Archive for the ‘Blogging’ Category

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.

I grew up in a small family business. We knew all of our customers and they knew us,  personally. Social media is creating the opportunity for businesses online to develop a personal relationship with their customers no matter where they are. And businesses are taking advantage of this opportunity.

Social Media Makes It Personal

Local businesses have always had the advantage when personal relationships are important to a business. Business contacts become friends. They learn about each other. They’ve seen their business associates in person.

Today, in the case of a national business, personalized interaction via a blog, Facebook and other social media gives some of this advantage to companies on the other side of the country.  A photo on Facebook that changes on a regular basis can add an element of personalization that was reserved for local businesses in the past. The appearance, the hobbies, the interests and other personal traits create character that makes your business contacts your friends.

What Should You Do?

Your competition is going to get personal with the customers you are competing for no matter where they are located. To learn how this is going to impact your company, you need to ask yourself two questions:

1. Will they implement social media before your do?
2. Will they use it better than you do?

If your competitors do it first and win over your customers then it will be hard for you to get them back. And over the long term customers will migrate to the company with better social media correspondence.

The key is for you to get started quickly and stay ahead of your competition in providing value to your customers. Value can be created on social media through the sharing of information. Everything from product information to the achievements of your employees creates an image of your company. That image has value.

Web 2.0 Class In Wadesboro, NC

Huck Huckabee

On Thursday, October 21st, 2010 at 1:00 PM I, Huck Huckabee, will be teaching a class on Web 2.0 for South Piedmont Community College. The class will be taught at their Wadesboro, North Carolina campus. It will be an overview of the interactive Internet. Learn how businesses are using YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other interactive tools to provide their clients exactly what they are looking for.

Contact Vince Holloman

To sign up for the class contact Vince Holloman. Call 704-289-8588 or send an email to vholloman@spcc.edu. Class size is limited so call now.

Class On Blogging, FaceBook, and Twitter

Huck Huckabee

On Thursday, October 14th, 2010 I, Huck Huckabee will be teaching Internet Marketing Techniques at South Piedmont Community College in Monroe, North Carolina. Learn the basics on blogging, Facebook and Twitter. And learn how businesses can use these tools to there advantage.

Contact Vince Holloman

To sign up for the class contact Vince Holloman. Call 704-289-8588 or send an email to vholloman@spcc.edu. Class size is limited so call now.

If your company’s blog does not offer two way communication then it is a website and not a blog. One of the most important things for your company to do is to accept and publish content from the site visitors. This is the whole purpose of the blog when it is used for marketing.

Find Out What Customers Want

One good thing about allowing visitors to post on your site is that they can ask you questions. And you can give them answers. But, one of the primary purposes of blog marketing is to fine our what your customers want. So you should be the one asking the question. What do they like about your product? What don’t they like? How can you make the product better for them?This can give you some very valuable information. Who better to tell you what will sell than your customers?

Allow all of you blog viewers to see such an interchange. Who knows, someone may join in with additional suggestions toward the creation of a new product or service that could be something they really want and something that is profitable to you.

Review Responses Before Posting

Don’t worry about ugly things getting posted unknowingly on your blog. You can set your blog software to hold responses for your approval. You will get spam responses, but there are tools available to minimize this problem. And you will get responses from individuals who have a lot to say about nothing. These can all be trashed or tagged as spam. Your blog software should block most of these items once they are initially tagged.

Welcome to the blog section of our website. I would like to invite all of you to share your ideas, offer suggestions or ask questions you have concerning Internet Marketing.

Help us make this site Web 2.0 by participating!

Thank you very much.

Huck Huckabee