Amplified Content Marketing

by Michael Stuart

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Content is the fuel that engages your audience on social media.

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Content is the fuel that engages your audience on social media.
To engage (meaning) to succeed in attracting and keeping somebody’s attention and interest.

Here are nine proven ways to create and share engaging social media content.
  • Stop Using Text, Start Showing. …
  • Use High-Quality Stock Photography. …
  • Recycle Your Evergreen Content into Infographics. …
  • Share Customer Testimonials & Reviews. …
  • Search Visual Trends on Pinterest. …
  • Host Contests & Surveys.

Content marketing plays a big role for social media marketing, because of these connecting elements that help in shaping content marketing strategy for social media:
  1. Goals
  2. Target audience
  3. Product preview
  4. Communication
  5. Plans
In order to succeed in social media campaigns or marketing, the first thing you have to do is to set your goals or objectives. What do you want to achieve? Who is your target audience? How many people are you targeting? When is your deadline? When you have set your goals and targeted audience, from there, social media starts taking place. On social media, you can start taking notes of those people who seem to be your perfect criteria for your target audience.

Once you get the perfect idea about who your target audience will be, you can start previewing your products and classifying them into some parts that depend on your target audience’s age, gender, or locations. From that, you can plan strategies on how to approach your target audience and communicate with them. Yes, even communication needs strategies, because how you deliver a message to your target audience will define what their response will be. With social media combined with strategic planning, you can communicate better with your target audience, your existing customers and even with your potential customers. Now after maintaining good communication with your audience, you can start making marketing plans.

Marketing plan here means that you create a content plan and test it first. In case it does not work out, you try to create solutions based on the problems or things that lack in that content plan. Then re-create the whole plan with new strategies, before executing it on social media. Good combination between content marketing and social media can be the key to great marketing strategies for the future.

Arranging the objectives

When you combine content marketing with social media, you have to be focused on these objectives in mind:
  • Help your target audience understand your products or services better
  • Entertain your target audience with your interesting content
  • Educate your target audience on new trends and best practices
  • Tell your target audience about the challenge of the current situation
  • Convince your target audience to buy your products or use your services and tell them why they need it
reference: bestinau.com.au

Tips from the Top Ten Inspirational Books

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Tips from Ten Inspirational Books

  1. Find Your Element by Ken Robinson
  2. Start With Why by Simon Sinek
  3. Purple Cow by Seth Godin
  4. Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
  5. Getting Things Done by David Allen
  6. The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
  7. The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss
  8. The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen
  9. The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
  10. Zero to One by Peter Thiel



Get your tips on from each book below:

Find Your Element

by Ken Robinson

· Expose yourself to as many new opportunities as possible to discover your unrealized aptitudes.
· Strive to have a growth mindset. It will allow you to develop and improve your abilities.
· Find your passions, things you do without noticing the passage of time.
· Forge your own path, along with an understanding of your happiness, instead of blindly seeking wealth, immediate gratification, or other people’s definitions of happiness.
· Don’t plan your life when you’re young because life is unpredictable.
· Don’t assume you are bad at something because you performed poorly in that subject in school. Standardized tests only measure one kind of human intelligence and schools only cater to a few learning styles.
· Every person is special and different because of their genetic makeup (every human who ever existed in history has their own genes) and their environment (everyone has their unique mix of family, friends, and location).
· If you accept you can’t predict or control the future, you will discover many new opportunities.
· Experiencing positive emotions from your passion reduces stress, chronic pain, and addictions. It also improves sleep and concentration.
· Finding a group of people who share your passion can be very beneficial, or even necessary, for both you and other members of the group to realize personal goals.

Start With Why

by Simon Sinek

· Think inside out (starting with why), not outside in (starting with what). Communicate the why as it fosters a sense of belonging.
· The goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe.
· People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. What you do simply proves what you believe.
· Excited employees and customers who believe in your cause are the most powerful resources an organization can have.
· Financial incentives or punishments do not motivate people on a deep and emotional level.
· Customer manipulation may work in the short term, but it doesn’t foster trust and is ultimately counterproductive.
· The Golden Circle consists of three concentric circles. The what is the outer layer, the how is middle layer, and the why is the core.
· Making profit is a result of the what and the how, not the why.
· The Law of Diffusion on innovation breaks down to 2.5% innovators, 13.5% early adapters, 34% early majority, 34% late majority and 16% laggards. If you want mass-market success, you have to achieve a 15–18% tipping point.
· The early majority won’t accept something until early adapters have tried it and accepted it, and you won’t get early adapters until they believe in what you have.

Purple Cow

by Seth Godin

· Take risks at being remarkable, and don’t worry about criticism.
· Target the people who are both willing to try new things and very vocal at spreading the word to others.
· Invent the product with marketing.
· Target and measure your marketing effectively.
· Don’t emulate the leader, because you’ll never learn the process of turning risks into success.
· The traditional form of advertising is no longer effective because in today’s overwhelmingly advertised world capturing the consumer’s attention is almost impossible.
· In today’s crowded marketplace, there is no room for “ordinary.”
· Being ridiculed can be a good thing, as it spreads word about you and your product.

Tipping Point

by Malcolm Gladwell

· To spread an idea, you must make sure it sticks first. It has to be something special, catchy, unique, and remarkable to cut through the market noise.
· Keep the group smaller than 150 if the goal is to effectively spread a message.
· The spread of ideas is similar in behavior to the spread of epidemics.
· The tipping point is when ideas spread from an initial niche user base into the mass majority.
· A select few types of people are generally responsible for ideas to spread: connectors, salesmen, and mavens.
· External elements influence our behavior. Such influence is generally greater than what we perceive it to be.
· Small changes in context caused by external elements can have a big ripple effect.

Getting Things Done

by David Allen

· Focus. When other thoughts enter the mind, record them on an external nearby Thought Bucket.
· Empty the Thought Bucket weekly and organize it.
· Remove unimportant items, finish 2-minute tasks, and enter deadlines, or appointments in your calendar.
· Practice outcome thinking by having a project list that tracks steps leading to desired goals. The most urgent step on the project list goes to the Next Action list.
· The Next Action list should stay with you at all times so you can choose to act on them when time frees up.
· The Waiting For list can help expedite things.
· The Tickler File consists of 31 days and 12 months into the future, and is for time sensitive reminders.
· The Someday/Maybe list is for ideas in the future that are not concrete projects yet.
· Set up a functional workplace to create a cockpit of control that eases your mind.
· Review and update all of your lists weekly.
· Natural planning turns ambiguous ideas into brainstorming sessions that reduce the fog and provide clarity into actionable steps.
· Don’t multi-task. Focus 100% of your mental capacity on the task at hand.
· Our brain’s nature is to think. Thus, thoughts might enter our mind that distract us from the current tasks.
· Daily to-do lists are inefficient because of their warped view of time.

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

by Stephen Covey

· Effectively integrating into the world means aligning personal paradigms with universal principles.
· “Sharpen the Saw” to stay effective. Stay physically fit by exercising. Stay mentally healthy by learning new things. Stay socially and emotionally engaged by developing positive relationships. Maintain spiritual health by confronting and reflecting on your own values.
· Be proactive and take control of your own fate.
· Begin with the end in mind and set long term goals with an understanding of your personal mission statement.
· Visualize the outcome of every step toward your goal so it will be easier to translate into concrete actions.
· “Put First Things First” by prioritizing things that bring you toward your goals and are consistent with your values or norms.
· Practice the Win-Win mentality. It will create good relationships, mutual trust, and long term benefits.
· Forming stable relationships means listening empathetically to others and understanding their personal paradigms so you can contribute and invest in their goals.
· Engage in active listening by repeating back people’s own words, mirroring their emotions, and helping structure their thought processes.
· Synergize with others by cooperating openly and respectfully. Collectives can achieve a result that is impossible for an individual.
· Don’t say yes to everything.
· Don’t view the world from a Win-Lose, competitive perspective.
· To change, you have to address your character, not your behavior.
· Our paradigms are our subjective perception of the world that shapes our habits.
· If you want to be able to influence others, first seek to understand. Only then can you be understood.

The 4-Hour Workweek

by Tim Ferriss

· Aim high so you can create your own reality and write your own rules.
· Step outside of your comfort zone and take action now.
· Try to gain the freedom of remote working within your current job.
· Be effective on the job by working on things with the goal of gaining remote work.
· The 80/20 rule applies with work: 20% of work will bring 80% of results. So, focus on being productive instead of busy.
· Time is money. Remove things that reduce your effectiveness at the job.
· Rate the importance of a task by asking yourself, “If this is the only thing I do today, would I be happy with today?”
· Finish your high priority items before noon.
· Address email and voicemail messages after completing the high priority tasks are done. Then bundle tasks to finish them.
· Have others play by your communication rules.
· Set up an automatic source of income by outsourcing everything. The key is to use as little of your time as possible.
· Have open communication and do not let your input be a requirement in the business process.
· Delegate as much responsibility as possible.
· Validate and test your products before selling. Set up an online store with out-of-stock items and an A/B testing ad campaign.
· Establish credibility in your product category.
· Appear bigger; because people trust larger companies.
· Be picky about your customers. The 20/80 rule applies. Top 20% of your customers will be responsible for 80% of revenue, so attend to them.
· Go premium with your product because premium quality brings higher profit and customer quality.
· Don’t lie to yourself and think that when staying within your comfort zone, things will magically be okay.
· Don’t start your day by checking emails.
· A fulfilling life can be achieved by being mobile and flexible. This means that you can do whatever you like, whenever you like.
· Moderate, automatic income you can manage anywhere around the world allows for the mobility required for the lifestyle you truly want.
· The worst-case scenario from making a decision is usually not as bad as you think.
· Five steps to independence: 1) start with a full time 9–5 job; 2) move to a full time remote 9–5 job; 3) gain efficiency to reduce 9–5 tasks to 9–1; 4) use other time to automate alternative income; 5) quit old job and live on alternative income.

The Innovator’s Dilemma

by Clayton Christensen

· Have two innovation incubation models for an established firm.
· Observe how customers are actually using the product.
· Have discovery-driven planning that is adaptable to various factors of change.
· Be creative at finding the right customers who can directly benefit from your innovation, rather than a large, less targeted market.
· Expect trial and error so that a new organization can fail early and without great expense.
· Don’t develop products and services based on what customers say they would like.
· Don’t innovate in a singular quality such as performance oversupply. What does innovation look like in functionality, reliability, convenience, and price?
· Established and entrant firms bring different types of innovations to market.
· Established firms bring sustaining innovations to maintain market positions and profit margins. However, they still lose market dominance because of their focus on sustaining profits while ignoring new markets brought by disruptive technologies.
· Knowing what customers want through surveys, focus groups, and interviews is good at incremental improvement, but not effective at creating the next thing.
· A tunnel-vision chasing of profit margin should be moderated with long term expectations.
· The difficulty of predicting emerging markets means an established company can’t justify the investment. Consequently, they usually miss out on disruptive technologies and the emerging market that comes with it.
· Sometimes firms are too inflexible with its Resources/Processes/Values (RPV) framework to adapt to changing conditions.
· Theoretical models for innovation rarely work in the real world.
· Disruptive innovations are usually variations on existing technologies that open up a new customer base.
· The best way for an established company to take advantage of a disruptive technology is to create or acquire an organization that is small but utilizes flexible processes.

The Lean Startup

by Eric Ries

· Focus the whole team on finding a sustainable business model. The faster the model is found, the likelier the start-up is to succeed.
· Learn through a scientific approach, constantly validating your findings.
· Validate your hypotheses by speaking with real customers.
· Move from believing to knowing by testing the value and growth hypotheses of your product.
· Test the demand of your product by building a minimal viable product.
· Establishing the build-measure-learn cycle as fast as possible will get you to your sustainable business model quickly.
· Split-test all your features to distinguish what would be valuable to your customers and what would be a waste of time.
· Pick an engine of growth (sticky, viral, or paid) and focus.
· You must examine the right metric, not superficial metrics that don’t help you towards your goal.
· Traditional strategies cannot manage start-ups because start-ups lack a history.
· Don’t be afraid of pivoting your fundamental core assumptions.
· The main goal for a start-up is to find and build a sustainable business model.
· Value hypothesis assumes early adopters will accept a product.
· Growth hypothesis assumes a product will appeal to a larger group of people later.

Zero to One

by Peter Thiel

· Think about the future as a definitive vision. This is a vision you want to focus on and attain.
· When thinking about the future, think about the progress which stands between now and the future.
· Finding ideas most people don’t know about, or agree with, is key to being successful.
· First aim to be a profitable monopoly at a specific and narrowly defined target market, then expand to other markets.
· The initial team members are critical. You must find the right mix of skills, vision, and personal connections with each other. This makes it easier to foster a strong company culture.
· Have balanced owner interests to avoid future misalignments that may cause the company to suffer.
· Two types of progress bridge the now and the future: horizontal progress (one to n) and vertical progress (zero to one).
· Vertical progress is hard because it does not exist yet. It requires you to see the present differently. It also requires you to find a truth most people don’t see or agree with.
· A startup has only one specific future vision leading to success. One must parse decisions relevant to specific conditions.
· Perfect competition is good for consumers, but it does not drive progress.
· Real progress, the zero to one type of vertical progress, usually results in monopolies. That means you’re producing something much better than everyone else is.
· Sales and distribution is vital because your products will never sell themselves. Optimize your sales effort per distribution point to include various sales strategies.
· Founders tend to be strange people. However, the vision they have is indispensable because the decisions are made to realize that original vision.

Great Google Tools to Make Collaborating Online Easier

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Over the past 18 years of its short lifespan, Google has created over 140 products, here are some Google tools that most people don’t talk about much, but would be extremely handy to use in a wide range of situations.
Google Keep is a beautifully designed, visual note-taking app that can help you keep all your notes, to-do lists, reminders, images and all sorts of other tidbits of information organized and easy to view. The card-like interface makes it super intuitive to use, which you can customize any way you want by adding labels and colors.
Need to record some audio for a reminder? Or have a shopping list that you and your family members need to access and edit as you pick things up? Google Keep lets you do it all. You might just find that it’s one of the most useful note-taking apps out there.
Ever wished you could do a Google search for something according to what it looks like because you can’t for the life of you remember what it’s called? Well, Android users, you’re in luck—because Google Goggles is an image-driven search engine that actually lets you snap a photo and use it to search for information about it. (Sorry iPhone users, Google Goggles isn’t available on your platform!)
Just point your camera at a famous sculpture, a landmark at a specific location, a product you’re using, or anything else to see if Google Goggles has it included in its vast database. You can also use it on barcodes and QR codes to find more information about products as well as related products.
Google Spaces

Maybe you already use Google Drive and Gmail to connect and collaborate with others on all sorts of stuff, but you probably didn’t know that Google also has a dedicated tool made just for small group sharing. Google Spaces is a tool that you can use to create a new space for a group, invite who you want into them, have conversations based on what you share and find anything easily that was previously shared.
Similar to Trello, Google Spaces uses a card-based layout to keep it simple, functional and easy to use. And the best part is that you can use it from the regular desktop web plus take advantage of the handy-dandy iOS and Android apps for when you need to collaborate with others while you’re on the go. (There’s also a Chrome extension!)
If you’re a fan of Gmail, then you’ll love Inbox by Gmail — a tool Google developed based on everything known about how people use Gmail. It’s a slick, visual platform that makes it easy to view, organize, and respond to your email messages both on the web and on mobile devices with apps available for both iOS and Android.
In addition to making Gmail a lot easier to manage, other tools like reminders, bundles, highlights and a “snooze” button are worked into Inbox in a way that combines email management with other important tasks and organizational features. While there may be a slight learning curve to getting to know the platform and all it has to offer, going back to plain old Gmail would probably be out of the question once you’re familiar with how Inbox works.
source lifewire.com/little-known-google-tools-4118527

Good marketing nowadays revolves around inbound marketing. And the good news is

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Good marketing nowadays revolves around inbound marketing. And the good news is that if you have a blog, you are already on your way toward creating a great inbound marketing strategy.
Iinternet marketing gameplan by http://www.1stonlinetech.com
Checklist for Launching an Inbound Marketing Plan in WordPress
1) Attract: Get to know your ideal target audience and create content that speaks directly to them by solving their biggest pain points and uses a language they can relate to.
2) Convert: Convert your visitors into leads by capturing their contact information
  • Include forms on your site where visitors can submit their information such as their name and email address.Tools: PopUp Pro, LeadIn, SideOffer
  • Include calls-to-action which will encourage visitors to take action such as share your content on social media, sign up for your free offer or download a free resource.Tools: MaxButtons, Inbound Now
  • Create dedicated landing pages where you can expand on your offer and describe all the benefits. Include a form where users submit their information.Tools: Unbounce Landing Pages, WordPress Landing Pages
3) Close: Convert leads into actual customers.
  • Use CRM software to keep track of all the important details and interactions with your contacts.Tools: HubSpot CRM
  • Analyze. Use analytics software such as Google Analytics or Crazy Egg to understand how visitors are interacting with your website and how well your sales team is doing.Tools: Google Analytics, CrazyEgg, KISSMetrics
  • Automate. Use email and marketing automation to further build trust with contacts who aren’t ready to buy yet and to target the right message that relates to the needs and the lifecycle stage of each lead.Tools: MailChimp, Active Campaign, ConvertKit
4) Delight: Continue to engage with your customers by creating new offers and gradually transform them into your loyal fans which will act as your promoters.
  • Use surveys . Ask for feedback to ensure you are giving your customers what they want.Tools: PollDaddy, SurveyMonkey
  • Use smart calls to action and smart content. Make sure your calls to action and your content is geared towards your ideal content based on their interests and their lifecycle stage.
  • Social Monitoring. Keep track of social conversations and reach out with relevant content when your customers ask a question.Tools: Hootsuite, Cyfe, Simply Measured

There are five core ideas behind inbound marketing:
  • Content Creation and Distribution. Creating content that is bound to attract your ideal clients by solving their immediate problems, concerns, and needs then sharing that content far and wide
  • Lifecycle Marketing. Ideally, you want your targeted leads to become your biggest fans who will go on to spread the word about you. However, they don’t just appear out of nowhere. Each lead you attract through inbound marketing will start off as a stranger. The goal is to transform each of those leads into a repeat visitor, who will become your customer and then promoter.
  • Personalization. We established that your content needs to speak to your ideal customer. As time progresses, you will learn more and more about their specific needs and then you can utilize that knowledge to further refine your content.
  • Multi-channel. Inbound marketing is not tied to one specific platform, rather it approaches people where they are, on the platform in which they feel most comfortable interacting with you.
  • Integration. Creating content, sharing the content across different channels and analyzing how well that content is doing – all that integrates together to allow you to put your focus on publishing the right content in the right place at the right time.
By focusing your efforts on inbound marketing, you are no longer a noise they’ve learned to tune out. Instead, your message becomes something they want to hear, something they want to learn more about, and that’s hard to ignore.
How Does it Work?
When it comes to inbound marketing, there are 4 key actions you need to take to capitalize on your marketing strategy.
Attract Even though you might think you want to be found by as many people as possible that is not the right course of action. You want to be found by people who are most likely to become leads and ultimately, your ideal customers.
Some of the most important tools to attract them to your site include:
  • Blogging. If you already have a blog, then you have an excellent start. Blogging is one of the easiest methods to create content that speaks and educates your target audience.
  • SEO. In today’s day and age, each and every one of your customers will begin their search online — either to find out how to solve a particular problem, compare products and services, or to find out more about a particular product. As a website owner, you should focus your efforts on selecting the right keywords and then create content, build links, and optimize pages around those terms.
  • Pages. In correlation to blogging and SEO, the static pages on your website should be optimized for your target audience as well. Rather than simply stating what you offer in dry corporate–speak, you need to speak directly to your target audience by explaining how you can help solve their needs in a language that they can relate to.
  • Social Publishing. Social media should be a natural extension of your blog. This is where they get to see the face behind the brand so do your best to represent your website in the best light. Aside from sharing relevant and valuable content, share content you know your audience would benefit from and don’t forget to engage in the conversation. This means responding to any questions you might get on social media as well as encouraging and being a part of the conversation.
Convert Now that you have their attention, it’s time to convert those visitors into leads. This involves gathering their contact information. Ideally, you will have their full name, address, and email. At the very least, you can get by with just their email address.
When it comes to converting visitors to leads, the best assets include:
  • Forms. These are usually email signup forms where you ask for their email (most often their name, too) in exchange for a download. A good place to feature a signup form is below a blog post or in your sidebar, and to repeat it again in the footer of your website. As with anything, your forms should be easy to fill out and stand out from the rest of your content.
  • Calls-to-Action. Calls-to-Action or CTAs are buttons or links that encourage your visitors to take action with words such as “Download my Checklist to Complete XYZ” or “Sign up for a live workshop.” Sometimes they include a form, and often they lead to a separate form where visitors can submit their information.
  • Landing Pages. Landing pages serve a specific purpose–and that is to convert visitors to leads. This is where you expand on the offer in the call-to-action and where you include another form where the user can submit their information. The information submitted on the landing page can be as simple as a form including a name and an email field, or it can be somewhat longer including more specific information that can be used by your sales team. Landing pages should not include anything else other than your offer and the form so distractions are minimized.
Once your visitors have filled out the form on your site, they become contacts. It’s your responsibility to keep track of those leads in one place by using a custom marketing database. Make sure that every interaction you’ve had with your contacts is documented and that it makes sense for you. In the long run, that information can be used to optimize your future interactions with leads and visitors.
Close The next step in inbound marketing strategy is to convert your contacts into actual customers. This can be achieved through various marketing tools which include:
  • CRM Software. Customer Relationship Management software allows you to keep track of all the important details about all your contacts, companies, and deals in your sales pipeline. Above all, it makes it easy to get in touch with your ideal audience at the right time.
  • Closed-loop Reporting. This allows you to analyze your marketing efforts and see which one of those methods works best to bring in new leads, how well your sales team is doing to convert those leads into customers, and much more. When you integrate this with your CRM software you can have a snapshot of your marketing strategy at a glance at all times.
  • Email. If your visitors aren’t ready to become clients yet, email can be an effective tool to build trust and ease their decision to make a purchase.
  • Marketing Automation. This includes creating a series of automated email messages that relate to the needs and the lifecycle stage of each lead. The content of the messages will be different depending on where and when a visitor actually converted into a lead and that’s one of the biggest benefits of inbound marketing.
Delight At this stage of your inbound marketing plan, your tools should include:
  • Surveys. Asking your current customers for feedback is the best way to ensure you are providing them with what they are looking for instead of randomly guessing and hoping to hit the target.
  • Smart calls-to-action. By smart, I mean calls-to-action that are specific to your ideal customer depending on the lifecycle stage.
  • Smart content. Content that is geared towards your ideal customers’ interests and challenges written in a language that’s familiar to them.
  • Social Monitoring. This is also sometimes called Social Listening, which refers to actively keeping track of social conversations that matter to you, listening to customers’ questions and comments, and then reaching out to them with relevant content.
What Goes Into an Inbound Marketing Plan?
Creating remarkable content Long gone are the days when it was enough to churn out content filled with keywords. The competition is tough and you need to make sure your content stands out from the rest. This comes by creating content that is targeted to your ideal buyer persona – content that inspires, entertains, provokes, and educates.
Using the power of visuals In the age of short attention spans, images really do speak more than words. A number of studies have shown that the average attention span is just 8 seconds so make sure those 8 seconds count. Creating highly engaging visual content that begs to be shared is a good way to get the attention of your target audience. This includes not only photos but infographics, slideshows, videos – anything that will make you stand out from your competition.
Mastering CTA Your Calls-to-Action shouldn’t be ignored. Spend as much time on crafting compelling CTAs as you do on creating your content and your visuals. The last thing you want is to spend hours on an epic blog post and infographic only to have people leave your site because your CTA wasn’t clear, or worse, weak.
Utilizing the power of analytics You won’t know how it works unless you gather and measure data. It’s important to know which pages on your site brought in the most leads, where they clicked, and where they dropped off. Similarly, you want to know how many of your contacts actually turned into customers, at which point on your site they converted, and where they were when they left. You won’t know any of that without analytics software. Google Analytics is great for tracking your website and more sophisticated tools like CrazyEgg can show you exactly where your visitors are clicking.
Implement testing After you have results gathered from analytics, you can start testing different variations of your marketing strategy. This is often referred to as A/B testing and you can set up tests for almost anything, your headlines, your CTAs, content, the color of buttons, and so forth. This is a valuable part of any marketing plan because it lets you tweak until you get that perfect solution that is guaranteed to convert.
Getting the right people on your team As a website owner, you already wear many hats and not all of us are born marketers. Knowing when to bring people on your team to help with your marketing efforts is a smart decision. However, you should be careful to hire those whose skill set not only matches your strategy, but also those whose vision and value align with yours. They should also be ready to continually learn and improve so you can update your marketing plan as your goals grow.
SEO The best way to attract visitors to your site is by optimizing your SEO efforts. By that, I mean researching your keywords and then planning your content around them. However, your SEO efforts should be boosted by using a plugin such as our own SmartCrawl SEO plugin or All In One SEO.
Content Structure Another important factor when it comes to SEO is your content structure. This means setting up a customized permalink structure for your blog as well as creating categories for your content. You can then include categories in your permalinks since URLs are important factors in search rankings. By doing this you inform not only the search engines but your visitors as well how a particular blog post relates to other content on your site.
Image Optimization When it comes to image optimization for inbound marketing you need to make sure that your images are compressed and load fast and that their names include words that can help you get found online. It’s one of the most overlooked aspects of proper inbound marketing and yet the way you handle images matters for several reasons:
  • Image size affects page load time which in turn affects search engine results.
  • Properly named and tagged images can show up in image search results where there is often less competition.
  • Images increase engagement. According to a study done by MarketMeSuite content with images attracted 94% more pageviews than content without images.
  • Enter Media File Renamer. Media File Renamer is a plugin that automatically renames your media filenames depending on their titles. When files are renamed, the references to it such as posts, pages, custom types, and their metadata are also updated.
Social Media Integration Finally, no inbound marketing strategy would be complete without integrating social media. After all, you want your content not only to be found, but also shared on social media so your message can reach even more targeted leads.
  • For the last step, your WordPress website should include social media sharing buttons which make sure your content appears correctly no matter which social network your content gets shared on.
  • For a complete list of the best social media sharing plugins check out our ultimate collection of social media sharing plugins.
source: premium.wpmudev.org/blog/inbound-marketing-checklist/