While 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.
Your website will be placed on The Chamber of Commerce’s web directory.
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.
You can request that your business be featured on their blog or offer to guest blog for them.
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.
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.
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
Social Media + SEO = Social Media Infrastructure
Thursday October 28, 2010 @ 1PM EDT
Social Media Infrastructures are multiple social media platforms chosen for engagement and how they are connected to one another. Most companies that fail in social media marketing have each platform in a silo without regard to SEO, connectivity or the efficiencies of time and message that can be gained.
