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I joined HubSpot webinar, “How to Combine SEO, Blogging, and Social Media for Results”, held on December 17, 2008. I reviewed the webinar for my busy readers. This is part 1 and it covers SEO and blogging only. I will mention social media in part 2.

Inbound Marketing: SEO + Blogs + Social Media

The webinar is hosted by Mike Volpe from HubSpot. Mike started the webinar with the comparison of outbound marketing (old media platforms like TV, newspapers, etc.) and inbound marketing (SEO, blogging, social media, etc.)

Inbound marketing is based on permission, whereas outbound marketing strategy is based on interruption. Who likes the commercial breaks during the TV series or shows? We don’t like them at all.

Inbound marketing is also a good strategy for bloggers. You should not interrupt your readers with so many affiliate marketing links or sales banners.

Add value, build trust, create a community, get their permission first before trying to sell your readers something. This is my definition for inbound marketing for bloggers.

Key Ingredients of Inbound Marketing for Bloggers

• SEO / SEM
• Social Media
• Blogging
• RSS
• Public Relations
• Free tools/trials

Don’t worry if you don’t have so much money to spend for your blog. We are living in the era of innovation and creativity. You can use above mentioned tools, and create miracles. You can compete with any company, even if you don’t have the same budget. If you dedicate yourself and spend the time as efficient as possible, a good inbound marketing strategy can bring you to over the top.

What Determines Success?

• Blog Content (subscribers or fans, inbound links)
• Social Media (fans or friends, content)
• SEO (content, inbound links)

A good inbound marketing strategy can bring your blog a lot of visitors. If you do it correctly, chances are there will be an exponential growth in your traffic. If you blog regularly, and apply some SEO techniques your posts will be better indexed and ranked in search engines. In other words you will have more visitors. If you effectively use social media tools at the same time, then your visitors will reach more than you can imagine.

The next question: What to Publish?

You should fully use the advantages of all possible publishing alternatives:

• Blog
• Videos
• Podcasts
• Photos
• Presentations
• eBooks
• News Releases

Don’t be shy, capture a two minutes video and help your readers solve a problem. Upload it to video sites like YouTube, and see how many people will be viewing. Do this regularly, and follow your blog stats. Even the photos you captured with your digital camera can bring your blog a log of visitors. Upload them to Flickr. Spend a few hours everyday starting from this week to write your ebook. An ebook has viral affect, and you will never know how easily it will spread around the blogosphere. Write a press release for your blog and submit it to tons of free online press release services. Spend some time and create a presentation for your blog. Share it using SlideShare. Create podcasts by interviewing popular bloggers.

Where To Publish?

I created below list for your easy guidance:

• Photos : Flickr, Photobucket
• Short updates : Twitter
• Presentations: SlideShare
• Videos: YouTube, Google Video, Tube Mogul, blip.tv, Viddler
• Podcasts : Podcast.com

The Biggest Blogging Mistake

According to Mike, the biggest blogging mistake is using a free URL from TypePad or Blogger. I certainly agree with this. You should use a self-hosted WordPress blog if you are serious about blogging. You may read one of my old posts, Blogging Wars – WordPress Vs Blogger, for a good comparison of Blogger and WordPress.

SEO and Blog Frequency

Mike mentioned the importance of SEO for blogs. You shall read my post series The 5 Basic Steps Of SEO For Your Blog – Part 4 to learn some basic SEO tricks for blogs.

The only thing I did not agree with Mike during the entire webinar was the blog posting frequency. He says if you have a SEO focused blog, frequency is less important. Sorry Mike, but Google bots are frequently visiting the blogs that have one or two posts a day. So frequency is still important even if you have a 100% SEO friendly blog. Look at Darren Rowse from Problogger.net, he posts at least two posts every single day.

Assume that with every blog post you are putting another brick in the wall. You are building your empire. Type “site:www.searchforblogging.com” and see my blog’s indexing rate in Google. Do the same for your own, and see your blog’s indexing rate. If the results are less than 1000, then you need to post more, and focus on tagging. For some tips on tagging, take a look at The 5 Basic Steps Of SEO For Your Blog – Part 1

Blog Topic Ideas

• List of 5 ideas, trends, or thoughts: List articles are easy to write and read, if you have enough experience.
• Publish a list of links: If your brain is stuck, take a look at your Google Reader, and find the most interesting blog titles. Read them and if you feel like they will give value to your readers, make a post with a few sentences introduction to those blog posts.
• You may share an experience: This could be easy if you regularly try products or tools related to your blog topic.
• Comment on other blog articles: Collect all your comments to other blogs in a document. These comments can easily turn into blog posts.
• Check your email outbox: When you reply a blogging related email, you write a summary for a good blog post at the same time. Check your email outque, there are a lot of good blog topics are waiting for you.

The presentation video is online at http://www.hubspot.com/archive/sbsm-webinar. You may download or view the slides on the same page, as well as access the additional resources we mentioned during the presentation.

Part 2 – Social Media will be ready this weekend. Make sure you are subscribed to Search For Blogging RSS feeds so that you don’t miss any updates.