I love when a good book finds me. This was the case with “Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, And Blogs” by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah of HubSpot. It was next up on my Amazon Wish List but then – Boom! – it came my way via a promotional copy handoff from Social CRM consultant Brent Leary.

This friendly exchange ended up being a nice example of what the book is all about; creating content (online content for the most part) and relationships that help people find you and your business. These guys are good… I called up Brian right away and he was open to sharing some additional thoughts regarding Inbound Marketing implications and opportunities. His comments became the basis of my January PR Tactics article “Welcome to the DARC side: Creating compelling content for your Web site.”

The article focuses on the authors’ DARC acronym detailing essential qualities for every communicator in the digital age (Digital Citizens, Analytical Chops, Web Reach, and Content Creators). I couldn’t fit everything from my discussion with Brian into this piece, so here are some additional insights he shared. His comment regarding Apple is timely this week given introduction of the iPad, and extension of their simplicity and ubiquitous themes. (Apple PR, by the way, is an interesting study unto itself. This New York Times article by David Carr gives further details.)

Ryan Zuk: You cite Apple and the iPod among the inspirations for HubSpot. Are there elements here communicators can apply to help do their jobs better?

Brian Halligan: When I think of the iPod, instead of a complicated MP3 player, I think of a great experience focused less on features and more on user interface. Apple designed an alternative focused not on features but on an enjoyable experience. This is the takeaway everyone in business should consider. At HubSpot, for example, we take complicated Web concepts and simplify them for marketers. Most marketing firms wanting to do modern marketing right need to assemble SEO, blogging, lead management and Web analytics consultants. This can get rather complicated. Our Internet marketing software harnesses these elements to help businesses generate more inbound leads and convert a higher percentage of them into paying customers.

RZ: How does Inbound Marketing change business operation and communication?

BH: I was reading a comment by David Meerman Scott basically suggesting that the old-school rules of marketing focused on buying attention (advertising), begging for it (PR) or bugging people one at a time (sales). Inbound Marketing is about creating really compelling content for your Web site (videos, blogs, EBooks etc) that pulls people in to learn more about you. The people attracted include other Web site owners who link to your content, and people tweeting about your content and sharing it on other social networks. Lots of links naturally bring more people to you, and meanwhile you start ranking nicely on Google.

When you have good content it tends to snowball. More and more people start to find you. The nice thing about creating remarkable content is that it is very cumulative. You earn a few more links after each post. It’s kind of like compounding interest in your bank account.

RZ: What can we do as marketers, PR practitioners and communicators to get on board?

BH: Marketing teams and PR agencies need to help clients change their culture of content creation. Bigger, older businesses need to understand that every piece of content shouldn’t be scrutinized through legal reviews. You really need to crank out lots of good stuff, so focus on turning your clients into publishing machines. Businesses who win on the Internet are prolific publishers. Zappos and Whole Foods are a couple that come to mind.

Help your clients craft content that is right for them. Maybe it’s videos for one and blogs for another. Getting remarkable content to the masses creates an inbound flow of traffic that becomes your prospect pipeline, and eventually your paying customers.

My thanks to Brian for his time. You can find HubSpot’s free Grader resources at Grader.com if you haven’t experienced them already. The tools help evaluate and improve your Web presence as well as how you use Facebook and Twitter.

Also check out www.hubspot.tv which airs Fridays at 4:00 p.m. Eastern

What a year of numbers for social media and the Web. Take Twitter for example. Approximately 70% of its nearly five million users registered for the service in 2008 according to HubSpot’s Q4 2008 State of the Twittersphere report. This is but one of many quantitative gems that cap an impressive year of social media growth. The following stats represent a slice of the past year’s activity that I found most impressive.

Google Search - As if there were any doubt, Google continued to hold the top search engine spot with 63.5% of traffic. More impressive to me – although also expected at some point – was Google’s YouTube individually surpassing Yahoo and Microsoft according to the comScore Expanded Search Query Report as referenced on ZDNet’s Between The Lines blog (also thanks to Brent Leary for Tweeting it.)

Google Chrome - Another boon for Google was its Chrome Web browser tallying 10 million users just 100 days after its release. Google also lifted the Beta tag from Chrome, noting that its “goals for stability and performance have been met.” This was a significant move considering many Google apps its senior are still labeled Beta, and an aggressive move in browser/search war terms versus Microsoft and others too.

Facebook - With a 140 million active users and 600 thousand joining daily (according to Inside Facebook and as reported by ReadWriteWeb), Facebook is the juggernaut of social media and online communities. And while Twitter posted impressive numbers of its own this year, ReadWriteWeb calculated that if Facebook were to hold steady at 140 million users while Twitter’s current growth continued, it would take Twitter 36 years to catch up. Two popular and powerful tools, yet a world of difference between them at least as far as uptake is concerned.

Blogosphere - In September Technorati released its annual State of the Blogosphere report. I blogged a bit on it referencing the Universal McCann data that measured 184 million people worldwide having blogs, and 346 million reading them – a ton of content generation for sure. I also found the report’s Day Five data (Brands Enter The Blogosphere) about blogger participation in Web 2.0 activities interesting. The fact that bloggers use other online tools isn’t at all surprising, yet their percentage of activity for things like commenting on other blogs (84%), watching online videos (68%), sharing photos (48%) and using Twitter (41%) confirm that integrated communications are prevalent and expanding. The connected world is now, and its proving out and documenting itself daily.

There’s much more I’m sure. These are just a few social media and Web tools that proved why they’re elite this past year. Lots of social media predictions for 2009 are popping up too. I’ll leave you to surf those out, and will continue my observations of and additions to “the conversation” in the New Year.