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6 Ways Your Chamber of Commerce Can Help Your Inbound Marketing

 

Inbound Marketing   CofC resized 600While doing my daily perusing of the HubSpot forum I ran across an interesting inbound marketing question.   The question was whether or not the person should reciprocate links with their local Chamber of Commerce.  That’s an easy question for most inbound marketing folks to answer.  No. . . not if you don’t have to.  But, that isn’t what interested me about the post.  It made me realize how much my local Chamber of Commerce has helped my inbound marketing efforts.

Chambers of Commerce are in the business of supporting and promoting its members.  They generally have several online and offline channels to distribute content.  Why is that important to your inbound marketing efforts?  Since they’re in the business of promoting businesses they will most likely include your business's website address in their promotions.  

Why is that important?  Aside from the obvious, driving visitors to your website, their online channels of content distribution will create lots of very high quality backlinks to your website, thus improving your search engine optimization and inbound marketing.

  1. Your website will be placed on The Chamber of Commerce’s web directory.

  2. If they publish a newsletter you can request to write an article.  Don’t forget to include a link to your website for maximum inbound marketing benefits.  These newsletters are usually emailed, snail mailed and published in PDF form somewhere on the Chamber's website so your link is still indexed and active.

  3. You can request that your business be featured on their blog or offer to guest blog for them.

  4. Most Chambers of Commerce allow you to upload press releases to their site.  Press releases are a proven inbound marketing technique.  You can put links there too.

  5. Offer to do a free seminar or webinar for the Chamber.  Make sure you create a custom landing page for the attendees and offer an opt-in for something of unique value.

  6. When I lived in Indiana my local Chamber had its own radio show and invited me on to be a guest.  That’s a wonderful platform to direct people to your custom landing pages too.

If you’re not already a Chamber of Commerce member where you live and work I highly recommend becoming one.  Your inbound marketing efforts will thank you.

Photo Credit:  jamiegreen08

 


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Comments

Great points on how you can leverage your Chamber membership. I have used and recommend all these tactics to my clients.  
 
I do have to disagree with you on one point though- why wouldn't you have a reciprocal link back to your Chambers site- whether you have to or not? Here's why: 
 
-Increase your local community biz by helping to raise the SEO of your Chamber. Helps you, helps your potential clients (if you are selling locally to businesses). 
 
-If you live in a tourist area, as I do, increasing the SEO of the Chamber can expand it's visibility beyond your state and locale. 
 
-If you are guest blogging, wouldn't you want your site visitors to also see that? Wouldn't that raise your credibility? 
 
 
-It's just seems like good karma? 
 
My 2 cents!
Posted @ Friday, October 22, 2010 10:17 AM by Carole
Carol: 
 
Thanks for the comment. You brought up some very good points! 
 
Generally you want to limit your outbound links as much as possible so you don't give away your link juice. The Chambers that I have experienced all had really high page ranks and didn't need my link. That being said, for those Chambers out there that are struggling for search engine visibility sharing some of your link juice is a great idea. 
 
Regarding guest blogging, I would indeed promote it on my site. However, I'd issue a press release in my newsfeed with a nofollow link to the Chamber article and post it to the wire. Then I'd promote it via social media. After a week or so I'd cross post my authored article back to my blog and include a nofollow link to the original. If my Chamber was struggling for search engine visibility though, I'd consider making the nofollow links follow. 
 
@CPollittIU 
 
Posted @ Friday, October 22, 2010 10:32 AM by Chad H. Pollitt
Yes, if they don't need it- great. Usually you only see that with the larger regional chambers though. The smaller ones are in desperate need of it however- many are running on volunteers to help manage their websites. (for any start-up inbound marketers-that would be a great way to get some experience and visibility!)
Posted @ Friday, October 22, 2010 10:36 AM by Carole Mahoney
Great idea Carole! 
 
That would be a great thing to do for smaller Chambers and would be really good experience for beginners too. If rookies across the country take your advice there'd be a lot of highly successful small Chambers out there. 
 
@CPollittIU
Posted @ Friday, October 22, 2010 10:42 AM by Chad H. Pollitt
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