Content Is Like Fruit; The Best Is Fresh

 The 3 Pillars of Inbound Marketing

The definition of inbound marketing can be interpreted in many different ways, one of these ways is Permission-based online techniques like blogs, e-books, webinars, videos, tweets of information, etc. that are used to draw people to you. This is slowly replacing Outbound marketing which uses things such as print ads, newspapers, and radio and television commercials.

                Inbound Marketing is set up using “3 pillars”. These pillars include SEO or search engine optimization, Content Marketing, and finally Social Media.

1.) SEO (Search Engine Optimization): SEO is how your website ranks in search engines such as google. This does not include the paid advertisements that you see, it is strictly based on how much web traffic your website receives. Although there are some ways in which you can control and maintain your SEO a majority of it is believed to be out of your control. A rough estimate is 25% of your SEO is based on the keywords you chose to link your website to, the URL itself, and the copy and content of the page. These things can all be controlled by the creator. Unfortunately about 75% of SEO is based on how other webpage’s are linked to your website. Anytime your website is linked to another the search engine views this as a recommendation of sorts so therefore the more recommendations you have the higher on the search engine you will be. SEO is very important because most consumers don’t have the time or the mindset to sort through thousands of links so naturally they chose the first one that they see that fits what they are looking for, so if you are near the top you will obviously get more traffic than if you were near the bottom.

2.) Content Marketing:  The content that you have presented on your web page may be the most important aspect of inbound marketing. First and for most we live in a Web 2.0 society meaning that the content on your page must be interactive and it must serve as a communication tool between the customer and yourself. (Examples: live chats, comment pages, emailing lists). The content on your page must also be constantly updated and current; people do not want to read the same information over and over again. And although your webpage is professional the content on your page should sound human not like a robot. People are tired of hearing all the corporate lingo that has acted as a mask for businesses throughout the years. Real people are reading your webpage and they would like to read “real” content from a “real” individual.

“The best websites are designed by those who think like publishers … who start with a content strategy, and then focus on delivery” David Meerman Scott

3.) Social Media: Social Media wraps SEO and content marketing up and turns them into one cohesive action. The term “Social Media” does not refer to specific applications such as Twitter or Face book but rather how they are applied and the return on investment they receive. You must first make a strategy and then follow through with it; you must make sure that all the social media applications in which you are using are linked to one another. And you must remember that your ultimate goal in this is to form long lasting relationships with the consumer as well as seek out new ones.

http://davemorse.net/  (Blog I used that was very helpful)

http://www.whitespace.on.ca/Blog/bid/89127/3-Pillars-of-an-Effective-Inbound-Marketing-Strategy