Sarah Fowler

There are a couple basics every blog should have; most related to either making your site easier for your customers to find (whether they know they are looking for you or not) or making your content easier to share.

You’ve heard a lot about social media. You know you should get involved. You’re just not sure you have time/not sure you know how/not sure you want to jump in just yet. That’s fine (for now). What do you do now, then? Ignore the conversation? Pretend no one is mentioning your brand because you’re not there? No way!

It’s very common for me to have a conversation with a potential client that starts something like this:
“I know I should be on social media; I keep hearing that. But I don’t get it. What can I use it for?”
Let’s start with how you do business already– there’s no need to totally reinvent the wheel.

“Yeah, I know I should be on social media. But what would I use it for?”
“I don’t have a lot of time to devote to this, but I want to jump in. How can I start?”
“I’m not ready to set up a profile anywhere. Is there a way for me to dip a toe in another way?”

Ted’s online marketing strategy is pretty simple. They started with a solid, easy-to-navigate website; added email, then Facebook. It is not an inordinately expensive campaign, nor do the Ted’s staff have much direct interaction with fans (such as Twitter or back-and-forth on Facebook). They’ve just set up a forum for people to share good things, and given away a few (in the long run, also fairly inexpensive) incentives along the way to get more people involved.

In short, the same advice applies to building an online community as it does to any marketing venture: know your audience, and give them what they want before they even know they’re looking for it.

If you are not active in social media (especially Twitter), you are not set up to control your own message through a crisis. That’s a dangerous place to be.

Say you’re a small- or micro business and you want to “start doing some PR”. Where do you start? Do you hire a PR agency? Maybe, but first you should try doing a few things yourself.

The first thing companies often want to do to “jump in” to social media is start a company blog. They put together a nice-looking page, build a sidebar of links to their site (ahem, perhaps try linking to other sites too), and write a few helpful posts. Within a few weeks, I usually hear ‘Why [...]

This is a good concept to apply to all your marketing: interruptive selling can put a bad taste in the mouths of potential customers, but if you make information easy to find (through SEO, a good website, and a social media presence), people who are ready to buy will come right to you.