I am a voracious reader of all things that's entrepreneurship, interactive marketing, and personal development.  So when my wife bought me a Kindle as my belated Christmas gift, I immediately filled them up with books I could read anywhere --- one of which is The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott.

Being that my memory gets clogged everyday by many information I come across (I'm in the business of knowing and sharing), I naturally scan the digital pages and go to the topic I love to read (I call it the "topic of the moment").  Anyway, to cut the story short, I am sharing with you what I learned, or at least what I mentally registered, during my reading:

The illustration above is the marketing funnel.  If your organization is thinking of doing inbound marketing tactics such as blogs; tweets; wiki entries; pr; search engine marketing; podcast; facebook fan pages/ads; and video blogs, you have to ALWAYS do them with the sales consideration cycle in mind.   Each of the tactics you do (such as a blog entry), should conclude with a way for your captive audience to engage your organization --- by downloading a white paper or a case study, buying your product, or donating to help your organization's cause.

By doing so, actions performed by anyone in the organization, whether they are tweeting or blogging, are justified because they all contribute into generating revenues, even if they are not immediate.