Delicious Social Bookmarking For Inbound Marketing Content Creation
Posted by Jeff Machado
For some people, creating content for their business is the eat healthy and exercise portion of Inbound Marketing. You probably know you should be doing it but you're just waiting for the right time or moment to get started.
But Pete Caputa, the Partner Program Director at HubSpot, pointed out in no uncertain terms that content creation isn't just a suggestion, it's an absolute must.
"If you want (your clients) to be successful online, you need to create content every day and forever." Read more here
He's not skirting the issue. He's not being vague. He's telling you - create content now or perish.
So, how do you make content creation a little bit more delicious and decadent?
I'm not going to lie - I took Pete's suggestion to heart and had to ask myself if I was still in the "I'll get to it later" state of mind. I wasn't totally happy with my answer.
But what it did inspire me to do was come up with creative ways to actually make the content creation process much easier. To do that, I suggest using Delicious.com, a social bookmarking service.
Why Social Bookmarking For Inbound Marketing?
Whenever you find a site you like online, you probably save it to your favorites. It probably sits on your favorites for a while and you may not ever even get back to it again.
Here's what you need to keep in mind though - you bookmarked it for a reason. Something about that page caught your attention. What you have here is something that can be turned into juicy and succulent content for your blog!
I like keeping my bookmarks on Delicious to help me come up with design ideas, keep track of helpful sites that I'll refer to over and over again, and keep track of blog posts I want to read but don't have time to focus on at the moment I find them.
Not only can you keep your own bookmarks organized, you can also see what your friends or coworkers have bookmarked. Or maybe there are thought leaders in your industry who are sharing their favorite pages. No matter what, you're getting a wealth of information that's ready to be blogged about.
The more links you have exposure to, the greater the amount of topics you have to create content on. That's the power of social bookmarking for creating content!
I'll show you how you can do it too!
Step 1: Sign up for a Delicious account at Delicious.com.
Delicious is now integrated with Yahoo! so if you already have an account with them, you can head right over to Delicious. If not, they will ask you to open an account.
Step 2: Install The Delicious Bookmarklet
On the Delicious Tools page, you can install a bookmarklet for your web browser that will easily help you bookmark any page you find without having to go yet another website.
Step 3: Save The Content You Like
With your browser fired up and the Delicious bookmarklet installed, go out there and find a blog post or story you like. If you like this post, feel free to bookmark it!
A window will pop up asking you to confirm the title of the page as well as the URL. The best part is the Notes section. Here, I put the quote from Pete Caputa's blog post that really struck a chord with me - the inspiration for this blog post.
Notice in the image how I used toblogabout as one of the keywords. This will help you easily separate articles you're keeping for reference and for blogging.
Step 4: Create Your Letter To The Editor
If you have ever read a newspaper, you know that the Letter To The Editor section is actually a hub for interesting conversations. Interesting conversations in the Inbound Marketing world are perfect starting points for a blog post!
Imagine you're writing to the person who wrote the blog post. Respond to them. challenge them. Prove even more why they're right. You can even compare several blog posts with different viewpoints.
Make sure to link back to the original blog post for your readers to check out so they can get the whole picture.
Here's the secret - your content doesn't have to be 100% original. It just has to be there.
Step 5: Publish and Say Thank You
Now that you've written your letter to the editor, make sure to research keywords that go well with your blog post. Optimize your title and meta tags. Then, publish away.
Take the extra step and tell the blog owner that you've used their post as inspiration for your own blog post. Here are the benefits of doing so:
- Bloggers love attention - responding to their posts make them feel special
- You'll probably earn a valuable inbound link coming to your own blog
- You will be forming a relationship with that blogger. When they usually get comments like "Great Post!", it's not very good for making you stand out. Writing a post about their post creates a more meaningful interaction.
- You will get traffic to your blog post
- If the blog post you are responding to had a lot of discussion, you can make your blog another place to explore the issues deeper.
You can follow this process as much as you want. Not only will you be creating that all important content, you'll also be helping your business in other areas such as social media and link building.
What are your current content creation challenges? What have you done to overcome them?