Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Inbound Marketing

“If you have more money than brains, you should focus on outbound marketing. If you have more brains than money, you should focus on inbound marketing by reading this book.”

—Guy Kawasaki, cofounder of Alltop, and author of Reality Check

Whilst Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs (The New Rules of Social Media) by Brian Halligan & Dharmesh Shah is aimed primarily at business owners, many of the topics covered will also be very useful to bloggers who want to get themselves known in a field wider than their family and close friends.

The premise of the book is that the old marketing is dead or dying. Gone are the days where simply throwing money at print or radio advertising guaranteed succees. Instead, you need to engage your customers; give them reasons to come to visit your web site, and once they are there give them reasons to come back again and again. The key notion is that at the centre of all business (or blog) promotion is the Internet and the social media available within it such as Twitter, FaceBook, Linkedin etc.

No matter how confused you feel by the rise of social media sites, (sure doesn’t a new one seem to appear everyday now?) this book will help you overcome your worries and fears.

The chapters cover:

  • Shopping Has Changed, Has Your Marketing?
  • Is Your Website a Marketing Hub?
  • Are You Worthy?
  • Create Remarkable Content
  • Get Found in the Blogosphere
  • Getting Found in Google
  • Get Found in Social Media
  • Convert Visitors into Leads
  • Convert Prospects into Leads
  • Convert Leads to Customers
  • Make Better Marketing Decisions
  • Picking and Measuring Your People
  • Picking and Measuring a PR Agency
  • Watch Your Competition
  • On Commitment Patience and Learning
  • Why Now?
  • Tools and Resources
  • Tips from the Trenches for Startups

Inbound Marketing is a compact and easily accessible book. Unlike many of the other books focusing on this subject Inbound Marketing is engaging and easy to follow. Sure, it talks about the power of Twitter, but it then gives you advice on how to choose a twitter handle. Sure, it talks about the rise of the superstar blogger and the death of the press release, but then it talks about how to decide whether you need a PR agency and, if you do, then how you should hire one. Each chapter contains a checklist of things you should do, right now, to start improving your inbound marketing; a great feature that those already well established in the world of commerce and the new starters alike will find immensely useful.

In the crowded social media market, where just about everyone and their brother is coming out with a book, this book rises to the top because of its balanced combination of theory and practice.

With thanks to Wiley & Sons, Inc. for the review copy.

Hardcover: 256 pages

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons (29 Oct 2009)

Language English

ISBN-10: 0470499311

ISBN-13: 978-0470499313

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