#inbound13

At Inbound 13, the world's largest marketing conference hosted by Hubspot, Arianna Huffington shared some words of wisdom with conference attendees. People often measure success by money and power, but there is a third metric of success: our well-being.

We have to find ways to renew ourselves to be creative. Over the past few months I’ve hit the ground running in the startup world. There’s so much to do in so little time, and almost everything needs to be done on a last minute deadline.  Most leaders make their biggest mistakes when they’re tired. According to Huffington, “Burnout is the disease of our civilization.”

Our lives are so outbound at the moment, we need to make them inbound. We have to decide what to put our energy into, and sometimes it’s more effective to drop projects.  

“The worst things in life are usually the best because they open doors,” Huffington said. “Life only makes sense when you look back.”

She thanked a breakup in her life for happening, or else the Huffington Post may have never been created. That immediately resonated with me. If my previous relationship never ended, I would probably be a starving PR intern trying to get by in New York City at the moment. Instead, I took a leap of faith, packed my life into two suitcases and dived into the startup ecosystem in Boston. Best. Decision. Ever.

Most of the time I notice people are “on” working because they can. It’s important to take breaks from work; a culture of burnout will never sustain creativity.  

Sometimes we have to lean back in order to jump higher.

What do you do to prevent burnout?

The Internet has evolved a lot over the years, so much actually that you can’t almost tell what it used to be like before. Marketing followed along.

It took its time to adapt, but in the end it did. We saw the transformation: from consumers to prosumers, basically what happened is that the web has empowered people. Various sites have provided valid alternatives for researching brands and buying products. Consumers no longer get informed or make decisions based on what they see on billboards and TV commercials. That was outbound marketing. There’s a new kid in town, and it has been called the rising star.

So where is marketing heading? Inbound, ladies and gentlemen. Marketing went from one-way to two-way communication, better yet, conversation bewtween brands and customers. Much of which is facilitated by social media.

The star became a comet, big enough to earn a huge self-standing event: #INBOUND13.

Inbound marketing has taken the lion’ share over traditional marketing and that is because it definitely costs less. Who would buy their way to consumers’ sweet spot when consumers aren't even paying attention?

Want some numbers?* At a glance:

44% of direct mail is never opened. That's a waste of time, postage and paper;

86% of people skip through television commercials;

84% of 25 to 34 year olds have clicked out of a website because of an "irrelevant or intrusive ad."

Inbound marketing focuses on earning a person's attention. This can only be done through more personal content like blogs and social media. If the content is interesting, yet informative and adds value to the person who reads it, it calls for a target audience more likely to engage with a brand.

Inbound marketing rhymes with blogging. A blog is quite possibily the most efficient way to attract new visitors to your website. A blog post is solid content, which gets shared pretty fast on the Internet. It’s only normal to expect your prospects to be interested in the things your value proposition is about.

In order for the matchmaking plans to fall into place and for you to be found by the right customers, your bloggins strategy should at least meet one goal: write helpful content that speaks to them and answers their questions.

Welcome welcome to my blog! Today is the first day in my attempt to blog every day in September!

My motto, as stated on my Tumblr account, and many of my various social media accounts is a personal quote of mine, "My goal is to inspire and be inspired. To some, this is unattainably ambiguous. To me, it makes perfect sense."

Review some of the keynote highlights from the #INBOUND13 conference.