The One Online Marketing Tactic You Need – Now

March 29, 2011 By 2 Comments

It doesn’t matter how much you intend to achieve with your online marketing if you’re not actively producing the work that’s necessary to even give a shot at succeeding.

Hopes and dreams will not help you achieve your goals; you need to develop an online marketing strategy with clearly spelt out, actionable tasks. If not, the risk is that you’ll either lose focus – constantly chatting on Twitter – or wander off topic in your blogging.

Actionable Plans

It doesn’t matter if you’re a solo consultant, a small business or the member of a marketing team, it’s vital that you have a set of tactics to put into practice each day. For example, let’s say you’ve decided that publishing a business blog is a key strategy to increasing your presence in Google (search engine optimziation) and and demonstrating expertise. Deciding on the tactic isn’t enough. You have to follow through, or you’re simply kidding yourself.

Why not try something like this:

Rather than writing when and if motivation and inspiration strikes, schedule your blog topics for a month at a time. I find the best way of doing this is to write 25 titles in a spreadsheet, identifying what aspect of my target audience each post is meant to appeal to. Then when I open up my computer at a designated time, inspiration is prompted by the title or notes that I’ve made for that post.

business blog topics

If your sole job is marketing and communications it’s obviously easier to schedule specific time for content creation like this than if you’re a consultant jugging marketing alongside your actual job. Nevertheless, even a busy small business can create online content efficiently if adequate time is regularly set aside for producing the work. [Read more...]

Filed Under: blogging, communication strategy, productivity Tagged With: , , ,

How Do Business Blogs Get Creative?

January 5, 2011 By 14 Comments
creative blog content

Get your hands dirty and be creative!

There’s an incredible amount of blog posts published daily urging you to start blogging, optimize your website for search, jump on social media to drive traffic to your business website. But one thing I started thinking about this morning (whilst feeling sorry for myself, down with flu) is just how little constructive help there is with actually creating content.

Outstanding online content is what will make you stand out from the crowd and generate interest from visitors to your site.

One of the things that all the outstanding corporate blogs that Mark Schaefer mentioned in The 10 Best Corporate Blogs in the World was just how good the content was. Varied, entertaining content.

But if you’re a newbie or looking to take your blogging to the next level, what kind of content should you be looking to share?

One of the best ways of generating ideas is to actually read blogs in the first place! Not just in your sector, but a broad selection of blogs.

From my own reading of the last couple of days I’ve spotted five types of posts that could inspire your own creative content creation if you turned them to your own business.

So here are a few suggestions of things you could try:

  • a discussion of the results and implications of an industry survey (Cf Charlotte Britton’s post on social media adoption in Yorkshire (UK) over at Quest PR).
  • a brief piece of audio content (or podcast), embedded in your blog (Cf Donna Papacosta’s post on why use audio).
  • a low-cost, entertaining vlog or video (Cf: I loved this video some of my students made to market their school. They got over 5000 views in less than a week!)
  • an e-book that generously shares important knowledge and information (Cf Danny Brown’s From Stats to Strats).
  • a genuine invitation to your audience to comment on your products or services (Cf Starbucks are masters at this, generating masses of online audience participation).

Your Turn!

What other kinds of posts would really make a corporate blog swing?

Filed Under: blogging, communication strategy Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

More on B2B Blogging & Conversions

September 6, 2010 By 2 Comments

I‘ve got a guest post up on Mark Schaefer’s brilliant blog today about how business blogs often fail to convert visitors into clients.

By means of a follow up I was thinking about how we as online communications, marketer and PR folk can convince businesses that they really should invest in blogging.

It’s Not About Conversion

When it comes down to it, my experience with clients has shown that blogs aren’t really about converting to sales. Yes, they might be an important part in the process of generating a sale, funnelling site visitors to specific landing pages; but as anyone involved in B2B marketing will tell you, the sales process is much longer than B2C. You have to convince different levels of an organisation that your product or service is just what you need. And persuading everyone through to the top brass can take time.

So I tend to see blogs are part of that initial journey to the sale.

For small online businesses, or would-be internet marketers, blogs are a vital cog in the sales wheel because so many internet marketers make their money with affiliate links or the sale of ebooks or training courses. But the techniques they use, won’t / don’t necessarily wash if you’re selling printers; or consultation services.

So What Are B2B Blogs Good For Then?

[Read more...]

Filed Under: B2B, blogging Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Content Marketing is a Commitment, Not a Campaign.

August 11, 2010 By 11 Comments

It takes time to for online content marketing to yield results. Despite what those marketing snake oil salesmen might tell you.

In the old days before the internet you could grab an audience’s attention by the throat with a 30 second ad on TV that literally burst onto the screens, propelling them to your store.

content marketing commitment

Showing commitment

Nowadays, whilst old school interruptive marketing still gets attention – I’m specifically thinking about the now infamous Old Spice video that originally ran back in February on TV before being superseded by the short-n-snappy vox pops that ran on YouTube in the summer – one of the best ways for a business to get noticed is to publish great content online. After all, there are over 12 billion searches on Google in the US per month alone – and many of these are for services, products or information.

Trouble is that intrinsically valuable content that connects with your target audience, showing your key value proposition, takes time to bubble to the surface of Google’s search engine results. It’s not found easily if you haven’t already built plenty of online equity. That’s why there are so many search engine optimization (SEO) experts out there, peddling their wares of “Get to the Top of Google Search”.

So beware. Agencies that promise an all-bells-and-whistles blog marketing campaign will yield quick results are either world leaders in online marketing and communications or planning to move country the minute your organization has handed over the cash for the work they’ve done.

For example, an online content marketing campaign aimed at generating more traffic to your site is not something to bash out in a week. Sure, unique visitors sent to your site via Google when searching for your keyword phrases have a good chance of converting to sales. Trouble is, the new blog you’ve just started writing as part of your latest marketing campaign, in all likelihood, isn’t going to help you capture the kind of search traffic you need to keep you in business if you’re struggling to take care of payroll. Blogs can take 3 – 6 months of careful business blogging with a WordPress theme optimised for SEO and cleverly worked-out keywords to really start converting visitors – and that’s assuming you’ve invested in great landing pages and call-to-actions across your site. [Read more...]

Filed Under: content marketing, seo Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Content Marketing – How long does it take to work?

June 5, 2010 By 33 Comments

If you’re starting a new online business – or transitioning your existing business to the web – and have decided to use online content marketing to promote your business and build your brand, you’re probably hoping it will yield results very quickly. Or even immediately!

online content marketing

Build for success

The bad news is it won’t. After three months you probably wont’s see much return on your investment, after 6 months you might see a glimmer of results, after 9 months your approach will start to be discovered by more people, and after 12 months you’ll know for sure that it’s working. And that’s if you commit to a plan, regularly create excellent online content for your marketing initiatives and track your metrics to know how you’re doing.

You Need to Be in it for the Long Haul

Online content marketing takes time because your business is coming out of nowhere. Google simple won’t put you on the first page of their search results – unless you’ve got money to throw at a pay-per-click campaign.

My personal recommendation for building your presence online is to start a blog as blogs do pretty well in terms of search engine optimisation (SEO). However, no matter what blog marketing gurus might tell you, even though blogs are great for SEO, you don’t get to the top of Google’s search results overnight.

It takes time and commitment, regular writing, a bit of tweaking to your code, and bloody-mindedness. I could also add a unique voice, an ability to vary your content with different media (text, video, audio) but I don’t want to scare you away.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: communication strategy, content marketing, marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

How to Hire Great Staff to Work with Social Media

May 10, 2010 By 22 Comments

A company I know is looking to hire a permanent member of staff who’ll work with social media. Trouble is, they know very little about social media themselves.

They’ve heard plenty about the benefits of social media. I know they’ve even seen a campaign generate some great results, but that was after they outsourced (to me! Yes, I know. Shameless self-promotion!).

On the back of the success they’ve had, they’ve decided to hire someone full-time to join their staff. Trouble is, they don’t really know where to start having previously let me run with the ball.

Before You Advertise the Position

The first rule of thumb is to identify your objectives. Or rather, the end objective. Where do you want this social media / marcom hire to fit into your team and what you do want them to achieve and contribute to your business?

If you don’t understand what successful social media marketing and communications are to begin with, you run the risk of hiring the wrong person. Or even getting the wrong fit for your company. Someone who thought they would be working with marketing but basically ends up a general dog’s body for anything vaguely associated with communications isn’t likely to be a happy bunny.

So before you even go out with your job ad, you need to have some understanding of what you’re looking to recruit and achieve in the first place. Otherwise, both you and the new employee could find yourselves very frustrated down the line.

So perhaps it’s time to take that extra month to research and understand social media before you rush into a knee-jerk appointment. There are plenty of resources out on the Net. Or you could also consult with an existing consultant to discuss your needs.

What to Ask?

Let’s say you’ve got a better understanding of social media now and you’ve put your advert out to recruit a member of staff who’ve you’ve decided to call your “Community Manager”.

Their key responsibilities will include:

  • Setting up and running the company blog
  • Running the new Facebook Page you started a month ago but really hasn’t taken off
  • Developing a presence on Twitter to connect with customers
  • Media monitoring and crisis management

and producing content for the company in-house Newsletter, Intranet and external communications like press releases, marketing copy, etc.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: communication strategy, social media Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,