The 7 Steps to Inbound Marketing Success: Step 3 Distribute

Over the past few weeks we have been taking a look at each of the 7 steps in the lead generation process that we use to help clients navigate and embrace an inbound marketing culture. We hope that by detailing each step in the process it can help clarify the steps needed for inbound marketing success.

In our first post, we addressed Step 1 in the Inbound Planning Process, Plan. During our day-long, inbound planning day where we work with clients to establish an inbound culture and provide a strategy that can be either carried out by the client or by a marketing agency such as LeadG2. The second step, “Create" is sometimes one of the most challenging aspects of inbound marketing and embracing an inbound culture.

Step 3: Distribute

Creating content is just the first step in getting leads. Getting your content in front of your target persona through social media, organic search optimization and link building is the next and sometimes most difficult step.  

Turning your blog into a lead generating machine and getting thousands of visitors to your blog doesn’t just happen overnight or by itself.  It can take months or even years for some of your blog posts to be become popular with Google or to be found by those in your industry.  On our own blog, we regularly see certain blog posts that begin to get shared more frequently and starts to move up quickly in the search rankings.  When you can combine great content, solid search engine optimization, links on other sites and social media… you can create an awesome content machine.

So how do you get thousands of visitors to your blog each month? It’s been said by many content marketing and inbound marketing experts that you should spend 20% of your available time writing blogs and 80% promoting your blog.  At LeadG2 we believe strongly in this philosophy have come up with several proven ways to promote your blog.

In a recent blog post, we provided a few tips to promoting your blog that we would like to further discuss here.

1. Get your team behind the effort

Your blog should be analogous to a sales library. This sales library is where you archive the most common questions asked by your clients and prospects and can email these resources to them when appropriate. The best blog posts come from interactions that you have with your clients and prospects, the objections they have and the questions they ask. So, what better way to serve your clients and get new business then by sending them information from this sales library to answer their questions.

2. Get links to your blog on as many websites as possible

Most businesses are members of various organizations, chamber of commerce and other civic organizations. Don’t be shy in asking to have them link to your blog or asking to guest post on their blog if they have one. The more incoming links to your blog and website the better.

3. Get social

Make sure that you are engaging in social media where your clients and prospects are online. Not all social networks make sense for every company so establish yourself and promote yourself on the networks that make the most sense for your target persona.

You have a choice in the matter. You can either have a beautiful garden that you water, spend time pulling weeds every week, and spend money fertilizing every quarter or you can neglect your landscaping, take a vacation and come back to weeds and dead grass. Just as you can with the maintenance of your yard, if you can’t spend the time to do the job properly, you can hire an expert to do it for you. Let’s face it, not everyone is cut out for gardening and if inbound marketing is not your main job it’s best to hire someone with a green thumb to do it for you. This is especially true if you or someone on your team doesn’t have the skillset required to conduct an inbound marketing program.