Posts Tagged ‘Online Marketing Plan’

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 »

Social Media Marketing for Business is ALL About Discipline

Monday, August 9th, 2010

Do you have what it takes to stay on task, achieve your objectives, and be consistent in your approach when using online tools to promote your business? Hopefully at this point, almost everyone can agree that Social Media Marketing benefits businesses. With that said, there are still a large number of organizations who are not seeing results from their Social Media Marketing efforts.

There are many reasons why some business owners still are not seeing their Social Media Marketing efforts pay off. One of the main reasons might be that they lack discipline in one or many areas of their Social Media Marketing efforts. You see, Social Media Marketing is ALL about DISCIPLINE. This post dives into the subject of how being disciplined in your Social Media Marketing efforts helps you achieve your Online Marketing goals.

Create a Online Marketing PlanSocial Media Marketing takes time. Success doesn’t happen over night. Business owners who jump into Social Media Marketing without a plan lack discipline. Business owners who use online tools that are not relevant to their business lack discipline. Business owners who do not consistently use those online tools to engage their target audience lack discipline. Business owners who spend time discussing topics that are not relevant to their business or to their target audience lack discipline. Business owners who do not take a step back (at least quarterly) to analyze how they are tracking against their performance measures (which should be set within your Online Marketing Plan) lack discipline…and the list goes on. All business owners who act in the ways mentioned above are going to find it hard to achieve success with Social Media Marketing. For Catalyst Marketers, it all comes back to discipline. So let’s discuss how you can ensure that you do not get stuck in the traps above, get disciplined in your Social Media Marketing efforts, and achieve success with Online Marketing.

  1. Just like a shiny new toy, Social Media Marketing gets business owners excited. Sometimes you just jump right in without a plan. As a business owner, I’m sure you can appreciate the importance of having a solid plan for almost everything you do. A plan allows you to set objectives, figure out ways to achieve those objectives, and set performance measures. Before starting that Facebook business page, or tweeting on Twitter, be sure to take time and build your Online Marketing Plan. This will allow you to stay focused while executing on your plan, as well as, provide you with direction, and allow you to measure your results.
  2. When creating your Online Marketing Plan, be sure to determine who your target audience is, and then spend some time doing a little research on what online tools they use. Once you determine where your target audience is spending their time online, you can setup profiles on those online tools & begin engaging with your audience. It takes discipline to say, I’m going to use LinkedIn to promote my business or I’m not going to use Facebook. If LinkedIn makes sense for your businesss, then that’s where you need to be. If your target audience isn’t on Facebook, then don’t waste your time on that channel.
  3. Be focused in your messaging. Inject personality into you content, but DO NOT talk about topics that are not relevant to your business or your audience. Your customers and prospects don’t care that you’re “taking a shower” or “headed to the gym”. Separate your personal messages from your professional messages, BUT AGAIN, be sure to infuse your personality into your messages.
  4. Set time aside every month or every quarter to analyze your Social Media Marketing against the performance measures you setup in your Online Marketing Plan. You can do this by utilizing reporting tools like Google Analytics, Facebook & foursquare Reports, Feedburner, etc. Tracking your results on a regular basis against how you thought you would perform in certain areas allows you to understand return-on-investment. It also allows you to capitalize on marketing tactics that are working and improve marketing tactics that are not working. With time always lacking in a business owners schedule, it takes discipline to sit down for a few hours every quarter and truly analyze how things are going. Those who do make time for this CRUCIAL activity will see many more benefits than those who do not.

Here at Catalyst Marketers, we know that Social Media Marketing works. Two of our largest clients have been a direct result of using online tools to reach prospects, build relationships with them, and ultimately convert them into customers. The two tools that were of most use to us in attracting those two clients were LinkedIn and Squidoo. We setup our Online Marketing Plan, understood what online tools made sense for our business, used the tools consistently, and ultimately achieved success. You can do the same for your small business. All it takes is a little discipline.

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Posted in Online Marketing | 2 Comments »

Select the Right Social Media Tools for Your Business

Monday, October 19th, 2009

Everyone is talking about social media and the marketing potential it provides for businesses. What you don’t hear a lot about, unless you’re listening to the right individuals, is how to select the proper social media tools for YOUR business. Just because you only hear about Facebook and Twitter, doesn’t mean that they should be the ONLY tools you use. It may be that you shouldn’t focus on Facebook and Twitter at all…Perhaps LinkedIn and Squidoo are better suited for your business. This post is going to cover the process you should take when determining what social media tools you should be using to support your online marketing strategy.

So, before you jump in and create profiles on all of the latest social tools in the news, do a little planning. Proper planning won’t ensure success, BUT it will significantly increase the chance for success. Below are the steps that we recommend you take once you decide that an online marketing strategy makes sense for your business. If you have any additional steps that you think should be added to this list, please leave us a comment with what the step is and where it fits into the list below.

7 Steps to Choosing the Right Social Media Tools

  1. Be sure your company is prepared for social media marketing. Social tools allow businesses to interact with customers and prospects on a level never before achieved in business. With that said, you have to be sure that your business is setup to thrive in this environment. For example, customer service is changing with the explosion of social tools. Customers will expect that they can Twitter a question to you and you’ll respond within a reasonable amount of time (24 hours or so). Customers will express their happiness with your service and they will also express frustration if you are not meeting their needs. You should be prepared to use social tools to embrace these types of interactions.
  2. Determine your goals for social media marketing. It’s always a good idea to establish your goals up front, this way you have something to measure against. Ask yourself the following questions:
    1. What am I trying to achieve with social media marketing?
    2. What is a reasonable time frame for me to achieve these targets?

    I’d recommend that you go back to your goals quarterly. If anything needs to be changed within your marketing tactics, then you can do so at that point.

  3. Find out where your target customers are hanging out online. If you are a new business and you haven’t already identified your target customers, then you should definitely do that first. Once you know your target (age, gender, spending habits, interests, etc) then do a little research to find out where those types of people are spending their time online. So if you’re a recruiter, your target market is other business professionals. With a little research, you’ll find that LinkedIn is a great place to find other business professionals who are looking for work and for businesses looking for workers. Make a list of the top four or five social tools that your customers are using. Research each of those tools to find out what they do and how they are benefiting other businesses.
  4. Align your market research with your goals. Now that you have determined where your targets are spending their time online, you can use that information along with your goals to determine what social tools to use. As we discussed earlier, some social tools make more sense for your business than others depending on your goals and customer information. If your goal is to create an online space where your customers can connect with you and other like-minded people, then you might consider using Ning or Facebook. If your target customers are senior citizens, then Ning is probably better than Facebook because seniors, although a growing Facebook audience, are not using Facebook as much as others. It’s all about matching your goals with your market research to come up with the top social tools to spend your time developing.
  5. Build your profile. Now comes the fun part. Go ahead and build your social profile on each of the tools. Post as much information as possible. Explain what the site is about and how it will benefit those who sign up. Share images, articles, event information, and special offers with your online followers.
  6. Promote your social tools. Once you have your social tools to a place where you’re comfortable sharing them with others, then start promoting your tools. Include links to your social tools on your website, in your ads, on your business cards, and within your email signature. Seek out people in your life who are on the same social tools and invite them to join your network. Search for other local business owners who also have sites on the social tool and become a follower of theirs. Hopefully they will do the same with you. It doesn’t make sense to invest the time in social media marketing if nobody is following your moves. Get out there and promote your social tools.
  7. Continually update your site and interact with your followers. Social media marketing takes time. Success doesn’t happen overnight. Be sure to answer any comments that come through from your network. Try to post valuable information at least once a day. Start discussions. Encourage your network to interact with one another and not just with you. If you stay with it, I guarantee you will have success using social media marketing.

Do you have anything to add to the list above? Perhaps you have a success story that you’d like to share with us? Please leave a comment below OR connect with us on Facebook to share your information.

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Posted in Online Marketing, Small Business | 2 Comments »