Top 5 Inbound Marketing Articles to Start the Week: Motivating Content Contributors

Our top pick of articles to get you in the inbound marketing mindset this week will give you some tips about how to overcome this challenge and motivate employees to lend a hand in your company's content development strategy.

1. How to Motivate Employees to Contribute Content

Author: Mark Thompson on Search Engine Journal

Content creation definitely doesn't have to fall completely under the wing of your business's marketing team, but it can be tough to inspire others to contribute.  While Mark's article first stresses the fact that blog article contributions from other employees should still follow content best practices, he also highlights 5 ways you can motivate your employees to lend a hand in the first place.

His suggestions include performance-based incentives, monetary incentives, company acknowledgments, paid time off incentives and an end of year prize.

Marketing Takeaway: Add variety and new perspectives to your content by inspiring non-marketing team members to contribute.

2. 5 Tips for Making Your Presentations More Social

Author: Chuck Dietrich on Mashable

We've all suffered through one: a dull PowerPoint presentation that bores rather than engages the audience.  Obviously, the best presentations are those that achieve the latter, so this Mashable article offers some ideas for making your next presentation more social and interactive.

Chuck highlights 5 ways to socialize a presentation, expanding on the following tips:

1. Create anticipation.
2. Create a social-friendly presentation.
3. Use interactive polling.
4. Use the backchannel, but wisely.
5. Keep the conversation going after you've left the podium.
   

Marketing Takeaway: Make your presentations more memorable by taking more "social" approaches.

3. Create Evangelists for Your Brand on Twitter

Author: Pete Kistler of Personal Branding Blog

Pete's article is not for the Twitter beginner , but rather for those looking to grow their networks and expand their reach.  One way to do this, he suggests, is by creating brand evangelists. 

He recommends a number of steps to help create these evangelists, which can ultimately serve to strengthen your online brand.  His suggestions?  Define your goals, engage major players in your industry, proactively join relevant conversations, engage people in your area, and focus on quality over quantity. 

Marketing Takeaway: Develop and strengthen relationships on Twitter to help establish your brand's social media authority .

4. The Two Vital Attributes of Quality Content

Author: Catherine Caine on Copyblogger

Catherine's article applies the words of wisdom of poet William Morris to quality content.  In a nutshell, she communicates the principle that every piece of content you produce should be either useful or beautiful (or both).  While she recognizes this concept may scare some of you out there, she also provides a few guidelines that can help you trust your judgment on whether your content is useful and/or beautiful. Here's how to tell...

Marketing Takeaway: Create effective and lasting content by making sure it's useful and/or beautiful.

5. Ten Ways to Build Trust with Online Customers

Author: Darren Barefoot on OPEN Forum

Trust can make or break a successful marketing program , which is why it's extremely important to develop and nurture a transparent and honest relationship with your prospects and customers. But just like with any other relationship, Darren warns, building trust takes time.

To help you start building online relationships you can be proud of, Darren gives his 10 best tips you can use to create friends out of strangers and customers out of friends. These tips include respecting people's time, telling the truth, acknowledging every mention, obeying the cocktail party rule, and speaking as individual humans, among others.

Marketing Takeaway: Building great online relationships can help propel and maximize the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.

Photo by Conor Lawless

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