In this Appendix, we look at some of the tools and resources that we think you'll find useful as an inbound marketer.
If you want to continue learning about inbound marketing and connect with others, a great place to visit is http://inbound.org.
This is an online community with tens of thousands of members all looking to share the best inbound marketing content available on the Internet—and to discuss, collaborate, and connect.
The site is free to join and is a great way to further your education and start building your professional reputation as an inbound marketer.
The site has a number of areas that you might find interesting and useful:
You already know how to use Google. You use it every day. So you're probably thinking, “How can Google be a power tool for inbound marketers?” Chances are, you're not using Google to its fullest and some small tips can help a lot. The following are simple but powerful features to help you use Google.
If you're like most people, you simply type a search term into Google in the simplest way possible. You hope to get what you're looking for, and if you don't, well, you simply change the words. However, in addition to typing regular search queries, you can also use special modifiers that tell Google more about what you're looking for. Here are some of the most useful modifiers:
Explicit Phrase: Let's say you are looking for content about Internet marketing. Instead of just typing Internet marketing into the Google search box, you will likely be better off searching explicitly for the phrase. To do this, simply enclose the search phrase within double quotes.
Exclude Words: If you want to search for content about Internet marketing, but you want to exclude any results that contain the term advertising, simply use the “-” (hyphen) in front of the word you want to exclude.
Site Specific Search: Often, you want to search a specific website for content that matches a certain phrase. Even if the site doesn't support a built-in search feature, you can use Google to search the site for your term. Simply use the “site:somesite.com” modifier.
Another useful tool that's a variation on this is to not include any keywords in the search, but just the “site:” operator. This tells you approximately how many pages from the specified site are in the Google index.
Similar Words and Synonyms: If you want to include a word in your search, and also want to include results that contain similar words or synonyms, use the “∼” (tilde) in front of the word.
Specific Document Types: If you're looking to find results that are of a specific type, you can use the modifier “filetype:”. For example, you might want to find only PowerPoint presentations related to Internet marketing.
This OR That: By default, when you do a search, Google will include all the terms specified in the search. If you are looking for one or more terms to match, then you can use the OR operator. (Note: The OR has to be capitalized.)
Imagine if you had a personal assistant that did nothing but monitor the Internet for you. You'd hand him a list of websites (perhaps a list of your top competitors), and he'd dutifully type them into Google every day. Anytime something interesting showed up, he'd e-mail you. Even better, he'd remember which items he'd already sent you, so you only got the new stuff. That's precisely what Site Alerts does. And it's free!
To sign up for Site Alerts, visit http://SiteAlerts.com. Set up an account. Once your account is set up, adding alerts is easy. You enter the name of a website that is of interest (usually your own plus a couple of competitors).