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ColumbiaDoctors of the Hudson Valley

“Content is King” as the saying goes. But creating content consistently over the long haul is an investment no matter how you look at it; an investment in time and money.

So how does your content marketing strategy stack up to the typical B2B? Check out this infographic and see.

If you are interested in learning about how to develop a successful content marketing strategy for your business give us a call.

Content Marketing: Building B2B Content

I came across this great infographic and thought I’d share.

These social media statistics can give you some insight into how people are – and aren’t – using social media.

Customer Care

I found it particularly telling that 56% of customer tweets to companies are being ignored! Yikes!! Setting up tools to monitor social media channels can help insure this doesn’t happen to your customers.

The Pluses of Google

What about Google+? Websites using the +1 button increase traffic 350%?

Active Google users are on for over an hour a day; this include Gmail, Google calendar, Picasa, etc.

Mark Twain

Listen, you and I both know the Mark Twain quote; “There are lies, damned lies and statistics.”

The point isn’t to get you to stop everything else in favor of social media marketing. The point is to help you see where there is opportunity to improve how you use these social media statistics to see where there are opportunities that you might be missing.

To that end, we have put together a Social Media Audit checklist to help you assess your current efforts. Email jann@westchestermarketingcafe.com to get your free copy. (I promise I won’t start stalking you!)

Social Media Statistics: What’s really happening with SM?

I recently guest-lectured for an MBA Marketing Communications course; a redux of the class I taught last year. What was interesting was the contrast between the students this year and the students last year. In particular, it was notable whether they perceived social media as a viable strategy and their role, if any, in furthering the strategy.

Small Biz vs Corporate

Last year’s class was made up almost entirely of individuals who owned or worked for small businesses. This year’s class was made up of employees of larger, and in many cases international, organizations.

Last year’s students, while not all were active social media participants, they all knew how/if the business had any sort of social media marketing strategy. This year’s class was also a mix of users and non-users, but many were unaware of what, if any, social media marketing strategy their employers were using. Many had jobs that were outside of marketing and as such were outside the loop in this area.

In both cases, we had a lively debate about the pros and cons of using social media marketing. If I had to characterize these debates, I would say those who were in small businesses were more open to the possibilities social media presented in spite of any concerns they may have had. The corporate employees tended to be more skeptical and unsure how they could utilize it in their current role even if they used social media for personal use.

Size Does Matter…

…or at least it seems to when it comes to social media marketing. And it would seem that small businesses have the upper hand here.

While big businesses have the resources to dedicate a team (or at least one full-time person) to social media they don’t typically utilize a cross-department approach. It is “the brand” that is engaging in social media, not the names and faces behind the brand.

Small businesses rarely have the luxury of dedicating one person to any single task, much less social media. This is precisely the reason they are better positioned to leverage social media. EVERY employee of a small business is closer to the front line; closer to customers and prospects. By empowering these employees to use social media to help them do their jobs small businesses are better positioned to “move the needle”. Consider the following.

Branding & Marketing

How can you reinforce your unique positioning using social media? If you’re a local deli and your counter person sees a post on Facebook about a food pantry looking for donations, she has found for you an opportunity to help your community and get your name out there. If you are a doctor your desk staff/nurse/you can let folks know when you’ll be doing a wellness workshop at the local library.

Think of how each of your employees can help to reinforce your message?

Reputation Management & Customer Service

Many customers won’t complain to you but will complain online using Facebook, Yelp or other social media channel(s).

If your employees are empowered, they can respond to criticism and redirect the conversation. Your service person can respond with an ETA, whoever is in charge of inventory can respond with the estimate date of shipment. Its never about the problem; its about how you handle the problem.

Think about how your employees can improve customer service and help to deflate any criticism using social media?

Networking & Human Resources

What about tapping into your employees’ networks to fill a need that YOU have? Maybe you’re looking for a new sales person or want to fill a summer internship?

Small businesses are, well, small – and nimble. This gives them a leg up on Corporate when it comes to adapting new channels to communicate with customers, prospects, vendors, etc. They don’t need to wrangle with layers of management. They just need to see the opportunities and seize them.

Social Media Marketing: David vs Goliath, and David has the upper hand.

You know you need a website to reach the 50%+ of customers who begin their research online. A blog may seem like overkill. It’s not.

Here’s how a blog helps your business.

1. A blog provides information to your readers.

Your standard pages are great and talk about who you are and what you do. But your blog pages are what provide information about your industry, trending topics and latest best practices/products. This is important information especially for those who might be in the early stages of they buying cycle. They might not be ready to buy yet because they just don’t know enough. Give them what they need to get ready to buy.

2. A blog provides information to search engines.

As you write articles around your primary business and industry you will be providing information to the search engines about your site. Even if you don’t write with SEO in mind specifically you will benefit. If your business is home construction your articles will be about home construction and the construction industry in general. Those articles will contain keywords and phrases relevant to these topics. And guess what! When people look for those terms you now have a better shot of showing up in their search results. (Hint: don’t be too jargony in your writing.)

In addition to these keyword-rich articles, the very fact that you are keeping your site current and up-to-date will help.

3. A blog links your offline and online marketing.

There is only so much you can say on a postcard or magazine ad. You can say a lot on your blog.

You can talk about upcoming events and promotions. During events and promotions you can send folks back to specific, relevant articles.

If you are speaking at a trade show or community event, you can multi-purpose your comments by creating an article to share for people who couldn’t make it.

4. Establishes you know stuff.

Let’s face it, most of our pages are full of marketing stuff. But we know other stuff too. We know about our business and what’s happening in our industry.

Your blog gives you the opportunity to talk about the stuff you know so well. Just be sure you’re talking to your audience not at them. Educate them. Enlighten them. Dare I say entertain them a bit?

5. Provides a  feed.

Without geeking out on you too much, a blog will provide a “feed” for others to subscribe to among other useful tools (like automated email campaigns.) Think of it as putting your website into syndication. It opens up new possibilities for getting your content – and name – out there in front of interested people (read: potential customers).

You don’t have to be a blogger. But including a blog in your website is an important tool to help your business.

If you’d like to learn more check out these other posts:

• Managing The Growth of Your Website; Blogging for business
• Blogging for Business (video)

How A Blog Helps Your Business

Everyone is watching their bottom line these days; it doesn’t matter which side of the political aisle you’re on. There is no money to waste. So how do you know if your marketing budget is earning its keep?

Let me share with you some real-world scenarios and the lessons that can be drawn from them.

A bargain isn’t a bargain if you don’t need the service.

I got a call recently from a prospect. He is in a very competitive industry and knows he needs to be “out there” with respect to online marketing. To that end he began working with a vendor who specializes in his industry. They were going to take care of everything for him; hosting his website, content creation, analytics, etc. He contracted with them for their complete package.

But that vendor only focused on one aspect of his business, so he contracted with another vendor to flesh out  his sub-specialty. They were going to do for his sub-specialty what the other vendor was doing for his primary industry.

Good stuff, yeah? Except no. It wasn’t.

He wasn’t getting any hits because each vendor was working on a proprietary system that wouldn’t play nicely with other systems. He ended up with several domains that did not reflect the name of his business or interact with each other. Visitors would land on his primary domain and promptly be sent away.

This was no bargain because there was, in the end, no value added for him. There was nothing that these vendors were providing that couldn’t be done better, and less expensively, under one domain. By getting his house in order, he was better able to track what was happening with all aspects of his business and his marketing.

What’s driving your mobile website?

I had another client call me to ask about creating a mobile version of her website. It’s a question a lot of small business owners ask; shouldn’t I have a mobile site?

And the answer is, of course, yes. But the REAL answer is “What value are you providing?”

Without a doubt our smart-phones and tablets are becoming our new computers. So making sure our websites work properly on these devices is a no-brainer. How you go about implementing a mobile site is a brainer. (Yes, I made that word up.)

In this client’s case, it didn’t make sense to create a separate “mobile” website. She doesn’t own a retail shop or restaurant that customers would be looking for information on her while they are out and about. Her clientele typically do their research at home or work. But more importantly we know that we will be redesigning the entire site to work off of a Content Management System in the next 6-12 months. It makes more sense to include responsive design as part of that larger project.

What if we weren’t planning on redoing the website in the near-term? Well maybe then we have a conversation about making changes to the website to make it more mobile-friendly. That conversation too, would include talks of what value is there in doing this?

Creating mobile for mobile’s sake alone is no bargain. 

Marketing is, by its very nature, “squishy”. It’s difficult to evaluate what is providing value for your business. Marketing is about creating awareness and building confidence around your company’s name. So how do you evaluate the relative value of something that has no intrinsic value of its own? Think like your customers.

Will your actions make it easier for them to understand you and your business? Will it build confidence and provide a professional image? Or does it seem like its more about you than them?

When it comes to your marketing budget, sometimes a bargain is worth passing up.

When Is A Bargain Not A Bargain? Qualifying your marketing budget.

Protected: Search Engine Optimization

I’ve had several conversations in recent days about websites suffering from extreme growing pains. You know the kind; they have tons of information that you can’t find using the navigation maze…I mean menu.

It all starts innocently enough. “I need a simple website for my business” you say to your designer/programmer/neighbor’s kid. “No problem” is the reply.

And a new website is born, exactly the way you said you wanted it; Home page, About Us, Contact Us, Services.

But now you want to add a page about the new whiz kid you just hired. There’s another page. Hmmm. I guess we’ll just add that under “About Us”. And the new service package? Just throw that under “Services”.

You’re smart though. You know good SEO is all about adding content so you add those articles from your newsletter for good measure. Ummmm. Those can go under…well, they aren’t services exactly, and they’re not about the company exactly. Just go ahead and squish in a new top-level menu item called “Articles” and drop the articles in under that.

Over time, you dutifully add more articles and information and include them where they kinda, sorta fit.

And before you know it your navigation – your clean, simple navigation – looks like your cat sat on your keyboard. The menu is awash with links to pages upon pages of great information but lacks meaningful structure.

O Blog, Where Art Thou?

Like most things, planning is key. Your website infrastructure needs to work for where you are now and where you will be in three years or more. Establishing a means for organizing your existing and future content is essential.

Including a blog on your site allows for easy scalability. By it’s very nature a blog is designed to organize and store lots of content with new content “pushing down” older content. Oodles of articles can be added over time without crowding the primary navigation of the website. The articles provide fodder for the search engines, useful information for your potential customers and clients.

By planning ahead and including a blog in your website – or adding one to your existing website – you can avoid suffering through growing pains of your own.

Managing The Growth of Your Website; Blogging for business

Protected: Content Development For Online Marketing

“I thought you would just do it for me.”

I once had a client say those exact words to me. The impression – or more likely, the hope – was that he would sign the contract and I would magically whip up a website with compelling content and fabulous visuals that would launch his business into the stratosphere. But successful web design projects don’t work that way.

A vacuum sucks. So does working in one.

The best projects are done collaboratively. A marketing professional will help you craft a message that will resonate with your audience rather than sound melodious only to your own ear. A talented web designer will create a website that not only looks good but will allow even your mother to easily navigate the site. A good programmer will code a website that can be updated by the coworker who hits “reply all” to virtually every email the receive (though, admittedly, this may require some oversight!)

Each player has a role. So do you.

Your role is to know your business; what sets you apart from your competition? what problems do you solve for your clients? Understanding how your role will effect, and be effected by, the rest of the team will improve the overall outcome of the project.

Creating a website doesn’t have to be a collaborative process…unless you want it done right.

Read more about Hiring A Web Designer.

Working With Web Designers