One of the first thing I quickly realized when I started my first business was this: I do NOT want to chase business.
I’m not that old by the way, that was 12 years ago. The landscape was completely different even though it wasn’t that long ago. I think I shared this with you before, I got started by doing some small print ads on local magazines and ended up producing my own TV spots and running them on national networks. I had to learn everything from writing to casting, producing and even doing my own media buys and running all kinds of reports.
I did all that just to avoid chasing business. The end result was about 600 incoming daily calls.
I did learn how to generate a lead through Inbound Marketing. But there was something I figured out besides making the phone ring 600 times in a day. The quality of the lead generated through inbound is much much higher than outbound, where you are pretty much trying to convince a person about something they did not ask for.
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This is a guest post by Mitt Ray from Social Marketing Writing.
Social media and blogs are usually the basic requirements of every content marketing strategy. Having a good blog with a lot of good content and being able to share them on social media platforms with lots of followers and fans can be a really good start. But the marketing material you should never forget to use in your content marketing strategy; is a white paper.
White papers differ from blogs and other form of content as they have a tiny bit of direct marketing messages in them. Most of the white paper is generally content, but a small fraction of a white paper consists of direct marketing material. A blog can be very powerful and educative, but it would normally take you some time before you start generating leads (on average it takes about 6 months for a blog to generate leads) from it.
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According to the Content Marketing Institute, Content is one of the fastest growing segments in Marketing and an increasing number of marketers are relying more and more on their strategies to achieve success online.
Is this a surprise to you? Because if it is, you have probably been living under a rock for the last couple of years.
With the amount of content that goes left and right in front of you, on your screen, there are content creators, curators, users that share and consume on a minute to minute basis. Now, that doesn’t mean all that content is successful in reaching its goals or has even been put out there with a business goal.
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This is a guest post by Hector Cuevas from HectorJCuevas.com
Mediocrity is often the result of taking the road of least resistance. You agree?…
I’m sure you do. Building successful blogs, strong brands and huge audiences is no walk in the park. This process slaps you in the face with resistance ever step of the way.
But it gets worse. Even though you’ve decided to take on this monster of a task; even though you’ve decided to take the road less traveled by building your internet empire, you may still be getting mediocre results. But why? – Are other successful bloggers smarter than you? That’s highly unlikely…
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This is a guest post by Srini Rao from The Skool of Life
If you know anything about me you know that I have a tendency to look for people with interesting stories. I think social media fame is ridiculous and I could care less how many followers you have on twitter. I never even check how many followers I have on twitter. It’s no secret that I believe metrics and measurements limit your potential.
I believe there’s a tremendous power in reaching out to people because you have a genuine interest in them. The problem is we approach too many things with a “what am I going to gain from this mind set?” What I’ve realized that every single conversation you have with a person whether it be via tweets, emails, facebook comments or anything else creates new possibilities and opportunities in your life.
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Last April was a crazy month for me. I was in Antigua Guatemala for a week, came back to Los Angeles for 3 days, flew to Santiago Chile for 10 days (that’s a 12-hour flight in case you didn’t know), came back to Los Angeles again for a week to finish rushing to Miami for a couple of days.
But that wasn’t all, I did all this in the middle of clients projects and, except for Guatemala, the rest of the traveling was strictly business (when I say business that includes drinks and cigars in the middle… I didn’t say I was complaining). On top of that, my blog has been experiencing some serious issues that required some special attention. Just so you get an idea, every time I publish a post, the entire site goes down, sometimes it will disconnect from the database or it will go completely blank.
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You probably already read a thousand posts about how to promote your blog.
Every blog about blogging has published one and, hell, I probably have written something about it too. And yet, how to put my blog on the map is one of the most frequent questions I get from clients and friends. I don’t blame you, blogging is one of the hottest marketing vehicles nowadays (I heard).
Commenting, guest posting, free gifts, you name it. If you ask me, all good advice. I’m not about to tell you not to do those things because I truly believe they help get some visibility back to your blog. Allow me a couple of minutes to make my point.
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This is a guest post by Hector Cuevas from HectorJCuevas.com
There are a lot of reasons why your blog might not be growing, but I don’t have enough time or space in this article to get into all of them.
What I am going to do is give you the one thing that changed it all for me. This idea, although simple in nature, is very powerful.
I don’t know where I first heard it, but I owe the success I’ve had with my blog to this one single sentence. OK. I’m done building anticipation; here it is. The best way to grow you blog is to leave it. Right about now you’re either having an “Aha” moment or you’re confused as hell.
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Don’t Listen To Anybody – The Weirdest Advice You’ll Ever Get About Promoting Your Blog
Every blog about blogging has published one and, hell, I probably have written something about it too. And yet, how to put my blog on the map is one of the most frequent questions I get from clients and friends. I don’t blame you, blogging is one of the hottest marketing vehicles nowadays (I heard).
Commenting, guest posting, free gifts, you name it. If you ask me, all good advice. I’m not about to tell you not to do those things because I truly believe they help get some visibility back to your blog. Allow me a couple of minutes to make my point.
Read more…