Inbound marketing is a constantly changing environment and, as such, there is a consistent stream of new developments within the field. Sometimes these developments are great for marketers and sometimes they make the job just a little bit tougher but, either way, they keep the whole field exciting.
With that in mind, here are some exciting new developments and platforms that you should be using to beef up your inbound marketing in 2018.
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Twitter Moments
Hot off the presses is Twitter Moments – a unique news curation service offered by the microblogging giant and designed to allow Twitter users to catch up with important news, events, and happenings at a slightly slower pace than is normal for the site. As of the beginning of October, users who log into Twitter now see a small lightning bolt icon at the top of their dashboard. Click on it and you’ll be taken to the Twitter Moments page, where news, sports, and cultural stories are grouped into curated categories and available to tweet, favorite, embed, follow or share. Although the Moments pages are currently curated by Twitter’s content team, the service plans to open it up within the next few months and allow Twitter users to curate their own Moments – a development that could be huge for bloggers and inbound marketers everywhere. Because Twitter Moments will allow users to curate their own collections and stories, it will be a fantastic, customizable platform for inbound marketers who want to gain a larger audience or interact more effectively with their readers.
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Periscope
Nowadays, it’s not enough to just write great content, you also have to know how to tell stories effectively and you need to have a platform that allows you to push those stories out to your users. Although storytelling in marketing is nothing new, the level of focus it’s enjoying right now is. There are many places visual marketing is dominating the world of inbound content creation right now. Instagram (which just surpassed Twitter in users) is one of them while Facebook’s new live stream app known as Periscope is another. While Instagram is available to everyone (if you’re not using it, you should be) Periscope is currently only available to celebrities with verified Facebook pages. There’s some talk, though, that the service could soon open up to everyday users, which would allow inbound marketers to follow the lead of the celebrities and offer real-time glances into their operations, offices and content creation process, which is one of the best ways to build relationships with customers and create increased levels of interest.
The fascination with visual content doesn’t end with Periscope, though. To bring more traffic to your brand throughout 2015, ensure that your content is image-dense and that you’re making the best possible use of visual features like infographics, memes, and videos. If you’ve never created any of these things before, don’t worry. It’s easier right now than it’s ever been before and there are dozens of web-based, free platforms that allow users to create all three. For the best results, mix up your visual content and ensure that you’re focusing on creating high-quality, unique images that are likely to be shared across the web.
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LeadPages
LeadPages is a hot new tool for inbound marketers who want to simplify their sales funnel. With LeadPages, you can generate a landing page on an intuitive and endlessly user-friendly platform, which makes it a fantastic tool for the inbound marketer who is just getting started. While LeadPages isn’t a free service, its prices are affordable and users get support from the LeadPages community and the service itself.
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Mention
In the current world of inbound marketing, social media rules all and, as such, it’s valuable for inbound marketers to have a way to track interaction on all of their various social media platforms. Fortunately, there’s a tool for that. Mention is a social media monitoring tool that allows users to receive real-time alerts whenever anybody mentions your company’s name, industry or keyword on social media. This is a great way for companies to keep tabs on the competition and do high-quality industry research that allows them to execute quality SEO, rank for important keywords, appear in their SERPs of choice and connect more efficiently with their customers.
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Sidekick
If social media is the king of inbound marketing right now, email is the incumbent queen and any good inbound marketer needs to know how to take advantage of email marketing tactics. Sidekick is a platform that allows inbound marketers to keep tabs on their email campaigns, including allowing them to track who opens emails, how many times each message is viewed and at what times of day open rates peak. This, in turn, allows you to automate your sales funnel, plan effective email marketing campaigns and gain important data about your users – leading to bigger followings and more seamless marketing practices.
Because inbound marketing is such a rapidly changing field, smart marketers keep their ears to the ground in order to stay in the know on the best new technology, platforms, and software available to them. For right now, however, these 5 tools promise to help you gain an edge on your competition, boost your inbound marketing game to the next level and streamline the entire process – so you can be more effective and enhance your online presence with less stress.
For more help with your inbound marketing strategy, visit Bigfoot Media. Bigfoot Media is here for all of your digital marketing needs and would love to help your business create a game-winning strategy. Call us today for a FREE consultation or shoot us a quick email to learn more.
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