Striving to be a thought leader and gaining social proof is sometimes easier said than done.  At the core of these strategies is content.  Not a great deal of content mind you, because you can establish a role as a thought leader without having thousands of pieces being circulated;  no this is about quality content.

That’s where many business owners get hung up when they’re trying to build their reputation, brand and customer outreach online.  While the barrier can take varying forms the most common brings about one very ugly question:

“What do I talk about when I have nothing to say?” Read the rest of this entry »

Good customer relationship management is about engaging your audience on a very personal level – one that is targeted and resonates with their needs, wants and expectations.  While this can be easy to do if you’re holding a conversation with a person, businesses often struggle achieving this in an online environment through text-based content.

Being Human

You’re human, and so are your customers – even if you’re involved in the business to business world the businesses is still being managed by people and people have needs and emotional triggers.  If you want better customer engagement and relationship management then you need to engage on a very human level.  Broad marketing campaigns are still designed to target a specific person.  When you’re crafting content online for articles, blogs, marketing reports, videos, podcasts, etc. you need to fashion your content in a way that it sounds like it came from a person.

Not a corporate PR Rep. Read the rest of this entry »

It doesn’t matter what type of content you’re working with, everything starts out with a headline.  That page title is vital in drawing in the readers and getting traffic to funnel into your website and/or sales funnel.  There are a few different schools of thought on how headlines should be written, with some stating that you need to focus on the individual person while others believe that search optimization of the title or headline is what brings the most traffic.

Targeting only one of those two will gain you little ground.  It’s best to aim for both… or more. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not that the writing of your press releases is poor, and it’s certainly not the direct result of a PR rep or agency twirling in a chair with a finger up their nose.  The main reason why your press releases are losing traction (a little… or completely) is because the audience is changing.

The web has become a social monster that continues to grow and feed on instant information and simple sharing.  We exist now within a vast network with a love of social media.  This mass of people spanning the globe have a very different outlook on content. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s should be a goal of any business to improve their relations with customers – that’s the focal point of customer relationship management (CRM).  To improve relations, many organizations improve that relationship by adding a personal touch to their services.  This is a natural and very smart way to do business because no customer wants to be treated like just another number on a profit and loss report.

The downside on personalizing the customer relationship is that if you’re not carefully it’s easy to sabotage the entire process and burn yourself.  There is such a thing as getting too personal, often too fast.  Finding the right mix of personal and professional when dealing with your target audience in extremely important. Read the rest of this entry »

Social media marketing and content marketing isn’t just about positioning yourself to be more visible in the online market place.  It’s also about branding and thought leadership.  While many businesses owners consider this in the development of their marketing campaigns they often leave one area untouched; reputation management.

The result is a reactive state when something negative happens to a business.  In some cases when positive things occur a business owner or marketing rep may not have any clue how to react and opportunity is lost.  Both situations can wind up painting a business in a bad way.  When you’re developing or revising your online presence it’s important to consider how you will position your brand to improve reputation and how you will be proactive as well as reactive in handling issues relating to the reputation of your business. Read the rest of this entry »

Woe to those who believed at any point that social media was merely a passing fad and had little to do with SEO, content marketing or business to business relationships.  What’s worse is that many felt that social media marketing had absolutely no (or very little) ROI.

Then the fun begins as Google stomps mud all over that cynical parade.

The most recent update – Farmer… Panda… call it what you will – is changing the game for a lot of people.  Those who were quick to jump on the social bandwagon for reputation management and consumer outreach are now pulling a flash-dance style party in the rain because the payout has arrived. Read the rest of this entry »

Business owners often complain about the struggle of making social media and online marketing work – or return an investment.  What they don’t realize is that the method is sound it’s the execution that’s flawed.  A perfect strategy, like the best joke in the world, can be botched and utterly derailed during the delivery.

The most common cause of delivery failure in content marketing is the “shill”.

The shill is when a piece of content within any media format (podcast, video, article, blog, press release, etc.) is being generated for the sole purpose of selling something.  The difference in the case of the shill is that Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a small furry creature walking among hundreds of other furry creatures.  It’s not certain of the destination but it knows it needs to go somewhere.  Since all of the other furry creatures are going in this direction it falls into place as they clamor along in a swirling mob.  The mob continues right off a cliff.

A lemming isn’t clever enough to understand why it’s not ok to do what everyone else is doing but as a business owner you should recognize that there is a difference between real success and the assumption of success.  If you assume competitors are successful and you simply begin to mimic what they’re doing online there’s a good chance that you’ll get similar results – especially if they’re doing poorly. Read the rest of this entry »

Online marketers all have some sort of eye on Facebook; the attraction cannot be denied. When it comes to sheer traffic numbers, the eyes that see the content on Facebook, the multitudes, an opportunity of this kind has literally never seen before. New ways of using it to generate leads and conversations are invented everyday, and still we are only scratching the surface. The limits of Facebook have yet to be tested, and it is up to every small business owner to take advantage of it while they can.

Every business should have a Facebook fan page. This is one of the best ways to directly interact with your fans and hear what they have to say about your products as well. What it ultimately boils down to is sort of a popularity contest where you have to be the most well liked kid in class.

Read the rest of this entry »