Actually, there was a small mistake in the subject of this blog, because there isn't really a secret in great inbound marketing – other than ensuring the right people see your content at the right time!
Inbound marketing is all about your prospects finding you, which means that it’s important that your precious and brilliant content is found when it’s needed to be found.
I’m sure we've all done the same thing at some point in our careers; we've created a brilliant piece of content (website content, video, article, blog or social media post etc) we have lined up several online channels to host and promote the piece and clicked send … then sat back ….. and waited ….. and waited some more …. but nothing happens!
No interest at all in our lovely, well crafted content, but it was perfect, what went wrong?
Well the chances are that simply your excellent message just didn't rise above the rubbish and the clutter – image this from a social media perspective, as soon as you click the send button your piece of content is the freshest and newest piece out there and it appears at the top of the stream, but second later it’s buried in a pool of noise.
As an experiment I simply tweeted the hashtag #Marketing and within just two minutes it was buried in my own twitter stream with by all the other stuff I follow, Even when I searched Twitter for my update after only 10 minutes my tweet has disappeared under 187 tweets – for all intents and purposes this post was now gone.
So what could I have done differently?
Very simply I just needed to make my post rise above the clutter and this is easiest done with my advocates – and virtually everyone and every business has some of these. These are your greatest fans, your enthusiastic followers.
These people serve two key functions:
- They a can extend the life of any content by simply sharing it for you, but more importantly,
- They take on a valuable “word of mouth” presence.
What you might not realise is that a large percentage of new business comes from some sort of referral (whether these be Friends, Relatives, Acquaintances or Unknown online networks etc), and word of mouth has always been the most trusted form of advertising.
And whats even better is that these advocates are still working for you when you aren't around, constantly posting, sharing, and mentioning your brand.
How do you find your advocates?
They should be fairly obvious to spot if your close to your online marketing channels, these are the people that will
readily retweet, like, favourite or share your content; they respond to your requests, they comment and talk about you (and often without being prompted).
The trick is to recognise these traits in your social networks and recognise the individuals - network with them, thank them, provide easier access to your best staff, provide extra content, training or even prizes. If your industry is suitable for it then try rewarding with gamification (providing points and badges etc).
Numerous big businesses understand the importance of their advocates and work with them – Google have supplied advocates with freebies in the past as a thank you; Samsung provide special events for their advocates and chances to get their hands on the latest devices (the recent
Samsung Unpacked 2014 in Barcelona was a great example; Walmat creates specialised online communities of shoppers to help spread their messages. It is everywhere.
It’s the very importance of these advocates is the reason that I seem to find the constant need to explain to people that it’s not the number of Followers or Friends, Retweets or Likes that important, but
who Follows and Likes you,
who Retweets or Likes your posts.
One good advocate is worth more than 1,000 Followers that don’t listen to you.
Summary:
So listen to your channels, discover your advocates and build a relationship with them, then the life of your precious content will be lengthened allowing your important messages to reach more people.
