The 3 Steadfast Constants of Inbound Marketing Success -

The 3 Steadfast Constants of Inbound Marketing Success

Posted on February 11, 2013 by Chad Pollitt

These days the blogosphere is filled with tactical how-to’s, lists and tips. There’s no shortage of consumers for this type of content, either. It seems like many are looking for the one online marketing secret that costs little, is easy to do and drives maximum return. Unfortunately, there is no one secret, but if there was it would be hard work. Even though inbound marketing success is a derivative of hard work, the other constants include – quality, frequency and consistency.

Quality

Successful inbound marketing campaigns consistently produce content of the highest quality by industry experts or practitioners. This content can be in the form of the written word, video, graphics, podcasts or others. Whether or not content is considered high quality isn’t just in the eye of the beholder, either. It’s also in the eye of the analytics.

Some key quality performance indicators include traffic, conversions, social shares and natural inbound links earned. People only consume, reference or evangelize content that provides value. As a result, it’s pretty easy to determine what content resonates and can be considered high quality.

Frequency

There’s a reason most successful news outlets publish or air on a daily basis. Frequency in content publishing communicates expertise and passion – both of which are desirable brand attributes. If one or both traits weren’t present, frequency in quality content publishing couldn’t occur.

Each time content is published represents another opportunity to drive new traffic, conversions and more customers. Frequently publishing content online not only creates more opportunities for success, but it creates them more often. Over time, positive analytical momentum builds and directly impacts the bottom line.

Consistency

Consistency in content publishing is a sign of reliability. In business, reliability can sometimes trump cost or value when making purchasing decisions and is a powerful brand attribute. Consistency should be reflected across the quality, schedule, tone, expertise and topics of the content being published.

A brand’s online content is one of the few ways it can communicate directly with the public. Eliminating consistency from an inbound marketing campaign represents a lack of commitment to public discourse at best, and at worst it can communicate disdain or indifference.

Not a single reference to social media or search engine optimization was presented above – and for good reason. Both represent distribution channels for content. If the content created as part of an inbound marketing campaign is not squared away the channel it is distributed on is irrelevant. Distributing poor quality content infrequently and with little identifiable consistency is a recipe for online failure.

For help improving the quality of your own content, download our Guide to Enterprise Blog Post Optimization.

Image Credit: sillydog

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Chad Pollitt

Director of Marketing at digitalrelevance

Chad is a decorated veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, a former Army National Guard Commander and the Director of Marketing at digitalrelevance. He authored "The Content Marketing Manifesto" in 2012. His other writings and articles have been published in dozens of newspapers, magazines and websites throughout the world.

@ChadPollitt

Web Traffic Controller, Author of Ebooks, Member of a Forbes Top 100 List, Former Army Commander, Current Battle CPT and Dir. of Marketing at @drelevance

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