Drive business through content

However great product you role down into the market if it is not communicated properly to the consumers it cannot be a success. Companies that understand this define goals – to sell products, generate leads, secure contributions trough well articulated content that directly contributes to reaching the goal. When content effectively drives action, the end of the sales process – an ecommerce company’s “buy” button, the B2B corporation’s “please contact us” form, or non-profit’s “donate” link – are found in logical places, based on content that leads people there.

For many companies, Web content also has a powerful, less tangible effect. On the best sites, content does more than just sell product – it directly contributes to an organization’s positive reputation by showing thought-leadership in the marketplace of ideas

Many people view a well executed series of press releases as highly influential, with regards to a company that they are considering doing business with. Press releases mean your company is “busy” and a lack of press releases can indicate that you are not moving forward. In the new world of marketing, consistent quality press release content brands a company or a non-profit as an expert and as a trusted resource to turn to again and again. Press releases are often considered as an important buying criteria, especially in a complex B2B sales process.

Is it like small business still finds it difficult to realize the need of social media!!

As we see in new technology wherein most innovative individuals in the most innovative industry go for it and later the conservative individuals in the most conservative industry adopt to it, the universal adoption curve states 5 categories.

• Innovators
• Early adopters
• Early majority
• Late majority
• Laggards

It is not like innovators completely adopted to social media, atleast they have experienced and know the importance of social media as big companies started to integrate social media into their overall marketing, sales, HR, customer service and other strategies.
With this fine note I would like to share this information, I found a new blog post by Jack Loechner (Center for Media Research) to be very interesting. He reviews a new survey by Citibank of 500 small businesses and their experiences with social media. Here it goes…

“76% have not found social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to be helpful in generating business leads or for expanding their business during the last year, while 86% say they have not used social networking sites to get business advice or information.

The survey found that general search engine sites such as Google and Yahoo! trump small business-focused sites and the WSJ.com as destinations for small business owners to seek business advice or information. 61% of respondents say they rely on these search engine sites.
Lead Generation by Social Networks (% of Respondents, August 2009) Small Business Execs Who Say

Social networks are:
• Very helpful- 3%
• Somewhat helpful-9%
• Not very helpful- 13%
• Not at all helpful- 63%
• Don't know/na- 11%

Source: Citibank omnibus poll by Gfk Roper, October 2009

Maria Veltre, Executive Vice President of Citi's Small Business Segment, concludes "... small business owners are still feeling their way into social media... many... may not have the manpower or the time required take advantage of them."

Additional responses found that 42% of small business owners and managers reported that in the past year they have made greater use of their company's website to generate business leads and sales. Among companies with 20 to 99 employees the percentage rises, with 57% saying they have made greater use of their website. 28% of survey respondents are also using email marketing and 25% are using online advertising to generate business leads and sales".

From the above information it is clear that the adoption rates and the time small business owners and executives take is very low and the good thing is people slowly realizing the need and trying to adopt. It is difficult to digest for small business owners that their customers are there on social networks and this social media is a function of “going where are customers are”. I can tell you that we think of social media from the outset when designing our integrated sales, marketing and PR plans.

The Social media Buzz as they say..

Do you have a LinkedIn profile? Do you watch video in YouTube? Do you use face book to search for your friends and to comment about them? Do you look in for Wikipedia for any information you want? If the answer is yes for any one of these question then you have experienced the Buzz as marketers generally term it for Social Media.

There are literally 100’s oops apologize for that 1000’s of social media sites and applications. For small businesses I would like to share the following digital outposts. Based on the time and money spent you can derive your ROI.

Youtube.com-

If you ask me which is the most viral (shared) form of content today I will tell it is video, if you are into a product based company you can setup a You Tube channel to display videos that relate to your business, how to tutorials or website channel videos. Your video can be obtained when people search YouTube itself  or by finding video results in search engines.

Twitter.com –

Do you want to connect with like minded people the I can tell Twitter as the powerhouse for that, one can increase their brand visibility, developing relationships and moreover customer feedback. And as you are it is has become one of the major tool to drive traffic back to your websites. The role of content is important on a Blog and twitter works especially well with a blog, how this is done? Simple share your blog links with your twitter followers and it’s done.

LinkedIn.com-

LinkedIn I can tell it is an ideal platform for professionals to display their credentials. But to really add value to it you have to do more, yes, complete your profile to 100%, create a group around your business or around a topic your customers are interested in, participate not only in your own group but also in other related groups, participate in the discussion answer questions that you feel your expertise in the LinkedIn answer section. As many say it as a professional networking tool it is an excellent tool for lead generation and even to close deals.

Facebook.com-

Do you know Facebook is the place where many target market is networking and spending free time, hope many small business owners will take this seriously. Don’t forget to update your business page regularly, spent some time it is a worth investment.

MySpace.com-

If you are not in the entertainment business or market to the youth market please do not waste time in this but if you tell no, you are into entertainment business and youth market is one of your target market a MySpace page is a useful outpost.  

Docstoc.com, slideshare.net- 

If you want to generate knowledge pieces in the form of PowerPoint presentation, spreadsheets, Word file and PDF files then this is an important tool you have to use. These document sharing sites enable you to download and upload documents. Set up an account at key document sharing sites. Remember content plays a major role feed your content to these sites regularly.

Many companies’ especially small firms find it difficult to get quality content at regular period. Check out www.contentcrossroads.com  to overcome this problem.

These are some but inevitable social media outposts as a small company has to follow..