 Looking to start an inbound marketing strategy, but not sure what to do, I'm going to share with you today how I got started and then also share with you some platforms that you can use to not only increase your personal brand, but share content with your clients and prospects. So stick around. Hey friends, it's Leanne and when I first started my first blog a few years back at LeanneColderWood.com, I really wasn't sure where I was going with it. I knew I wanted to create something that provided value for others in the industry. And since then it's kind of blown up into an additional blog, which is a resource library for meeting planners, but as well as then the blog that accompanies some of my blog posts. But that's what I love about inbound marketing is there's always something to learn. There's always something to add and there's always something that you can do to make the blogs and blogs and podcasts you do today, better than the ones that you produced yesterday. So you're always learning. It's a great skill set to have. And for those of you who want to attract either clients to your organization or even delegates to your meeting, I think inbound marketing is a really smart strategy. So for those of you new to inbound marketing, I want to share with you five platforms that you can dabble into and find one that works for you and your messaging and create a strategy through that platform. So here we go. Now before we get started on the platforms, it's important to remember that inbound marketing is about attracting people to your product or service. And so I invite you to join me now. If you're on my YouTube channel, please click the subscribe button as well as the bell to be notified of new content each week. Now this is something that you, when you're building your inbound marketing strategy, also want to ask of your clients and prospects as well as your delegates is you want to ask for that engagement. So I'm asking you for engagement. Subscribe to my YouTube channel and click the bell to be notified. I did a vlog not too long ago about the differences between social selling and inbound marketing. And if you are watching this video on YouTube, just click on the link right here to find that video and learn about social selling and inbound marketing. How inbound marketing is defined is you are providing something of content that attracts people then in turn to check out your website, check out your conference webpage, etc. So you are the leads are inbound versus you pushing out a sales message. So you want to position yourself as a thought leader position yourself as someone who is engaging in the community and in turn you are attracting that attention back to your product or service. Okay, so here are the platforms that you can use to do that. Platform number one and probably the most popular is social media. You can push out content through any of your social media channels, be it LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. It's free to use. You don't have to promote ads to push your message out. But if you want to promote ads and spend a little bit of money, the option is there. So social media obviously one of the more popular ways to push out great content. Platform number two is through an email newsletter or an e newsletter. Now I added this to my roster of inbound marketing tools, I guess about a year into my process. And I have two email newsletters one that goes out to my meeting planning friends as well as one that goes out to my meeting partner friends. And so that is a great way to push out content as well as through an email newsletter. I should caution you though ensure that you are following Castle guidelines as well as Foype guidelines when you're producing your email list and creating your newsletter. Platform number three is podcasts and I have never done a podcast. So this is an area that I'm really super green and hoping to dig into a little bit more in the months and years ahead. But there are some great podcasts for our industry. And again, if you go to this video over on YouTube, I have some links to some of the more popular industry podcasts, both here in Canada and of course globally. Platform number four, the written blog blogs are best done on a platform like WordPress, but there are a number of platforms that you can use. Here's a couple reasons why I chose to use a blog as my first platform. Number one, it's somewhat of a permanent record. So as opposed to social media where you're on someone else's platform, your blog really is your own platform. So that's what I like is all of my content is housed and I control it and it's easy to find on my WordPress blog site. So after my blog was established and I had a good process in place, it was time to add video. And that is platform number five is video or vlogs, video logs. Of course, my videos are housed on YouTube as well as uploaded natively on to LinkedIn. But in an industry like ours where we value face to face interactions and value visualization video, I felt was a great way for me to interact with you and hopefully have you interact with me in return through forms of engagement. I love learning about video. There's always something new to learn. The videos of when I first started are so completely different from these videos now and I'm hopeful the videos I do a year from now are completely different from the one you're watching right now. So there's always something to learn. And again, it's that craving knowledge and learning that makes video so much fun. It's always changing. So those are the five platforms that you can look into when creating your inbound marketing strategy. But now I want to hear from you. Is there a platform that really resonates with you right now that you think, yeah, you know what, I can create an inbound marketing strategy using this platform. You can either comment below this video here or take the poll that I've created in the YouTube video and you can answer the poll right here. Now that you've hopefully checked out my blog over on YouTube, I also invite you to check out my blogs over at leoncallederwatt.com as well as conferencesource.net. But also jump back to this video because in the description for this video on YouTube are going to be links of other blogs, podcasts and other blogs that I want you to check out. It's important when you create your strategy that you're doing it with your unique voice. So check out a bunch of different examples before you decide on the one that's going to work best for you. All the best to you on your inbound marketing strategy. Thanks for watching this video and we'll see you soon. Bye for now.