My Google Calendar has one daily entry for an hour (including Sundays) – “Always be hiring“.
Finding inbound marketers isn’t straightforward. (And in India, forget it). To start, inbound marketers do not look like ‘inbound marketers’, in almost all cases. More on that in a later post.
If you look at the US, UK and Australia, inbound marketing is becoming mainstream. And attracting an interesting group of media professionals – journalists.
The business economy is also precipitating this combination from two directions. One, a depressed print industry that is seeing layoffs. Two, businesses – established and new – looking at content and inbound marketing to establish relationships with their stakeholders and customers.
By virtue of being HubSpot partners and also being part of online inbound marketing communities, I have had the chance of interacting with journalists turned inbound marketers. They have taken to inbound marketing as if they were born to do just that.
Consequently, I am meeting more of them in India (1 in 3), talking to them about the opportunities, inbound marketing holds. Not all of them share my excitement. After all India is a “news-rich” society with a new story happening every second. That gives the journalists, all the thrills.
Ironically, it is the very same reasons that make journalists best suited for inbound marketing.
WritingI know what you are thinking – everyone can write.
But, can you write at will? Is writing for you a medium of self-expression? Does writing excite you? Will you write for free? Will you write for yourself?
Storytelling
Writing isn’t enough. All writing has to be evocative for inbound marketing success. Writing should create visuals for the reader. Therefore, storytelling.
Journalists live stories, everyday and stories play a vital role in inbound marketing.
Quick appreciation of Issues
Inbound marketing is besieged with multi-level multiple things all seeped in ambiguity, most of the time. This too-many moving parts situation requires unabashedness, presence of mind and decision-making. That requires an evolved understanding of all isssues in question and the articulation to expresss it vividly.
Love
Read ‘eccentric”.
I wasn’t too sure about writing this part. Or maybe it applies to all things ‘worth doing’.
“Do what you love” is an oft-quoted saying. And it seems to me (at this moment), journalists sure love what they do. And so do inbound marketers.
Yours truly !!!——————-Charles Assisi, co-founder and director at Founding Fuel and a weekly columnist at Mint, took some time out to respond to this on twitter. Here is the conversation.
@crajagopalan Not all journalists whose names you see in print are good story tellers. The heroes are the unnamed ones @inboundmantra (1/n)
— Charles Assisi (@c_assisi)February 22, 2016
