Inbound marketing
may start with creating content, but it doesn't end there.
As a business marketer or content creator, your instinct may be to hold on to the content you've created and post it only to your website in the hopes of forcing people back to your website. But if you're doing that - holding your content hostage - you're losing out on free marketing that social media sharing sites will do for you.
By posting your content on social media sharing sites you can leverage those websites' networks as well as the easy-to-use built-in sharing features of those sites, like easy share links, tagging, and subscription.
Video:
Have some customer case studies? Interviews with your CEO? Recorded presentations from your last conference? Post them to video sharing sites :
1.) YouTube - If your video is under 10 minutes (and the shorter the better), YouTube is the best site for sharing your videos. Key sharing features : tagging, social media share links, video embedding, subscriptions
2.) Blip.tv - If your video is more than 10 minutes, use a site like blip.tv (or Vimeo or Viddler) to post your videos. Key sharing features : tagging, automatic iTunes (and other video) syndication, creative commons licensing, video embedding, subscriptions
Or, use a tool like Visible Measures to post and track your videos across many video sites.
Documents/Presentations:
Take all those slide presentations, ebooks, whitepapers, and post them to:
3.)
SlideShare
- Take your existing documents (PPT, PDF, etc.) and post them to a SlideShare (or
Scribd
or
Docstoc
).
Key sharing features:
tagging, social media share links, document embedding, subscriptions
Photos:
Whether it's photos of your
team
, screenshots of your
product
, or even
funny cartoons
, post them online:
4.) Flickr - For any of your images (or even some short videos), flickr is a fantastic sharing site. Key sharing features : tagging, creative commons licensing, slideshow embedding
5.) Facebook - Facebook is an incredibly powerful social network that allows people to share all sorts of content, and photos are among the most popular applications. Facebook now has over 200 million active users, and more than 850 million photos are uploaded every month. Key sharing features: news feed update (when you upload photos, tag people, or people comment on them), tagging (people)
Events:
Have an event coming up? List it on these sites:
6.) Upcoming -Upcoming is an event sharing site hosted by Yahoo. Key sharing points: share your events with your friends
7.) Facebook - Yes, I'm listing Facebook again. But Facebook events are another great (and frequently used) application for sharing events. Key sharing points: news feed update (when creating, attending, commenting on events)
8.)
LinkedIn
- Similar to Facebook, LinkedIn has an event posting/sharing feature.
Key sharing features:
posted in LinkedIn network updates (when creating or attending events)
Have you had success posting your content on these sharing sites? Do you have others that have worked well for you? Share your experiences in the comments.
Flickr photo credit:
wlodi
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Eric Guerin 10:07 AM on June 23, 2009
Great Post Ellie! In regards to video, while YouTube may be the biggest video sharing site I'd recommend people try to find out where their primary customer demographic is viewing videos too. It could be MetaCafe or Yahoo! Video would make more sense or all of the above(can't hurt right?). I'd also suggest using a service like TubeMogul so you can easily upload to multiple video sharing sites all at once with descriptions, tags, etc. and track your views on all the video sharing sites through their web panel. Best of all it's free.
Guido Jansen 10:54 AM on June 23, 2009
Nice post. I do kinda miss the microblogs here (Twitter/ Laconica/ Ping.fm/ HelloTXT). It's even quite easy to automate the process of posting any RSS feed on the microblogs with help of online services (like Twitterfeed).
Titan 1:15 PM on June 23, 2009
Thanks for the information, very informative
rebekah donaldson 2:53 PM on June 23, 2009
Ellie - good ideas here. You've collected good links/resources and you're a great writer.
- I think we need a nod to David Meerman Scott here for his World Wide Rave ideas re: "set your content free."
- However, I've returned to the "dark side" of download forms recently... here's why.
In Feb 2009 we published The New Rules of Outsourcing B2B Marketing. The PDF has been directly downloaded -- no form -- by hundreds of people.
Salesforce shows no leads associated with that ebook -- though there has been terrific exposure and wonderful discussion and a feeling of having contributed to the marketplace of ideas.
I am aware of the intangibles. I came out of the PR agency world. I stump about social media ROI etc. I'm talking about tangibles here.
Week before last we published "Six Marketing Gotchas CEOs Can Avoid" behind a registration form (incidentally, it's behind a Hubspot-powered landing page as we're a Hubspot Marketer customer).
Salesforce shows the information on 20 contacts who've downloaded. About half are open - meaning, they weren't disqualified.
Upshot:
My heart says, "set the content free!"
My head says, "keep the download form, making it as hassle free as possible."
jodi 3:33 PM on June 23, 2009
FYI- Your Blip.tv link above actually links to YouTube. :)
Ellie Mirman 3:53 PM on June 23, 2009
@jodi - Thanks! Just updated that.
@rebekah - You bring up a great point. I think it's really a balance of setting your content free and putting some behind a lead gen form. As David points out, freeing up your content can get you much more distribution and a lot more sharing. Even when you do so, it's important to measure the spread (number of downloads) and results (inbound links, leads generated from that content spreading).
@Guido - Twitter is definitely a great outlet to publish your content. I decided to leave it out of this list just because I see it more as a great outlet to share links to the content you've published elsewhere. But it is indeed a great way to spread your content!
@Eric - Great suggestions! Glad to have the input from such a video guru :)
Jean Wnuk 9:35 PM on June 23, 2009
For events, I also love Craigslist and your local paper's event calendar online. Most papers use a third party app these days that posts your event all over the place and allow people to search by date, location, event type, etc.
Mary Fletcher Jones 10:30 PM on June 23, 2009
Nice list! I have had good success with posting content, esp. video content on YouTube, Blip.TV, and Daily Motion and Facebook. I notice that my FB videos don't get many views as the other sites, which is curious. I would add, share your YouTube videos on your WordPress blog...and if you're doing video already, go ahead and create a podcast. I get most of my video views on iTunes for one show; for another video series, its audience is primarily YouTube.
I use Podomatic to host my video podcast episodes...what host do you all use?
Amy Dunn 10:32 PM on June 23, 2009
I loved this post- great suggestions that I will try! I think Scribd is a great place to post your articles- I also have found Ezine Articles to be a valuable site to post content- anyone use it or have thoughts on it?
Laurie Dunlop 9:47 AM on June 24, 2009
We also use http://www.metacafe.com/ to post our Internet Marketing TV videos.
Justin 7:05 PM on June 25, 2009
Great list with some rocking ideas. Thanks for the information.
Ryan Yip 8:21 PM on June 25, 2009
Nice post! Eric, thanks for the tip on TubeMogul.