I’m interested in Inbound Marketing, the rapidly growing topic where marketing content is being designed and presented on sites and blogs. You’ll find it often mentioned in our monthly Editors’ Picks stories. But I think Inbound Marketing is becoming a significant and much talked about topic. It’s become a growing trend, so it will get more attention in the future.

Inbound Marketing is a multi-faceted approach to building an email and social media marketing strategy. It all revolves around establishing digital credibility. I’ll give you a quick explanation of what Inbound Marketing is and how to incorporate it into your marketing mix.

What is Inbound Marketing?

Inbound Marketing is a mix of content creation and marketing campaigns that focus on delivering value to your customers while you build brand awareness. So it includes both content creation and paid advertising campaigns. Here’s an example: imagine a sales person or a blog writing posts, such as these:

How many of these would you see?

Nearly all of them! There are plenty of people out there who want to learn about and take action on the things being written by our authors and other marketing voices.

There are many successful leaders in various industries, companies and niches who have adopted the Inbound Marketing approach. I think our most successful readers benefit the most by getting in front of the readers who ask for their help or other input and a two-way conversation. This is the fun part of Inbound Marketing.

What’s the methodology for this approach?

Ideally, you would create stories to educate and showcase your products or services and you’d begin posting them in your blog and social media channels. The bloggers and communities that you and your marketing “ecosystem” build would start sharing your content. Inbound Marketing works best when you have a big publishing network. This type of network also gives your content visibility among a large audience who don’t visit your website regularly.

At its core, Inbound Marketing is building media credibility. You can achieve this by writing your stories and articles on the subjects, organizations, or brands that your marketing ecosystem controls. You can also use your database of followers to reach out to people you want to learn from, as well as provide content to others who publish in your network.

When do I need to start Inbound Marketing?

Begin this in the last week of January and continue through the end of March. The time between the close of your business tax season and the next tax filing season is the perfect time to begin this approach. So make January and February your kick-off months for Inbound Marketing. It’s a strong part of your marketing mix for the full year. If you want, you can extend your Inbound Marketing effort for longer periods through the year.

How do I define Inbound Marketing?

There are all sorts of definitions. Brian Solis, one of the “power brokers” in Inbound Marketing, defines it as the action of focusing on search engine optimization (SEO), social media and Web analytics. If you’re starting this approach, you’ll likely have to invest in some new technology, and before long, you’ll notice your sites and posts ranking higher in online rankings.

All of your content should align with one of the three “pillars” of Inbound Marketing. A few examples:

Product or service: Send your visitors to your website, download information from your pages and then write about it. The same can be said of your social media channels as well.

Content: Send your visitors to your website, download the information on your site and then write about it. The same can be said of your social media channels as well. Networking: Create a network of people you respect and who you respect and send your visitors to them. Ask those people to share the information you’ve put on your website and in your media.

Listicles: Write longer content such as article paragraphs that walk through the topic from one point to the next. You should always be adding an additional link to your website. You can also include source links to your website within your article. You should post the links that you link to as soon as you complete the article.

What’s the payoff for this approach?

Being successful in this approach is about being an expert in your field. Sometimes there are more advantages to being relevant to a larger, more expansive community than knowing about your company or to what you’re doing in your industry.