Inbound Marketing: Looking back on a year of Great Minds articles

by Adam T. Sutton, Senior Reporter

MarketingSherpa's Great Minds newsletter has delivered expert examples and analysis on a broad range of marketing topics. We always pushed to make its content relevant to both consumer-marketing and B2B companies.

This coming year, we will be transitioning Great Minds to the Inbound Marketing newsletter. We will continue writing top-quality content for both consumer marketing and B2B readers.

Inbound marketing is a broad discipline that covers tactics and strategies to attract customers to your company without paid advertising. Related topics include:
o Content marketing with blogs, webinars, whitepapers and more
o Search engine optimization
o Social media marketing
o Landing page optimization and website testing
o Analytics and analysis

These tactics have greatly increased in prominence over the last five years. They've helped marketers achieve stronger results without drastically increasing their budgets -- because they do not require paid media.

The coming issues of this newsletter will show you how to use and improve your inbound marketing. As always, we will explain strategies through metrics and case studies from real-life campaigns and analysis from seasoned experts.

Below are links to 12 Great Minds articles from 2010 on topics related to inbound marketing.

Social Media Marketing

Reaching prospective customers in social networks, forums and similar outlets is an inbound tactic that touched every one of our newsletters this year -- with specific strategies outlined in our Consumer Marketing, B2B and Email newsletters. Here are four articles from this year's Great Minds content.

Members Library -- Special Report: Social Media's impact on SEO -- 5 trends to guide an integrated strategy

Members Library -- Special Report Part 2: Social Media and SEO -- 7 tactics to boost rankings and generate links

Members Library -- Establish a Social Media Code of Conduct: 5 actions to protect your company's reputation

Search Engine Optimization

Designing websites and content to be effectively indexed by search engines is vital to making them readily available to potential customers. Below are three articles featuring experts' advice and marketers' experiences in improving their inbound natural search traffic.

Members Library -- Lift Long-Tail Search Traffic: 6 tactics to find and test niche content areas

Members Library -- Adopt a Content Management System that Supports SEO Goals: 5 tactics to choose a new platform

Members Library -- Forging Link-Exchange Partnerships to Boost SEO: 5 tactics to select partners and guide strategy

Strategic Content Marketing

Though not a prominent topic in our 2010 Great Minds articles, content marketing is an important part of a strong inbound marketing strategy, and we will be reporting more on this topic in our coming articles. Below are two Great Minds articles featuring marketers focusing on improving their company's content.

Members Library -- Combining Email, Search Social and PR for a Content Marketing Campaign: 6 tactics to generate surge in visitor traffic

Members Library -- Oursourcing Your Blog: 6 tips for finding and managing quality contributors

And more...

Inbound marketing includes a range of other tactics we will be featuring, including website optimization. These last four Great Minds articles involve improving your website's copy, understanding your marketing's impact and getting more press coverage.

Members Library -- Improve Your Copywriting with Help from Social Media: 7 tactics from David Meerman Scott

Members Library -- Measuring Social Media's Contribution to the Bottom Line: 5 tactics

Members Library -- Improve Attribution: 8 steps to measure the impact of your marketing efforts

Members Library -- Get Press Coverage for Customer Success Stories: 6 tactics

Useful links related to this article

Social Media and Content Marketing: Don't expect the world to find you