(Attention all inbound marketers: To help with the winter homework you need to read and dig for the Invest in An Inbound Marketing (IIAM) book, and use this as your roadmap for this semester.)

With approximately 80% of companies staying online for longer and with the lure of infinite customer and product details at our fingertips, most businesses today believe they have to invest directly in direct mail and email campaigns to increase market visibility. But while email does carry a high ROI, because it is only half of the solution it’s unrealistic to expect it to represent the entirety of your communications strategy. The new logo you have for your website or website keywords are a great start, but more important is to develop a strategy that will augment the impact of your Inbound Marketing efforts with inbound link rankings, analytics, and follower engagement.

We know from personal experience that effectively and efficiently developing inbound campaigns has significant value for businesses because sending inbound links has helped us greatly with our Inbound Marketing strategy. Incorporating great content is a hard core activity, so it’s in every business’ best interest to keep up on the latest insights on how great content works and how it makes your strategy better. However, within the abundance of knowledge is a wealth of strategies for increasing effectiveness. These strategies are interconnected and combine these ideas and innovations into a consistent portfolio. These must be put into action if a business is going to keep up its competitive edge and ensure increased traffic and leads.

Based on our years of corporate and industry experience, here are ten strategies for increased impact Inbound Marketing:

1. Expanding your inbound mailing list.

Remember the big push to increase email open rates? Sending up to 5 open requests per month is a great strategy for inbound but if you aren’t placing your new subscribers on to your homepage, they will have no reason to convert, even though they will have subscribed to your email list because it’s that easy. The same is true with ongoing open requests: once they receive your new email, don’t be sending them to your homepage. Instead, give them information they want, create article, resources, and videos that are already available to them, or put links to these resources right on your landing page.

2. Connecting people with your company and your product.

Inbound Marketing is all about establishing a connection with your clients and customers. Whether it’s a blog post, video, Twitter account, or social media, this is the most successful way to connect your business to your clients’ customers.

3. Inviting your audience into your email newsletter.

A lot of business owners believe that their most important audience is within their email list. It’s certainly true that their most important audience is the people in their email list, but don’t think you’ve lost your advantage because that may not always be the case. A lot of people also receive emails from their friends who are not in their email list, but yet they don’t read those emails. By adding your clients and customers as readers, your email marketing efforts have the potential to offer compelling content that your subscribers trust, give them access to the information they want, and expose them to new products and services.

4. Increasing distribution for your blog content.

Blogging is a powerful form of Inbound Marketing. It increases distribution to your ideal readers by bringing them into your newsletter, posting their articles on your blog, and linking to your content on your social media accounts.

5. Turning your website or site’s content into a newsletter.

Content marketing is not just about creating great content, it’s about creating compelling content that’s easily discoverable. Incorporating a newsletter into your website provides an opportunity to connect with your customers in a way that can increase your brand’s message. You can even use this as a means of acquiring your customers.

6. The business publication you write for, and the journalist you make a good connection with.

Everyone has news they want to share and research and journalism allows you to publish an article, voice your opinion, and attract quality readers and help them view your content in a different way. If you’re in need of an article, check out an Inbound Marketing tool such as SiteVibes to see if this is the right publication for you.

7. Using social media to build trust and awareness in your organization.

It’s hard to talk about a business without speaking about the amazing employees that your company has. Since your website isn’t the only place people are finding out about your business, you can use social media to educate them about the real work that you do. An additional benefit of having social media content is that it’s a great