Sticky have just launched a new website for the Tinkler Sports Group’s bid for the Newcastle Knights NRL club.

Knights Vote Yes was created to present information for members and fans in the lead-up to the historic members vote on 31 March 2011 and answer any questions members might have around the proposal.

Knights Vote Yes includes an open letter from Nathan Tinkler, details about the offer, messages from prominent supporters, information about the Tinkler Sports Group and a form so members can submit a question about the offer.

The site also has plenty of video with NBN’s exclusive interview with Nathan Tinkler and the series of television commercials currently running for the vote.

The website can be found at www.knightsvoteyes.com.au

9 steps to inbound marketing success

Tired of achieving poor results from your traditional marketing approach? Worried that your sales and marketing efforts are not cost effective? Then it’s time to look at inbound marketing.

Traditionally businesses have relied on broadcast style marketing and advertising to create awareness of their existence and offerings. Broadcast marketing, such as television, radio, press, billboards and Yellow Pages, is like using a shotgun. You aim it roughly in the right direction (ie. general target demographic), pull the trigger and hope that you hit the right audience. Of course, you’re also paying to hit some unwilling bystanders (non-target demographic) but that’s unavoidable. You then trust that the people you have hit will react to your efforts.

Inbound marketing turns this approach upside down. It involves discovering where potential customers are searching, positioning yourself correctly so they’ll find you and letting them discover whether you have what they are looking for. Successful inbound marketing can turn your website into a customer magnet, drawing motivated prospects towards your business.

Here are the 9 steps we use at Sticky for a successful inbound marketing plan:

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We have speculated for a while now that Google and Bing were starting to give more weight to Twitter and Facebook links as they move towards providing the most relevant and real-time search results. In fact, at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco last November the Bing team acknowledged that social signals were becoming increasingly influential.

Now this is being confirmed officially by Google and Bing. Leading search engine blog Search Engine Land conducted an interview with Bing and Google recently to discuss how social signals are being measured. This is fantastic news for inbound marketing.

Here is an excerpt:

1) If an article is retweeted or referenced much in Twitter, do you count that as a signal outside of finding any non-nofollowed links that may naturally result from it?

Bing: We do look at the social authority of a user. We look at how many people you follow, how many follow you, and this can add a little weight to a listing in regular search results. It carries much more weight in Bing Social Search, where tweets from more authoritative people will flow to the top when best match relevancy is used.

Google: Yes, we do use it as a signal. It is used as a signal in our organic and news rankings. We also use it to enhance our news universal by marking how many people shared an article.

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