Mike Volpe of Hubspot wrote an article today entitled “Why Social Media Is BS.“ In the post, Mike essentially advocates inbound marketing, and Hubspot knows inbound marketing. I would encourage you to read Mike’s post, view his slides, and maybe even sign up for his webinar.
Inbound Marketing: How To Pick A PR Agency
In my opinion, if you want to get the full value from inbound marketing, you need to be personally involved in the effort.
If you keep social media at arm’s length, you will never fully understand what people are doing, why they are doing it, and how to leverage that knowledge to give your company a formidable competitive engine with your use of the relational web. If you let others filter this understanding for you, your company will most likely spend it’s time copying what others are doing instead of forcing your competition to copy what you are doing. Its the difference between competitive parity and sustainable competitive advantage.
Until you develop a few internal digital citizens and become one yourself, a good PR or internet marketing firm can help you get your inbound marketing campaign off the ground. In his exceptional book “Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs,” Dharmesh Shah suggests the following three filters you should use when selecting a PR or marketing agency (pp. 182-183):
1. Evaluate the senior leadership and every member on the team assigned to your company to see how fully engaged each of them are on the web. They should all have individual and active Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn accounts and the firm should have a blog. If they are not digital citizens, how can they help you become one?
2. Make sure they practice what they preach. Run the PR firm’s website through Website Grader to see how well the firm’s site performs. If they can’t manage their own site well, don’t trust them with yours.
3. Ask the agency for names of their other clients or examples of their best work. Run their clients through Website Grader to see how well the sites perform, taking particular note of the inbound links section.
I would add to #3 the following: do the sites the agency says represent it’s best work have remarkable and current content, with mechanisms for active conversation around that content? Is the site an active relational community that attracts and engages people or simply a digital billboard that could only serve to blast out broadcasts? If not, you should be skeptical of the agency’s claims of inbound marketing competence. Move on.
Don’t be fooled by slick websites with fancy graphics. Check under the hood and kick the tires. Your PR or marketing firm needs to keep the engine of your inbound marketing campaign in top operating condition – not just wax the paint and wash the windows.
You should follow me on twitter here.
Website grader – what a fun tool. And I totally agree, you have to be a digital citizen yourself to understand inbound marketing.
When I first started out online, I thought I knew it all. And when I outsourced my first tasks to the cheapest companies/people I could find, I got: incredibly boring content and clowns who spammed others on my behalf.
What a waste. Thanks for posting a useful warning here.
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Bret L. Simmons Reply:
November 9th, 2010 at 4:59 pm
Welcome, Anna! I still get spam from those clowns (not from you)! The only way to “get it” is to do it. The opportunities are only just beginning, but the spoils will go to those that do the work. Thanks! Bret
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