After being away for two weeks – first at INBOUND15 in Boston, then at dmexco in Cologne – I had so many things to take care of so I used my weekend to deal with some urgent emails and to catch up with my reading: there were about 350 unread articles among the 40 subscriptions that I have in my feedly.
I’ve managed to get down to 88 articles now, so this was a productive learning weekend.
Anyway, there were so many good articles which I thought would be useful for the other Channel Consultants in my team at HubSpot so I emailed them a list of 10 fantastic reading recommendations.
Then I thought, these articles would surely be of interest to my readers too and so I decided to share them with you as well. I hope you enjoy them and they inspire a powerful start to your working/study week.
This is some fantastic advice from our very own Nataly Kelly – our VP of Marketing Localisation at HubSpot – in the Harvard Business Review. The world may be going global, but local is super important in business.
The tips here are useful for any professional and the essence is really about learning to say “no” – something I personally suck at (I always agree to do more) although I’ve read Essentialism, the book that is reviewed in the article.
Key learning here is that both agencies and clients have to take the time, be patient and do inbound right. I quite like this quote: "You can't have a baby in less than nine months, no matter what you do." Good analogy, right?
Some good advice for both agencies and brands on how to use Robert Cialdini's principles from Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
Remarkable marketing is about them, not us, about how we make them feel, not about the numbers – again, what matters most for each consumer is What’s In It For Me. Brands should not forget this.
How to never stop learning – this is so important for us as consultants and professionals, but we barely take the time to do it. I particularly like the example at the beginning of booking time in your calendar, just 30 minutes a day, every day, and STICKING to it every day - that's the hard part!
The next big thing: Blab.im – if you want your agency or brand to stand out, this is one way of doing it: no webinars, no podcasts, let's do live broadcasting but with multiple users, so it's like a mix of Periscope + Google Hangouts. I can see that to be a cool way of presenting case studies or even doing live consultations/reviews of websites/workshops.
Hands-on advice on creating buyer-persona websites – so many agencies offer website services, so these are some easy to stick to tips. I love this quote: "If you remember one thing, it is this: Create a website based on your buyers’ problems rather than your own ego. Nobody cares about your products and services except you. What people care about are themselves."
I normally don't like that type of negative posts, but this one has some sound advice on blogging, particularly useful for brands who write their own content or such who supply it to their agencies. Writing is hard and creating a remarkable blog post is an art. These tips are a good guidance.
For those of you who speak German, you’ll love this piece from one of my partners about why inbound marketing + inbound sales is a love story – he was super inspired by INBOUND. For those of you who don’t know Germany, maybe Google’s translate function will work so that you can get the essence.
What’s your weekend reading recommendation?