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As we continue our monthly theme of Inbound Marketing we would be remiss if we didn’t talk about Facebook. If you are on the web and do anything social networking related, you have probably heard of Facebook.

It started out as a social network for college students and then opened up to corporations and then to the general public. Over time they opened up their back-end and launched the F8 developers platform and the gold rush of games and all kinds of applications launched.

This was the catalyst for millions of people who never considered getting on a social network before. I

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The tasks that make up an inbound marketing strategy are known more for requiring constant attention than some of their outbound counterparts. With a trade show, for instance, you’ve got some prep work to do, but once the show is over you can relax. With a blog, though, you have to keep adding new content at the very least. Working with a virtual assistant who specializes in that sort of work can help you focus on running your business while still getting the benefits of those inbound marketing strategies. It’s just a matter of deciding what tasks to outsource to your VA.

1. Writing blog posts: Depending on your VA, she may be willing to simply write the posts and other materials you need for your inbound marketing efforts. Tha

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Our Grow Smart Business theme this month is inbound marketing.  For you non-marketing folks, that just means pulling business in online via your website, social networking, and blogs, rather pushing marketing messages out to your audience via advertising, direct mail, PR, etc.  Inbound marketing should be your new best friend, as it is the present—and future—of an effective marketing program.

Ken Fischer, Click for Help

The two person monologue (bilogue?) that appears below started out as an interview with Ken Fischer, President of ClickForHelp, a web 2.0 application development company.  In plain English, that means one of the things his company puts together and executes is an SEO program that is fully integrated with your marketing and branding efforts, which most SEO companies do not do.  It’s a very robust approach that generates unbelievable results.

Amanda Fischer, Infinite Technologies

To make this interview more interesting, we decided to make it a case study using one of his clients, Amanda Fischer, Director of Marketing at Infinite Technologies, which makes orthotics, prosthetics, and helmets for babies with flat, flattening, or misshapen heads.  They just launched a new, totally rebranded website with Ken’s help called HelmetTherapy.  Ken and Amanda worked together to position HelmetTherapy.com as the go-to educational website for parents of children who need helmet therapy.  The re-launched website has been wildly successful thanks to a strategic online marketing plan.

I told them what I wanted to write about, and then just sat back and listened to their back and forth, scribbling notes furiously.  (Oh, and they are not related despite having the exact same last name.  They usually point that out to people, so I figured I would, too.)

Excerpts from the “bilogue”:

Ken: Our philosophy around online marketing is simple: understand your audiences’ needs and meet them.  You want to build trust and retain your audience.

Amanda: And education is a huge part of that.  We put together great content that would fulfill the expectations of what our audience was looking for online.

Ken: Exactly.  You want to educate people on issues they want to know about.  So we always start out by doing a lot of analysis.  We analyze audience data (who they are, what they’re looking for online, etc.), look at what the competitors’ are doing, and conduct an in-depth market analysis….Our strategy with HelmetTherapy.com became building an educational resource for prospective helmet therapy patients….All of this information does you no good, of course, if no one can find you.  The website needed to be searchable and findable around terms parents regularly search for.

Amanda:  Our goal with the website was to be top-ranked.

Ken: So, once you put an SEO strategy into place, you have to ask yourself: was the effort worth it?  You must have A+ analytics in place so you know exactly what is and what is not working.  We measure every path that customers can follow to your website.

Amanda: And the effort was worth it.  We had been attracting 1-2 patients per week via our website; now we’re getting 5-10 patients per week.  Our sales increased by 500% and we’re top-ranked on almost 300 sites!

Ken: HelmetTherapy.com is searchable for over 2,000 terms, and they have been found with 500.

Amanda: This huge project has also really helped with our brand awareness.  It’s been 5 months since the site launched, and at 3 months, people were referring to our helmets, which did not have a name, as “KidCap”.

And that, folks, is the formula for a successful inbound marketing program: valuable information + technology  + analytics.  Deceptively simple, and very doable.

For most business owners, the problem with inbound marketing isn’t that we don’t want to do it. Instead, it’s an issue that there are only so many hours in the day. Without the right tools, it seems impossible to get the job done. There are tools out there, though, that can help make managing your inbound marketing efforts.

1. Website Grader: Not sure how your website ranks in terms of social media? This tool from Hubspot will tell you how you’re doing on optimization, content and other criteria. The analysis it offers provides you with actionable information that you can use to decide how to improve upon your website. Hubspot

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My last blog post, Social Media in Action Part One: How a Farm Cultivates Fans on Facebook, looked at one significant aspect of Great Country Farms’ (GCF) successful inbound marketing program.  With the help of public relations, social media, and event planning expert Christine Geno of Geno Communications, GCF grew their Facebook fan page 580% in 8 ½ months—and for 4 ½ of those months, they were closed (not much going on at a farm in northern Virginia during the winter months).

Just to recap quickly: GCF is a 200 acre working farm owned by the Zurschmeide family nestled at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains in small, historic, rural, and beautiful Bluemont, VA.  They are part of the thriving tourism industry in Loudoun County, VA that is heavily promoted in and around the metro Washington, DC area and the Mid-Atlantic region.  Though they have gotten promotional help from Loudoun County’s very active tourism board, the Zurschmeides have done a great deal of work themselves to promote their farm.

So what is GCF and why do they attract so many fans?  Their tagline “Buy Local.  Play Local.  Eat Local.” pretty much describes what they are. GCF offers organi

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