5 Tips To Improve Your Inbound Marketing Results
Inbound marketing refers to marketing activities that bring visitors in, rather than having to go out to get prospects’ attention. Inbound marketing earns the attention of customers, makes the company (and blog) easy to be found, and draws customers to the website by producing interesting content.
Now that you know what inbound marketing is, here are my 5 tips to improve your inbound marketing results:
1. Write SEO (search engine optimization) keyword rich blog posts.
2. Name your images accordingly, so that they show up on search engine searches.
3. Write blog posts that your ideal target customer would find of value, so that they come back to your company/blog again and again.
4. Pin your images from your new blog post(s) to your Pinterest boards, so that people on Pinterest will see them, hopefully click on them and be driven straight to your website/blog posts.
5. Shout out your recent blog post on social media platforms, so that you make people aware that you have a new blog post available to read.
Real Life Examples
How to create an SEO keyword rich blog post?
One of my favorite tools is the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress – a free plugin I use to analyze each blog post’s content. It really helps me to write better content and produce SEO rich posts.
Here’s a dashboard screenshot from a recent blog post on my site “10 Tips to Get on a Brand’s Radar”.
Yoast allows me to put in my keywords, edit my snippet (that search engines display to people) and then it generates a red, orange or green circle analysis.
If I were to receive a red circle, I would go back into my post and correct what the analysis stated what was wrong. An orange reading is better than red, but why not make a blog post the best it can be and make it ‘green’ every time. THIS is how I write SEO keyword rich blog posts!
How to name your photos and images accordingly?
In a nutshell, name your images what they are. So before you upload your images for your next blog post, be sure to change the name of the image to match the name of your image and/or what you’re posting about. You can read EXACTLY what I’m talking about, see real examples and how to do this here.
Name the above photo pumpkin-pancakes-maple-butter-glaze.jpg, not DSC_242.jpg (or whatever else your camera spits out)
How to write blog posts that your ideal target customer would value and enjoy?
Write blog posts that answer your customers questions, teach them how to do something, inspire them, or showcase projects or products your company has been working on … you get the idea.
One of my favorite tools, to tell me which blog posts my target customers value, is Google Analytics – a free tracking tool that tells me which blog posts my readers like the most. Note: They are the blog posts with the most traffic/readership!
A couple of years ago, I had a number of my readers email me questions about their booth spaces for an upcoming trade show. So rather than answering them one-on-one (which can take a lot of time, plus I knew others had the same questions) I wrote a blog post about ‘Trade Show Inspiration’.
Guess what? This blog post blew up (translation: My Google Analytics told me I had a ton of traffic to this post). So you know what I did? I wrote several more blog posts over the next two years around the topic ‘Trade Show Inspiration’.
Fact: Trade Show Inspiration: DIY Fabric and Ribbon Backdrop is the most read (aka most traffic) Trade Show Inspiration post to date on my site!
Pin your images to Pinterest.
I’m going to let you in on a little secret, and I know this is going to sound bad, but it’s my reality today. I only spend 1 minute a week on Pinterest. Say what? It’s the truth. I simply pin each of my images from my recent blog post(s) to my Pinterest boards. That’s it! Did you see my numbers last month, Jan 2016? I shared them here. Pinterest was my #3 driver of traffic to my site. Not bad for 1 minute a week, right?!
Disclaimer: I really think you should spend more time on Pinterest and especially when you’re first starting out. There’s a lot more I could be doing on Pinterest and a lot more I could be getting out of Pinterest. It’s simply a time issue for me right now. Do as I say, not as I do. Wink
Shout out your latest blog post(s) on your social media platforms
You’ve already written your SEO rich blog post with your photos and images named accordingly, now it’s time to let people that follow you know that you have a new blog post. Post it to your social media channels like this…
Inbound Marketing is built around the sales funnel of attracting, converting and closing customers. It is a strategy that attracts targeted traffic through information.
Follow my 5 tips to improve your inbound marketing results… and you should start seeing your website traffic numbers increase!
Image Sources
Cover photo via @angela_luck_photography. Cover design by Your Marketing BFF
Pancakes via Carole of TootSweet4Two
DIY Fabric and Ribbon backdrop via Papermusepress