Updated: September 30, 2010
Recently, I had the pleasure of meeting with and interviewing Kipp Bodnar, Inbound Marketing Manager at HubSpot. On a recent trip to the Boston area, I visited the company’s headquarters in Cambridge near the MIT campus where the company’s founders met and charted their course.
Their space is very nice and the place is teeming with lots of activity.
During my visit there, I interviewed Kipp about content development, blogs and social media. I asked him a few questions about developing trust in a site’s content, how often you should post something on your blog and ways to share your site’s unique content through social media channels.
Below are the questions I asked during our 15-minute discussion along with a quick synopsis of Kipp’s answers…watch the videos below for the actual interview.
1. What are ways you can recommend for site owners to build trust in their content?
One way is to give people answers to their most pressing questions and concerns. You can also ask the questions to different industry experts…diverse opinions make information really credible.
2. What is the proper frequency of blog posts and does that amount have any bearing on what industry you’re in?
Kipp says once a week at minimum but as often as you have relevant, useful things to share. There’s no rule set in stone but publishing something that wastes people’s time is worse than publishing nothing at all.
3. What kind of differences in content are there or should there be for B2B and B2C companies?
Not much really…B2B companies have an advantage here because their audiences are much more targeted but as far as the content itself, there isn’t a whole lot of difference. Any good business blog should strive to be the best trade magazine in its industry according to Kipp.
4. In terms of impacts of keywords on search engine rankings, are there any differences between blogs and websites?
If your blog is hosted on your own server (http://blog.yourcompany.com/), then no. As long as you keep the blog in-house, the impacts of keywords are the same. If you keep the blog on the WordPress or Blogger server, they will get all the credit in terms of keywords.
5. What types of content do you think warrant further publication through social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter? Only original content the author develops themselves? Or content they developed through others’ ideas/writings?
Basically, any relevant information that makes you appear credible no matter if it’s your original thoughts or whether you’re expanding on someone else’s ideas.
6. With the advent of social media channels like Twitter and Facebook, how important do you think blog directories will be going forward?
How they exist now, blog directories will become less relevant over time. With its metrics of fans and followers, it’s easier to gauge the credibility of content with Facebook, Twitter and other social media channels.
7. At what point should marketers consider adding a Facebook “like” button to their blog?
With Facebook’s new one-step process of linking up with a business, you want to give people every opportunity to share informative content. But do some research and find out the main social network(s) your prospects hang out. Only include 2-4 to avoid overwhelming yourself and your readers.
We’d like to once again thank Kipp for his time. I really enjoyed visiting the team at HubSpot and found their operations to be dynamic and very active. The 2-hour journey from my brother’s house to the company’s headquarters was well worth it.
Enjoy the interview.
(And BTW, I want to thank my brother for getting me to and picking me up from the train station…thanks for being there for me man)
Part I
Part II