Trying to explain WHAT content marketing is, let alone how it can benefit a business, can be a challenging endeavor.

Courtesy of ContentPLUS

Most business minds, from CEOs to marketing managers, are stuck in the mindset that all marketing should directly generate leads/sales, or at least directly impact your bottom line…especially when it comes to online advertising.  They’re hesitant to spend money on things that are more for branding then direct revenue generation.

At least, this has been true of smaller businesses in my experience.  Most big brands understand the importance of branding – after all, it’s usually one of the ways they became a “big name” in the first place.

Content marketing is all about building a name for yourself online, spreading your brand, and become an internet superstar in online communities.

The Fact Of The Matter Is…

I think anyone who knows anything about internet marketing can agree on two facts:

1. With very few exceptions, just about every business (both b2b and b2c) can benefit in some way from internet marketing.  In fact, businesses who haven’t made an effort to include online advertising in their marketing budget are cutting themselves off at the knees.
2. There’s already a TON of content on the web – and most of it isn’t very good.  Gone are the days where new content you post gets noticed easily because now there’s just too much of it.  Your content has to offer something pretty spectacular to get noticed.

Content marketing is about creating an awesome piece of content, whether a whitepaper, viral blog post, infographic, contest, or video, and promoting it online via social sharing and blogger outreach.  It can be useful content chock full of stats, something comical to make people laugh, something heart-warming to get their attention, or some tool that fulfills a need.

It’s most often used as both a branding and SEO tool to improve your visibility online.  (There are other definitions of content marketing, but for now the focus is on viral content marketing).

What businesses need to understand is that the audience you’re creating viral content for is NOT necessarily your segment of prospective customers.  They may be a secondary target, but not the primary.

The main audiences of most viral content are the communities of people on the web who love to spread, share, link to, and talk about cool content pieces, videos, apps, programs, etc.  These are the social media power users, the shareaholics, and the “linkerati” as our friends over at SEOMoz call them.

Your prospective customer base is your secondary audience – anyone who might need your products or services, or could potentially become a strategic business relationship.  However, if you’re in a smaller industry, there are not always easily identifiable, prominent web communities for your industry to which you can promote your content.

Occasionally, rarely, in the right industry with the right content piece, they do overlap…and when that happens, whoever created and promoted the content gets lifelong bragging rights!

So What Is Content Marketing Good For?

Just because a piece of content that’s gone viral doesn’t generate leads or sales on your website does NOT make it a wasted venture.  Instead, the success of a content piece should be measured in:

• The number of visitors your content piece receives, and whether a traffic spike is evident in your site analytics during the implementation and promotion of the piece.
• The number of backlinks the page on which your content piece is posted receives.
• The number of Shares, Likes, Pins, Tweets, etc. your content piece ends up with.
• Whether your website eventually starts ranking for keywords related to your content.
• Any major media mentions you receive thanks to your amazing content.

There are other ways to measure the success of your content marketing campaign – these are simply the most obvious.

So what’s in it for your business?  Well, your business and your website can benefit in several ways from content marketing:

1. The SEO effect – viral content tends to generate tons of social mentions (increasing your site’s “social signal authority” to the search engines) and backlinks to help increase your organic rankings.
2. The traffic effect – as the content spreads, people are visiting your site on a regular basis, increasing your direct, referral, and organic traffic.
3. The branding effect – your brand becomes a more famous name online as people notice your content and start remarking on it, helping to build you into a household name.
4. The sales effect – as the above effects take hold over time, you’ll see an increase in relevant traffic to your site, which typically equals more leads or sales for your company!

I was going to end the post with one or two awesome infographics about content marketing – but  last year, Joe Pulizzi over at ContentMarketingInstitute.com already put together a post compiling some of the best content marketing infographics on the planet (his words, not mine).

About the Guest Blogger: Bob Bentz is president of Advanced Telecom Services with offices in Philadelphia, Toronto, London, and Prague.  Bob helps companies make more sales through mobile marketing enhancements.  He sent 3879 text messages last month, just slightly more than the average teenage girl.

Going Mobile

Americans are on the go more than ever.

And, that means that they are searching for your products via the one medium that is always with them — their mobile phone.

In fact, according to Pew, 17% of all internet searches now come from the mobile phone and not the traditional desktop computer.

Do I Need a Mobile Website?

I always tell people to use the “thumb test” when considering whether they need a mobile website or not. If you can navigate your desktop website on your cell phone with your thumb only, then you will know what it’s like for a man with large fingers, or an older person with declining eye site, to navigate your site on a mobile phone.

In most cases you will find that a traditional desktop site simply doesn’t provide a good user experience for cell phone access. Mobile users are often on the go and not near a high speed internet connection so expect their load times to be slower. With 57% of visitors saying they will tune out if your site doesn’t load within 3 seconds, you need a lighter site that will load quickly.

Best URL’s for Mobile Search

The best way to optimize for a mobile website is to use the same URL on the mobile site as the desktop site. This way, you don’t have to do anything differently and you benefit from all of the optimizing that you’ve already done for the desktop site.

If you can’t go with the same domain, then it’s best to use the m.domain.com. This URL structure doesn’t provide any additional built-in SEO benefit, but it has become the industry standard as opposed to the original thinking that the .mobi suffix would become the mobile standard.

But, the best strategy is actually to use device detection to determine whether the user is coming in from a mobile device or not. Then, use canonicals so that your desktop site shows up in search results regardless of what device the consumer is using. When the visitor clicks on the desktop search result, the device detection will take them to either the mobile or desktop site depending on whether the user is on his cell phone or not.

Don’t Forget About Tablet Users

With over 75 million Americans owning tablets, this is clearly not a market that you can ignore. And, with the larger screen of a tablet, the customer may be on a wireless device, but want to use the greater content available from the desktop site. That’s why it’s important to always have a link back to the busier desktop site on the mobile site as well.

A Mobile Customer is Your Most Valuable Customer

Studies show that the mobile searcher is actually closer to making a buying decision than the desktop searcher. 85% of restaurant searchers, for example, convert to making a purchase. Hence, the mobile searcher is more likely to be a buyer now while the desktop searcher is more likely to be gathering information.

That makes mobile searcher the perfect storm of just the right searcher at just the right time.

This is Part 3 of a 3-part series giving practical, easy-to-implement advice to small B2C businesses on how they can use Facebook to promote their business, increase customer satisfaction, and gain a whole new customer base.

Check out Parts 1 and 2:
Part 1: Creating Your Facebook Business Page
Part 2: Practical Tips for Updating Your Facebook Page

Beginner’s Guide to Promoting Your Facebook Fan Page

Comprehensive promotional campaigns for Facebook are probably best left to the professionals (like us!) but there are some fairly easy things you can do yourself to start promo

ting your Facebook page. The biggest goal is to attract more fans and more “Likes” to your page – when someone “likes” your page, you’re showing up in their news feed for all their friends and acquaintances to see!

Get started with promoting your page by:

• Adding the link and Facebook “Like Box” to your website in a prominent place (preferably every page if possible).
• “Like” your own page – and get all your employees too as well – this helps you reach out to each person’s “Facebook sphere of influence” and may result in more “likes” from their friends and acquaintances.
• Incorporate your Facebook URL into marketing materials like business cards, brochures, Power Points, etc.
• Add a link to your Facebook in your email signature and any other social profiles you have (such as LinkedIn).
• Add your Facebook link or URL to your digital media, like press releases, news articles, and videos.
• Tag other popular Facebook pages in your updates (where relevant) using the @ symbol – their fans may notice and give you cross-traffic.
• Share the love by “liking” local businesses – many will “like” you back. This includes any of your vendors, distributors, service providers, etc.
• Hit up your own sphere of influence (relatives, friends, business associates, etc.) and get them to “like” your page. (Use sparingly – your don’t want to bug them TOO often).
• Write a blog post about your Facebook page and how it benefits customers and prospects.
• Invest in Facebook ads – Facebook’s PPC option is still relatively inexpensive and rather easy to set up once you’re familiar with it.

It’s worth mentioning that Facebook WANTS you to use them to promote your business – which is why they continue to add more functionality to make that possible. You can take advantage of their “Facebook Offer” app to attract customers, add custom-designed apps and pages to better “brand” your page. This makes it more engaging, which, in turn, makes the promotion of it easier.

By implementing more comprehensive Facebook marketing campaigns, you can promote your company, your website, and your Facebook page – all at the same time.

For example, a custom Facebook page can be designed to promote a contest you’rerunning. You can incorporate contest details and the entry form right on your Facebook page – every entry is a new lead or prospect for your business!

Using a combination of Facebook advertising, social media promotion, and blogger outreach, there’s no telling how much new traffic you can drive to both your website and Facebook page!

Are You Convinced Yet?

Facebook isn’t going anywhere. And even if it was, there would soon be something similar to replace it – after all, your future customers have grown up on this stuff – so you’d better be there when they’re searching for something you can provide!

It really isn’t that hard to start using Facebook regularly if you have a reliable, diligent employee who is willing to learn, can handle the responsibility, and understands that the overall goal is to engage and attract customers and prospects.

Honestly, who wouldn’t want to get paid to sit on Facebook for a couple hours a week?

If you have any comments or questions, please comment below and we’ll reply ASAP!

If you missed Parts 1 & 2, check ‘em out!
Part 1: Creating Your Facebook Business Page
Part 2: Practical Tips for Updating Your Facebook Page

*This is part 1 of a 3-part series giving practical, easy-to-implement advice to small B2C businesses on how they can use Facebook to promote their business, increase customer satisfaction, and gain a whole new customer base.*

Keep an eye for Part 3 next week:

Part 1: Creating Your Facebook Business Page
Part 2: Practical Tips for Updating Your Facebook Page
Part 3: Easy Ways to Promote Your Facebook Page

Updating Your Business Page: Easy Content Ideas

The most challenging part of using Facebook for most businesses is coming up with regular updates. The best way to gain fans and keep visitors engaged is to ensure your page is updated regularly.

Ideally, shoot for 2-3 updates per day, but even 1 per day is better than nothing. It’s often easiest to incorporate time into your morning and lunchtime routine to update Facebook. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t get much interaction at first – building your fan base is a slow process if you don’t have time and money to invest in heavy-duty marketing.

But coming up with content ideas won’t be as challenging as you think, especially once you get used to it. Not everything should be about your business. It’s important to mix fun and useful information into the mix, not just ads for your businesses or services. A completely self-serving business page is simply boring!

Here are a few content ideas that work for just about any B2C industry – though it’s important to use some sparingly (particularly self-promoting updates):

• Product or service updates, info or promotions
• Company news about events or conferences
• Specific tips or info that prospective customers would find interesting
• Employee spotlights for birthdays, big milestones, etc.
• Customer testimonials or reviews
• Limited time “offers” specifically for Facebook fans
• Links to cool or informational articles or infographics you’ve read or videos you’ve watched
• Completely random facts about your general industry
• Completely random facts about things that happen on a particular date (a holiday, a celebrity birthday, date of an invention, etc.)
• Trivia questions or polls (can be related to your industry, but doesn’t always have to be)
• Links to new content on your website (such as blog posts)
• Funny or random quotes (ex: “things heard around the office”)

This list alone is enough to keep you swimming in plenty of content for your page. It may even be useful to plan out a “schedule” so whoever is in charge of the page has as much direction as possible.

Useful Tip: Occasionally posting things about celebrities and relating it back to your industry can help in getting more people to pay attention to you in their news feed. Yes, it’s cliché, but celebrity still sells!

For example:

• A contracting/remodeling company could post about celebrity bathrooms
• A clothing retailer could post examples of ugly celeb fashions
• Retailers of baby-related products can post cute celeb babies
• Cell phone providers can post info about celeb cell phone sightings
• Real estate or building industries can talk about celebrity homes for sale

Again, you don’t want to over-saturate your Timeline with the same type of info over and over again – a good mixture is what it takes to get people interested and coming back for more.

Hubspot has a pretty useful article you can check out as well.

Stay tuned for the last part of the series next week:
Part 3: Easy Ways to Promote Your Facebook Page

*This is part 1 of a 3-part series giving practical, easy-to-implement advice to small B2C businesses on how they can use Facebook to promote their business, increase customer satisfaction, and gain a whole new customer base.*

Keep an eye for Parts 2 and 3 in the coming weeks:

Part 1: Creating Your Facebook Business Page
Part 2: Practical Tips for Updating Your Facebook Page
Part 3: Easy Ways to Promote Your Facebook Page

Facebook for Small Businesses

By now, most B2C businesses realize that Facebook CAN benefit their business in several ways by:

• Spreading brand awareness outside the typical sphere
• Engaging current customers to increase customer satisfaction
• Attracting new customers by leveraging current customers’ social spheres
• Increasing social media usage, which has positive effects on SEO and rankings
• Improving business by actively listening to what customers have to say

You can argue that your target audience is too “old” to be using Facebook and social media – and in some cases I may not disagree. But I can guarantee that your “future” customers WILL be social media and Facebook addicts – today’s teens are tomorrow’s customers – so you may as well start figuring out this whole Facebook thing before it’s too late.

Besides, this series isn’t an argument on WHY you should Facebook, but rather on how smaller local B2C businesses can slowly start incorporating Facebook into their everyday marketing and branding tasks.

Facebook for Business 101: 3 Practical Tips for Getting Started

I promise – using Facebook for your company isn’t as overwhelming as it seems. This series lays out 3 easy, practical Facebook tips to get you started.

1. Creating Your Page & Choosing Your “Social Media Manager”
To create a business page, you have to have a regular Facebook account. Your best bet is to set up a new Facebook account rather than using an existing employee’s account – after all, employees can come and go.

It’s also important to choose 1-2 employees who will be responsible for the page. This person will need a couple hours a week to dedicate to maintaining the page. Someone in marketing, or even a receptionist/admin position would work fine. Typically, someone who is more tech-savvy and already engaged with Facebook will have an easier time of it. College interns (if you ever take them on) are also ideal for this, as long as you give them some strict guidelines on what they can post.

Facebook makes it fairly simple to create your business page – you can review their help section here. The Hubspot Blog also has a useful infographic about the newer Facebook Business Page Timeline.

A few highlights to keep in mind:

• Don’t forget to set a more user-friendly URL for your page at Facebook.com/username (when logged into your account). Making is similar to your website address is your best bet.
• Make sure your cover photo and profile picture are good quality and legible at the size Facebook sets. Be as creative with your cover photo as you can without breaking Facebook’s rules.
• Be sure to include correct contact and location information for your business.
• Get some pictures in an album to flesh out the content of your business page. Company parties are always fun, but examples of your products or work make great “testimonials” that speak for themselves.

Stay tuned for Parts 2 and 3 in the next 2 weeks:
Part 2: Practical Tips for Updating Your Facebook Page
Part 3: Easy Ways to Promote Your Facebook Page