I was recently asked on twitter “what would be your single, top tip for someone new to inbound marketing?”

It’s a valid question and I thought I’d expand the response as a post on the blog.

Sidenote: If you get asked a question on Twitter, turn it into a blog post. It’s a fantastic way to pull more organic traffic into your site.

My number one tip for people getting started in inbound marketing is to learn by doing.

The social media space is getting noisier and noisier with everyone and their mother claiming to be social media experts, twitter gurus or Pinterest samurai warrior ninjas (the list goes on) and it’s increasingly difficult to sift through the information presented.

When reading most blog posts on the web, you typically see a ton of pie in the sky crap about “Engage your community”, “join the conversation”, and “create remarkable content” and are left with the feeling Ummmmm okay, but how specifically do I do those things?

Where is the meat? Where is the actual how to guide that takes you through the process step by step?

Learn by Doing

Stop reading all the blogs that regurgitate useless “marketing” theories and learn from those who teach you specifically how to do something step by step by step.

Then, get to work.

Replicate what you learn and implement those how to tips to see what sticks.

You can read twenty thousand posts on how to grow your Facebook fan base, but unless you put theory into practice, you aren’t going to learn anything and no results will be achieved.

If you are all theory and no action a very unfortunate thing will happen, you will lack experience.

Lacking experience is one of the biggest pitfalls of young/new marketers, where they can spout off “Oh well to do this marketing thing you need to do this… blah blah blah” when in reality they haven’t actually tried any of the things they are recommending.

Recommending the untested and unknown to your company/clients is a one-way ticket to amateurville - Population: unsuccessful & un-trustable marketers.

Real applied knowledge is the only type of knowledge you can take to the bank.

Here is your call to action:

Stop reading and Start Doing.