My Top 8 Marketing Insights from Inbound Conference

Posted by Adam Franklin

Updated on November 26th, 2019

Inbound conference

2,800 inbound marketers gathered in Boston this week for Inbound12.  Since I was one of only 3 Aussies there, I want to share my Top 8 marketing insights from the Inbound conference which we flew around the world to attend.

1. Get ready to news-jack

How…?  David Meerman Scott says to track Google News for what’s happening now and if you find a topic you can somehow relate to your blog, post something in real-time.  If journalists see your content as they are looking to report the story, you may news-jack it & earn thousands of backlinks!

David Meerman Scott at Inbound12

2. You can’t really blog, tweet or email too much

Dan Zarrella is Hubspot’s Social Media Scientist and having analysed loads of data has drawn the conclusion that you can tweet, blog & email much more than you’re doing already.  Tweeting every 30 minutes, emailing daily and posting 3-4 blog articles a day will actually do you good, not harm!

3. Ranking #1 on Google is not the be all & end all

Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz says if you optimise your YouTube videos and use Google+ authorship to get your profile pic appearing next to your search results, then people are very likely to click where the images are.  Rand was a highlight at the Inbound conference.

4. Help journalists, and treat them like human beings

Laura Fitton, author of Twitter for Dummies, says don’t just spam them with your boring pitches. Get to know them by connecting on Twitter, read their stuff and build a relationship. You may even find yourself in the main stream press getting loads of attention!

5. Context marketing is the future of marketing people love

Hubspot founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah who also host the Inbound conference, gave an electric keynote where they outlined where marketing is heading over the next 6 years.  Blind Freddy knows interruption marketing is dead (think tv, radio and banner advertising) and that content marketing is where we are today, but context marketing in the future will be like Amazon’s totally personalised recommendations engine!

Content pulls people in (as leads) and context pulls people through (the buying process).

6. Unleash the power of introverts

Susan Cain compared the virtues of introverts (think Buffett, JK Rowling) and extroverts (think Clinton, Oprah) and provided an action plan for cultivating solitude to get high performance outcomes. Both introverts’ and extroverts’ best creativity comes from solitude.

7. Use your heart, more than your head

Gary Vaynerchuk earned his standing ovation on the final morning for illustrating how social media is USELESS if we don’t care immensely about our customers. Tools like email marketing and social media will lose their effectiveness over time, but if you care more, you’ll win!

Marketers ruin everything. It’s our job. We see something shiny & we squeeze the f*ing sh*t out of it!

With Gary Vaynerchuk

8. Content opportunities are all around us

Ann Handley highlighted just how many content opportunities are all around us, all the time. Photos, videos, blog posts, tweets surround us and we just need to be attuned to them and start creating content that rules!

Inbound 2013

If you get the chance to go to Boston for 19-22 August in 2013, tickets for Inbound13 are only $249 until the end of September. Of course for us Aussies, flights to get there cost 10x that, but it is still tremendous value and we highly recommend going!

I’ll write more detailed blog posts about each session, but this is the highlights reel.

Note: As a Hubspot Agency Partner I also attended a heap of session aimed at helping resellers roll Hubspot out for clients. For the record, Toby and I learnt a huge amount from Jeetu Mahtani from Hubspot Eric Keiles & Mike Lieberman from Square2 Marketing, Bob Ruffalo from Impact Design and Tiffany Sauder and Lance Schwab from Element Three.

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About Adam Franklin

Adam Franklin is the bestselling author of Web Marketing That Works. He is an international social media speaker and CEO of Bluewire Media.  His blog was Australia's #1 Business Blog and his podcast was #9 on the top marketing podcasts in Entrepreneur magazine. His work has featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, The Australian, Sydney Morning Herald, Huffington Post and iTunes. Download the popular Web Strategy Planning Template which has been used by hundreds of thousands of businesses worldwide. His weekly 'Bluewire News' email goes out to over 32,000 readers.

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