The Tools You Need to Resolve These 3 Common Marketing Mistakes

Inbound marketing campaigns must have the right amount of balance if you wish to see success.

Without this balance, you'll be surprised at just how easy it is for the wheels to start coming off. One mistake will often times trigger another mistake, and before you know it, there are some serious gaps in your plan.

While marketing mastery doesn't happen overnight, you have to start somewhere if you wish to avoid going up in smoke.

These 3 marketing mistakes are common, but they are also preventable, which is why we've detailed the tools you need to avoid them.

Following, Not Leading

"Can you hear me now?"

No, this isn't a Verizon commercial, but I have to be honest, the Internet can be pretty noisy at times. Wouldn't you agree? 

While businesses are more than aware that they must create content in order to provide their target audience with the resources that they need to make a purchasing decision, it's hard to hear with everyone talking at once. 

If you want your content to stand out, you have to stop jumping on every bandwagon that makes its way around town. 

Trust me on this one. Enough people have covered the "Is SEO Dead?" debate at this point, and there's no need to pile on. 

The solution:

If you want to pioneer some new ground, consider making use of the Google Alerts tool. This free monitoring tool allows users to receive email updates based on the queries of their choice.

By keeping up on industry news and events in real-time, it's much easier to forecast trends and be the first to hear about changes and announcements. 

With Google Alerts you can stop running after the bandwagon and start heading the pack because it's the authoritative content that has the ability to break through. 

Failing to Network Effectively

In order for your business to become influential, you must build a name for yourself. Networking is about building and utilizing connections with the right people in order to validate and further the success of your brand. However, it's important to remember it's not only that you're talking, but that you're talking about the right things that will help you to make moves.

What I'm trying to say is, make it less about you and more about the other person. After all, Guy Kawasaki once said, "The mark of a good conversationalist is not that you can talk a lot. The mark is that you can get others to talk a lot." 

One-sided conversations aren't stimulating. If you're too busy pitching yourself and your businesses, you wont be about to establish the personal connection necessary to remain at the top of someone's mind.

The solution:

If you haven't heard of Refresh app yet, get ready for this. Acting as a social cheat sheet, Refresh is deigned to help users build connections by pulling information about people from all of their online profiles and organizing it into one place.

For people looking to expand their networking roots, this type of insight makes building rapport, initiating a conversation, and finding common ground easier than it's ever been.

Check out the information it was able to pull about our marketing director in the photos above.

It look's like John and I both attended the same college, he visited Ireland last August, and he's a Chicago Bulls fan. If I didn't already sit next to him, this would surely give me enough grounds to strike up a friendly conversation.  

Underutilizing Your Blog 

81% of U.S. online consumers trust information and advice from blogs. (Source: BlogHer)

92% of companies who blog multiple times per day have acquired a customer from their blog. (Source: HubSpot)

B2B marketers who use blogs generate 67% more leads than those that do not. (Source: InsideView)

Companies that blog have 97% more inbound links. (Source: Hubspot)

61% of U.S. online consumers have made a purchase based on recommendations from a blog. (Source: BlogHer)

Remind me again why your business blog isn't a priority???

It is critical that all businesses not only recognize the value of blogging, but also come up with a strategy to ensure that they are posting consistently.

Blogs not only have the ability to drive new traffic to your website, but they can be used to convert prospects, facilitate interaction, and retain existing customers. 

While businesses are known to counterclaim that their industry or niche is simply too boring to sustain regular content creation, we beg to differ.

The solution: 

When you're struggling to come up with concepts for your really niche market, or you're simply suffering from a case of blogger's block, the BlogAbout title generator may be exactly what you need to start seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

Once you get started you'll find that BlogAbout is more than just a title generator, but rather it's an interactive brainstorming tool that we brought to being as a result of our own frustration with coming up with workable, quality blog titles on a regular basis.

Rather than give you ideas, BlogAbout helps you find them through a bit of creative exploration, keyword adding, and rearranging. 

If you still feel stuck, BlogAbout also offers a quiet place for you to doodle until something strikes you, because sometimes that's all it takes.