Inbound marketing is the theme this week at Infusionsoft because we want you to become a better marketer. More often then not, entrepreneurs are people with great ideas , but not necessarily such great marketing ideas. I attended the Inbound Marketing Summit this week in San Francisco and I wanted to share solid ways on how you can become a more relevant, useful and creative marketer. The best part is, anyone can do it.

Inbound marketing is the practice of publishing powerful content that is so interesting and useful, that people just naturally attract to it. One doesn’t need to apply paid promotional techniques because the content stands on its own merit. Inbound marketing involves social media, people, conversation, buzz and value.

Why is it important to become a better Inbound marketer? If you apply the same techniques you learned ten years ago, surely, you aren’t keeping up with your customers. Customers today have been empowered to search and converse with close contacts when they evaluate your products or services. People who become better Inbound marketers understand their audience, their value and earn more respect and loyalty from their users.

Anyone can implement these strategies. No longer is just the few at the top who control the message for consumers [mainstream media]; anyone can publish useful information that earns the accolades from their audience on the Web.

17 WAYS TO BECOME A BETTER INBOUND MARKETER:

1. Define Yourself. Understanding exactly how you help your customers and defining it down to a simple one or two sentence statement will help others understand what you do. Defining yourself also helps others hold you accountable. (As an example, we define ourselves with our Core Values that we believe in everyday.)
2. Listen to your prospects, customers and former customers. Listening to your prospects will help you identify their needs. Prospects make their needs evident when they talk about another competing product that does what they want. When you listen to your customers, you will offer better customer service. When you listen to your former customers, you’ll build better products and services.
3. Define your ‘ideal’ customer in the form of profiles. Most people take the easy route and say they just want to sell. But when you have a specific customer profile in mind, you can more effectively qualify prospects before they get ‘in the door.’ Additionally, the makes your marketing (inbound or outbound) more relevent and tailored.
4. Accept that nobody cares about you. Not many people really care about you, and that’s OK. Accept that and focus on providing value for people. When you provide value in the form of help, accessibility and even reciprocal interest, you are viewed as a trusted advisor in the area of expertise. People care about how they will benefit, how they can do better and how they can improve.  Naturally, if you provide value, you’ll get more people to care about you.
5. Create content that is worthy of being shared and voted on. While there is no formula around it, many popular pieces of content usually speak to the audience of where it was promoted. For instance, Digg users love the iPhone, despise Microsoft, salivate for anti-government content and drink up top lists. Consider your prospective audience and provide amazing content. A great story will also help the authenticity and the depth of your content, too.
6. Respond to critical posts about you. Hateful or critical posts about you onlin are opportunities. Opportunity to improve your product or service, opportunity to turn that person around and opportunity to gain an insightful perspective. When responding, demonstrate respect and be human about it.
7. Talk about the invisible. Be open and discuss the sides of your business that customers don’t see. For instance, it’s very useful and transparent for the company to showcase their employees so customers can connect with them. When you’re willing to uncover the invisible, you’re willing to go strong with the visible. It becomes unquestionable that you’re human and authentic.
8. Have a conversation. Most marketing today is interruption marketing, which why it’s failing. Consumers don’t screw around, and will block and ignore advertisers if they think it’s crap. Conversations and dialogs are great to be able to empower the customer to interact and give others insight into the experience.
9. Monitor your brand and industry. Today, it’s incredibly simple to monitor your brand and keep the pulse of the industry. Tools such as Google Alerts, FriendFeed and BackType are free solutions to help you track the buzz. Search including a human element will yield you relevant results. Depending on your company’s size, it may be prudent to use professional tools like Radian6 or Sysomos or ScoutLabs.
10. Treat your Website like your 6th sales person. It’s depressing to see so many Websites out there that suck. Not just their looks, but how they function. Your Website should be addressing top questions and objections from prospects; provide relevant content for customers and be easy (and clean) to navigate. A website needs to be engaging and need to be human. (Of course, if you have a rockin’ site, I didn’t mean to say it sucks, but many do!)
11. Optimize your Website for humans. There are so many SEO specialists and blackhats out there that will tell you a million tricks will get you to the top of search engines. On-page SEO (meaning the stuff you control) is just as important as external link partners. The easiest thing that you can manage is your titles on pages, place your keywords first then your brand. (An example is the title of this page on the blog.)
12. Don’t half-ass your social media efforts. If you’re going to engage, then engage; but don’t half-ass it. That is, if you’re going to blog, blog frequently and do it from your heart. If you’re going to use Twitter, then Tweet daily (at least). If you’re going to listen to customers, implement their feedback into your products and services. A mediocre blog is more of a liability than if you had no blog — great advice from Tim Ferriss.
13. Tie your activities to sales. Tim Ferriss suggests to make a concerted effort to track your activity with relation to sales, or don’t waste your time. Many company often spin their wheels without needing to.
14. Consider a social cause to boost branding. If you have a damaged or not a strong brand, investing into a legitimate cause that people identify with will boost your brand. Examples include encouraging people to donate to a charitable organization, doing charitable activity in your area and show your humanity. (Yes, businesses can be human if they want to.)
15. Empower the passionate voices in your company. Not every CEO has to blog (personally, I’d love if they did). Find the folks who are on Twitter, Facebook and browse the Web all the time and give them the opportunity to be the voice for your company on the Web. You’d be surprised what can happen.
16. Build a strategy in social media. This is an absolute must if you want to strategically build value for your company on the Web. Set realistic goals and immerse social media into your product development, customer service and marketing processes in your company.
17. Measure yourself. Track your social media efforts with measurable metrics — customer retention (common), leads, time to close, customer satisfaction, etc. Yes, it is possible to correlate social media to real business analytics. It all depends on your goals. At a minimum, measure your Web traffic with a service like Google Analytics.

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These certainly aren’t all the ways to become a better marketer, but I believe they are a great start. The best part is, entrepreneurs have it easy. They don’t have silos or barriers like corporate communications, nanny-style public relations teams or lawyers to battle over interacting with customers.

I am here to help. I want to help. I’m not calling for the total destruction of outbound marketing; I want to help others become better marketers. It makes it much easier for a small business to automate their outbound marketing and sit down and focus on their inbound marketing — for that, Infusionsoft rocks.

HubSpot has killer services, great Webinars and a helpful blog that helps small businesses execute their inbound marketing flawlessly. I seriously recommend you check them out, and consider complimenting that with Infusionsoft. You’d be amazed at the results when you just try it.

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• Inbound Marketing with Outbound Solutions
• 5 Insider Tips to Get Your Business ‘Social’
• Thank You to Our Infusionsoft Fans!