If you're a HubSpot user, you've probably noticed a new(ish) item in your portal: Conversations. This is essentially HubSpot's chat tool, and with it, you can do both live chat (staffed by a member of your team) and add automated chat, AKA chatbots, to your website.

Way back in 2016, HubSpot cofounder Brian Halligan called chatbots "the biggest wave we’ve seen in technology in the last two decades” while speaking at the INBOUND conference. And yet many teams still aren't using chatbots, fearing they take a lot of resources to set up or, worse, that they'll somehow "take over" — and damage — their relationships with leads. But none of those things are true. The fact is, chatbots are at your service, they're integral to inbound marketing, and they free up your team for the marketing activities best done by a human.

In short, if you can set up an FAQ page, you can set up a chatbot.

In this blog, I'll explain how chatbots fit into inbound marketing and show how the HubSpot chatbot works. (If you still have questions, feel free to contact Yodelpop to set up a demo.)

At their best, annual reports are a golden opportunity for nonprofits to showcase their accomplishments through storytelling and photos, thank their donors and supporters, and issue a clear call to action to readers for how they can help keep the momentum going. A their worst, they're a boring exercise in self-promotion or a thinly veiled request for donations.

If you publish an annual report, you want the former, not the latter. But how do you get there? There are so many formats and storytelling approaches — which one is best for your organization? Moreover, should you even bother publishing an annual report?

 Associations have a lot of competition when it comes to attracting and retaining members. Social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook and even Instagram provide today’s professionals with a convenient, always-on way to engage with their industry colleagues. Information is shared easily across feeds and within public and private groups. This, combined with an abundance of free informative blog posts, trainings and online resources, has increased the challenges facing associations — and other membership organizations — as they seek to increase their ranks.  

But hope is not lost.

Annual report season often brings a mix of emotions. There's the excitement of a new year of programming, educating, fundraising, and success stories to report on!

Then there's the trepidation of having to compile the data, get team members to provide needed information, and find people to tell those powerful stories. Oh, and did anyone take any good pictures at that fundraiser?

At their best, annual reports are a golden opportunity for nonprofits to showcase their accomplishments through storytelling and photos, thank their donors and supporters, and issue a clear call to action to readers for how they can help keep the momentum going. At their worst, reports are a ho-hum recitation of donor names (yawn), actions taken (so what?) and dry data (zzzzz).

Look at the website of a company that’s successful at marketing and you’ll find a resource hub, loaded with content that their ideal customers can access when they’re ready.

They talk little about their brand, and instead demonstrate their unique value to the buyer with blog posts and case studies that position them as experts in the field.

I recently got the following email from one of our inbound marketing clients:

"I had another organization call us and wanted to use some of our blogs. Could we let them use some of them if they gave us credit or linked back to our site? And how would that affect our SEO? What is your opinion on this?"

Since this issue affects businesses and nonprofits across the board, I thought I'd share my answers to these questions here, including:

• Who should be allowed to republish your content
• How to prevent damage to your search ranking
• How to make sure a republishing partnership benefits you

An AB test can be a great tool for nonprofit or small business marketing. Whether you're doing the marketing yourself or overseeing a team, it's important to understand how AB testing works — when to do it, how to do it, and what kind of effort you can expect to put into it.

Having worked in the nonprofit world for many years, I know the feeling of being ashamed of your nonprofit's website. The organization is doing great work, but the site just doesn't do it justice. Or the site seems to somehow draw more attention to the organization's shortcomings than to its strengths. The design may be outdated, traffic may be low, there may be no engagement, donations, or e-mail subscriptions coming in through the site—all of these are symptoms that there's a problem.

Fortunately, you can turn your nonprofit website around—even if you don't have a budget for a totally new site.

Nothing compares to spending 4 days with 22,000 marketers, a handful of inspiring celebrities and hundreds of educational sessions on all things marketing, sales and the human experience.

Inbound17 was everything I’ve grown to expect from HubSpot's yearly conference: totally moving keynotes (Michelle Obama), entertainment that makes my spouse increasingly jealous every year (Judd Apatow), free massages and head shots and a stunning variety of food trucks everyday at lunch (vegan!) and of course leading thought in the sales and marketing industry.

HubSpot's INBOUND conference, held every fall in Boston, is the one conference Yodelpop has attended every year since we were founded. Not only do we tap into an incredible amount of marketing information that we bring back to our work, we always make great connections with clients, marketers, and HubSpot team members. Watching the video recap reminds me of the impressive range of the stories HubSpot brought before 21,000 people this year: keynoters included Michelle Obama, Roxanne Gay, Billie Jean King, Issa Rae, Piera Gelardi, Brene Brown, and so many more people I admire.