I decided to vary the content a wee bit today and start the week with a short vlog.
It was made using my MacBookPro and a bit of time and patience.
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If you’re not getting the right message across to the people that matter – whether it’s customers, potential clients or colleagues – you might want to take a look at the way you’re communicating.
Communication is a massive part of daily business, but what with the rapid pace at which things are changing online, you might be missing the opportunity to communicate effectively with the people that matter if you aren’t making the most out of the tools that are available online.
Blogs
I’m a massive believer in the value business blogs can bring to your strategic communications.
Over the years, I’ve witnessed firsthand how they can:
- generate regular traffic to your website
- improve how you perform in Google search results because they’re pretty much SEO-friendly – straight out of the box
- help show customers who you and what you do
- give you a channel that’s easily helps you publish and promote text, video and pictures
- enable you to communicate directly with customers through comments
- make crisis management easier
If you’re looking to find out more about business blogging as a communications strategy, please download my free ebook.
Also, check out my 10 Essential Posts for Business Bloggers or Six Must Haves for Business Bloggers
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Are your People Pages scaring customers away?
Don’t lose sight of the fact that your people are one of your best content marketing resources.
Whilst recently reviewing the Google Analytics for a couple of client sites I noticed how high their people pages were ranking. Visitors to the site were obviously spending a lot of time checking out who they could / would be working with.
It doesn’t surprise me that people want to spend time looking at the people in a team. It’s part of business to check out qualifications and experience; however, I think there’s more to it than that. We want to know something about the people involved because we don’t do business with a faceless corporation; we do business with people.
The Social Web
With the web becoming increasingly social, and more of us than ever having social media profiles, it’s becoming second nature to click on profiles and make judgements. Do you follow so and so on Twitter? Do you want to friend this person or that?
Because the social web is changing our attitudes, I believe businesses need to make their people pages ooze personality and showcase the team that will be working with you, teaching you, managing your project, and so on.
Establishing Personality & Trust
Showcasing the people in your team is both a sign of trust and helps build trust.
It’s a sign of trust because you’re celebrating their skills and ability. You’re so confident that they can do the job and deliver that your happy to introduce them to your prospects.
Great people pages also build trust because they give insight into the team; their personalities, skills and experience.
Make Your People Page Stand Out
With companies having to think more and more like media publishers these days, you want your people pages to stand out. People pages should be something more unique, eye-catching and compelling than just the tried and tested photo + blurb approach.
I don’t know them personally, but Mule Design Studio have one of my favourite people pages. The best way to see how it works is visit the page and mouse over their portraits or watch this screen clip I’ve put up on YouTube.
Talking of YouTube, I think one of the most successful ways we conveyed the personality of some of the staff at IEG was through a low-fi video. This example shows you who’ll be teaching and the positive results from this strategy speak for themselves.
Don’t forget that great content marketing makes use of a variety of tools: a static webpage will enable you to showcase your staff in one way. A vlog or video clip will do it another way.
Showcasing
Another great way to feature your staff is to shine the spotlight on them with your company blog.
Telling the story (or a bit of the story) behind the people that work in your organisation makes them standout. What’s more, you also communicate to them that you appreciate and value the work they do.
Employees thrive on positive recognition and reinforcement. In-company recognition is one thing, but telling the world is another, more powerful way of communicating your feelings.
The bottom line
People are increasingly getting used to knowing more about people online and making personal connections through the Net. Use your website or business blog to showcase the team that provides your services and products. Successful people pages can help you build better relationships with your prospects and help convert them into buyers.
Image:FlickrCC
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Today’s post is way off topic but it’s for a good cause.
The students at Internationella Engelska Gymnasiet in Stockholm approached me to help them publicise a free concert they’re giving this Friday to raise money for Haiti.
If you happen to be near Skanstull T-bana at 18:00 zip up to Allhelgonagatan 4 and visit IEGS.
They’ll be holding an auction, performing songs as well as welcoming a guest appearance by Swedish star Swingfly.
Rapper Swingfly is coming to IEGS
If you can’t make it, please Retweet this post to help spread the word!
Directions to IEG coming up after the jump.
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How’s your content marketing strategy going?
Now that the fanfare about the iPad has died down you might want to think again about working on an e-book. I’m sure interest in e-books will increase once again when the iPad starts shipping.
Time to update my ebook, I think!
I’m convinced a quality ebook should be part of your content marketing strategy and will really benefit your business.
Here’s four reasons why I think e-books should be an integral part of your business’s content marketing:
E-books can show your strengths
It’s hard to cover a lot of ground in a single blog post. With the extra space an e-book allows, you can compellingly and visually establish thought leadership with an e-book and connect with potential. Sure, a quality e-book may well cost time and effort to produce but they’re a great way of showing what you know. One of my recent favourites was a presentation that was ported to Slideshare and worked as an excellent ebook discussion of whether corporate blogging is dying.
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Are you smug about your social media efforts?
Maybe your business is like this?
You know: you’ve got a Facebook Fan Page, a Twitter account; you’re maybe posting pictures to Flickr, and monitoring realtime streams for mentions of your brand.
Trouble is: Just having the gear, doesn’t make you the belle of the ball. The tools per se don’t make you social: it’s what you do with them.
Successful online marketing with social media is about your mindset, and the communications strategy you use!
10 Questions to Ask Yourself About Your Business
Do you:
- never answer questions on Twitter just to be helpful?
- forget to respond to comments on your Facebook Fan Page the same day they’re posted?
- find yourself erasing the comments that don’t make you look good?
- conveniently forget to be honest when you mess up in public?
- police every move your people make on social media?
- always – bottom line – focus on selling more stuff
- jump in with social media tools before thinking about your communication goals and desired outcomes?
- forget to measure success and failure and fail to learn from it?
- feel insecure when promoting other people’s services and products online?
- never bother to look for new and emerging channels ?
Bonus Question?
- Do you think you’ve got social media totally nailed?
So what about you?
If you’re answering YES to lots of these, you might want to think again about your online marketing and communications strategy.
Maybe you’re missing the point. Or maybe you’re not quite seeing the return on investment (ROI) you thought you’d be getting once your business went social.
Go on: take another look at your online marketing and how you’re using tools like Facebook, corporate blogs, Twitter and so on. Is your business really social ?
Image:FlickrCC
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Social media marketing worked...this time
Like me, they were ecstatic! Not just because they’re way ahead of targets but also because they decided to go with a recruitment drive based around what was a totally new approach for them: social media marketing.
The Brief
My brief was to come up with a successful alternative using social media and online marcom strategies to what had previously been a series of expensive interruptive marketing campaigns that promoted the school in the national press, national radio, and on the Stockholm T-bana (metro).
The campaign needed to deliver the best qualified 250 applicants possible.
My Approach
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One of the best ways to assess whether you’ve got enough time or energy to start using content marketing, especially if you’re a small business, is to plan a week’s work. In your head.
For the purposes of this post I’m going to do some of this work for you by illustrating how a Dog Trainer working in Stockholm might go about this, but you could swap “dog trainer” and “Stockholm” for your business and your city, no problem.
The point here is I’m trying to get you thinking about the potential ROI from blog marketing and give you an idea of how you can approach a week’s content production.
Here’s the scenario
Let’s say Anna works as a dog trainer. She wants to get more customers and establish herself as an authority on dogs in Stockholm. Her dream is to one day be “Sweden’s Dog Whisper”, interviewed on radio and TV, and really be seen as a trust agent.
Anna’s business is already working out; she has two to three clients a day, as well as a two group classes on Tuesday and Thursday evenings.
Looking at her schedule, Anna identifies that has 1-2 hours each morning between 9 and 11 which she could dedicate to building her business with blog marketing. It’s the quiet time after she gets back from dropping the kids at school and finished walking Rocky, her boisterous – but well-trained – 2 year old Labrador.
For the purposes of this post let’s assume she’s already got a blog, Facebook Fan Page, and Twitter account all branded as “Friendly Paws Dog Training” (a fictitious name I just made up!)
So here’s a suggested day’s content marketing for Anna together with her outline for a week.
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A recent report suggests 6 out of 10 Norwegian managers don’t believe social media sites like Facebook are any use to their business.
Echoing Annika Lidne’s comments yesterday that Swedish businesses could learn from how international businesses are using social media, it seems our Norwegian neighbours aren’t exactly oozing enthusiasm for social media as part of their online communications strategy.
Social media is a great way to engage people across a country
Manpower asked 750 senior Norwegian managers about their attitude towards social media.
- 21 percent thought social media might benefit branding,
- 14 percent reckoned it could help recruitment,
and only a mere 11 percent thought it would improve co-operation and communication in the workplace.
Start-ups Interested in New Media
After talking in Oslo a couple of weeks ago my impression was that there’s plenty of interest amongst small businesses and start-ups, but that businesses are unsure where to start. Several people asked me about where there were courses they could take or the kinds of books they should read.
Norway, like Sweden, has fabulous online framework and is incredibly reliant on the Net given that it can be so difficult getting around the country to meet customers face-to-face because of the landscape.
It surprises me, then, that there’s not more enthusiasm from senior managers about the way in which social media could benefit businesses.
As I’m booked to speak about online communications and how Facebook and Twitter are likely to impact businesses in the future in Oslo on June 3, I’m curious to know more about how things are in my neighbouring country.
If you have any experience or thoughts about where things are going in Norway, do get in touch either in the comments or please connect with me on Twitter.
Image:Flickr
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I wanted to go Swedish with this week’s Online Communications interview and I immediately thought of Annika Lidne, CEO of Disruptive Media.
Annika Lidne (photo: Björn Falkevik)
I first came across her when I attended one of the Disruptive Media events she organised last year.
As well as being a very knowledgeable and popular figure inside the industry, advising large companies and organisations about social media and digital business, she’s also a very passionate and eloquent speaker about social media and online communication.
Each month Annika also organises the Stockholm Social Media Club that meets for a Friday lunch and networking get-together.
The next Disruptive Media conference is on Social Cash and takes place on March 25 in Stockholm. I hope to see you there!
Jon: One of the courses you offer through Disruptive Media is “How to Create a Successful Blog”. What do you think makes a successful business blog ? And is there anything that Swedish business bloggers are doing differently that people can learn from? Examples?
Annika: Successful blogs are like any other successful content; interesting, relevant and entertaining. To be successful in a business setting, you also have to be useful, very up-to-date and on-topic. The problems many corporate bloggers face are over-selling and over-promotion. Instead of thinking what is interesting for your readers, you want to promote what is interesting for your company.
To make your company blog rise above the level of every other company blog you have to move from just writing about your company, to writing about the topic of your niche i.e. report news and user cases from the area your company works in (Well, unless you are Google. Then you can get away with being very company-centric!) .
I can’t really think of any advice gathered from Swedish business blogs, per se. It’s more the reverse: Swedish business bloggers can learn much from international business blogs on how to select a niche and promote your blog.
Jon: A lot of Swedish businesses are increasingly active on Twitter and Facebook. Some post in English, others Swedish. How would you describe how we’re using these channels in Sweden? or Stockholm? Any trends you’re seeing? Is this a possible route for Swedish businesses to make international connections ? And how do they best achieve this?
Annika: Right now, ordinary Swedes haven’t discovered Twitter. They are on Facebook. But, if you want to connect with journalists, politicians and other people involved in the media, Twitter is a good service. More and more companies and organisations are on Twitter so I think we will see an increased adaption from the general public, especially with the live Twingly channels from the Swedish semi-finals to the European Song Contest and the upcoming Swedish general election. Twitter is getting a lot of media attention right now.
I think that Twitter can be a great tool for Swedish businesses to make international contacts, especially for start-ups in the fields of IT, Web, and Media. If you’re selling industry production, however, I think it’s harder because the audience isn’t there in the same way. But to make worthwhile contacts, you have to start by reaching out through Twitter, reading that person’s or company’s blog, starting a dialogue and then perhaps meet up at a conference.
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