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

In an inbound marketing world, the careful alignment of sales and marketing can be tremendously beneficial to business success. But are enough companies taking steps in the right direction to facilitate the collaboration between these two departments?

In this week's top inbound marketing article, Todd Defren discusses the problematic disconnect between many businesses' sales and marketing teams in terms of social media engagement. 

1. Social Media and the Sales Team

Author: Todd Defren on PR-Squared

While Todd's article focuses on the disconnect between sales and marketing for companies mainly in the retail industry, the overall theme of sales and marketing alignment is one that can be applied to businesses in any industry.

Todd specifically focuses on how the disconnect applies to social media engagement, highlighting a great point about how marketing and customer service teams seem to be experiencing congruency, yet marketing and sales teams are still struggling to find the proper balance when it comes to promotion in social media .

Marketing Takeaway: Align your sales and marketing teams and determine a mutually beneficial approach to social media involvement.

2. Should Your Content Aim for Traffic or Conversion?

Author: Sean D’Souza on Copyblogger

Using magazines Cosmopolitan and The New Yorker as analogies, Sean stresses the importance of and describes two very different types of blog content : content that attracts and content that converts.

While both offer different advantages for your blog and its readers, Sean emphasizes the fact that each style can (and should) live on your blog. There's no need to choose just one strategy, and a mixture of both types of articles will not only attract a larger number of prospects but will also afford you better business blogging conversion.

Marketing Takeaway: Feed your blog with a balance of different types of articles to attract new readers and convert more customers.

3. Risk and Reward of Social Sharing in B2B Email Marketing

Author: Adam Holden-Bache on Social Media B2B

There are risks associated with incorporating social sharing elements in B2B email marketing? You betcha, says Social Media B2B, whose article discusses the fact that certain content included in email marketing campaigns may not be suitable for social sharing (e.g. proprietary information).

Holden-Bache highlights a short list of email content safe for sharing and reinforces the rewards that can come from enabling the social sharing of email content . However, he raises an important point that email marketers should proceed with caution and evaluate emails on a content-by-content basis to determine if social sharing links are appropriate.

Marketing Takeaway: Before you jump on the social sharing bandwagon, review and evaluate content in individual emails prior to delivery.

4. Shake Up Your Link Building Efforts

Author: Julie Joyce on Search Engine Journal

Most internet marketers are aware that generating inbound links is invaluable to search engine optimization . But what do you do when your go-to link building efforts are no longer returning the results you used to rely on? Search Engine Journal suggests you try something totally different.

Julie Joyce's article suggests several ways to think outside the box and shake up your link building efforts by searching differently, reaching out in a new way, realizing that less is sometimes more, brainstorming, thinking in a different place, getting a second opinion, and persisting in your efforts.

Marketing Takeaway: If your tried and true link building efforts start to fail, try something new!

5. 5 Techniques to Make Your Next Post Unforgettable

Author: Bamboo Forest on Problogger

Keeping in line with his belief that reading a blog post should provide a similar experience to the indulgence of an ice cream cone on a hot day or the thrill of a roller coaster ride, Bamboo Forest reveals five techniques bloggers can use to create a truly unforgettable, great experience for their readers:

1. Be a contrarian.
2. Create the unexpected.
3. Use similes and analogies.
4. Use humor.
5. Use quotes.

Marketing Takeaway: Keep your blog's readers coming back for more by creating for them an unforgettable experience at every blog visit.

What other great inbound marketing blog articles have you come across in the past week?

Photo Credit: Tim Parkinson

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