Updates from My Neglected Hubspot Site

I told myself that if I was going to blow $200/month on a Hubspot inbound marketing web platform, I'd get everything out of it I possibly could. Oh, how life happens...Despite my neglect, check out this progress.

Hubspot is known for its success in getting sites to rank organically. I've kept up blogging once or twice a month and made very minimal tweaks to my site since December, but look! Nearly a 200% increase! For a site that started at ground zero, I am pleased.

I thought these analyzitics were interesting because I did low budget, paid advertising on Yelp and StumbleUpon in December for the holidays. I am rarely disappointed by Yelp. I was less excited by StumbleUpon. Though I did see a significant boost in traffic, traffic was all it was.

More to come - I promise...

The Best Internet Marketing Secret Weapon There Is

Writing.

Writing is the best secret weapon available to you as an internet marketer. Learn to write, and you can do anything. There are some general rules for SEO and webinars out the wazoo for social media. You have to be persistent and committed to master those things but not overly talented.

Writing is a bit harder - takes practice plus persistence and commitment. And people in your industry want it. If you can write, you can helpfully and knowledgeably blog for product wholesalers, clients, magazines, industry affiliates and on and on and on. And they will all link back to you, your product, your company's web presence.

Learn to write. Then write a lot. Then share what you write, and offer to write for others.

Your writing, locked and loaded with strategic links and helpful content, is the best place to invest your time and start an internet marketing plan.

365 Days with Hubspot

I did it. I signed a contract with Hubspot.

Hubspot is an inbound marketing content managent system that allows small businesses - and some. big ones - to manage their web marketing efforts with one platform. I've worked with the software since 2008 and really believed in the principles and the overall product. I've taken bad jobs and paycuts just to be near the Hub'.

Recently, I got frustrated at work, and somewhat impulsivly but not regretably signed myself up for 365 day, basic Hubspot package at a whopping $200/month. I say whopping because I don't actually HAVE much of a small business to run. I have a very dead massage website that hasn't been updated since 2009 when I went into marketing full time. And it's terrible.

So that's the challenge. For the next 365 days, I have to make $200/month doing massage to cover the cost of this software. At least. (I'd like to quit my desk job, too, of course.) I plan to post regular updates, screenshots and more to track my progress and to entertain whomever is out there reading.

Here goes nothin'...

Optimize Your Blog with Calls to Action

A basic inbound marketing rule is to provide valuable content. Make valuable content available everywhere from your website to your lead nurturing campaigns to your customer service and sales cycles. But to get the most out of your content, you have to call attention to it. You need pair your valuable content with a call to action!

A call to action (CTA) is exactly that. It makes your blog reader, applicant, shopper want to do something - and in an ideal situation, do it with a sense of urgency. Your blog is an excellent place to use CTAs. Putting a small CTA at the end of a brief article about related, valuable content will generally be received as helpful, not pushy.

When I post mortgage rate updates on a mortgage broker client's blog, I always include a variation of CTA like this one at the bottom of each article:

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Rates for every home loan type listed above are under 4%! Now is a great time to refinance. Request a free home loan consultation to learn more about your mortgage options.

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On text-heavy articles, I include graphics to draw attention to the CTA. Fiddle with it. Do some A/B testing. See what works best for different types of articles.

However you do it, dropping a call to action in the bottom of a blog article rich with valuable content is a quick, easy way to helpfully encourage your target audience to take action. Give it a try! And check out Hubspot's recent article 5 Locations You Must Add Your Calls to Action for other great ideas.

HubSpot says CREATE CONTENT!

To anyone who has heard me talk about my job, it's no secret I am a big fan of Hubspot and Hubspot's message - INBOUND MARKETING. See what HubSpot TV has to say about creating content. Fast forward to 3:30 mins to get the bulk of the discussion on content. (Perk: Get HubSpot's scoop on the next hot marketing book).

For the Content Late-comers

For those of you who are not building content and don't know why you should bother, and unfortunately there are quite a few of you still out there, according to Wikipedia, "content marketing is an umbrella term encompassing all marketing formats that involve the creation or sharing of content for the purpose of engaging current and potential consumer bases...Delivering high-quality, relevant and valuable information to prospects and customers drives profitable consumer action." What company bottom line doesn't want that?

Most marketers will tell you that creating valuable content for your clients and web visitors is not a new marketing tactic. Seth Godin, who regularly champion-blogs about the unexpected, often Purple Cow value certain companies create, and David Meerman Scott, who interviews any and every successful by-chance marketer in the world, have been talking about it in their blogs and books for ages. Check them out immediately if you are a late-comer to the concept of creating content. Hey, then get on point. Create something valuable!

For the Content Bandwagon Riders

For everyone else, for my fellow veteran, content-creators, this post just a redundant hooray, a broken-record-pat-on-the-back and an admitted effort to support the awesome marketing gurus at HubSpot.

By the way, HubSpot, good for you!

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An inbound marketing pioneer, today Hubspot is the number two fastest growing software company according to Inc Magazine. The founders of HubSpot^® met at MIT in 2004. Both were interested in the transformative impacts of the internet on small businesses and were early students of Web 2.0 concepts. And they wrote a book!
Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs