May 18, 2012

Best Troy Chamber BRG & Blogging Benefits

Best GRG Group in Troy Chamber of CommerceApproximately one year ago I joined the Troy Chamber of Commerce and, shortly thereafter, joined one of the Chamber's best BRG groups.  Our BRG group (BRG IV) meets on the first and third Tuesdays from 7:30AM – 8:30AM of every month on the 10th floor of the Columbia Center (in the conference room of Giarmarco, Mullins & Horton).  If you would like to come visit our group and check it out, please just comment below and I will be happy to pass along your name to our chairperson.

With my 5-minute Troy Chamber BRG presentation slated for Tuesday (2 days away) I plan to take those five minutes to demonstrate first-hand the benefits that blogging can have on your organization's lead generation efforts.  There are several benefits of blogging:

  1. Blogging not only helps position your organization as industry experts, but it also helps instill your organization with trust and credibility.
  2. By allowing comments and a dialogue on your blog, your organization is able to listen, engage and adapt the message to your clients and prospects.
  3. Blogs can help your organization rank well with search engines (think Google) because, with each post, you are creating relevant and unique content.  With a coordinated strategy in place, blogging can be one of the most effective ways to ultimately help your organization rank well for the keywords that are relevant to your business.

Example of Optimizing Keywords in a Blog Post

In this particular post, I am — at least in part — optimizing for the keyword phrase, "Best Troy Chamber BRG."  My guess is that shortly after publishing this post (perhaps even a couple of hours later) if you were to go to Google and type in the keyword phrase "Best Troy Chamber BRG" into the Google search box, this blog post will achieve a page 1 Google ranking.

While it is true that very few people will actually type that search phrase into Google, similar strategies will work for more popular phrases — and for phrases that are more relevant to your business.  That's why keyword research and developing an overarching strategy is so crucial for success.  Please let me know if I can be of assistance in helping you or your organization create a blog and develop a strategy for your organization that will yield lead-generation success.

For those of you in Troy's best BRG Group, I will see you on Tuesday morning.  For all others, happy blogging!

Marketing Resolutions for 2012 for the Business Owner

With 2012 but a few days away – and with the marketing landscape drastically different than from even one year ago — we wanted to create a list of ideas that can help jump-start your marketing in the New Year.   This list isn’t intended to be exhaustive; it is meant to get your creative juices flowing.  It does require time – and it does require a coordinated strategy.  If executed appropriately, however,  it can yield significant results.

If we can be of any help in this effort, please let us know.  

Without further ado, and, in no particular order:

  • Create a Google Plus brand (business) page
  • Develop a content strategy (blue-print)
  • Incorporate QR codes into your offline marketing collateral
  • Optimize your website for smartphones & tablets so that the user experience on such devices remains positive
  • Create a corporate blog – the cornerstone of any digital marketing strategy – and post regularly
  • Implement a social media strategy – and policy
  • Brand your YouTube Channel
  • Schedule social media training for you and your team so that your organization can effectively enhance branding & lead generation efforts with social media
  • Design campaign-specific landing pages on your website where you can convert your visitors into customers
  • Create a Facebook landing (welcome) tab
  • Initiate a process to measure phone calls, emails and form submissions
  • Run a Google Adwords campaign
  • Hyper-target your target audience with Facebook ads
  • Optimize your website for keywords that would be searched on Google by your prospects
  • Create a video and syndicate it to video-sharing sites
  • Optimize your Google Places listing by submitting videos, photos and encouraging reviews
  • Consistently tweet
  • Utilize 3rd party apps such as Hootsuite, CoTweet and Tweet Deck to increase social media efficiency
  • Link your Twitter Account to LinkedIn
  • Create a Mobile App for your Business
  • Integrate social media into your website (displaying latest tweets, Facebook stream, etc.)
  • Display call-to-actions on all pages of your website
  • Execute email campaigns targeted to clients, prospects and those with whom you network
  • Run focused, marketing campaigns (monthly, quarterly) and make sure all social media efforts revolve around that campaign
  • Write press releases and syndicate them
  • Remarket
  • Participate in LinkedIn Groups and answer questions to increase your trust & credibility
  • Offer Foursquare specials (for you business-to-consumer, brick-and-mortar businesses)
  • Reduce or significantly decrease your dependence on Yellow Page advertising
  • Monitor your brand, products and competition online with Google Alerts or other monitoring sites
  • Respond to comments made by your fans & followers – and engage with them

These are just a sampling of ideas.  If you have additional thoughts, please comment below.

Blogging Training: Trust, Credibility & Engagement

A blogging strategy is typically the cornerstone of any successful digital marketing plan.  It's a strategy that organizations can effectively employ to generate leads and build trust, credibility and engagement with clients and prospects.  Blogging is also an effective way to add relevant and meaningful content to your website.

The following video illustrates the value of blogging from a business perspective.  If your organization isn't fully incorporating a blogging strategy into an overarching digital marketing plan — or you are not sure exactly how to move forward — please schedule blogging training today.

Blogging to Build a Reputation

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-r-P4amnQ7U[/youtube]

Blogs provide the opportunity to market, inform, demonstrate and elicit feedback from your customers / readers. It’s a known fact  that keeping your website "fresh" encourages repeat web visits.  Having a blog on your website is a great way to add content consistently and keep your site fresh – as well as to establish yourself as an expert, thought-leader and credible resource. Other reasons to start blogging include:

  1. It helps your SEO (Google loves new content)
  2. You can engage and understand your customers better.
  3. You are seen as an expert in your field.
  4. Great content gets people a reason to keep coming back to your site.
  5. Blogs are a much more trusted source than companies press releases and official company PR.
  6. It moves customers to a conversion point of trusting and believing enough to buy.

Having a blog is just another way to increase your online branding & credibility with your clients & prospects and take your digital marketing strategy to the next level.

5 Reasons your Company Should Have a Blog

Blogging(1) Give your Company & Brand a Personality Writing a blog allows one to express the personality behind your company and brand.  Your prospects and customers ultimately need to feel comfortable with you and your company if they are going to give you their business.  Blogging allows you to showcase that you are knowledgeable in your industry and you are more than just a corporate brand; you are "real" people.

(2) Easy Distribution At its very core, a blog is a website.  As such, the content contained within them is easily distributed, easily shared and easily referenced by others.  If you provide relevant content and promote your company blog well, your blog will likely be picked up by others and mentioned on other blogs as well. This all contributes to building your company brand.

(3) More Effective than your Email Newsletter Blogs are essentially more easily edited versions of a newsletter.  You can update your company blog on the fly, any time you need to and virtually anywhere you have a connection to the Internet (computer or mobile device).  With a newsletter, on the other hand, you are limited in your updating capabilities once you have distributed that newsletter to your database.  So if you are looking to have an easy way to give your audience information in a frequent manner, blogging is the ideal solution.

(4) Great Place for Feedback & Engagement Like many other social media tools, blogs provide the opportunity for comments and feedback.  It is another great way to find out how your company is doing and connect with your audience / customers.

(5) SEO Benefits When written strategically, blogs can improve your organic (non-paid) rankings on search engines, and in today’s world, we all know how important it is to be visible online.  If you are going to use a blog platform external of your company website, be sure your posts provides links back to your site, so it can also benefit from an SEO perspective.