Online Content Marketing

The book I read to research this post was Online Content Marketing In 30 Minutes by Derek Slater which is a very good book that I downloaded for free from kindle. For most people there main motivation in starting a website or blog is to promote either a business or cause. In this book you learn that it is best if in business to not focus on selling but create an information resource connected to what you sell. In time people will see you as an expert in your field and come to you when they need to buy your product. In this context it isn’t essential that you are the cheapest as they perceive it as a quality product. Of course this extends into social media where even if someone doesn’t actually buy as in the case of twitter they might follow you or retweet your tweets. This is quite exciting that you don’t always have to focus on price. In other forms of marketing like conventional advertising or PPC marketing you do focus on price. This is about creating a relationship with the customer and hopefully the buying experience is so good most of your customers will recommend you to all there friends. Also you must treat everyone as a potential customer who maybe will only retweet one of your tweets today but may buy something in the future or if not one of their friends might be looking to purchase something. You aren’t confined to just written content although if you go down this route be prepared for longer loading times for your pages. Webinars, videos, graphs, photographs and audio are just some of the content you can have. Some people aren’t comfortable writing but are quite happy to do a video presentation. I did quite enjoy reading this book and would recommend it.

Twitter Marketing

The book I read to research this post was Twitter Marketing for Dummies by Kyle Lacy which is an excellent book which I borrowed from the library. You do hear about certain people on Twitter offering to sell you followers I’ve noticed some people who often have lots of followers offer to retweet you if you retweet them. Also if someone is after lots of followers the people are often inclined to follow you if you follow them. This book emphasizes quality & discourages the idea of trying to get loads of followers at any cost. If you are selling a product ideally you want followers you are interested in your product. A couple of marketing ideas are Dell the computer firm has exclusive offers on Twitter, & Ashton Kutcher the actor rented billboard space to promote his Twitter address. Both of them are very popular on twitter. If someone follows you, you should always follow unless they have no tweets or haven’t tweeted in a long time. Either of those mean they aren’t on Twitter very much & aren’t going to see your tweets. You should do plenty of retweets it makes your followers feel appreciated & you should in particular look for tweets in the same industry as you. A very good Twitter app is Qwitter which tells you who has unfollowed you & helps you see if there is a pattern. To promote a product you need a blog, ideally a web site where they can buy the product, a facebook page, a linkedin page & a youtube page in addition to a twitter page. You need to integrate them but as well as advertising in your tweets you should also put useful links up & give relevant information.

Corporate Blogging

The book I read to research this post was Corporate Blogging for Dummies by Douglas Karr et al which is an excellent book which I got from amazon. There are some connected posts on this site in particular wordpress, blogging, social media marketing, facebook advertising, content marketing and twitter. This mostly deals with the wordpress platform as that is the most common. A recommended plug in is chachame which allows you to answer users questions as a part of your blog. A good way of promoting your blog is to select say 20 posts & turn them into an ebook which you can give away on a site such as getfreeebooks.com or lulu.com

If you are a company you need to select a team & it may not be the most obvious people the most important requirement is that they want to do it. Sometimes someone who is not an obvious choice will relish the opportunity & another point is the person who is in charge of the blog should hold a very senior position after all official company statements will be going out on the blog.  The company should keep a tally on how much they are spending on the blog & that should include the wages per hour they are paying someone writing a post. To be professional it’s worth getting the blog  professionally designed as it reflects the companies image. Another option is hosted or self hosted it’s worth if you have it hosted by a firm like wordpress it’s free but it limits your customisation options.