Content or Die?

March 30, 2010 Filed under: Internet Marketing,Social Media Marketing — Tags: , , —

It’s a gloomy, rainy Tuesday in Seattle, and the weather is making me rather philosophical.  So, rather than sharing my own tips and experience, I’m going to share my reactions to a recent blog post entitled “A Challenge: Content or Die“.  Sounds pretty dire, doesn’t it?   The author’s point isn’t quite as extreme as the title suggests.  I invite you to read it, but let me summarize it quickly:  if you don’t keep creating new content, your web presence will stagnate, your search ranking will suffer, your revenues will drop.   It may not mean death, but clearly it’s not good.

The author’s point is valid.   I’ve been in marketing for a long time.  Before the days of social media, marketing consisted largely of advertising, public relations, events and sponsorships.  They were all ways of communicating your brand to your public.  And they were all big, costly undertakings.  Because they were big and costly, each campaign had to last a long time, so marketers got used to communications with a long lifespan.  In advertising, you would pay big money to develop an ad campaign, and it would run for months.  In PR, you’d need “big news” to compete for limited print stories, and big stories don’t happen very often.  And sponsorships or events, well, they only happen a few times a year.

Now, we’re talking about search engines that come looking for new information multiple times a day.  They’re hungry and they need to be fed.  If you don’t feed them fresh, new food (content), they won’t regard you as highly as sites that do.  And they may not come to visit that often, if they don’t expect to get fed.  Online marketing, therefore, requires a major  change in mindset. 

If you want to keep the search engine spiders happy and well-fed, you need to change the way you think about the lifespan of your information.  You need to deliver good content on a regular basis and you need to keep it coming.  I don’t mean to suggest that content becomes obsolete as soon as it’s published; in fact, if it’s good, it may get shared, bookmarked, retweeted, and linked-to — and in the process get noticed by a far larger audience than you anticipated.   But the more frequently you add fresh content to your website or new posts to your blog, the better your chances of ranking well, being found, and building your brand.

The Bottom Line: if you want to market your brand on the web, you need to adopt a new marketing rhythm.  Think short and compelling content, frequent publishing schedules, and active online engagement if you want to do effective branding in the virtual world.   And measure your results so you can continually revise and improve as you move along.

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How to Guest Blog

March 19, 2010 Filed under: Social Media Marketing — Tags: , —

I’ve recently been working with several clients who are thinking about starting their own business blog but are either not ready to make the time commitment required, or are looking to share the responsibility with other “contributing writers.”  Guest blogging is a good way to make a partial commitment or to share the load .  If your plan is to ultimately author your own blog, but you need some practice to find your voice or to build your comfort level, guest blogging on someone else’s blog can be a terrific first-step opportunity.   Even if you have your own blog and post regularly, guest blogging can give you an opportunity to expand your audience and send more traffic and links back to your blog.  Or, if you’ve decided to take the full plunge and author your own blog, inviting other guest bloggers to contribute will give your readers some variety of perspective and give you some breathing space and some new content to build from.

The trade-off, of course, is control.   The beauty of authoring your own content on your own site is that you have full control of the brand you put forth.   If you’re guest blogging on someone else’s blog, you’ll need to select the site carefully so that it’s consistent with your own brand and its readers are an audience you want to reach.  If you’re inviting someone to guest blog on your site, again, select carefully.

I found a post that I think does a terrific job of covering the what, why,  and how of guest blogging — so I’m pointing you there rather than trying to say it all myself.  Check it out — Guest Blogging, the Ultimate Guide – and consider guest blogging yourself!

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What If I Don’t Twitter?

March 8, 2010 Filed under: Social Media Marketing — Tags: , , —

My primary goal for this blog is to have it address the questions and concerns of our Sound Web Solutions clients.  So, I take most of the ideas for my blog posts from questions I’m asked by clients.   Let me share with you an interesting question – devil’s advocate approach – I heard from a client recently.   Aware, as most of us are today, that Twitter is the hot new thing, this client felt compelled to do something — but didn’t know what.  Should one person in the company become their “twitter expert”?   Should all employees be told to start tweeting?   Should we host a training session of some kind?   Then came the devil’s advocate — what if we don’t do it at all?   Is that really going to harm us as a company, brand us as a Luddite, leave us hopelessly behind our competition?

What I told this client and will say again is: there are no hard-and-fast rules here.  Twitter is simply yet another way to “get out there” in the Social Media realm – both to hear what others are saying and also to be heard.  I guess the downside of NOT doing it would just be the loss of an opportunity for participation.   Not a dire loss, and not necessarily something that’s going to hurt you.   I personally think the best way to get engaged in Social Media is to author a blog and to read, listen and participate on other people’s blogs in your industry.   Twitter is a way to  send your blog posts out more broadly, to pick up followers who may then become readers of your blog, and to be alerted to what others in your world are saying, writing, and thinking.   A decision to NOT participate in Twitter is a little like a decision not to attend a social gathering at a trade show (or not to attend a party in college) – you can still get the content from speakers at the show (or lectures from your classes), but you won’t be plugged in to the commentary & social chatter that goes on around them.  There’s certainly value in the chatter, and you gain perspectives and tips you wouldn’t get from the formal speeches. 

As is true for much of social media, it’s hard to know what you’re missing unless you try it.  There must be some reason why everyone’s doing it.  Rather than decide against it because you can’t commit to daily tweeting, designate someone to devote 30 minutes a day for 1 month (even 2 weeks) and then share their impressions about what they’ve learned.  That way you can at least develop a point of view on it.   The important thing is to try it before you write it off.

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