Inbound marketing is “in”

Earlier this week, I attended and presented at the Inbound Marketing Summit organized by Chris Brogan. It was truly an engaging and informative conference.  The consensus was that social media marketing is still big on tactics and short on strategy.  Marketing has changed and every company needs to have a long term plan for participation- or be left behind.

Here are some highlights from the summit:

Convincing the Curmudgeon
Charlene Li, Altimeter Group
·    When developing a social media strategy, think about the type of relationship you want to cultivate with your customers
·    Social media is a medium that is built for failure (it is about relationships and many relationships fail)
·    Brands must prepare for and embrace failure
·    Brands can’t be in control unless they are engaged
·    Understand the value and importance of SEO for social media content
·    More companies need to develop a social media policy for employees

The Art of Persuasion in the New Content Marketing World
Darren Guaranaccia, Sitecore
·    Advertising still works, but there is more of a responsibility for brands to deliver on ad promises
·    Marketers today must overdeliver and delight their customers
·    Brands must both learn to listen and listen to learn
·    It’s important to be where the fish are (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter) but your website is still important
·    Content marketing is not just talking about your product

Marketing: The Last 50 Years, the Next 50 years, and How to Succeed
Brian Halligan, HubSpot
·    The era of outbound marketing, where brands were good at interrupting their way into your living room, is over
·    We’ve gotten good at blocking out what we don’t want to hear or see with Tivo, caller ID, email and pop-up blockers, etc.
·    The next 50 years is about inbound marketing; instead of interrupting people, brands need to be found by them
·    The currency of today is links
·    It’s about ROA – Return on Assets. Your assets are your fans, friends and followers and it’s important to increase the value of these assets over time

Monitoring, Conversing & Measuring Results
Jay Krall, Cision
·    It’s possible to provide ROI with social metrics
·    Some traditional metrics still matter (visitors, subscribers)
·    Social metrics that matter include inbound links, comments, unique commentors, comment engagement, and citations on social bookmarking and news sharing sites
·    No matter how small your industry, it’s getting talked about online