Inbound Marketing For Small Business

The internet and rapid growth of social media coupled with a tough economic climate have many business owners asking – Where are my customers? Their traditional marketing methods are not nearly as effective as they used to be, and they need sales, NOW!

In recent months Google has introduced changes to their algorithm to penalize sites trying to “trick” the search engines, and reward the sites who are focused on the customer experience and publish quality sites.

Ive published many blog articles on choosing keywords so I won’t go over that again, at the end of this article you’ll find links to those articles.  So lets assume you have your list of keywords, you even know where and how to use your keywords, but you’re struggling with the implementation. How do you make it happen?

The number one request I get as an inbound marketing consultant is to help companies rank higher in search results to drive more traffic to their site. So the question begs; “how do we do this the right way?” Thankfully Google is committed to returning search results that are highly relevant to searchers’ requests. They do this by updating their search algorithm, the way they rank web pages and return results to the searcher, to penalize sites that use tactics that cheat the system, known as ‘black hat’, ‘keyword stuffing’ and ‘webspam’. 
"The key takeaway is that Google is changing it’s algorithm to reward quality sites – so stay focused on publishing quality content."

While your end goal for might be sales, the secret to success for lead generation with social media is to know where it fits into the buy cycle for your business. My view is that it's at the beginning, and should be utilized to build reach, awareness, rapport, trust and authority. So here are my 8 social media tips for small business owners and marketers:

How are you adjusting to the new Facebook Timeline? The more I learn about it the more I love it, especially for marketing.

How was your first quarter of 2012? Did you achieve your lead, customer and revenue goals? Did you get through all your tasks?

It's easy to get overwhelmed with all the changes to the internet, social media and specifically Facebook. Especially when you're trying to run your business and just keeping up with technology is a job in itself.  

If you are in charge of marketing and generating leads and customers for your business then understanding content marketing, if you want to be successful, is important. "But why?" I hear you ask.

The next step is lead generation!

Check out these blogging and lead generation resources: