Last week, our marketing team attended Hubspot’s Inbound 2014 marketing conference at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. Thousands of marketers and sales professionals travel to Boston, Massachusetts every year for this event. Luckily for us, the beautiful city of Boston is our home.

boston

As the newest member of Genesis’s marketing team, this was my first time being exposed to the world of Inbound and the experience surpassed all of my expectations.
Food trucks, concerts, inspirational keynote speakers, networking, the September Campaign – and more! Inbound 2014 was an incredible experience and offered a variety of informative topics for every session. There was a session available on any marketing topic you could imagine. The most difficult part of my week, was choosing which session to attend and where to eat. The sky was truly the limit!
Personally, the highlight of my Inbound experience was participating in the Charity Water campaign. Research done by Charity Water shows, “In Africa alone, people spend 40 billion hours every year walking for water. Women and children usually bear the burden of water collection, walking miles to the nearest source, which is unprotected and likely contaminated.” Like most Inbounders, I participated in the water walk, which entailed carrying two 40 lb containers across the stage. The campaign put into perspective how severe the global water crisis really is.

charity water

In just a few short days, I learned many new tactics to improve our social media strategies and I want to share the takeaways from my sessions that resonated most.

5 Tools for “Boring Industry” Marketers
Dan Moyle – @DanMoyle

You are not boring and you’re industry is not boring. This can be proven as long as:
1. You do no harm.
2. You don’t spam.
3. You’re helpful.
According to Dan, “Helpful is the new sexy.” Regardless of your industry, make marketing work by walking your leads through the process using lead nurturing. Use marketing tools where they apply to answer questions, solve problems and share success stories of clients.

The Art of the Perfect Post
Guy Kawasaki- @GuyKawasaki
Peggy Fitzpatrick – @PegFitzpatrick

Guy and Peggy are social media experts and explained that your social media content needs to hold value. This means that your content contains any of the following: information, analysis, assistance or entertainment. Content without value will not pass the reshare test. Every post that you create should be useful, so that others will reshare.
Here are some other helpful tips they offered when it comes to social media:
• Be bold. You want your content to stand out.
• Be brief. Get to the point.
• Add drama. Drama meaning large images or videos.
• Embrace the #hashtag.
• Schedule and spread out postings.
• Cross post. Share your content on all social platforms.

inbound 2014

Last year, 5,500 people from 35 countries attended the Inbound conference. This year, 10,000 people were registered and I am so grateful to have participated in this significant marketing event!

If you would like to learn more about our Inbound experience, please reach out to Genesis HR Solutions at AskUs@genesishrsolutions.com or 800-367-8367.

Genesis HR Solutions is the premier PEO provider for Massachusetts based businesses.