Top 5 Inbound Marketing Articles to Start the Week: Humanizing Social Media

Social media now plays an important role in how many businesses are engaging with prospects and customers, but despite the implications of the term, it’s easy to question just how ‘human’ social media interactions really are.

In this week’s top inbound marketing article, Social Media Explorer discusses the need for more humanization when it comes to online marketing and engagement.

1. Social Media Humanization

Author: Mark Smiciklas on Social Media Explorer

In the world of internet marketing , it’s becoming easier and easier for businesses to lose sight of the fact that, while their organization may be represented online by a logo or an icon, it’s the person-to-person connections that build trust in a brand.

Smiciklas’ article discusses the problematic disconnect between businesses and people online. He highlights the need to first understand your audience then suggests various tactics that can be used to humanize your brand in social media such as featuring employees in photos, avatars, ‘about us’ pages and other content.

Marketing Takeaway: Help build trust in your brand by being transparent about the people who make up your business and who communicate with customers and prospects.

2. Content Marketing That Stands Out

Author: Dr. Pete on SEOmoz

For businesses facing heavy competition in online marketing, SEO based on quality inbound links is key. This SEOmoz article stresses the powerful role remarkable content can play in link-building, offering several tips and examples of content marketing ideas in various industries to get you thinking in the right direction.

Content marketing tactics mentioned include positive user-generated content (UGC), local interest, and local expertise, and Dr. Pete emphasizes the fact that despite your perception that you might be in a ‘boring’ industry, you shouldn’t be afraid to get creative.

Marketing Takeaway: (Remarkable) content is king. Use creativity in content marketing and reap the rewards of quality inbound links.

3. The Easy-to-Use Tool That Helps You Build a Breakthrough Blog

Authors: Zack Grossbart and Justin Evans on Copyblogger

The easy-to-use tool mentioned by Copyblogger is none other than the editorial calendar . An editorial calendar, or a publishing schedule, serves as the foundation of strategic blogging and goes to show that a bit of planning can go a long way in getting maximum reach from your blog.

Zack and Justin’s article provide various ways an editorial calendar can be helpful: it allows you to plan ahead, it adds structure to your creativity, it enables you to take a great concept further, and it helps you be proactive and capitalize on search trends. They close their article by highlighting a free plugin that can help Wordpress users start managing their own editorial calendar.

Marketing Takeaway: Maintain an editorial calendar for more strategic control over your blog’s content.

4. Claiming Local Business Listing Is Only the Beginning

Author: Melih Oztalay on Search Engine Journal

By now, especially if you’re a regular reader of this blog, there’s a good chance you’ve already claimed your local business listing on Google . While this is a good start, Search Engine Journal identifies a couple of areas businesses are missing out on regarding the topic of online business listings: claiming their listing only on Google and not other sites, and doing nothing else with their listing besides claiming it.

Oztalay therefore offers several suggestions to help businesses take advantage of listing sites and increase interactivity on their pages, such as updating listings with marketing materials (e.g. coupons, offers, events, discounts, promotions, etc.), removing or claiming duplicate listings, responding to existing customer reviews (particularly negative ones, and securing positive reviews from satisfied customers.

Marketing Takeaway: Claiming your local business listing is only the first step. Make an effort to monitor engagement, update content, and interact with customers on your business’ listing pages.

5. Three Problems That Make Me Leave Your Blog in Three Seconds  

Author: The Blog Tyrant on Problogger

Before diving into the meat of his article, the Blog Tyrant emphasizes the point, “one loyal reader is worth thousands of one-time visitors.” He continues to highlight three problems that will make readers leave your blog and will kill your chances of gaining loyal readers. He also provides detailed suggestions for how to fix each problem.

The three killer blog problems he identifies are a lack of comments, a butchered theme, and no original ideas.

Marketing Takeaway: If your blog is falling victim to one or more of these three problems, fix them right away to start attracting a loyal following of readers.

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