With 2016 around the corner, now is the perfect time to take a look at your current inbound marketing strategies and figure out how to tweak them to maximize results. To help you ring in the New Year, we’ve gathered eight hacks you can use to improve four critical aspects of your inbound marketing: content marketing, SEO, email marketing, and social media.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is a necessity if you want to build brand authority, boost SEO, and nurture leads. Here’s how to make sure your content in 2016 is more effective than ever:
- Perform an audit. Start the year off by figuring out what works and what doesn’t—and the content you create in the upcoming year will be better for it. Take a look at our previous postfor everything you need to know about performing a content audit on your website.
- Create premium content. Premium content offerings—such as in-depth guides and eBooks—generate 3x as many leads than traditional marketing.
SEO
Search engine optimization is a great way to enhance your brand’s online presence without much out-of-pocket cost. In order to hold your position at the top of search results, you need to stay a step ahead of your competition. We recommend that you:
- Find powerful friends. Backlinks are one of the most important aspects of your SEO rank, so foster relationships with key influencers and encourage that they link to your content.
- Optimize everything. Don’t overlook any content that you create as an opportunity to drive results. YouTube videos are a great example! As 62 percent of Google searches include video, you can optimize your videos with keyword-rich titles and descriptions to see a search rank boost.
Email Marketing
Email marketing might not be the most exciting digital marketing platform, but it’s still incredibly effective. Here’s how to give your email marketing a shot in the arm next year:
- Add social proof indicators to emails. If you’re looking to instill trust in your readers through your emails, social proof features are exactly what you need. Make sure to include testimonials, reviews, security badges, and industry awards prominently in your marketing emails.
- Tweak your headlines. A great headline is the difference between an email being ignored or opened. Words like ‘you’ and ‘download’, for example, have both been shown tosignificantly boost email open rates.
Social Media
Social media usage shows no signs of slowing down in 2016, so you need to continue dominating the space. Here’s how to keep your momentum going:
- Leverage the audiences of others. Instead of finding an audience of your own, engage the people who already influence them.Studies show this strategy is 6x more effective than growing your own audience.
- Find new ways to interact. Social media platforms are constantly creating new and exciting ways for you engage with your audience, so don’t overlook these opportunities. Check out our post on using Twitter Polls to engage your Twitter followers.
Armed with these inbound marketing hacks, we hope you have your best year ever in 2016!
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