Fundamentally, inbound marketing is demonstrating through relevant and valuable information online that you are a leading authority in your industry. By doing so, sales calls will be inbound from your prospective client to you instead of your salesperson calling (and interrupting) a prospect.
A client recently asked her Web SEO vendor what they use to generate content for the dynamic news feed on their website. What "Curator Plugin" did they use? The answer came back starting this way: "There's no easy answer on this one..." The vendor went on to explain how they manually get (curate) articles for their news feed. "We all do a lot of reading and we share the best of what we find..." continued the answer.
I agree with this vendor's answer and I would take it a little further. Any time you can create fresh content by writing it yourself or making newsworthy moves in your industry, all the better! What is your company doing to make news? Are you working with any landmark properties and marquis clients; do you have an informative case study about it? What business trends are you observing? Are you witnessing noteworthy phenomena that aren't talked about much? The answers will help you originate new content worth sharing with your audience.
People running businesses don't have much time to be authors or trade publication editors. No problem. There are plenty of sources gushing with information to be redirected toward your audience. When deciding what content to share or publish, be certain of its sizzle factor as well as its relevance. You need to grab attention and keep it long enough for your prospect to associate the good content you're providing with your company's value.
Where to get content:
If you follow the right people, LinkedIn and Twitter are great resources and idea generators for interesting and valuable content you can share. I got the idea for this article by going to Twitter with the intention of scooping something. Within 5 minutes of perusing a few tweets I had this article outlined.
More content resources: Listening to customers; conversations with vendors and strategic partners; conversations at networking events; studying the competition; interviewing smart people; Google, Bing, YouTube, Yahoo; LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google Plus; libraries and bookstores; The New England Real Estate Journal; blogs; newsletters; your imagination; life and work experience; and children and pets.
Put some teeth into your inbound marketing campaign by creating a library of content and a schedule for publishing and sharing. Stick to the schedule and add to your content library daily or weekly so you'll have a continuous feed of valuable information emanating from your brand's home base.
Chuck Sink is president of Chuck Sink Link, Hopkinton, N.H.