Thanks to MIT entrepreneurial guru Ed Roberts, we had lunch today with Dharmesh Shah, the CTO of Hubspot and the co-author of Inbound Marketing. Having read or skimmed many books on the topic of web marketing, I find it a pleasure to read a book as clear, simple, and lucid as this one. I strongly recomment it.
Our conversation centered on how to best launch JewishBoston.com and best practices for social networking marketing. Here's what Dharmesh said:
1. Remember that there's huge value in social connections. As a philanthropy, CJP (and JewishBoston) should recognize that getting people to leverage their social network has tremendous value. Think about this as you launch JewishBoston.
2. Start with asking people to do the right thing. "If you find JewishBoston.com useful, we would really appreciate it if you'd tell your friends about us!" Altruism is a wonderful thing and, in general, people do want to be helpful.
3. Think about social incentives that would get people engaged. Girl scout badges are an example of this; the online world is exactly the same. Sites such as stackoverflow, a Q&A site for developers, really excel at this. People want to be recognized for their contributions.
4. Contests are good but they are timebound.
5. Recognize that the bar for engagement with a website is very high these days. The second that people feel that you are wasting your time, they will run away. Do everything you can to make it easy for people to engage with your website. Incremental improvements over time can make a big difference.
6. Don't push too hard. Think carefully about what you ask people to do when. Coming on too strong turns people off. Instead, use analytics to see what people do on your site and design involvement opportunities depending on what they do.
7. Use a Facebook fan page to market your site.
8. Make it simple and obvious for people to share information with their network.
9. Don't overthink your marketing! Try new things, trust the organic nature of social networks, identify the connectors and go with it.
Thank you, Dharmesh! Very helpful!
Let me know what you'd add to Dharmesh's list. What would be #10?
#10 Use the HubSpot system
Posted by: john smith | Dec 08, 2009 at 03:04 PM