Archive for July, 2011

Planning

Too often design precedes content. You have the website with a blog page and a link to Facebook and Twitter. You’re ready to publish. Stop! Slow down. Do a little planning. Is your focus on branding, sales, information or entertainment?

Integration

Will your blogs be snippets of unrelated information from different departments in your organization or will they be smoothly integrated quality content.  Your organization needs a common platform for what you publish. That means a framework ensuring a consistent voice, tone and style. What should the content be, when should it be released, what story is it telling and what is its lifespan? Think consistent sustained story rather than short term campaigns that are often unrelated.

“What’s in it for me?”

Social Media is a two way street. You want to interact with your customers. Give them content they want to share, can use or find entertaining.  But remember that content needs to be specific to what you do or sell. Stress “Easy to assemble” if you’re selling children’s bikes, “Beauty advice” if you’re selling cosmetics, “Healthy eating habits” if you’re selling natural foods.

Presentation

Publishing is about presentation as well as content. Avoid like the plague dense blocks of verbiage. Good content must be presented in a usable usable and readable format or your audience will go away. Publish regularly with easy to read entertaining or useful content to stay on top of your readers minds when they are online. Be seasonally relevant.

Share

It’s really important to make your content easy to share. Meet your audience where they are rather than trying to get them to come to you. Create a mobile version of your site.

Help is a click away

Need help? We specialize in blog writing. Send us the information about your company you want online and we’ll work with you to create blog content for maximum effect.

Last year enough data was stored to fill 60,000 Libraries of Congress. Four billion mobile phone users have turned into data-streams. YouTube says it receives 24 hours of video every minute. Companies are gathering more detailed data on the buying habits of their customers than ever before. According to the McKinsey Global Institute big data are the next frontier for innovation, competition and productivity.

Companies are using data to enable them to adjust prices and promotions. Manufacturers use sensors in their products that allow them to see if they need repair long before they break down. Auto manufacturers tell customers when their cars need to be serviced. And so on.

But companies also need to be careful to treat data as a slave rather than a master. All these analytics and mathematical numbers are great, but they can obscure the unreliability of some numbers that are fed into them. Garbage in, garbage out. When all’s said and done, there is no substitute for intuition and good judgment. But if used wisely, the ever-growing store of data can provide important insights for businesses, both large and small.

Talk to us about analyzing usage of your website to find just who is interested in your product or service.