Assignment 4 - Inbound and Social Media Marketing - Part 2

While a business will have a brand, individuals can also have an associated brand; Personal Branding is the means by which people remember individuals. It's more than a trademark; it is how you present yourself online, and offline, to potential clients and customers, and is therefore important to the success of any business. Your personal brand builds your business, but it still centres around an individual. (Lake, 2017)

The question is no longer IF you have a personal brand, but if you choose to guide and cultivate the brand or to let it be defined on your behalf. (Hyder, 2014)

The emergence of Digital Marketing has provided important additional channels for building and maintaining a brand, with channels such as blogs, social media profiles and video being very personal, where the personality of not only a business, but individuals can be clearly exposed.

There are many ways to build a brand on social media, with key factors such as: (Patel, 2016)

•       Consistency; a person only has one personality, so if different personality traits come across in messaging, followers not only find the messages unpredictable, but fail to identify and bond with the brand.
•       Regularity; personalities are easier established with regular content. Michael Noice, founder of Entrepreneur Coach. “… it's best to focus on two or three carefully chosen social networks and try to be active on them, rather than posting sporadically to a half-dozen.” (Patel, 2016)
•       Diversify Your Content; crafting a communications strategy for your personal brand that includes an editorial calendar and a diverse content plan so that you won’t resort to publishing the same types of articles every single day. (Patel, 2016)
•       Groups; If you can find groups that line up with your area of expertise, then you’ll be able to share that experience and build authority around your personal brand. (Patel, 2016)
•       Be memorable; If you want to create a memorable brand, you need to give people a reason to remember you. (Patel, 2016)
•       Ask questions; Questions are a great way to spark engagement and improve the visibility for your brand. (Patel, 2016)
•       Join discussions; Don’t be afraid to add your voice and make yourself visible in a discussion. (Patel, 2016)
•       Monitor; Set up alerts for your name, as well as branded terms and product/service-related search phrases so you won’t miss out on opportunities to respond or join discussions. (Patel, 2016)
•       Lengthier posts; platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn offer longer posts, allowing more scope for personalities to shine through. (Entrepreneur, 2014)
•       Be positive; social media can be a negative place, so be positive to not only stand out, but people are more likely to follow positive brands. (Entrepreneur, 2014)

Good examples of personal branding on social media:

Rob Beckett - https://twitter.com/robbeckettcomic

As a comedian, it is important that Rob’s humorous personality is evident in his social media activity. Rob not only joins in with regular comical conversations, but every morning he posts a ‘random’ image alongside a simple “Good morning.”, which is humorous when knowing Rob’s personality, and therefore helps maintain his brand.

Mercedes F1 - https://twitter.com/MercedesAMGF1

As a large international brand, the Mercedes F1 team have been able to build their own social media personality. During a race weekend they post lots of informative news, and lots of interesting content between races. However, their friendly banter with other teams shows their personality. Also, almost 100% of their posts are within the F1 ‘arena’, maintaining their authority within this group.

Entrepreneur, 2014. The 11 Must-Use Social Media Strategies to Expand Your Brand. [Online]
Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvMmo3GB2WM
[Accessed 16 12 2017].

Hyder, S., 2014. 7 Things You Can Do To Build An Awesome Personal Brand. [Online]
Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/shamahyder/2014/08/18/7-things-you-can-do-to-build-an-awesome-personal-brand/#6fe0b48e3c3a
[Accessed 16 12 2017].

Lake, L., 2017. Personal Branding and What You Need to Know About It. [Online]
Available at: https://www.thebalance.com/what-is-personal-branding-4056073
[Accessed 09 12 2017].

Marion, 2017. What is branding?. [Online]
Available at: http://www.thebrandingjournal.com/2015/10/what-is-branding-definition/
[Accessed 09 12 2017].

Patel, S., 2016. 9 Ways to Use Social Media to Build Your Personal Brand. [Online]
Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/sujanpatel/2016/11/12/9-ways-to-use-social-media-to-build-your-personal-brand/#5e4048303520
[Accessed 16 12 2017].

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Assignment 3 - Inbound and Social Media Marketing - Part 1

An inboard marketing review of the following 3 organisation’s websites:

·      Hubspot – www.hubspot.com

·      HelpScout – www.helpscout.net

·      Sage – www.sage.co.uk

Each organisation’s approach to inbound marketing

Each of the website’s are professional in look and feel, and well laid out, making them easy to use and navigate.  The content is also relevant, helpful and informative.

There are blogs on all three of the websites, offering helpful information, all related to the nature of their businesses and updated regularly.

Both HubSpot and HelpScout make good use of gated offers, forcing users to sign-up before providing the means of a free trail, while Sage doesn’t appear to utilise this.

Each also has a strong social media presence, complementing the websites with their messaging and regularly engaging with, and answering, their audiences.

Strengths and Weaknesses of the inbound marketing approach used by each organisation

In terms of SEO, when searching for ‘inbound marketing’, Hubspot is the top organic result, suggesting great SEO, with pages such as https://www.hubspot.com/inbound-marketing demonstrating this with good repetitive, but natural, use of keywords.

However, when searching for ‘customer service software’, HelpScout is not listed anywhere on the first page, suggesting poor SEO. This may be due to using the term ‘HelpDesk’ instead of what I regard the more default term ‘customer service’.

When searching for ‘accounting software’, Sage is top due to paid advertising, so this is well optimised in their choice of paid keywords, and their product also appears in the shopping suggestions, but there are no other organic search results.  There is constant use of the keyword ‘accounting’, but ‘software’ doesn’t look to be used much in the content, and there is also a lot of worldwide competition for these keywords.

HelpScout has a good array of helpful resources, helping to support their reputation as a credible provider of help desk tools, and they also make good use of video content. https://www.helpscout.net/classes/

Which organisation was best at inbound marketing, and why?

As you would expect from an organisation specialising in inbound marketing, Hubspot excels in it.

The website is well laid out, is available in different languages, the blog has an informative feel and appears to be regularly updated, has lots of free resources, is well targeted and relevant to their buyer personas, has an approachable tone, has case studies, a handy pop-up box for asking questions, a strong social media presence, and an interactive training course, all designed to engage with the customer and guide them through the sales funnel.

Examples of how each organisation can improve its inbound marketing

I feel the Sage blog is hidden on the website, and it is labelled as an ‘Advice Blog’ under the header ‘Support and Training’, which I feel gives the impression it isn’t a great way of engaging with potential customers.  This is not helped by what I feel is a formal tone across the whole site that I didn’t warm to.

I feel Hubspot could benefit from more video content, as aside from some brief product walkthroughs, video content doesn’t appear to be fully utilised.

However, the Hubspot blog provides a handy indication of how long each article will take to read, and they also have social sharing icons to assist the easy sharing of content, as do each of the other blogs.

Sage could make better use of SEO, as well as adding more video and engaging content.