Business Blogging:
Tips and Case Studies
Mike Volpe
Twitter: @mvolpe
Charlie King
Twitter: @CharlieKingGolf
Ilya Mirman
Twitter: @IlyaMirman
Marketing is Changing
1950 - 2000
2000 - 2050
Outbound Marketing
Outbound Marketing is Harder
800-555-1234
Annoying
Salesperson
More Bad News…
The Good News…
www.HubSpot.com/ROI
Inbound Marketing
Blog
SEO
Social Media
Inbound Gives Leverage
Budget vs. Brains
Flickr: Refracted Moments
Flickr: Gaetoan Lee
Advice for the road ahead
Stop thinking like a
marketer or advertiser.
Start thinking like a
publisher and socializer.
Some Ideas and Case Studies
Flickr: Gaetoan Lee
Target Content to Your Personas
What Gets Shared?
Rarely
Shared
• Product info
• Free trials
• Software documentation
Frequently
Shared
• New market data
• Educational content
• Top-notch blog posts
Content Makes You Interesting
Case Study: HubSpot Blog
• Top 3 source of leads
• ~10% visit company website
• ~10-20% lead conversion rate
SEO and Social Help Blog Results
25-30% of visitors from SEO
• Google is 90% of our SEO traffic
20-25% of visitors from social media
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Stumbleupon
Twitter
Facebook
Reddit
Delicious
Digg
LinkedIn
Friendfeed
Blog Article Performance Metrics
Traffic, Leads and Sales
…By Channel or Source
Visitors
SEO
Social
Media
Leads
Sales
Case Study: Reynolds Golf Academy
Charlie King
Director of Instruction
Reynolds Plantation
Twitter: @CharlieKingGolf
Reynolds Golf Academy
• Golf school near Atlanta / Augusta led by GOLF
MAGAZINE Top 100 Instructor Charlie King
• Golf lessons / schools and corporate outings on
a 16-acre campus w/6,550 sq-ft indoor teaching
center and state-of-the-art technology
• Marketing: magazine ads and direct mail
GOAL:
• More website traffic and leads
• More cost effective marketing & business growth
What We Did
• Blog
• 4-6 articles a month
• SEO optimized, keyword rich
• Video
• 23 videos, include in blog articles
• eBook
• “New Rules of Golf Instruction”
Results
• 50 times more web leads
• Over 600 blog subscribers
• Thousands of eBook downloads
Tips and Takeaways
• Content is King - you can be your
own media mogul
• Get started before your
competition to get ahead
• Make SEO part of your blogging
strategy
• Even non-technology businesses
can benefit from a blog
Case Study: Cilk Arts
Ilya Mirman
VP Marketing
Cilk Arts
Twitter: @IlyaMirman
Cilk Arts, Inc.
Mission:
To provide the easiest,
quickest, and most
reliable way to optimize
application performance
on multicore processors.
Our Goal:
Own a multicore
programming standard
• Cilk++ Runtime on every
processor
• Cilk++ used by all C/C++
multi-coders
[Update: Cilk Arts acquired by Intel in July]
Go To Market Approach
• Open source business model
• “You share / we share” public license
• Low-touch, low-cost sales model
• Broad awareness, trial, adoption
• Big bet on Inbound Marketing
• No sales people
• Hired 1 marketer (me) 8 months before shipping
product to implement Inbound Marketing approach
• Blog as primary marketing vehicle
• Entire team contributed (~1 post per week)
• Helped us engage with the developers we hoped to
serve; understand what content they’re interested in
Results
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Reached over 100,000 developers
Traffic and awareness matched or exceeded competitors
Adoption at >250 universities worldwide
>6,200 inbound links
>3,000 leads
Blog posts boosted
search engine
rankings for key terms
Get the whole team engaged
Don’t know ahead of time
which topics will strike a chord
Don’t obsess over
# of comments
Links drove our search engine rank
Metrics: Visits, Sources, Links
Inbound Links
Do…
• Get your whole organization engaged in
contributing content
• A small, dedicated team can drive some real
traffic and interest
• If no serious commitment, blog will fail
• Be real, be genuine
• Let your personality come out
• Build an editorial calendar with a broad set of
interesting, valuable content
• Target the key personas you care about
• You’ll discover which topics are worth investing
more in
• Invite guests to contribute
• Leverage content in many ways
• Blog, e-Books, Tutorials, etc.
• Consumable via YouTube, SlideShare, social
media sites, etc.
Don’t…
• …be a blatant, self-centered commercial
• …focus on just one topic
• …make your blog your only social media
effort; instead, spend time on other blogs,
community sites, and contribute
• …worry about # of comments
• …worry about slow periods (# of visitors,
subscribers, comments)
Summary
Content
SEO
Social
Additional Resources
• Facebook Marketing eBook
• http://www.hubspot.com/facebook-for-business-marketing-hub/
• Twitter Marketing eBook
• http://www.hubspot.com/twitter-marketing-hub/
• Social Media Marketing Kit
• http://www.hubspot.com/twitter-marketing-hub/
• Blog: http://Blog.HubSpot.com
Q&A
Mike Volpe
Twitter: @mvolpe
Charlie King
Twitter: @CharlieKingGolf
Ilya Mirman
Twitter: @IlyaMirman
Free Trial of HubSpot: www.HubSpot.com/free-trial
Appendix
What’s HubSpot?
• Marketing software for SMBs
• Over 1,800 customers in 2 years
• 100+ employees, lots of MIT grads
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3yCB7AvvAk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-lGe5MnBlY
Case Study: Website Grader
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Free interactive tool
1.5 million URLs
40,000 inbound links
5,000 websites w/ badge & link
4,500 Del.icio.us bookmarks
Great PR coverage (TechCrunch, RWW)
50,000+ visitors from StumbleUpon
100,000+ opt-in emails & leads
Case Study: HubSpot TV
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Weekly video podcast
80-100 live viewers
1-2K views / episode
Top 10 marketing podcast in iTunes
70,000 views in first year
Guests: MC Hammer, Biz Stone, David
Meerman Scott, Chris Brogan