” to the feed title:

<title><?php bloginfo_rss(‘name’); echo ‘ Blog’; wp_title_rss(); ?></title>

Note the SPACE inside the single quotation marks.

2. Remove all text between the <link> tags and then place the specific blog home page address (URL)

<link>http://www.yourdomain.com/blog</link>

If you’ve also had this problem, I hope this blog post helps!

Technorati Tags:Business, Internet Marketing, Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Web Marketing

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