Having a content strategy is important for businesses because it provides a plan for using their website and the Internet to reach business goals. Most businesses will have goals around increasing sales, improving customer loyalty and brand reputation, and decreasing customer support costs. These can all be accomplished online and on your company’s website and having a good content strategy will help. First step is to consider the questions from yesterday’s post. Once you’re ready to proceed, here’s an example how you might implement a content strategy:
Write a blog
Blogs are a great way to easily post content. Your blog content should be information that is useful and interesting to your customers. Set up a regular posting schedule (at least once per week is ideal) and encourage participation from your readers.
- Business Blogging Startup Guide
- Business Blogging – What to Write
- 11 Tips for Getting Readers to Your Business Blog
Microblog
Twitter is an easy way to post thoughts throughout the day and to connect with others in your industry and related industry. Twitter still may have small acceptance in certain industries, but it is growing rapidly and it certainly can’t hurt to start now. Keep in mind that Twitters should be mostly about giving useful information and linking to other sites, not about broadcasting press releases.
- Twittering for Business Startup Guide
- To Twitter or Not To Twitter
- Top Tools for Business Twittering
Share helpful links
Join a social bookmarking site such as Delicious and use it to bookmark pages that are interesting to your customers. Using your RSS feed from Delicious you can have these links automatically show up on your blog and on Twitter (check out Twitterfeed).
Record Video
Since most Internet users are on fast Internet connections these days, they like seeing video (even watching their favorite tv shows and movies online). Video is a great way to put a face to your business and can be helpful for demonstrating helpful techniques to your customers. Videos can be posted to your blog and/or website and shared via various video sharing sites.
Get Social
Find social networks in your industry, set up a profile, and have helpful conversations with people there. Many social networks will also allow you to post content from outside using RSS so you may be able to have your blog, twitter, and link content appear on the social network automatically. Remember not to just broadcast information about your business – connect with people and be helpful.
(photo by Marshall Flickman @ Flickr CC)Technorati Tags: content, customer-centric,content strategy, strategy, internet marketing, internet business strategy
You’ve heard it before – content is king. Well without regularly updated useful content your business website will stagnate. It’s the end of the year and a good time to reflect on how you’re using your website and the Internet to further your business goals. Take a few minutes to think about how you can use content to help your customers and further your goals. The good news is that content strategy can be cheap (in dollars) to implement and can provide excellent returns on investment (helping you reach your goals). Here are some questions to consider in your content strategy:
Twitter has become fairly popular over the last year and is a powerful tool for communicating with your customers. However, as with most business decisions, you should consider some things before you make your decision: