HubSpot TV - Get Out of the Weeds

Episode #54 - August 21st, 2009
(Episode Length: 25 minutes, 37 seconds)

Producers' Note: Sorry for the delay in getting this up! We lost the audio of the original version and had to sync the "live" audio in short segments. Quite a tedious process; we did the best we can. Hope you enjoy!

Intro

• How to interact on Twitter: @ mvolpe , @ karenrubin with www.HubSpot.tv in your tweet.
• Subscribe in iTunes: http://itunes.hubspot.tv
• Chris Brogan on HSTV next week!

Doing it Right

• NY Parking Ticket - A service that helps you get out of parking tickets!
• Strategy: give away tips for do it yourself people, charge for their service to do it for you
• Tactics: use blogging, SEO, Twitter, Facebook to spread the word about your free valuable content
• Results: Traffic grew 7x in the last 5 months, with equally strong lead growth as well
• Link with Video

Headlines

Google Caffeine...a new soft drink?

• Google Caffeine: Google’s New Search Engine Index
  
• "Google has just unveiled a "secret project" of "next-generation architecture for Google's web search". This new architecture appears to include crawling, indexing, and ranking changes."
• Developer Preview
• Marketing Takeaway: Focus on creating remarkable content, not gaming the search engines.

Adwords Positioning and Repositioning

• Conversion Rates Don't Vary Much with Ad Position
  
• "...for pages where 11 ads are shown the conversion rate varies by less than 5% across positions. In other words, an ad that had a 1.0% conversion rate in the best position, would have about a 0.95% conversion rate in the worst position, on average."
• After Moving Ads to the Left, Google Clicks Climb 10 Percent
• "...Google recently moved its search ads column to the left in a bid to increase their visibility and click rate...one search analytics company has published early analysis suggesting clicks may have risen by 10.3 percent"
• Marketing Takeaway: Think about bidding less on your adwords to save money.

State of Friendfeed

• State Of FriendFeed: 14 Things You Probably Don't Know
• "The top sources for items being pulled into FriendFeed (in order): Twitter, Google Reader, delicious, Facebook, bookmarklet, Flickr, Tumblr, YouTube, digg, and StumbleUpon."
• Marketing Takeaway: Make life easier for you by following influencers on FriendFeed and for your followers by aggregating your content on FriendFeed.

Blogging Brings Website Visitors

• http://bloStudy Shows Small Businesses That Blog Get 55% More Website Visitors
• Based on the "data from 1,531 HubSpot customers."
• "Companies that blog have far better marketing results. Specifically, the average company that blogs has:
  • 55% more visitors
  • 97% more inbound links
  • 434% more indexed pages"
• Marketing Takeaway: Creating more content attracts more people to your website.

Is ESPN Doing it Right? or Wrong?

• WTF ESPN
• Dear espn you're doing it wrong
• Making people only talk about ESPN is a quick one-way ticket to "who cares?"
• Mike's Marketing Takeaway: Companies need to think through their strategy of getting value for their employees time, while allowing for individual freedom.
• Karen's Marketing Takeaway: Building relationships is the most important aspect of social media. You should do it as a company and also allow your employees to do it on behalf of the company.

Forum Fodder

• Question on www.inboundmarketing.com/forum
• ddahl: What are your thoughts on website services that offer increasing your Twitter followers to the thousands ?

Marketing Tip of the Week: Don't get stuck in the weeds, stick to your overall inbound strategy.

Closing

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