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Top 10 Small Business Marketing Blogs Today In 2012

November 4, 2012 by 12 Comments

Who Do You Listen To About Marketing?

First let me say that the image above has absolutely nothing to do with the post.  I just thought it was funny and people would get a kick out of it.  I know my wife did, she looked like this after she saw it. Furious  But it was worth it, she was mad at me today anyway.  Something about doing the dishes or what not.

Anywho, lets get rolling on this post, what do you say?

When I began marketing online, or anything for that matter, I have learned that you need to qualify your mentors.  You don’t want to be following some one hit wonder and find out later that they just got lucky.  Or worse yet, they are someone who is just repeating some stuff that they learned somewhere else.  You need to be listening to people who are actually doing what they are teaching.

For example, lets say you want to learn how to make money in the real estate business.  Who are you going to listen to?  Lets say you had access to anyone that you wanted.  I personally would choose Donald Trump.  They guy has been in and out of bankruptcy a couple times.  But today he’s still worth billions.  I wouldn’t listen to some TV reality show star who is famous because of the show.

In marketing I choose to listen to people who are out there doing today.  Not someone who has taken to just teaching it.  With that in mind here is how I qualified each of these small business marketing blogs and have declared them my Top 10 Marketing Blogs for 2012.

How I Qualified Them

The first factor I picked is probably the most important.  Quality of the content on the site.  If the content provided me absolutely no value or was just a teaser to get an opt-in I passed.  Nothing worse than reading a post from an expert only to get told you only received half the story.  Why write information if your only going to give up half.  Now don’t get me wrong I don’t expect people to give away the farm for free, but at least live up to the headline right?

The second factor I used was traffic to the site.  How can you be good marketer or a recommend resource if you don’t have people coming to your site all the time?

The final factor that I used was the amount of people who made comments on the site.  Good quality content tends to generate tons of comments from loyal fans.

Top 10 Marketing Blogs

In the spirit of David Letterman’s Top Ten List, here we go!

NUMBER 10 – Digital Ethos (http://digitalethos.org/) Digital Ethos (formerly DBMEi) is a Not For Profit organization responsible for “Facilitating Awareness & Education in Digital Communications”.  The site has many different resources a marketer can access in order to learn more about their craft.  The organization uses its blog, newsletters, a print magazine, distance learning portal, and live conferences in order to educate people on all things digital marketing.

NUMBER 9 – Hubze (http://hubze.com/) This site is all about social media marketing.  They provide access to tons of content about the subject.  There is also access to a couple cool tools that you can use for your business.  I have used some of there paid tools and they were not too bad.  I would recommend them if asked about their Facebook page tool.

NUMBER 8 – Marketing Tech Blog (http://www.marketingtechblog.com/) If your like me you enjoy taking advantage of technology to not only enhance your marketing, but to make it that much easier.  Now don’t get me wrong, tools can hurt your business as much as they can help if used improperly.  That is why this site is on my top ten list.  Not only do they recommend the use of technology.  They actually show you how to use it right!

NUMBER 7 -Viral Blog (http://www.viralblog.com/) I know you have heard thousands of different methods to get website traffic.  And every marketers dream is to create a piece of content or image that goes viral.  This website gives you some great tips and usable ideas to actually do it without some gimic involved. They also discuss disruptive marketing and social media strategies.

NUMBER 6 – Tatango (http://www.tatango.com/) The Tatango SMS Marketing blog is unique from the rest of the blogs on the list because it provides tips, tricks, and advice on text message marketing. This type of marketing campaign is fairly new, and finding helpful information is difficult. Tatango, however, does a great job of providing quality information on text message marketing, in addition to attaching engaging graphics with every post.  Wondering if text is right for you?  Think about this, an average of 3-5% of emails are opened when sent.  An average of 97% of text messages are opened.

NUMBER 5 – CopyBlogger (http://www.copyblogger.com/blog/) Want more traffic, links, subscribers, and a profit-generating website? Copyblogger gives you the solutions you need to succeed.  There are several different tools that you can use including their Scribe plugin that help you optimize your site both on and off page.  They are also the creators of the ever popular Genesis WordPress theme and Premise Plugin that creates landing, capture, and sales pages with ease.

NUMBER 4 – Hubspot Blog (http://blog.hubspot.com/) Hubspot is a company that provides a software to help people who are marketing online through SEO, email marketing, and social media marketing.  One of themes of the site is inbound marketing, which basically means any piece of content that is created in order to bring people to your site or funnel.  Of course the entire site is designed to bring you to a landing page to get a demo of the software.  But you can take advantage of the tons of free information and training available.  I was on a few of their webinars and they were all no pitch zone and the training was very valuable.

NUMBER 3 – Jeff Korhan (http://www.jeffkorhan.com/) Jeff brings his experience in business and couples it with social media marketing.  Being able to apply these techniques is key if your small business is going to survive in the new marketing environment.  When your looking for someone to listen to, qualify Jeff as a Fortune 50 Sales and Marketing Manager with an MBA. Founder of a construction services company that was twice named Business of the Year.  And someone who now applies three decades of marketing experience to helping people develop sustainable marketing practices that capitalize on emerging trends.

NUMBER 2 – Jeff Bullas (http://www.jeffbullas.com/) Jeff is a consultant, coach, mentor and speaker and works with companies and executives to optimize their online personal and company presence and brand with digital marketing and social media through the use of social media channels and other web and mobile technologies.  This blog is about all things to do with Social Media and Online Marketing, including Twitter, Blogging, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and inbound and content marketing.

NUMBER 1 – GKIC Small Business Marketing (http://dankennedy.com/) I won’t sugar coat why Dan Kennedy and his partners at GKIC are the absolute best when it comes to marketing online.  They are behind some of the most successful launches around.  They host some of the most successful live conferences around.  And more importantly, Dan has taught some of the biggest leaders in the industry not only online marketing but direct marketing offline as well.  Through the use of both mediums, if you want to make money quick and over and over again for your business.  This is the blog you need to read everyday.

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Filed Under: Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Inbound Marketing Process

September 17, 2012 by Leave a Comment

 What Is Inbound Marketing?

I have been banging my head around tons of search engine and social marketing processes for a couple years now and have heard the term inbound marketing several times.  Now I understand what it is, even understand the basic concepts of how it works.  But I have run into quite a few people who don’t get it or tend to over think the whole process.  Where I really love to follow the KISS Principle.

So with this simple definition and the use of a great info graphic I thought I would help some people grasp really what it is.  This serves two purposes.  One, it breaks down a subject that people have written 100 – 200 page books about into easy terms.  And two, it really is a cool info graphic  :mrgreen:

Ok, so lets get started.

First I need to define inbound marketing, or as Seth Godin refers to it, permission marketing.

Inbound marketing is based on the concept of earning the attention of prospects, making yourself easy to be found and drawing customers to your website by producing content customers value. Simple huh, I can’t believe I don’t charge for this stuff!  I should write a book entitled “Internet Marketing for the Moron”  Being a moron myself sometimes I feel I especially suited to be a subject matter expert by now right? LOL

<Get back on track Clint sheesh>

Ok so search engine optimization, social media marketing, video marketing are all really methods of inbound marketing.  The concept is simple enough, its the execution that take a bit of time.  And truth be told if your looking to get rich quick on the internet please go back to your day job, because those days are over.

Alright, so we now know what inbound marketing is, take this time to look over this graphic and see how to actually do it.

inbound marketing

P.S. If you enjoyed the article please click Like below!!

P.S.S. By the way if you want some training on different marketing methods, give it a second an my site will redirect to you the best system on the internet.

Filed Under: Content Marketing Tagged With: , ,

Use Google For Your Inbound Network Marketing

September 11, 2011 by Leave a Comment

In are haste to rush to the internets top site, Facebook, we as network marketers have forgotten about the inbound network marketing tools that Google provides us.  Its not that we don’t know or about them (or maybe it is), its that at times we get tunnel vision and fail to realize that there are other games in town that we need to be prepared to explore when we have come to master the method we are currently employing.

What is inbound network marketing?

First, I believe that I owe you an explanation of what I mean by the term inbound network marketing.  As you may or may not have been aware of, traditional marketing techniques of network marketing have hit the back burner, thus resulting in the establishment of a stale an ineffective method of reaching consumers.  As a result of this change in the marketing environment, you need to shift your focus to to attract people who are actively searching for your product online.  This is where inbound network marketing comes in to play.

Inbound network marketing describes the challenges your customers are facing on a day to day basis, and what types of solutions to their problems that they are looking for.  I know you have heard this before from the “guru’s,” they have all told you that you need to solve people’s problems, provide them solutions.  Inbound network marketing as a result takes advantage of the way people communicate on the internet and conduct research.  You as a business owner need to take advantage of this and tap into search engines, blogs, and social networks to provide answers where your target audience is searching.

Google tools for marketing.

1) Google Adwords:  So we all know that Google PPC is probably the one advertising system that can make you loose your shirt in about .03 seconds if you don’t know what your doing.  But, if you take the time to learn this tool, you can bank everyday.  To be simple in my description to those that are unclear, this tool allows you to create ads and target specific keywords.  As people search those keywords, the ads appear in the search results or on other people’s websites as part of their display services.  I want to warn you again, but not scare you off, Google Adwords costs can get out of control if you don’t know what your doing so buy a course and at the very least read their step-by-step guide.

2) Google Documents for inbound network marketing are awesome because you can use it to interact with your customers or prospects.  This service will provide you with free online documents that can be accessed from anywhere and the most powerful option is that they can be shared with your team and edited by them as well if you wish.  Think of the possibilities this presents if you working together to promote the same company or funded proposal, you can collaborate on ads, techniques etc. etc.

3) Google Keyword Tool:  I probably should have started off with this tool because keyword research is the most misunderstood aspect of marketing online, and it is the most important if your doing search engine marketing.  On a site like mine, this really isn’t a big deal for the site itself, but if I was targeting my company, the Numis Network, then keyword research becomes very important.  I could do a whole training on keyword research so I won’t delve into it right now, but don’t ignore this tool.

4) Google Alerts is a free tool used by marketers to monitor brand names, industry terms, or your competitors website.  Play with this one, I use it to monitor technology news to keep abreast on the latest news.  Plug in your companies name into a Google alerts and you can stay up to date on what other people are saying about your company.

5) Google News for inbound network marketing is yet another whole training in and of itself.  My recommendation is to daily, do a search for your company.  Find out the latest news about it or network marketing as an industry, doing this will provide you some great content to write about.

6) Google reader is a free tool that helps you stay up to date with what’s going on in your industry.  It’s a great tool for coming up with content ideas and engaging with your community in industry related conversations.  Use Google reader to subscribe to your favorite blogs rss feeds and instead of running all over the net, they are all in one place.

7) Google Places should be used by you to get your business found on local search results on both Google search results and Google Maps.  This will increase your visibility, get you more traffic and best of all its a free traffic source.

8) And finally I am going to end with Google +, here is my Google Plus Profile, and this service is Google’s attempt to answer the popularity of Facebook.  Its a new social network that can drive traffic to your site via social media and search engine traffic.  As of the last time I checked, Google+ is missing a business pages feature, but as I understand the information coming out of Google HQ this option is slowly going to become available.

Ok, so I know there a lot of tools that I detailed to you, but don’t get crazy and think that you need to get all of them employed right this very moment.  If your doing Facebook marketing are your primary method stick with it, don’t let your inbound network marketing efforts get sidetracked.

But remember that Google is offering some great free inbound network marketing tools that you can employ and overcome that number one object we hear everyday and we ourselves use, I can’t afford to buy the tools to get started.

Regards,

Clint Butler

P.S. If You Need A System to Help You Get in Front of More Prospects (and even profit from people that DON’T want to Join. Click Here to See What I Mean

Filed Under: Search Engine Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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