Review: Inbound Marketing and Content Marketing
Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs (New Rules Social Media Series)
Inbound Marketing is one of those things that you intuitively get. “Of course that’s how you do it.” There’s a tendency to call it basic, but I’d argue best kind of innovation always feels obvious. “Of course we should lock cockpit doors.”
Anyway, inbound marketing boils down to creating content that drives interest in your business/cause. That way your web presence turns into a hub, and not an echo chamber. In its simplest form, you must: Write stuff, seed it into the wild to build buzz, and reap the rewards.
There’s a tendency for folks to start taking each step to an absurd degree – for example, with distributing content, you can get lost in a sea of SEO SEO SEO SEO SEO KEYWORD SEO.
This book doesn’t succumb to that snake oil. Instead, the author’s say you should focus on creating what they call remarkable content – timely, relevant, useful information. Create groups of people interested in the same. Be genuinely interested, be genuinely helpful, and business will flow.
That’s something I can get behind.
It’s a three or four year old tech book, so it is definitely showing its age — for example, there’s a section on Digg. But that aside, it’s a solid basis for someone trying to establish thought leadership and garner eyeballs in a particular market. Especially in concert with…
Content Marketing: Think Like a Publisher – How to Use Content to Market Online and in Social Media (Que Biz-Tech)
This book covers the same ground, with a few differences. Lieb reiterates using all forms of content – visual, audio, video. She uses case studies that are a little more in depth, but the real stars are the “Content Audit” section and a 14 point starter called “You’re a publisher, think like one.”
Anyway, between the two books, you have a solid basis in modern marketing. I’d argue the rest should be intuitive – build on this, hone the craft, test out buying strategies etc.
Unless there’s a major shift, you’re better off spending the time you would spending reading about marketing (beyond these two books) on writing and building great stuff.
-Shlok
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