We have compiled some of the most popular how-to and marketing information we have produced over the last year and added it to one simple resource page. If you haven’t had a chance to check it out yet, please do so and let us know how we can make it even better for you! Here are some samples of what you’ll find. We keep adding more each month!
Companies that blog greet 55% more visitors than companies that don’t
They generate more external web links, in some cases 97% more web links
This adds up to an insane amount of indexed pages (legal term, i.e. insane)
Which means the search engines like your company a whole lot more than those lame companies who aren’t blogging
These facts (from Hubspot, 2009) help me reiterate what I’ve been saying for at least two years – you need a company blog. Especially in light of our economic times, where marketing budgets are haulting or maintaining at best. Looking to resources that give you the big boom for your investment, and in a blog’s case that may potentially only be time (and trust me, I know the value of your time, and mine), you cannot ignore the potential, the facts, and ultimately the increase in traffic.
Another big push back I hear often is that you don’t have enough to say, or what would you say, or who would write it as your biggest concerns in accomplishing this task. Let’s take a step back here and look at the larger picture. Do you want your company to grow? Are you looking to establish, build or create loyal audiences to your brand? Has your web traffic hit a nice dull, low riding line on your analytics report? If you answered no, no, yes then by all means run far, far away from considering a blog. If you answered yes, yes and no, well then, let’s pretty much say the rubber is meeting the road.
In our blogging seminar, I use a video that has two of my most favorite business leaders. Seth Godin is a big marketing guru, and Tom Peters is a business thought leader. Both individuals can pretty much use any tactic they could dream up to reach out and communicate with their audiences. Tom Peters says, however, that blogging has had the biggest impact on his buisness and media presence than any other medium. Then they note together that… it’s free! So ignore me if you wish, but again, step back and see the global community we’re all playing in and take note to who is blogging and who is not. Which companies are thriving? Which are introducing new services and products? You will see a reoccuring ring to these successful companies. It’s humming a bit like a blog.
We have talked about being behind if you’re not already constantly creating fresh content for your company and brand, but one area that’s often omitted from the social media conversation is the power of networking.
I had the pleasure of having lunch today with the executive director of the 4H Foundation (I forgot to tell her about my holly hobby easy bake oven explosion, that’s one good story) and I shared as much as one can in a lunch timeframe about the power of social media… for networking. By the end of lunch I think I had her convinced that one of her next steps is creating a ‘place’ for all of those long lost 4H friends to meet up and catch up… and thereby creating a pool of potential donors for her to reach out to.
Networking is a marketing function. It is! Don’t forget this in your marketing effort. As we teach in our twitter guide, social media puts networking on steroids. It’s a platform that allows you to leverage your time to connect with many, many people; moreso than you could face-to-face (especially on that geography factor!). That being said, it’s not enough to just talk, you must begin, join and share in conversations. Go share!
The bigger the news in social mediaville, the grander the assumptions for what social media is and isn’t. For example, there was a recent reporting saying 40 percent of the tweets on Twitter were pointless. Pointless for what audience? Who decides?
When it comes to your social media activity, or any marketing activity for that matter, your audience decides what’s pointless, what’s important, what’s fun to know and what’s unnecessary. You learn by the activity, comments and links generated from your efforts. That’s the bottom line and that’s what’s important to know and understand out of this whole social media hairball. You have to figure out what marketing activity is right for your mix, and how and what those right mixes are in your strategy.
Here are two areas of advice to get you started right. You figure out these two things and the rest will flow.
Decide what’s important. Take this opportunity to talk with your clients and prospects about what they would like to know about the area in which you are the expert. What is important for them to know? How can you help them filter all the information that’s out there and learn what they need the most? Now deliver the goods and keep asking regularly.
Decide if it’s personal. What voice does your marketing deliver? Is it funny? Is it uber serious? Don’t be something you’re not and don’t make your company’s marketing message something it’s not. If social media is forcing anything at the marketing table, it’s authenticity.
This one is going to be short and sweet – but the message is as solid as they come:
Tearing others down is never as helpful to a movement as building your followers up. – Seth Godin in Tribes
We have been working on a book for a client and thinking of an array of subtitles; some good, some really bad, some jabbing fun and some very matter-of-fact. I think I must be more sensitive than I let on, because when I read about bad things, even when they are suppose to be funny or trendy, I just cannot feel good about them. Something in my core says woah, that just isn’t nice and therefore it never sits well.
Next time you’re brainstorming a message, copywriting or theme for a project, remember that statement. It will work in your favor and sustain your efforts far beyond a quick-jabbing line.
Smile & Move is a site devoted to making the world a better place. That seems like one hefty goal, but their approach makes it easy. It begins with you. YOU smile and move through life with the five action steps outlined on their site. I like the site because I feel, on most days, I too am smiling and moving and helping make the world a better place.
The movie gets to the real flavor of their message, so watch it and get started! (it’s 3 minutes)
Content management systems (CMS) are quite the rage in web site development circles these days and with good reason. For web site owners, a good CMS puts control of the web site back into their hands. Without needing to master the intricacies of HTML and CSS, anyone can add and edit pages on their site, upload photos, or even video clips. Here are some of the advantages of a dynamic content managed website:
No software to install. A CMS is installed on your web server. On your computer all you need is a web browser and the admin password.
Immediate updates. In the old model, you send a list of updates to your web developer and wait for them to squeeze you into their schedule. With content management you can make the changes instantly yourself.
Easy to maintain consistent look. A CMS does you the considerable favor of separating the content areas of the site that will change on each page from the areas like the header and footer that need to stay the same. Now updating your content never has to break your site layout.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO). A good CMS does all the heavy-lifting of optimization for you. Search engine friendly URLs and semantic HTML happen behind the scenes. (And, yes, that’s 4 geeky acronyms in just 1 bullet point.)
Schedule content. One of the coolest features of a CMS is you can write an article today and set it post at some point in the future. Put together several new pages for the site in one sitting and schedule them to trickle out while you’re on vacation.
Make your site sticky. This is a buzzword in the online world. It just means you’re giving people a reason to come back to your site over and over again. A CMS gives you the tools to update your site and keep the content fresh and relevant.
