Posts Tagged ‘content marketing’

4 Types of Online Content to Use for Marketing Your Business

Monday, November 7th, 2011

Content Marketing can be extremely beneficial for your business. Content Marketing is the process of creating online content as a way to educate your customers and prospects, increase your website traffic, and engage your online community. With that said, when most business owners think “online content” they only think about blog articles and e-mail newsletters. Blog marketing and e-mail marketing are two very effective marketing tactics, but they are only 1 of 4 different types of online content.

Written (typed) Online Content

Content Marketing ideasThe most popular type of online content, which we alluded to above, is written online content. Some examples of written content are blog articles, e-mail newsletters, white papers, and social media updates. The biggest advantage to creating written content is SEO. By creating blog articles you can insert keywords that are relevant to your business. Those articles then become indexed on search engines like Google and Bing. When your target audience is using those keywords to search for information your site will pop up. Here at Catalyst we highly recommend that all small businesses use blogging and other written online content to promote your business.

Video-based Online Content

Video content is another widely used tactic under a Content Marketing strategy. With sites like YouTube and technologies like iPad making it easier (and cheaper) than ever before to produce online videos for your business, small business owners can now compete with the big guys in terms of creating video-based content for your business. Small businesses should can use video marketing to create commercials for your small business, create instructional videos for products and services, produce animated videos with xtranormal.com, etc.

Audio-based Online Content

A third type of online content is audio-based content. Many business owners don’t think about audio-based content when they are creating their online marketing plan. Audio-based online content can come together as:

  • Podcasts
  • Webinars
  • Music or company jingles
  • Online presentations (think PowerPoint with audio)
  • Host a BlogTalkRadio.com Show

Audio-based content is usually a little easier to produce than online video, but still packs a large punch when it comes to achieving your online marketing goals.

Image-based Online Content

Online content that almost every business owner uses, but not usually as part of a defined marketing tactic, is image-based online content. Images are a great way to give customers and prospects a glimpse inside your business. Small Business owners should use imagery on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc. to tell a story about their products, services, industry, or even customers.

People love looking at pictures and business owners should capitalize on that by using imagery to share information with their online community. Simply keep a camera out at your business and instruct your employees to take pictures whenever they see a good opportunity. Be sure if you’re taking pictures of customers that you get their permission to use them.

Content Marketing for Your Small Business

As 2012 approaches many of you will begin to craft a new marketing plan for your business. Be sure to include marketing tactics that leverage ALL FOUR types of online content, as each offers distinct benefits to your small business.

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Posted in Online Marketing | No Comments »

Finding Sourcing Content for Your Small Business

Tuesday, March 29th, 2011

The backbone of an effective social media campaign is content marketing. Content Marketing is simply using content to educate your target audience about your products, services, industry, events, etc. as a way to spark conversations and build relationships. To elaborate, the content you create or promote should be viewed as relevant and of value to your audience, not just the classic “save 30% on your next purchase” advertisement.  Online content used to engage a customer and provoke conversation can be in the form of video, audio, written, imagery, etc.

All small businesses today can, and should, take advantage of content marketing.  Below are just a few reasons why your business should be utilizing content marketing.  These statistics, sourced from an Arik Hanson, give a glimpse at how fast the online audience is growing.

  • More than 250 million people use Facebook Connect every month. (Facebook)
  • Between April 2010 and January 2011, Twitter has gained 40 million users and a 62 percent increase in mobile use of the platform
  • The average American Internet user watches 30 minutes of video online per day [40 percent increase over 2009]
  • Social networking site usage grew 88 percent among Internet users aged 55-64 between April 2009 and May 2010

With stats like those above, most of you have probably decided that content marketing can do wonders for your small business.  But where do you get ideas for this content?  There are two main approaches for delivering content to your audience. As discussed in previous Catalyst articles “Content Marketing featuring Lil Wayne” and “Small Business Uses paper.li For Content Marketing”, the first method is for you to create online content for your small business.

Content Marketing for Small Business

The second method is finding great content from other respected individuals/businesses in your industry and sharing their content with your audience.  By doing this you’re accomplishing two things.  First, you’re building a relationship with the source whom you pulled the content from, as sharing their content should be seen as a valuable gesture by you (small business owner), thus they are likely to reach out to you to say ‘thank you’ and the relationship-building process starts. Secondly, you’re getting relevant (to your products/services/industry and to your target audience’s interests) and valuable content in front of your target audience. You can then use that content to engage your audience in discussions.  The benefit over time is that you can use other people’s content to build relationships with your customers & prospects, which should in turn generate new & continued sales for your small business.

Finding sources of content relevant to your audience can be both challenging and time consuming.  Fortunately, there are new tools being developed daily to assist you with this.  From Tweet filtering/aggregating programs, such as Mass Relevance’s TweetRiver, to blog search engines, finding good information on almost any topic is becoming easier.  A great, easy-to-use website we came across which can be used to find recent articles on any subject is Topix.com.  This site allows the user to search online news and blogs for any topic they choose.  The user is given the options to enter keywords and source details (blog vs. news article, specific website domains, etc.).  Another valuable feature is that one can restrict the search to a specific geographic location.  This is especially useful if you are looking for relative content specific to your town or city.  After the search criteria are defined, a list of all matching blogs/articles is listed in chronological order.

Employing an effective content marketing campaign for your business will engage your current and potential customers like never before.  However, how efficiently your content is obtained plays a big part in your business’s overall social media costs.  By using the tools and methods described in this article, your content marketing time and capital commitments can be greatly reduced, resulting in higher profit margins. How efficient and effective is your content marketing campaign?

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Posted in Small Business | 2 Comments »

How to Create an Online Daily Newspaper for Your Small Business

Thursday, February 3rd, 2011

Last week we wrote an article explaining the benefits of using paper.li for small business. What we did not cover was how to create a paper.li newspaper. This article is going to walk you through how you to go about creating an online daily newspaper for your small business. It’s actually a very intuitive process that shouldn’t take you more than a few minutes to complete. The tough part isn’t creating the paper.li newspaper, it’s being consistent in your promotion of your online daily newspaper. With that said, we can’t put the cart before the horse, so let’s walk through how to setup your paper.li newspaper.

Create a paper.li Newspaper – The Basics

Paper.li allows you to sign-in with your Facebook OR Twitter account. Once signed in you can create up to 10 unique online newspapers for free. The first difficult decision comes in deciding what to make your paper.li newspaper about. Hopefully you took time to create a plan for this Marketing Tactic, in which case you already know what you want your newspaper to be about. If not, a quick tip for creating a paper.li newspaper is to set it up around a content topic that’s relevant to your business; a topic that will pull in numerous quality articles & videos which your customers and prospects will find valuable.

Once you’ve signed-in and determined what topic your newspaper will revolve around you can click the ‘create a newspaper’ link in the top right corner of paper.li. You will then be presented with 5 options for creating your paper.li online daily newspaper.

How to create a paper.li newspaper

Create an Online Daily Newspaper with your Twitter account

The first option is to create a very generic online daily newspaper by sifting through your tweets AND all of the tweets from EVERYONE you’re following within the past 24 hours to come up with “newspaper stories” for your next edition. We do not recommend this option for small business owners as you are unable to truly create a topic-specific newspaper since many people tweet about different topics. With that said, if you go with this option, it is easy to setup. If you logged-in to paper.li with your Twitter account then you need only click “Create” under the ‘…of your Twitter account’ heading and you’re all set. If you want to create the online newspaper using another Twitter account then you can simply input the Twitter handle and click ‘Create’.

Create an Online Daily Newspaper with a Twitter #Hashtag

The “…of a Twitter #tag” option is recommended for small business owners. A paper.li daily newspaper created from a Twitter #Hashtag can be topic-specific. As mentioned above, you already created a plan for using paper.li, which means you have a topic in mind. If your paper.li newspaper topic revolves around “sustainable products” then your hashtag might be #sustainable or #sustainability. If you’re an organic bakery then you may want to create an online daily newspaper with a Twitter hashtag of #Organic #Baking. Although the algorithms used by paper.li are not 100% known, the system has a process for selecting tweets containing your specific hashtag. A newspaper is created based on the stories collected within the past 24 hours. It’s brilliant, isn’t it?

Create an Online Daily Newspaper with a Twitter List

Creating an online daily newspaper with a Twitter List is another great option for small business owners. The “…of a Twitter @list” option allows small business owners to create an online daily newspaper from any of the links shared in the past 24 hours from ANYONE on the Twitter List that you input into the paper.li system. You simply enter the @username/list-name and click ‘Create’. If you don’t already have a Twitter List setup, then set one up specifically for your online daily newspaper. In fact, that is recommended. This option is one of the best for small businesses. Find all of the great people on Twitter who are tweeting about your topic, put them on your paper.li Twitter List (you can even make it private if you’d like), and create your online daily newspaper. That’s it. It’s really that easy.

Create a Custom Online Daily Newspaper

The number 1 best paper.li option for small business is to create a CUSTOM online daily newspaper. By taking a few extra minutes to use the “Custom paper” option, small business owners can create a hyper-relevant online daily newspaper. Being that you only have to set it up once, it’s well worth the extra 2 minutes it’s going to take to create a custom paper.li newspaper.

Within the custom paper.li option you can create a title for your newspaper, set the focus through integrated search functions, setup a Twitter list, and even customize the language that the paper.li is displayed in. The custom option basically combines some of the options above, and then adds even more custom features. Setting up a title and selecting a language are pretty self explanatory. Be sure to select a title that will capture your audience’s attention. We have already discussed how to integrate a Twitter List into your paper.li newspaper, so lets focus on the search customization feature.

Here’s how paper.li describes it, “You can query Twitter with a more complex search term than just a #tag (e.g. find all the tweets that talk about climate AND carbon but NOT solar = climate carbon -solar).” Take a second and re-read that… It took a minute to grasp how it’s handled, but eventually it made sense.

Create a custom paper.li newspaper

Small business owners can create a hyper-relevant online daily newspaper through the paper.li “Paper Focus” feature. If you’re an auto repair shop then your “Paper Focus” search query might be “#car repair”, which would pull in articles tweeted in the past 24 hours from anyone on your Twitter list who used the hashtag #car and word “repair” in a tweet. If you’re a local retail clothing store who’s topic is organic clothing then your search query might be, “organic clothing -Etsy”, which wold pull in tweets from anyone on your Twitter List who used the words “organic” and “clothing” in their tweet. If the word “Etsy” appears in their tweet then it will not make it into your publication. You may have numerous reasons why you don’t want to include links containing specific words. The point is that you come up with an unique search query for your paper.li newspaper.

These are just examples, but hopefully you can see how taking the time to create your custom online daily newspaper makes sense for your small business.

Create an Online Daily Newspaper with Facebook

The final paper.li option is to create an online daily newspaper with Facebook. At this point, the “Facebook paper” option is not highly recommended for small business owners. Although it allows you to customize the title and language of your online daily newspaper, as well as, provides you with the ability to control the “Paper Focus” through a Facebook search query, it searches ALL FACEBOOK POSTS every 24 hours to find your “newspaper stories”. You cannot customize WHO to pull links from, like you can with the Twitter Lists and Custom options. Facebook has it’s advantages, but for small business owners we prefer the hyper-relevant custom newspaper to a “Facebook paper”.

What paper.li Option Will You Use?

Hopefully this article has helped you learn how to create an online daily newspaper using paper.li. With that said, there are a number of options for you to choose from when it comes to how you’re going to setup your online newspaper. From the list above, what do you think makes the most sense for your small business?

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Posted in Online Marketing | 7 Comments »

Small Business Uses paper.li For Content Marketing

Tuesday, January 25th, 2011

Are you looking to implement Content Marketing strategies for your small business, but just can’t find the time to blog more than a few times each month? If you’re looking for innovative ways to compile & share relevant content with customers and prospects, you should consider creating an online Daily Newspaper for your small business. Paper.li is a new online tool that allows anyone to create their very own online daily newspaper about any topic. Small business owners can leverage paper.li to create an online daily newspaper about a topic relevant to your business. You can then distribute it to your customers and prospects via Twitter and Facebook.

How Does paper.li Work?

According to their website, “Paper.li organizes links shared on Twitter and Facebook into an easy to read newspaper-style format.” Paper.li allows users to create their own newspaper through tweets or Facebook links. You can choose from a number of content collection options within the paper.li system. Depending which option you choose, paper.li looks for tweets/Facebook posts with links attached, and then organizes the content into a newspaper format automatically. The tweet content is used as the title of each “newspaper article” and the link is attached to the title to allow readers to easily link out to the story. Another great touch is that any images used within the article that’s being linked to will be used next to the “newspaper story”. Using paper.li provides small business with a tool to spread relevant content from others to your customers and prospects in a way that’s very elegant and consistent.

Paper.li Promotions

On a daily basis a new paper.li newspaper is created around your topic. You can set the system to tweet your online daily newspaper out automatically AND/OR you can log-in to paper.li, grab your newspaper URL, and promote it on all of your social networks. You can also embed your online daily newspaper into your blog or website.

Benefits to Creating an Online Daily Newspaper for Small Business

Paper.li is an innovative new online tool. Paper.li provides numerous benefits to small business owners who are looking to use Content Marketing to promote your small business. A few of the many benefits of creating an online daily newspaper for your small business are as follows:

  • Set your online daily newspaper up once and it updates automatically every 24 hours – You need only promote it daily (and that can even be done for you on Twitter)

  • Builds relationships with the people who you pull content from for your online daily newspaper – They appreciate you getting their content in front of your customers & prospects

  • Provides consistent and valuable information about a topic relevant to your small business to your customers and prospects

  • Paper.li is FREE (for up to 10 newspapers – most small businesses won’t need anywhere near that many online daily newspapers)

  • Takes advantage of all the benefits of using a Content Marketing Strategy without spending the time to produce your own online content

Create an Online Daily Newspaper for Your Small Business

As you can see from the information above, the benefits to using paper.li to promote your small business are many. Hopefully the ideas for an online daily newspaper for your small business are already racing through your mind. It’s definitely a great new online tool that all small business owners can easily take advantage of. The best part, it’s free to use (for your first 10 newspapers that is). In a future article we will cover how you can create a paper.li online daily newspaper for your small business. For now, let us know what you think about this new Content Marketing tactic for small business by leaving a comment below.

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Posted in Online Marketing | 3 Comments »

A Content Plan Makes Blogging Easier

Monday, January 3rd, 2011

It’s January 3rd, 2011 –> Have you setup a blog for your small business yet? For those of you who are unfamiliar with the numerous benefits to having a strong small business blog, please feel free to click the tag “Content Marketing” below to get access to an archive of blog marketing articles from Catalyst. This post is geared towards those small business owners who want to get more out of their small business blog.

Many small business owners find the time commitment and level of effort of maintaining a consistent blog presence to be a little overwhelming at times. For those of you who are struggling to keep your blog content fresh, relevant to your audience, and valuable to your customers & prospects, this article should help you build a more effective blog, while reducing the time and energy you spend on each article. How can that be done? Simple. Create a Quarterly Blog Content Plan for your small business blog.

3 Steps to Creating an Actionable Blog Content Plan

Blog PlanningDoes it take you longer than 10 – 15 minutes to come up with a topic to write about for your next blog article? Do you find that when you do finally start writing that you tend to drift down multiple paths, causing you to spend more time than necessary writing blog articles? Perhaps you are creative in your blog content ideas and efficient in your approach to writing each article, but maybe you are finding it difficult to understand how each blog article is working to achieve your organizational goals? If any of these descriptions are familiar to you then you’re not getting the most out of your small business blog.

Creating a successful small business blog takes creativity, effort, but most importantly it takes proper planning. Once you’ve created your Online Marketing Plan, you can then start crafting your Blog Content Plan (assuming that blogging is part of your overall online marketing strategy). Each quarter you should sit down to come up with a Blog Content Plan for your small business. A Blog Content Plan is a list of blog topics that you want to write about on your small business blog during the upcoming quarter. Here are the three main steps to creating an actionable Blog Content Plan:

  1. Develop a list of Blog Topics: Write down a 1 sentence description for each blog topic that you’d like to write about during the quarter. How do you know how many topics to come up with each quarter? Simply go back to the Blog Tactic in your Online Marketing Plan to see how many articles you want to write each month, then multiply that number by 3 (3 months in each quarter). You should already have an idea as to what type of content you need to produce for your small business. It should be listed in the Description section of your Online Marketing Plan.

  2. Set a Goal for Each Blog Topic: By setting a goal for each article (ie. Educate customers & prospects on the latest industry trend OR Explain the benefits of my small business e-Newsletter) you will be able to focus in on what you want to write about and accomplish. This eliminates the extra time that you spend drifting to far away from your blog topic while you’re writing your blog article. Also, by having a Goal setup, you can then measure your results to determine if your blog efforts are paying off.

  3. Include a Call-to-Action for each Blog Topic: As long as you’re providing valuable content to your audience on a consistent basis, then you should feel OK about asking for things in return from your readers. Now, that doesn’t mean that for every blog article you write that you should be asking for a donation OR driving people to sign-up for something. Be smart about your call-to-action. For some articles, your call-to-action may simply be for readers to click a link within your current article to read one of your archived articles. Don’t be overly promotional, but definitely include a call-to-action for each blog topic within your Blog Content Plan.

One important point to note is that just because you have a Blog Content Plan for the quarter doesn’t mean that topics cannot be added throughout the quarter. The key is to have a plan so that when you sit down to write an article you can be efficient with your time. With that said, if you become inspired or come up with a great idea for a new article, you should feel free to write about that topic and save the topics listed on your Blog Content Plan for another day.

Benefits to Creating a Blog Content Plan

There are a number of benefits to creating a Blog Content Plan for your small business blog. The biggest benefits that most small business owners will see by having a Blog Content Plan are:

  • Reduced time spent coming up with new blog topics each time you want to write a new article

  • Reduced time spent writing articles

  • Creation of more effective, relevant, and valuable content

  • Always something to write about

  • Ability to measure results

  • More actionable blog articles

Get Started Writing Your Blog Content Plan

Now that you know just how valuable having a Blog Content Plan can be for your small business blog, and being that it’s the beginning of a new year, hopefully you will take an hour this weekend to create a Blog Content Plan. It’s almost guaranteed that you’ll see better results from your blogging efforts, while at the same time reducing the time you spend to create each new blog article.

Have you already created a Blog Content Plan for your small business blog? Please share any results that you’ve seen from your planning efforts with our readers by leaving a comment below.

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Posted in Blog Marketing | 3 Comments »

Drive Traffic to Your Blog with Blog Carnivals

Tuesday, September 7th, 2010

If you use blogging to promote your business then you’re always looking for new ways to drive quality traffic to your blog. When you check your Google Analytics each morning you always want to see that monthly traffic total increasing. One great way to increase traffic to your small business blog is to use Blog Carnivals. In this post we are going to explain what a Blog Carnival is, how businesses can use Blog Carnivals for Inbound Marketing, selecting the right Blog Carnivals for your small business, and how to submit blog articles to Blog Carnivals.

What is a Blog Carnival?

Blog Carnivals are online publications on a specific topic whereby bloggers can submit their articles to the Blog Carnival moderator for inclusion in a future edition of the Carnival. The definition that Wikipedia gives Blog Carnivals is, “A blog carnival is a type of blog event. It is similar to a magazine, in that it is dedicated to a particular topic, and is published on a regular schedule, often weekly or monthly. Each edition of a blog carnival is in the form of a blog article that contains permalinks to other blog articles on the particular topic.”

Inbound Marketing through Blog Carnivals

As a business owner who publishes blog articles you can find relevant Blog Carnivals (the ones that you think your target audience read) and submit your blog articles to the Blog Carnival. This will get your content in front of the right people. On all Blog Carnivals a link to your blog article accompanies a brief description of the article. The description that you write should be used to convey the value proposition of the article:

quickly explain what the post is about and why the readers of the Blog Carnival should click the link to read your post.

Blog Carnivals are amazing Inbound Marketing tools as they publish links to your blog articles and your target audience is driven from the Blog Carnival to your blog/website. That’s pretty powerful stuff. Not only that, but
Search Engines like Google & Bing will rank your site higher the more Inbound Links you have spread throughout the web.

Here’s an example of a Blog Carnival that’s featuring a Catalyst blog article:

Inbound Marketing through Blog Carnivals

What Blog Carnivals are right for my business?

The first thing you need to do when searching for relevant Blog Carnivals is to find a Blog Carnival directory like BlogCarnival.com. Once you find a solid directory you can then start to search the available Blog Carnival topics. Find a few topics that are relevant to your business, which will therefore be filled with readers who can be classified as your target audience. If you’re a restaurant then find cooking or dining out Blog Carnivals. If you own a pet store then find Blog Carnivals about Pets or more granular topics like Pet supplies. The key is selecting the topics that will be of interest to your target audience. Once you find the topics then you can dig into ALL of the Blog Carnivals for each topic. Many times there will be more than one Carnival for each topic you choose. Within each Topic we usually like to find all of the Blog Carnivals that will be issuing a new Carnival within a week or so. All that’s left after you find all of the Blog Carnivals that you’d like to submit your article to is actually submitting the article!

How do I submit a blog article to BlogCarnival.com ?

BlogCarnival.com is a great Blog Carnival directory. They offer numerous topics and every topic is filled with a number of different Blog Carnivals. If you can’t find a Carnival that meets your needs you can always create your own…though that will require significantly more of your time than simply submitting your blog articles to existing Blog Carnivals.

We like to take time twice per month to submit articles to Blog Carnivals. We usually select one article each time and submit each article to numerous Blog Carnivals. When preparing to submit an article be sure to pick one of your latest articles that you feel is the most relevant to your specific goals for this tactic. We then like to create a 2 – 3 sentence description of the article whereby we explain what the article is about and why people should read it. We then simply go out to all of the Blog Carnivals that we will be submitting the article to, paste in the URL of the article into the field that requires it, paste in our description, review everything to ensure it’s correct, and click submit. The image below gives a visual representation of the format that BlogCarnival.com uses. It’s actually a very simple process, but it packs a big punch in terms of increasing quality traffic to your blog/website!

Inbound Marketing through Blog Carnivals

What Blog Carnival directories do you use?

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Posted in Blog Marketing | No Comments »

Hiring an Online Marketing Agency Instead of Internal Marketing Employees

Monday, July 26th, 2010

Have you considered hiring an online marketing agency to help you construct the appropriate marketing strategy, and to help you execute on that strategy? More and more business owners are considering outsourcing their marketing activities to Online Marketing Agencies like Catalyst Marketers. As long as you choose a great agency to work with, the benefits of hiring an outside agency to handle your online marketing efforts far outweigh hiring a team of marketing employees.

Whether you’re a medium to large-sized business, or you’re a small business, outsourcing your online marketing activities can help reduce expenses, and increase your revenue. As we dive into the benefits to outsourcing your online marketing activities, we are following the assumption that you have already decided to use online marketing as a way of reaching more people, building relationships, and driving sales.

Outsource Online MarketingA big key to all of this is finding the right Online Marketing Agency. Many traditional agencies out there now include social media marketing or blogging in their portfolio of services. Not only that, but it seems like 35% of the unemployed are now Internet Marketing Consultants –> Buyer Beware. I’m not saying folks shouldn’t try to start their own businesses if they’ve been laid off, what I am saying is that you need to meet with a number of agencies & professionals before making any decisions. Many of these folks don’t know how to truly use online tools to help grow relationships and drive sales. Others know how to do it, but they are stuck in the old world rules of having a brick-and-mortar agency with numerous employees. This means their costs are going to be astronomically higher than an agency like ours, which is a virtual marketing agency. Hiring an Online Marketing Agency is a process, one that nobody should take lightly. Do your homework and then go with your gut. If you make a mistake, then simply move on & try again. The benefits to finding and hiring the right Online Marketing Agency far outweigh any perceived risks in doing so.

Here are a few of the benefits that we believe make outsourcing your Online Marketing activities the better option when comparing it to hiring a team a internal Marketing employees:

  • COSTS: Costs are the biggest advantage to outsourcing your Online Marketing activities. The cost of a salary PLUS benefits to bring a knowledgeable, and experienced person on full-time are in the $100k range. With that, you’ll probably need at least another individual, probably at the Marketing Coordinator level to assist the department head. For less than $35,000/year you can outsource all of your online marketing needs to an agency.

  • DEPTH OF KNOWLEDGE: Even when you bring on a talented individual to head up your Marketing department, the likelihood that she will have the skills to plan & execute on ALL of your tactics herself is very slim. In most cases, you’ll end up outsourcing a lot of work regardless…which leads us to our next point…

  • ONE VENDOR: By outsourcing your Online Marketing needs, you can minimize paperwork and everything else that comes with contracting with multiple vendors + multiple employees. By selecting an Online Marketing Agency that can deliver on all of your web-based or mobile-based marketing needs, you are creating one point of contact. Pick the right agency, and then run everything through them.

The list of benefits to hiring an Online Marketing Agency instead of internal marketing employees does continue, but I think the 3 above are most critical. Some folks will tell you that you cannot find an agency that can understand your business as well as an employee would. We definitely disagree on that response. Again, it’s all about finding the right partner. Here at Catalyst, the very first thing we do when we partner with a new client is dive into all relevant aspects of their business. We also continue to learn every day that we work with our clients. Ultimately, we are able to integrate so heavily that many non-marketing employees know us by our first names. There are some agencies out there who are unable to integrate as well with their clients, but if you understand the importance of that ability, then you’ll be sure to select the right online marketing agency for your business.

What are your thoughts on outsourcing your marketing activities? Are you currently doing it? If so, how’s it working? Have you outsourced your online marketing in the past? How did it work out? We hope you’ll share your stories with our readers via the comments section below OR on our Facebook page – a place for small business owners to connect, share information & ideas, and learn about Online Marketing.

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Posted in Catalyst Marketers, Online Marketing, Small Business | 2 Comments »

Every Blog Post is an Opportunity to LOSE Followers

Monday, March 15th, 2010

Are you currently using online social tools to connect and communicate with your audience? If so, BRAVO! If you’re a Catalyst Marketers Blog subscriber, then you know we are all about using free online tools to reach more people, build relationships with those folks, and ultimately drive sales.

With that being said, this post is a cautionary tale about understanding the power of online communication and the impact it could have on your small business. This post isn’t meant to deter you from using online social tools, and specifically, blogging. It’s simply a reminder to be sure that EVERY time you produce something, you should try to make it your best work to date.

Blog for my small businessEach and every time you produce a new blog post, a new video, or audio program, there may be some followers who find the content so off-target that they actually stop following your business online. The other day I was on Twitter and clicked on a link that was tweeted by one of my followers. The link brought me to his blog and I read the post. The post was riddled with assumptions, had spelling and grammar mistakes, and was simply uninformative. Just like that, I stopped following this individual on Twitter. If I had been subscribed to his blog, I would have unsubscribed.

See the thing is that in an online world that is becoming saturated with content, yours has to stand out. If nothing else, it has to be mistake free and it must demonstrate that you actually took time crafting the message. Here are a few things that you may want to ask yourself as you’re crafting a new piece of online content:

  • Are there any grammatical errors in my new blog post?
  • Is the information relevant and educational for MY audience?
  • Are my stats and data accurate?
  • Have I included images and/or links to other relevant content in my blog post?

If you answer the above questions each time you create a new piece of online content, then you limit the chance that someone who you’d consider to be part of your target audience, will unsubscribe from your blog or stop following your small business online.

I hope that this post doesn’t scare people away from producing online content and writing in their business blog. Sometimes we can all get caught up and we may skip a few steps here and there. This post should remind us all that each time you create something online, it stays there forever (or at least a very long time). You want to make sure that your content stands out and continues to attract new followers, as opposed to losing current followers.

One last thing, don’t lose your personality and become too vanilla, as that’s the fastest way to lose followers. You must be confident in the content that you’re producing. If you want to be controversial, be controversial. If you want to take a stand on an issue, take a stand. With that said, be sure that you understand that every piece of content you produce online, can and will have some sort of impact on your business. Hopefully the majority of your content is sought after by your followers. You have to remember that you cannot please everyone and you should focus on pleasing and educating the individuals that make sense for your small business. Each time you go to hit that “publish” button, just be sure you re-read your content and ask yourself a few simple questions. Once you’re pleased with the answers, then go ahead and publish that great new educational blog content to the world.

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Posted in Online Marketing | 10 Comments »

What is Integrated Marketing Communication?

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

I received a LinkedIn request the other day from a good friend of mine from Bentley University, located in Waltham, MA. We graduated together and now she, Carolyn Hannus, is working at Digitas in Boston. She’s also getting her MBA at Boston University. As part of one of her classes, she told me that she needed to survey Marketing professionals with the following question, “What does integrated marketing communications mean to you?”

I felt like the question and my response was relevant for the readers of the Catalyst Marketers blog, so I posted my response below. One thing to note, if you’re a small business owner, don’t get scared off by the marketing jargon, “Integrated Marketing Communications”. I break it down below and chances are, you’re already doing it in one form or another.

For me, Integrated Marketing Communications means the all encompassing process for communicating your message, ideals, beliefs, and value proposition to your community. Your community can be filled with both customers and prospects. In order to truly make an impact with your marketing message, you must first start by outlining the goals and needs of your business. Once those have been established, you can then move on to creating strategies that align to those goals and needs. Next comes tactics. These are the vehicles by which you get your information to your community. Finally, the most critical step, one which many don’t consider, is measurement. At set periods of time throughout the year, it’s always good to take a step back and look at the numbers to see how your tactics are tracking against the goals and needs that you originally setup. If something isn’t working so well, then iterate or scrap it completely. If another tactic is truly resonating with your community, then find ways to highlight it and even enhance it. By setting up a plan, whereby you establish goals, you now have something to measure against.

A big part of my marketing efforts, and the efforts of my clients, is content marketing. Content marketing can come in many forms, like written text, video, and even audio. As part of content marketing, you want to ensure that you are educating your community and providing information that they consider valuable. That information should tie-in to your business. If you’re an organic restaurant owner, then you should be blogging about the different ingredients you use in your recipes and why they are better for your patrons. You can shoot videos of your chefs preparing different recipes in a sanitary environment. All of this information is relevant to your business, but also relevant to your target audience. By providing valuable information, you create brand loyalists who are not only going to become customers, but walking, talking, billboards for your business.

Integrated Marketing Communications is the overarching term used to describe all of the different ways you communicate with your community. Each different marketing vehicle that you use, whether it’s YouTube videos, Facebook, Twitter, Email, or Blogs, should tie into your overall plan. If you’ve setup your plan properly, then you should have goals that you can measure against. This will let you know how effective or ineffective your programs are. Either way, you’re learning something, which gives you the ability to make necessary changes. In this economy, and probably for the foreseeable future, those organizations that don’t listen to their community and constantly evolve their offerings based on their leanrings, will not survive. To ensure you don’t end up like that, it’s important to have a plan for your integrated marketing communications, check-in occasionally to see how you’re tracking against that plan, and don’t be afraid to listen to your community and make the necessary changes to satisfy them.

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Posted in Online Marketing, Small Business | 4 Comments »

Print Ads Run for a Month, Online Content Lives Forever

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

It amazes me that there are some business owners out there who still believe in paying for high-priced print advertisements, yet don’t see the value in creating a blog for their small business. Content marketing is the present and the future (for now). Whether you’re creating written content through a blog or e-newsletter, video-based content, or even simple audio-based content, it’s critical that you produce some sort of educational information for your target audience. Here are my top 4 reasons why you need to switch from traditional advertising strategies like developing print ads to more new marketing strategies like creating content.

Print Ads Run for a Month, Online Content Lives Forever

One of the biggest reasons for spending the time to develop a blog for your small business is the fact that the content you produce will live forever online. You create it once and 5 years from now someone may come across it and end up becoming a customer. Print ads usually run in the monthly flier/magazine and then they get tossed by readers. You spent time developing your ad and paid for the placement only to reap the benefits for one month. Even if you pay an agency like Catalyst Marketers to develop your blog articles, that content is yours and it lives forever. So even if the costs are the same or a little higher to create great online content, that content has the ability to educate readers and drive sales for years. Print ads are usually one and done. Where do you think you should be spending your time/money?

Print Ads Have Lost Effectiveness, Online Content is Thriving

Does this print ad entice you to buy Dunkin Donuts? For me, I breeze right by it when I see it in a newspaper that I’m reading. Even if I do take the time to read it, it doesn’t really entice me to go buy a smoothie. Does it entice you?

We have learned to ignore print ads, and many traditional forms of advertising for that matter. Now, if I’m new to an area and I’m looking for say, an organic cup of coffee, I’m probably going online to check out sites like Yelp or hit the blogs to find out if there are any great organic coffee shops in the local area. If I come across your blog where it explains where you purchase your organic coffee beans, how you make your coffee, what type of organic creams and sugars you use, then I’m probably going to swing by your store to try your product. Your blog has educated me on your process, as well as, organic coffee in general – an area I’m interested in. You have officially brought value to my life by providing me with great online content. Print ads simply cannot do that.

Print Ads Cannot Tell Your Story, Online Content Engages & Educates Customers

Print ads by nature are limited in the amount of space they offer you to tell your story. Guess what? The more room they have for you to put information into the ad, the more expensive the ad becomes. Most of the time, businesses can only include the most critical information: the offer, their tag line, and their address. That’s it, you’re done. No more space for you.

How do you expect to educate anyone about your business, your products and your services with such limited space? In today’s environment, consumers have an unlimited number of choices for almost anything you can imagine. The difference between purchasing one product over another is usually tied to some emotional reason. How can you evoke emotion from consumers through a print ad? You can’t.

Now, if you’re a salon and you produce “how to” videos for creating different hairstyles and target teenage girls, then you can really bring value to those girls lives. How often do young girls go over to their friends house to do each others hair? All the time. How about for big school dances, girls are always searching for new hairstyles. Now, through your videos, they can learn how to do it themselves. Your videos are now their go-to resources before all school dances. They now feel confident in their looks because they have professional looking hairstyles and your salon is responsible for that.

Talk about evoking an emotional attachment. Where do you think those girls are going to get their hair cut next? How about when they want to spend some big bucks on a hairstyle for prom? You better believe they are coming to your salon. All because you put your marketing budget to work on something valuable instead of wasting it on one and done print ads.

Print Ads Come with Boundaries, Online Content is Limited Only to Your Imagination

We’ve already explored some of the limitations that come with print ads, but just to get them all out in the open, let’s go through them again. Print ads are costly, they have limited reach, there is limited space available to you for telling your story, many people ignore them, and for those that do pay attention, they are only good for about a month before they are thrown away.

Online content is really only limited to your creativity. Have you ever considered running a radio show for your small business? Blog Talk Radio allows you to do that – FOR FREE. You can then archive your recordings to allow people to listen to them whenever and wherever. Those radio shows live forever online.

If you own a retail clothing boutique you can use video to broadcast your own fashion show. A fashion show that models the latest Spring clothing lines that you offer. If you own a restaurant, you can record one of your top chefs preparing one of your best dishes, just like the big guys do on TV. Through your video, people can now make these great recipes at home. You’ve brought value to their lives. Believe me, they are still going to go out to eat, but on days when they need to stay in, they can bring up your video and cook a great meal. You’re now responsible for feeding their family. Again, talk about evoking some emotions. Where do you think they are going to go out to eat the next time they want to do that? Exactly…

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Posted in Small Business | 9 Comments »