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Most marketing experts will tell you that if you blog more frequently - or publish any original content more frequently including photos, videos, and podcasts - you will get more web traffic and subscribers to your blog (by RSS and email).

To test that hypothesis, I did a little experiment - not on the HubSpot website or blog - but on my personal website because it is a test case similar to the average small business.  

Like many small businesses, I have had my site for a long time, my site gets about 1,000 visitors per month, and I have about 500 links into my website.  From my experience this is a typical situation for many small businesses.

Normally I write about 8-10 blog articles per month.  None of them are that great because all my best content ends up on this inbound marketing blog you are reading.  So, compared to most small businesses that usually have not started to use a business blogging system, I already had an advantage because I had over 100 articles on my website.

For the experiment, I decided to write a new article every single day (even weekends) for the month of February.  The hypothesis was that by producing more content and being active in the blogosphere, more people would find me, I would have a larger footprint in the search engines, get some SEO benefits from more inbound links, have a more interesting presence in social media which would drive more traffic, and just generally power up my inbound marketing program.

Here are the results: more traffic from search engines (Google), more traffic from social media (Twitter), more blog subscribers, more website visitors.  I probably would have had more leads too if I had a decent call to action on my website and cared about leads.  

This is very similar to the marketing ROI that other companies report from implementing inbound marketing.

The marketing takeaway? Publish more content to give a boost to your inbound marketing program!

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If you have browsed throught the Clickbank marketplace you may have noticed that there are a few shady products in there, like the download sites. But if you take a look at them, you see an interesting pattern.

I have dealt with Clickbank as an affiliate a long time now. And for a few months, I have been making posts over at a new site, Clickbunk.com. The only posts I make there currently are announcements of new products at Clickbank. And day after day, I have been browsing the products as they come up, watching for patterns, watching for something that may be a new hot product.

Okay, back to the download sites. When I started with Clickbank, they were only download sites. Then I noticed that they broke up into download categories. Soon there were movie specific download sites, game specific ones and music specific ones. And as handheld gaming consoles became popular, these sites started getting marketed to an even narrower niche: PSP download sites, etc.

And, although I have not tried any of these download sites, I am pretty sure they are all about the same, whether or not they specify a single product or download type. But by targeting the product to multiple niches, they expand the amount of sales they can get. You see, if you have a PSP and you are not tech savvy, you are going to search for PSP downloads. You don’t care about the format, as long as it works. Taking out all the extras makes it simpler.

But this pattern goes even farther than that. One of the staples in the Clickbank marketplace are the “Make Money Selling Ebooks” type products. Well, it seems the Amazon Kindle has become popular if you haven’t noticed. Today I noticed a new product at Clickbank that focused just on selling Ebooks for the Kindle called the Kindle Cash Machine.

A book is a book for the most part, whether of the ebook kind or of the solid kind. And an ebook is an ebook. We know that. We have been selling them as affiliates for a long time. But if someone just happens to be an aspiring writing and is unfamiliar with online ebook publishing, getting published on Kindle is a recognizable concept. And getting published on Kindle may reach people that never have thought about writing an “ebook”.

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• Google takes on Amazon with mobile book service (telegraph.co.uk)

Over the last year or so, Clickbank has really kicked it up a notch. They have added so many features that Clickbank affiliates have been waiting for for a long time. I just happened to notice this new feature as I was checking my sales stats.

I seems that they are adding an ad serving platform. Forget the old marketplace XML feed with the generic descriptions meant to get affiliates to sell a product rather than being of any benefit in selling a product. Now vendors can ad real ads to the marketplace feed. Well, maybe not now, but soon:

Shortly after the release of phase one, we intend to introduce phase two, which includes adding these new advertisement fields to our Marketplace XML feed and rolling out our own contextual ad serving platform. Affiliates will utilize this platform by placing a ClickBank widget on their site that displays relevant customer-facing ad copy to their readers. When a customer clicks an ad and makes a purchase, the transaction is recorded and commission is paid to the affiliate. We will provide more information about how affiliates can maximize the use of this program in an upcoming release.

Read more about it here.

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With quite a few webinars under the HubSpot belt, we’ve been able to nail down our process and even experiment here and there with new techniques to enhance our presentations. One such enhancement has been using Twitter as another means of communication during the event.

Some time ago we realized that a number of our webinar attendees were already tweeting about our presentations. We were long-time users of Twitter for marketing purposes and we recognized this as another opportunity to extend our reach and create buzz, listen and engage with our community, and add additional value to our events.

How Twitter Can Turn One-Way Webinars Into Two-Way Conversations

(1) Extend Your Reach

By tweeting about the webinar, our attendees were taking what was otherwise a closed event (though free, the event was limited to those who officially registered), and sharing the content with their network outside of that event. We loved this, of course, since we want our content to reach as many people as possible. By encouraging our attendees to tweet about the webinar, the number of tweets increased exponentially, and more and more people were sharing and spreading our content for us.

(2) Create Buzz

Not only did this extend our reach, but it also created a fair amount of buzz about us and our webinars. We asked attendees to use the hashtag #hubspot in their tweets about the webinar to help everyone track all the tweets related to the webinar. With the large number of tweets using our event hashtag, we very frequently made it to Twitter Search’s list of Trending Topics, which drove additional buzz and interest in our events.

(3) Listen to Your Community

One of the added benefits of using Twitter for questions and comments is that you can really tune into what people are saying about the presentation. With the webinar Q&A system, you will certainly get questions and a few comments directed to you, the organizer and presenter. Tune into Twitter and you’ll see what people are saying to each other - not filtered, and not limited to questions about the presentation. This is a great way to get honest (and immediate) feedback about your event.

(4) Respond More Effectively

Using Twitter during our webinars has actually made my life - the life of the organizer/moderator - so much easier. What’s great about doing Q&A on Twitter is it’s public. That may seem a bit scary, but it’s actually a lot easier to communicate with the large number of attendees all at once. If there’s a technical issue of sorts, we can easily communicate to everyone the situation and when it will be resolved, instead of responding to each individual question about the same issue. This can also help pre-empt more of the same question. The other great thing about doing the Q&A in this public forum is that attendees will actually start answering each other’s questions. Sometimes it can be hard to keep up with the stream of tweets and questions, but attendees are able to see and respond to each other’s tweets.

(5) Foster Networking and Communication

That last note touches on yet another benefit - by fostering event-related conversations on Twitter, you’re able to take your attendees out of the dark room of the webinar and communicate with other attendees. They can network, connect, and interact with others who are similarly interested in the topics covered in the webinar. This makes your event valuable not only for the content presented but also for the opportunity for your attendees to network and extend conversations beyond your hour-long presentation.

Ready to Try It? Here’s How:

Here’s how to start using Twitter for your webinars and web events:

1. Create a hashtag specific to your event.
2. Communicate to your attendees that you will monitor and accept questions via Twitter.
3. Make it easy for attendees to tweet with your hashtag.
4. Make it easy for attendees to follow the conversation related to your event.
5. Have someone monitoring and responding on Twitter as necessary throughout the event.

If you want to see this process in action, register for tomorrow’s webinar, which is about using these different Internet marketing techniques - Blogging, Social Media, and Search Engine Optimization - together to achieve exponential results (very much relevant to this discussion, too!). Whether or not you join the live event, be sure to tune into the Twitterstream!

Photo by StreetFly JZ

With quite a few webinars under the HubSpot belt, we’ve been able to nail down our process and even experiment here and there with new techniques to enhance our presentations. One such enhancement has been using Twitter as another means of communication during the event.

Some time ago we realized that a number of our webinar attendees were already tweeting about our presentations. We were long-time users of Twitter for marketing purposes and we recognized this as another opportunity to extend our reach and create buzz, listen and engage with our community, and add additional value to our events.

How Twitter Can Turn One-Way Webinars Into Two-Way Conversations

(1) Extend Your Reach

By tweeting about the webinar, our attendees were taking what was otherwise a closed event (though free, the event was limited to those who officially registered), and sharing the content with their network outside of that event. We loved this, of course, since we want our content to reach as many people as possible. By encouraging our attendees to tweet about the webinar, the number of tweets increased exponentially, and more and more people were sharing and spreading our content for us.

(2) Create Buzz

Not only did this extend our reach, but it also created a fair amount of buzz about us and our webinars. We asked attendees to use the hashtag #hubspot in their tweets about the webinar to help everyone track all the tweets related to the webinar. With the large number of tweets using our event hashtag, we very frequently made it to Twitter Search’s list of Trending Topics, which drove additional buzz and interest in our events.

(3) Listen to Your Community

One of the added benefits of using Twitter for questions and comments is that you can really tune into what people are saying about the presentation. With the webinar Q&A system, you will certainly get questions and a few comments directed to you, the organizer and presenter. Tune into Twitter and you’ll see what people are saying to each other - not filtered, and not limited to questions about the presentation. This is a great way to get honest (and immediate) feedback about your event.

(4) Respond More Effectively

Using Twitter during our webinars has actually made my life - the life of the organizer/moderator - so much easier. What’s great about doing Q&A on Twitter is it’s public. That may seem a bit scary, but it’s actually a lot easier to communicate with the large number of attendees all at once. If there’s a technical issue of sorts, we can easily communicate to everyone the situation and when it will be resolved, instead of responding to each individual question about the same issue. This can also help pre-empt more of the same question. The other great thing about doing the Q&A in this public forum is that attendees will actually start answering each other’s questions. Sometimes it can be hard to keep up with the stream of tweets and questions, but attendees are able to see and respond to each other’s tweets.

(5) Foster Networking and Communication

That last note touches on yet another benefit - by fostering event-related conversations on Twitter, you’re able to take your attendees out of the dark room of the webinar and communicate with other attendees. They can network, connect, and interact with others who are similarly interested in the topics covered in the webinar. This makes your event valuable not only for the content presented but also for the opportunity for your attendees to network and extend conversations beyond your hour-long presentation.

Ready to Try It? Here’s How:

Here’s how to start using Twitter for your webinars and web events:

1. Create a hashtag specific to your event.
2. Communicate to your attendees that you will monitor and accept questions via Twitter.
3. Make it easy for attendees to tweet with your hashtag.
4. Make it easy for attendees to follow the conversation related to your event.
5. Have someone monitoring and responding on Twitter as necessary throughout the event.

If you want to see this process in action, register for tomorrow’s webinar, which is about using these different Internet marketing techniques - Blogging, Social Media, and Search Engine Optimization - together to achieve exponential results (very much relevant to this discussion, too!). Whether or not you join the live event, be sure to tune into the Twitterstream!

Photo by StreetFly JZ