Mapping the Design journey

Written for Wakefly.com in April 2010

Today, I met Mike Volpe (@mvolpe), VP Inbound Marketing at Hubspot and it was a very educational experience. Having moved here recently I have been trying to expand on my network of friends, colleagues, industry experts etc. Social media marketing is both an online and offline endeavor. It is all about forming that link, that connection with individuals whom you interact with daily in the online space.  And as I mentioned in my last article inbound marketing channels have helped me connect to many people, discuss industry specific issues and gain greater insight. Mike Volpe is one of those few individuals who have helped me expand on my knowledge of inbound marketing.

The reason I call this article ‘the inbound marketing story’ is that today’s meeting stemmed from online interaction with an industry expert. Having taken the inbound marketing exam in February, I started following a number of people from Hubspot on Twitter. One of them was Mike Volpe. Mike and I started discussing the latest in tech gadgets on twitter. The discussion went from iPad to HP netbooks to eee pcs to coffee.

I was very excited about meeting Mike as I had seen him on Hubspot TV, had read his articles on the hubspot blog and had been talking to him on twitter. He was this contact on my screen whom I loved sharing ideas with. Meeting him offline meant taking the whole online marketing experience to real life. And a part of me wasn’t sure how this experience would translate. After having waited two weeks I finally met him today. And I was impressed at how down to earth he was and with what ease he translated the whole inbound marketing experience from the online space to everyday life.

The important thing I gathered from today’s meeting was that inbound marketing ethos and guidelines need to be communicated and established across the board – from our online activities to our everyday life. There needs to be a point where it all comes in sync and reflects the same brand attitude. Come to think of it the ‘online space’ is just a channel where we can further our everyday activities and businesses. It provides us with opportunities to reach out to a wider audience. And helps us create platforms which enable us to interact without having to be physically present in the same room. But if someone was to ask what inbound marketing would like if moved from the online space to the real world? I would say it would very much look like the hub of activity at the Hubspot offices.

The Hubspot offices seemed like an interactive maze to me where everyone was busy communicating on some level or another. From an outsiders point of view this communication was very much in sync. Even though each individual was carrying out his/her own task yet it all came together under one umbrella. It was hard to set rigid boundaries around groups or to say that one part was different from another. To be honest it was reflective of how hubspot carries out their online activities. They may do different webinars, have different twitter accounts, write different blog posts but they all speak the same language – the language of inbound marketing. The culture at their corporate offices reflects this too. What was most amusing was that I saw copies of the ‘inbound marketing’ book by Brian and Dharmesh on the desks of their employees too.

Written for Wakefly.com in April 2010

When a searcher types a query in a search engine, the search engines respond to the query by displaying URLs that best meet the searchers criteria. In simple words search engines index millions of sites (store them in a data pool) and pull up sites that have content that responds to specific search keywords. Sometimes a website can have two versions of the same page indexed by the search engine. Search engines treat http://yoursite.com and http://www.yoursite.com as two different websites, resulting in both URLs being indexed and traffic going to both separately. This could result in the sites search rankings being comprised and domain equity being divided. In such circumstances it becomes important to carry out a server side redirect commonly known as a “301 redirect”.

There are several other circumstances where having a 301 redirect becomes important. For instance, if you created a landing page that was no longer valid – it was generating a lot of traffic when created and had many inbound links (sites linking to it) but the offer on the page had expired and search engines were still sending traffic to that page. Instead of deleting the landing page you can 301 redirect it to another page on your site. This would ensure that the value and equity generated from that landing page stays in place. It also solves the problem of having redundant content on your site. The page could still be indexed by search engines but with a 301 redirect in place a searcher would be redirected to an active page on your site.

A 301 redirect is a way of re-directing or forwarding traffic from your site to another URL. With a 301 redirect you can direct traffic to your preferred URL (e.g. you want Search engines to treat http://yoursite.com and http://www.yoursite.com as one webpage thus, when you set up a 301 redirect, search engines will send traffic to your preferred URL).

It is particularly important for SEO purposes because: It is one of the most efficient and spider/search engine friendly strategies. It groups together your various sites and sends traffic to your preferred URL. It helps preserve your search engine rankings for a particular page.

Other scenarios where 301 redirects are very important include situations where you want to move your existing site to a new domain. Placing redirects allows old URLs to be “redirected” to the URL of your new site so that your visitors don’t get an HTTP 404 error (page not found message). Google Webmaster central explains the most useful circumstances for 301 redirects on its website and states that, “301 redirects are particularly useful in the following circumstances:

• You’ve moved your site to a new domain, and you want to make the transition as seamless as possible.
• People access your site through several different URLs. If, for example, your home page can be reached in multiple ways – for instance, http://example.com/home, http://home.example.com, or http://www.example.com – it’s a good idea to pick one of those URLs as your preferred (canonical) destination, and use 301 redirects to send traffic from the other URLs to your preferred URL.
• You’re merging two websites and want to make sure that links to outdated URLs are redirected to the correct pages.”

The kind of Web server you have dictates how your Webmaster will implement a 301 redirect. The most common Web server is Apache, for an Apache server the Webmaster will need to modify the .htaccess file. For implementing a 301 redirect on a Windows Server check out Bruce Clay Inc.’s post.

301 redirects are important for Search Engine Optimization purposes. They are placed to make sure that pages from your site are indexed properly, value from your old site is transferred to your new site and any content or page duplications are removed from your site.

You can place 301 redirects for any page of your site – product pages, landing pages, home page etc.

Written for Wakefly.com in March 2010

Today, I attended CRM Acceleration’s Social Media and CRM seminar sponsored by BrainSell and SugarCRM. The event was a gathering of Social Media and CRM gurus. Several speakers presented their ideas about Inboung marketing, Social Media, Sales and CRM etc. The seminar was structured to promote channels that can help businesses generate online leads.

Inbound Marketing expert Dharmesh Shah opened the house with a very interesting presentation on inbound marketing techniques. The presentation covered all aspects of inbound marketing – from SEO, Social Networking and Blogging to Measuring success metrics and sales. Dharmesh presented ideas promoting inbound marketing and further emphasized on the importance of content creation. He proved to the audience that inbound marketing was the approach to adopt. It is all about getting found by your customers and not chasing after them.

As stated earlier, one important element in his presentation was structured around the idea that blogging is a powerful means of content generation. In a previous post we highlighted 6 reasons why blogging is important for businesses. For businesses looking to adopt inbound marketing practices, content generation is an important step. Good, quality content is loved by search engines. Search Engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing match quality content with their searchers query. Thus, it becomes important for businesses to create content that can satisfy the needs of millions of searchers.

Blogging is a channel through which businesses can create meaningful content. As Dharmesh stated in his presentation, “Google loves blogs.” Through it’s search technique Google brings the searcher and content together. Blogs are means through which companies can keep their content current and informational. Through a blog businesses can talk to their customers and answer important questions. Many businesses assume that blogging isn’t important to them as they expect their customers not to go online to read or find information. Dharmesh elaborated on this point and stated that, “if there are people willing to buy in your industry then there are people willing to read about it.”

Today’s customer consumes information. They are smart and savvy and want to learn everything about your industry before they make a decision. The best way to be a thought leader in your industry is by building a blog. A blog is an informal way of showing that you can add value in your industry, that you are an expert on the material you sell and that you know how to build meaningful conversations. It’s all about building your credibility and showing that you are an expert in your industry.

Blogs also help keep your web content fresh and enable you to converse with your customers. “People value stale information less.” (Dharmesh Shah, Inbound Marketing)

Published for Wakefly.com in February 2010

Recently, five members of the Wakefly team got their Inbound Marketing Certification from the Inbound Marketing University at Hubspot. This is a great achievement for our team and we are very proud of them. There has been a strong shift in the industry towards inbound marketing. People are letting go of traditional marketing practices and adopting new innovative processes like ‘Inbound Marketing.”

Being found online is more important for businesses now, than it ever was. Inbound marketing brings together various online channels to market your business successfully in the online space. Many businesses have been prophesying about online marketing and its advantages but very few actually get what inbound marketing really is. Hubspot is one of those few businesses that really gets it. They discuss reasons why Search Engine Marketing, Social Media, Email Marketing and Content Marketing are important. And they provide sound reasoning. They deploy the inbound marketing practices successfully and they practice what they preach. In simple words Inbound Marketing can be defined as a channel to deploy the right services to market in the online/digital realm.

Dharmesh Shah and Brian Halligan in their book ‘Inbound Marketing, Get found using Google, Social Media, And Blogs’ take you through the journey of innovative and futuristic marketing practices. It’s no longer about creating several billboards and placing them everywhere. Now it’s about placing subtle messages in areas that the new generation is becoming familiar with. It’s about having a ‘unique’ strategy to position your brand in the right platform. In their book they emphasize that ‘having a remarkable strategy in the inbound marketing era is more critical than ever for two reasons.

First, the Internet enables you to reach many more people than you could pre-Internet, but it also opens you to up to potential competitors everywhere (e.g. globally versus locally). The trick is to stand out by becoming as remarkable (unique and valuable) as possible to a segment of buyers.

Secong, the Internet enables remarkable ideas to spread extremely quickly – far more quickly than pre-internet days. Unremarkable ideas languish infound.”

According to Google Public Data in 2008 72.4% of the population in the U.S. was using the internet.

This goes to show that the internet is becoming increasingly important and in our world today all channels of communication and businesses are very internet dependent. In a world like ours it becomes important to adopt practices that help us market successfully on the internet. Inbound Marketing is a book that takes you through the journey of unconventional marketing and introduces you to the domain of ‘inbound marketing’ and ways of leveraging your brand/company on a whole new platform. As the web is changing the way we interact with the world, inbound marketing practices have become really important. This book defines all the key concepts and also provides a step-by-step guide of implementing an inbound strategy.

Inbound Marketing practices can be adopted by communicating effectively with your target audience. It’s all about letting them find you online, letting them stumble upon your website or come across your content. The way to do this is to have remarkable online content, produce blogs, videos, have conversations, to be found in search engines, have a presence on major Social media networks (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Buzz, Digg, Youtube etc.) and to communicate through channels that your audience is familiar with. Now it’s all about humanizing your brand to connect to people online, to identify channels that they use and to strategize keeping inbound marketing practices in mind.

Inbound marketing is a remarkable book and is a must read. I recently wrote a review for it on Amazon and I think that anyone who wants to take their business to the next level should familiarize himself with Inbound Marketing. Thanks to @dharmesh on twitter for introducing me to successful inbound marketing.