Inbound Web Design

At each year’s mid-way point, we (at Magnetic MarCom) construct a simple one-page document that reminds the “troops” what we are working towards, and ratchets-up our goals and expectations for the following year…Sort of our yearly Declaration of Independence.

Don’t believe that you can plan your business for the next year using a single document? I would suggest that you take a moment and read the actual Declaration of Independence, a single-paged document that launched a powerful, free nation and inspired the world.

Most companies, usually by force of habit or procrastination, will begin forecasting and planning their “grand plans” for the following year somewhere between Thanksgiving and New Years Day. I, on the other hand, have become quite fond of making my grand business statements in line with when our forefathers did the same with the United States Declaration of Independence.

The simple fact is, on-page optimization doesn't necessarily rank first in the journey for top-10 rankings (#3 on our list). According to many SEO experts across the web, the process you may want to adopt for getting that coveted first position probably should look something more like:

#1. “Crawl-ability” – Super-optimized, carefully crafted, otherwise amazing content that the search engines can't see, cannot be indexed properly. The Google “Gods” have passed down the following (and fairly straight forward) tip for making sure your site’s pages are “crawl-able”:

Some of our June Favorites from the Magnetic MarCom Weekly Web Roll Call…

• The Jedi Master Approach to Content Marketing that Converts
• The Most Successful Email I Ever Wrote
• 10 blog post ideas that are so quick and easy you could finish them on a bar napkin
• CTA – Calls to Adventure: How to Make Your Posts More Heroic
• Infographic: How Online Marketing Drives Offline Success.
• Nobody Cares about your Business…But that’s OK.
• How to NOT Talk Yourself Out of your Goals and Dreams

If you would like to grab even more Inbound Marketing and #HubSpot links that we find useful ourselves during our web travels, join @MagneticMarCom on Twitter.
 
June was an awesome month…  

A common thread found in comments from our fellow Inbound Marketers is “I know what tools I have at my disposal and how they are used…but, I just don’t have enough time in the day to do it all. What channels should I focus on?

Well, Twitter may be one of the greatest all-time innovations in content sharing, LinkedIn is a wonderful place for making B2B connections, and Facebook is the single place where everyone on the web naturally congregates…but I would suggest that the space you should be putting most of your time and effort into is “none of the above.”

Many times CTA’s are written a bit too much like a wedding invitation. As soon as your guests open the envelope and see the velum and calligraphed “You are cordially invited…” they know exactly what they are looking at, and are free to begin creating preconceived notions of what may be in store.

But what if instead, you had slipped a scrap of paper under their door, a ransom note, giving strict direction, a command, on what they must do? Something like:

This Week on the Magnetic MarCom Weekly Web Roll Call…

• How I Leveraged LinkedIn to Create a 7-Figure Income in 3-Years.
• Infographic: A brief history of content marketing.
• What the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles can Teach us all About Marketing…Seriously.
• Getting Un-comfortable with your Content Marketing
• Nobody Cares about your Business…But that’s OK.
• How to NOT Talk Yourself Out of your Goals and Dreams
• How to Improve My Google Ranking? Use Google Authorship Program

If you would like to grab even more Inbound Marketing and #HubSpot links that we find useful ourselves during our web travels, join @MagneticMarCom on Twitter.

And so it begins…

What’s Your Favorite Color? Your Answer May Change Once You Better Understand How Color Theory Can Boost Your Conversion Rates.

Easily dismissed by some, color theory (color psychology) is often viewed as marketing “black magic.” In reality the very best color theory is the result of countless studies and the compellation of real-world data over decades of research.

As with many disciplines in this same vein, when these metrics are viewed from a distance, often times, some very clear conclusions can begin to be drawn. It is no mistake that some of the worlds most distinguishable brands have adopted, and stayed with, a single color scheme deeply rooted in this type of study. 

We have all been there: Staring at the blank screen, the blinking cursor…taunting us.

It can become a daunting task to continuously create timely, fresh, topical and useful blog content on a day-to-day or even week-to-week basis. Sometimes inspiration strikes and you effortlessly create a topical masterpiece, almost unconsciously. But on other occasions, frustration sets in as you struggle to even develop a topic…let alone a useful and sharable post.

Again, we’ve all been there.

The good news is, as inbound marketers and bloggers, we have at our disposal the greatest tool EVER created for collecting blog topics, researching ideas deeper, even connecting with other authors on a one-on-one basis…

This Week on the Magnetic MarCom Weekly Web Roll Call…

• 5 Ways the Ghostbusters can Improve your Online Marketing.
• CTA – Calls to Adventure: How to Make Your Posts More Heroic
• The One Tiny Difference Between a Mediocre and a Great Website.
• Automatic Appointment Requests on your HubSpot Site with TimeTrade
• Why the Future of Home Page Design is “Funnel Marketing”
• 5 Ways to Manage your Customer’s Expectations
• The Most Successful Email I Ever Wrote

If you would like to grab even more links that we find useful ourselves during our web travels, join @MagneticMarCom on Twitter.

Without further adieu…

The way people have interacted with brands has been (and will probably always be) in an ever-changing state of flux. The times, as they say, "are a changin'."

Marketing messages have been showcased via rock carvings and smoke-signals to iPads and iPhones. Not to mention the store aisle displays, newspaper and magazine ads, direct mail, radio, television, banner ads and spam that came somewhere in-between.

Of course, some of the marketing techniques used across these channels proved ineffective over time, and have (thankfully) fallen out of favor. But some “old-school” tactics have stood the test of time, and for good reason…they work. These techniques deserve a closer inspection, and possibly a spot within your inbound marketing efforts.