7 REASONS BLOGGING IS GOOD FOR YOUR SMALL BUSINESS

Small business owners have a lot to do.  In fact, running a small business can often be overwhelming when you really think about it.  You've got employees to train, teams to manage, products to sell, customers to please, and new customers to find.  It's no surprise then, that small businesses are resistant to adding to their already overflowing plate of "things to do," especially when it comes to things they don't understand.  I often find that blogging falls into the category of "things-I-just-don't-have-time-for-because-I-don't-see-the-benefit."

If that's you, you're not alone.  In fact, research shows that less than 18% of small businesses have an online blogging presence.   Here's the good news - that means that when you start a blog, you'll be far ahead of most of your competition!  And, companies that blog get 126% more leads (socialmediatoday.com).  If that wasn't enough of a reason, here's 7 more reasons that blogging might be good for your business.

1. Blogging Has a Lower Cost Of Investment

Small businesses are built on the hard work of the people who started them.  In addition to having to invest cash into your business, you're investing your experience - and your life.  Building a brand requires both money and time, and if you run a small business, you know there's no shortcut.  If you're like many small business owners, spending your resources on paid, traditional media advertising means not having that money to hire a team, or purchase inventory, or any of the other things you do everyday.

Blogging, on the other hand, allows you to create a far greater return on investment than many traditional advertising methods by spending your time creating content that attracts the right type of customers.  Blogging is a relatively inexpensive tool that can provide a huge return when used correctly.

2. Blogging Allows You To Share Your Expertise

Your customers aren't just looking for anyone to solve their problem.  Whether you're a lawyer, accountant, or pool repair technician, your customers want to know that they've chosen someone that knows their stuff, and can solve their problem.  Even if you're a boutique retail store, blogging gives you a chance to share your expertise, and position yourself as a resource among your potential customers.  By creating relevant, helpful content - on a regular basis - your readers view you as a subject matter expert, and that increases the chances that those readers will become customers.

3. Blogging Makes Your Site More Findable

Search engines exist for one reason.  Okay, they exist for two (when you include advertising).  Originally, however, they existed to help people find the most relevant information about whatever they were searching.  Blogging helps you build large amounts of searchable content that makes your company much more findable online, especially for the things your target customers are looking for.   More organic search traffic to your blog means more qualified leads to your online presence, which increases the quality of leads that contact you.

4. Blogging Gives Your Company A Voice

People want to do business with people.  Blogging allows your entire company to be a part of the client conversation, exposing your customers - and potential customers - to a much deeper relationship with your company.  Sure, not everyone in your company is a writer - but that's okay.  Everyone in your company has a different area of expertise (or you probably wouldn't have hired them).  By giving them a chance to create content that is relevant to their area, you make your company more approachable, and more relatable to your potential customers.

5. Blogging Helps You Sharpen Your Focus

By creating relevant content on a regular basis, you find yourself having to have a laser focus on who you are, and why you matter to customers.  Blogging makes you think about everything you publish, and make sure it lines up with what you want to say about your company.  

Blogging also requires you to think hard about your ideal customer.  In addition to focusing on what you're saying, you have to focus on who you're talking to.  By thinking about your reader (or ideal customer), you become more focused in all of your marketing efforts when you create blogging content that relates to them.

6. Blogging Results in Much Higher Quality Leads

Creating relevant content on a regular basis gives potential customers (leads) a reason to keep coming back.  The more someone is exposed to your content - and your business - the better they are able to make a decision about you and your company.  When they finally reach out to you, you'll find that you end up with much more qualified leads because a large part of the "qualification" process happens before they ever click "contact."  You'll also find that the leads you generate feel a greater sense of connection with you and your company, even before they ever talk to a person.

7. Blogging Makes You Sharable

Not only does blogging make you more findable, creating content on a regular basis gives your ideal customers an opportunity to share you with their friends.  Creating great content that is relevant to your customers is an invitation for them to spread the word.  Incorporating sharable links makes it easy for your readers to share your content (and therefore your business), with their social sphere of influence - which means your business is exposed to a far greater potential audience.  By the way, many of your best customers would share you with their friends if you made it easy for them.  For some of them, talking about you isn't their thing, but sharing you on Facebook or twitter is as simple as it gets.

What about you?  Does your company have a blog?  How has it helped your business?

5 KEYS TO BLOGGING FOR YOUR SMALL BUSINESS

Thinking that you should start a blog for your business?  If you read our most recent post, you may be wondering how to get started.  Here's a few simple steps you can take to get a blog started for your business.

1. Make It Someone's Job

If you don't make it someone's responsibility, there's pretty much no chance it'll ever generate any momentum.  That doesn't mean the entire project falls on one person's shoulders, but it does mean that there's at least one person who "owns" the success of the blog, and is accountable for it's execution. 

2. Identify Your Focus

What are you going to blog about?  Remember, the value in a blog is to create content that will help you connect with your ideal customer.  This means you are generating content that is both relevant, and helpful, to the people you want to do business with.  Your company blog isn't the place for random personal expositions, or pictures of cats.  It represents the face of your company, and you want it focused on content that attracts the right type of client

3. Create A Calendar

Before you start simply publishing content whenever you get around to it, start by creating a content calendar.  By mapping out your posts in advance, sometimes weeks or months in advance, you give yourself a plan you can follow.  This also makes it much easier to share the responsibility of creating content by delegating posts based on the calendar.  

I recommend you start by planning out at least 4 weeks.   This gives you time to create content, edit, and publish on a consistent basis.   Start by publishing on a schedule you know is sustainable for your business, beginning by posting 2-3 times a week.  Once you've gotten a good handle on your calendar, you can increase your frequency as you think is appropriate for your audience.

4. Find The Right Platform

Is your company's website already built on an existing content management system (CMS)?  If so, adding a blog is relatively easy.  If not, you'll have to decide which platform you are going to use, and how you plan to integrate it with your existing online presence.  There are a lot of different options available, from free (blogger, wordpress), to our personal favorite - squarespace.  

Which one is best for your business depends on a lot of variables, but the bottom line is that you should choose one that gives you the most flexibility, and that you feel most comfortable actually using.  Many of them (even the paid options) offer free trials so that you can get a feel for how you'll be using it on a regular basis.  

5. Be Prepared To Measure

If you're going to invest an effort in blogging, be sure to know in advance how you will measure it's success.  I've talked before about measuring your marketing, and it's especially important with blogging.  Free tools, like Google Analytics, can help you measure traffic, referral sources, the best content, and even conversions (to some extent).  At the same time, some CMS tools include robust analytics built in, and software like Hubspot gives you not only a tool for managing your content, but directly tracking what happens when customers interact with both your blog, and your website.

Do you blog for your business?  What tips would you share with other small businesses just getting started?   Leave a comment below!

PLEASE STOP INTERRUPTING ME

I was speaking at a conference a few weeks ago, and just before I was ready to take the platform to give my talk, I was going over a few things with the host and tech people.  As we were having our relatively important conversation (at least at that moment), a perfectly nice young guy walked up to me, and over the top of the person I was talking with, said: "I was hoping I'd find you here, I was wondering if you could look over my marketing materials and give me some feedback."

I thought to myself "this guy is asking me for a favor, and he's doing it while I'm in the middle of something else... seriously?"  That's not exactly what I said out loud, but it's exactly what I was thinking.   You know who does that?  Children.

I have 3 children under the age of 6, and I'm pretty familiar with having my conversations interrupted by them.  It's rare that my wife and I are able to have much of a conversation while they are around, without one of them interrupting.  It isn't that I don't care about what my kids have to say - it's just that interrupting someone isn't the best way to get their attention and earn their affection.  I'm sure that whatever they want to ask me is really important to them, but at that moment - let's be honest - it's mostly just irritating.

Amazingly, that's exactly what companies spend billions of dollars doing every year.  They pay a ton of money, to try and show up where their customer is, and interrupt whatever it was they were doing (watching a tv show, listening to the radio, reading a newspaper, visiting a website) with their message.  Clearly, this "interruption advertising," as Seth Godin calls it, isn't going anywhere.  But you have to ask yourself whether there might not be a better way to earn people's attention.

Your customers (and potential customers) are busy people.  They have jobs, and families, and lives.  They spend most of their time thinking about things other than your company and/or product.  Instead of focusing on interrupting your potential customers, here are 3 ways to earn their attention, and turn potential customers into customers for life.

1. Be EXACTLY what your customer is looking for.  This also means don't be anything else.  Don't try to be what everyone is looking for - that doesn't work.  Focus on being just what your customer is looking for.   You can try to be all things to everyone, but you'll end up being nothing to anyone, and your ideal customer won't want anything to do with you. 

When you focus on who you should "be," you create a compelling reason for customers to find you.  When you are the very best solution to their problem, you are able to attract the right type of customers, and those customers tell their friends - who become customers.  This means understanding the value you really bring to a customer, and amplifying that.  It also means resisting the temptation to try and be a little bit of everything.

2. Create value by solving their problem.

The problem with most "interruption marketing," is that it is focused on inserting yourself into the customers life, so that you can talk about yourself.  It's focused on you.  The entire goal is to blitz your customer with enough messages, that when they are in the market for whatever it is that you sell, they think about you.  The problem is, you risk of alienating the very customer you want to serve, because you've intruded on their life without permission.

Instead, focus on how you can create opportunities to solve problems.  An effective way is by creating value through freely shared content.  If you're a hardware store, maybe you offer free DIY classes.  If you're a bank, maybe you provide an educational series of videos about financial planning or managing credit.  Not only do you help your customers solve small problems with no strings attached - generating goodwill - you also position yourself as the expert in your field.  When customers are ready to solve their bigger problems, you're both generous, and the expert.

3. Cultivate affection, not just attention.

You may be able to capture my attention for a moment if you interrupt me, but the cost of my attention is that it's unlikely I'll have any affection for you or your company.  In fact, if you interrupt me, the only thing I'm thinking about is how quickly can I get back to what I was doing.  On the other hand, people don't quickly turn away from those for whom they have real affection.  

Think about creating marketing that builds genuine affection among your audience, instead of simply trying to grab their attention.  One of our clients has a habit of tweeting out a screenshot of their Starbucks app, with money preloaded on the card, and letting their audience have a drink on them.  They spend about $100 each time, but the affection they build among their target goes far beyond that. 

IS YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY ANTI-SOCIAL?

Small businesses are discovering that not only is social media a powerful way to connect with customers, in many cases, it's a requirement for a marketing strategy that engages with your market.  At the same time, many small businesses struggle with finding the right strategy and tools to manage the ever-increasing world of social media.  With 78% of US internet users (according to Nielsen) engaging in at least 1 social network, figuring out a social media strategy that works for you is more important than ever.

Yet, as many small businesses venture into the waters of social media, they find it to be not only overwhelming, but often they end up doing more damage to their brand then good.  From 

1. Know Your Audience

Do you know who your audience really is?  Do you know which social networks they use?  Be sure that your business or organization is engaging in social media where your customers are.  It's important to know which social media networks actually allow you to reach your intended market.

Additionally, make sure you've clearly defined the type of content that makes sense for your audience.  The content you share, the photos you link, and the articles you post should be relevant to your target audience, or you run the risk of alienating the followers you've worked so hard to gain. 

2. Designate a Social-Media Czar

Every business & organization on social media, needs to have one person responsible for all of that company's interactions.  That doesn't mean that you can't have a team that helps engage with customers, or curate relevant content - but it does mean that you need to have one person who sets the tone, and guides the social media ship.  Ultimately, this person is responsible for making sure that every social media interaction represents that organizations goals, as well as their brand identity.

3. Be Consistent In Your Content

Whether you blog, or tweet, or share on Facebook, your content needs to be consistent with your brand.  In addition, consistency extends to the frequency you create, and share content.  Nothing says "anti-social" more than the twitter account that hasn't posted in 3 months, or the Facebook page with no activity this year.  Brands that consistently share content across their social media channels, and consistently engage in conversations with their customers, generate significantly more traffic across their online channels, and convert significantly more leads into customers.

4. Engage With Your Audience

If your social media strategy is all about pushing out information about your business, but fails to engage with your audience, don't be surprised if that audience doesn't stick around.  By far, the biggest benefit of social media to small businesses, is that it gives instant access to your market, and your customers.  

Every time you engage with your customers, you create an opportunity to deepen the connection they already have with your brand.  On the other hand, if you ignore all of your twitter followers when they @mention your business (for example), you alienate the connection they have with you and your brand.  People much prefer to have conversations, rather than be around the guy that can't seem to stop talking about himself long enough to listen to anyone else.  That's basically who you are when you fail to engage with your audience. 

5. Don't Hide From Feedback

If your business has customers, eventually it will have unhappy customers.  Social media has greatly increased the ability for your customers (happy and unhappy) to share their feelings and opinions with their circle of influence.  When this happens, don't ignore it.  Think of it as an opportunity to engage with, and often fix, whatever happened with that customer.  

Some of the very best brands on social media use it as a front line customer service tool - and their social media team is empowered to help fix customer problems.  Instead of sticking your head in the sand, social media is a great way to reinforce your commitment to your customers - even when they're less than satisfied.

5 RULES OF SOCIAL MEDIA FOR SMALL BUSINESSES

For a lot of small businesses, getting started on social media can be scary.  You probably already have a personal Facebook page, and you might already be using Twitter, but if you're wondering how you can best use these tools for your business, you're not alone.  Many small businesses avoid social media all together, or they get started without any kind of plan.  Neither of those options are likely to help you grow your business, but a good social media strategy can.  Here are 5 rules every small business should know about social media:

1. Know Your Audience

Who is your customer?  Start by understanding who they are, and how they engage with your company on social media.  Depending on your audience, you can create a strategy that effectively utilizes the social networks your customers are already using.  Your audience also determines things like what type of content they want to engage with, how often (and when) they engage with your brand, and what calls-to-action work best to move "potential clients" toward becoming "clients." 

2. Quality Content Matters Most

Social networks are no longer about photos of cats, or posts about what you ate for dinner - unless of course you're a pet store, or a chef.  If you really want to develop a social media strategy that builds your small business brand, you have to focus on creating quality content.  What defines "quality?"  It has to be content that is both valuable to the reader, AND well produced.  Quality content means well-thought out, well written, visually appealing, and useful. It's not enough to simply post a ton of content and hope it sticks - it has to be valuable to your audience, and it has to be produced in a way that communicates that you know what you're doing.

3. Consistency Leads To Commitment

While quality is truly king, it's important to develop a consistent schedule of sharing across various social media channels.  Even if you produce helpful content, your audience will likely lose interest if you post, or share, too infrequently.  One of the best ways to build your social media audience is to be consistently sharing quality content.  We recommend that small businesses that are just starting out, figure out what is sustainable in terms of creating content for their business, and commit to that.  The more you commit to a consistent schedule, the more committed, and engaged your audience will become.

4. Build A Community, Not A Company

Sure, you're doing this because you're hoping to add value to your business.  That's a no brainer.  I'd challenge you to think about what that value really is, before starting to use social media.  If all you want is a platform for pushing out self-promoting content about your products and services, social media might seem like a great option.  It's relatively inexpensive, and there's huge potential for building an audience.  Of course, that audience isn't likely to stick around if all you do is promote yourself. 

On the other hand, the best brands understand that social media is a tool for creating community.  It can humanize otherwise impersonal brands and companies, and provide a connection point between you and your customers.  Focusing on creating a community, changes the approach you take to social media.  It means adding value, listening to what your customers are saying, and focusing on solving their problems.  At the same time, the result will be a much stronger brand experience for your customers, which can mean a huge return in terms of customer retention, new customer acquisition, and lifetime customer value.

5. Start

Finally, you can't steer a parked car.  I don't remember where I first heard that, but let's be honest - it's true.  When I travel, I often spend time figuring out where I need to be, how to get there, how long it's going to take, and what the best route might be.  All of that is valuable, but not if I never start driving.  In fact, often, we get paralyzed by all of the "directions," and "planning," and never get going.  

As someone who travels frequently for work, I can tell you that getting lost isn't nearly as bad as it sounds, and sometimes it's better to just start driving.  You can make adjustments as you go, but if you sit there in the driveway, you'll never end up anywhere - but the driveway.  The same is true in developing an effective social media strategy.  It's okay to plan, but eventually you have to start practicing.  It's okay if you make mistakes - chances are good that if you're just starting out, you'll make some.  Simply learn from them, make changes, and keep going!

What do you think?  What are a few rules, or tips, you would share for other small business owners?

WHY YOUR MARKETING PRETTY MUCH SUCKS

Marketing has never been about telling potential customers about your product or service.  It's never about finding people to talk to about your company or organization, at least not when it's done right.  Yet, so many small businesses spend enormous amounts of time and money trying to just that.  Marketing, when it's most effective, is about connecting with your customers' story.  It's true, marketing isn't about your company, marketing is about your customers.   

If your small business is struggling to create a marketing strategy that works, here are 5 keys that will help you refocus on what marketing is really all about - your customer.

1. Your Marketing Should Know Your Ideal Client

One of the biggest mistake most marketers make, is believing that they can come up with a strategy that "reaches everyone."  It's understandable that when you're passionate about your company, and it's products and services, that you want to make it available to everyone.  There's nothing wrong with that - except that not everyone is your customer.  Your job is to learn who IS your customer.  Learn their story - who they are, what they need, what problem they have that you can solve.

2. Your Marketing Should Tell A Story

Marketers are, by nature, wired up as storytellers.  The problem is that most marketers are focused on telling the story they want you experience.  They are experts on telling stories about their company,  the benefits of their products, and the reasons for buying their stuff.   That's the way that many marketers believe they prove their worth - by how well they get their message out into the world.  

In reality, most people don't care that much about your marketing message.  Most people don't care how cool your product is, or how wonderful your company is.  Most people, care mostly, about themselves.  They care about their problems, their lives, their kids, their car, their dog, their hobbies, their job, and their circumstances.  Your job isn't to get them to care about what you offer - your job is to demonstrate that you care about them.  

Your marketing should focus on talking to your customers about their story.  Talk to your customers about their lives, and their values.  Instead of trying to craft stories about your company, that your customers can relate to, craft stories that show how you relate to your customers.

3. Your Marketing Should Add Value

Obviously, people won't buy your product or service, unless they believe it will add value to their lives.  That's why so many marketers spend so much time, money, and energy, coming up with ways to demonstrate how much value their product (or service) will add to their customer's lives.  What if instead of your marketing trying to prove how much better your customer's lives would be with your product, your customer's lives were better simply because of your marketing.  

How much easier would it be for them to believe that your product has value, when you've focused on creating value before they buy anything?  Think about the value you add through your marketing.  Are you creating content that matters?  Are you telling stories that matter?  Are you giving your customers, and potential customers, meaningful ways to connect with you - and each other - through your marketing?  If I never buy your product or service, will my life be enriched in any way as a result of your company?

4. Your Marketing Should Be Consistent

There's nothing that ruins the marketing story you are trying to tell, more quickly than inconsistency.   Many small businesses grow fast, by moving fast.  They can adapt and change to the market much quicker than larger competitors, and often experience great success by being flexible.  Unfortunately, sometimes things fall through the cracks when you move fast.  That doesn't mean you shouldn't move fast, it simply means it's that much more important to pay attention to the details.

It's important to make sure that your brand identity is consistent across all platforms.  Your social media pages should match your website, which should match print pieces, which should match your TV ads.  Each component should be supporting the larger story, instead of each trying to tell different, often competing, stories.   Details matter, because the way you handle the details goes a long way towards building a customer's trust, which goes a long way towards earning a customer's business.

5. You Are Your Best, And Worst, Marketing Asset

It's true.  No one is more qualified to connect your company, with your target customer, than you.  No one knows your company better, no one knows your customer better (hopefully), and no one knows what you do, better than you.  That makes you the most valuable marketing asset your company has.  At the same time, it also makes you the biggest marketing liability.  So many small business have a great idea, with a solid brand, but fail in connecting with their customer, because the founder, or owner, is unable to look through the eyes of the customer.  Having an outside perspective is critical to being sure that each piece of your marketing supports your overall goal.

It's easy, as a small business owner, to get hyper-focused on what you believe people think about your company, and your marketing message, even though we know far too much to be objective about our own company.  It's easy to overlook the obvious when you've invested every ounce of passion into your business, and too many companies fail in crafting a message that connects, because they think like a company, instead of a customer.  Having an outside advocate for your brand, and your marketing message, ensures that neither get lost - and ensures that you can focus on doing what you do best, which is, after all, why you are such an asset.

OUR FAVORITE SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING TOOLS

Probably the last thing any of us has, is too much time.  If you run a small business, that's especially true.  You've got plenty of things to do, and figuring out the best tools for your social media strategy is just one of the thousands of things on your to-do list - if it's on the list at all.

At the same time, a good social media strategy can help you be even more efficient at attracting customers, and building loyalty.  That's why we are big believers in using social media tools that give you results, without wasting your time. 

These five tools are all great at helping you build a streamlined social media strategy, focused on publishing content, monitoring conversations, and organizing analytics in a way that you can actually use.  Social media management tools have come a long way, offering a comprehensive set of the tools your small business needs to be both efficient and effective.

Here are five of our favorite social media management tools for small businesses.

Hootsuite - is a free social media management platform that describes itself as "your social media dashboard.  Hootsuite allows you to connect your various social media accounts giving you the ability to publish, monitor and analyze your overall social presence. This platform allows you to schedule social media posts and easily monitor what your audience is engaging with  Hootsuite has it's own link shortening service, making it easy to share engaging content, and measuring the results.

One of the biggest benefits of Hootsuite, besides the fact that they have a free level of service, is the "Hootlet.” The Hootlet is a browser extension that allows you to pull content from anywhere on the internet.  Hootsuite offers additional analytics and added team members for a monthly fee.

Sprout Social - is a robust social media management platform that allows you to post on your social channels and has an efficient platform for monitoring.  One of the biggest benefits of Sprout Social is the detailed reporting and analytics.  In addition to giving you feedback on the types of posts that your audience most engages with, Sprout Social also gives you detailed information about your audience.  

Sprout Social also integrates easily with your RSS feed, making it easy to share content with your audience, from almost any source.  Though it's not the least expensive, this management software is great for teams managing their brand across multiple social media networks, needing professional reporting analytics.

HubSpot –is a paid software platform that is designed around inbound marketing.  More than just social media software, Hubspot is a complete solution for creating, publishing and sharing content that is designed to attract your target customer.  Hubspot provides some of the most detailed analytics you'll find outside of large enterprise tools, and it is designed to help you continuously refine your strategy based on results.  

Though it's not exclusively a social media management tool, HubSpot has a deep social media feature set, allowing you to post and schedule content through your various social channels, and monitor the results.  The "social inbox” showcases specific social activity and published content, especially as it is connected to your leads and customers. HubSpot also displays specific mentions or interactions on social media that are best for your business.  Hubspot has a 30 day free trial that's worth checking out for any small business. 

TweetDeck – is a free service that helps manage your twitter feed. This is a web based management site (now a part of twitter) for Mac and Windows that can be used to monitor your social media sites and schedule posts. It is also a great tool for hashtag searches, followers, and Twitter lists. Using a column-based layout,  Tweetdeck makes it easy to see your customized columns in one window.   Because it's free, Tweetdeck is a great tool when you need something to get started. 

Buffer –  allows you to schedule various social media posts and automatically staggers them within the day to showcase “real-time” posting. Since consistency is important in building an engaged audience, Buffer helps you create a stream of relevant posts across your social channels.  Monitor and maintain Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and more, and schedule posts that connect with your audience.  Buffer has a convenient Chrome plugin that makes it super easy to "buffer" whenever you're online.  Finally, Buffer also supplies social media analytics and reporting based on your published content.

All of these social media management tools have benefits to using them, depending on where you're at in developing a social media strategy.  We encourage our clients to check them out to see which is the best fit for their organization.

THE POWER OF A SOCIAL BUSINESS

As the Internet continues to lead as the largest global marketplace, the choice to be a social business can be one that makes or breaks your success in today’s data-driven world. Providing a great digital customer experience is one way to boost customer satisfaction and your chances for long-term success.

Often times, small and mid-sized businesses were propelled into motion by a brilliant idea or the zest of a passionate entrepreneur. It’s important to have the right marketing strategy in place so that you can continue to scale, grow and conquer at the optimal frequency and velocity right for your business. Integrating social technology and digital strategies into your overarching business plan can put you ahead of your competition, boost your revenue and foster customer loyalty, the end game for any business.

One of the most important keys to an effective digital strategy is building a consistent online marketing plan. This means establishing and maintaining a compelling website, effective landing pages, engaging social media presence across relevant profiles, positive customer reviews in forums, an enviable search engine ranking, and positive feedback loop for company information (blog, newsletter, etc.).

Through all of this digital real estate, the tone and brand voice should be authentic, informative, transparent and the company should be able and willing to listen and respond to customers, those who are happy and in distress, alike.

People want to know that they can count on you for service, support and quality. They want to, and are, sharing their customer experiences -- the good, bad and ugly -- with their networks. Moreover, they want to entertain their networks.

Don’t forget: Social media is fun! Why is our society so obsessed with social networking sites, such as Facebook and Instagram? Primarily because it’s fun! We enjoy being connected with our family and friends and seeing what they’re up to.

You can use this to your advantage and leverage these free marketing opportunities by utilizing candor, humor and wit.

By optimizing your digital and social presence now, your business will be better suited for the e-commerce boom that is only just beginning to take the world by storm. More consumers will be purchasing goods and services via their smartphones than ever before. In order to stay top of mind and relevant to consumers, businesses must establish and maintain a strong digital identity that engages with it its patrons. Social is the new business standard.

CASE STUDY: TELLING THE STORY OF YOUR BRAND

 

Dowding Industries is a family-owned business.  On the surface, they look like almost any other manufacturing company.   They have factories with stamping presses, lasers, and high tech machining equipment.  As you take a walk on the factory floor, you hear the sounds you'd expect to hear in a stamping or fabrication plant.  Walk through the factory and you hear the presses stamping out parts that end up in final products like giant CAT trucks, or Cummins engines.  

But as you walk through one of the 3 Dowding plants in Eaton Rapids, MI, even more than the sounds, or the smell of diesel, there's something else you can't help but notice.  The people.  

Dowding really is a family. Chris, the CEO, grew up hand-painting depth finders, while watching cartoons on TV.  Her dad, Skip, is the founder, and Chairman of the Board.  Over the last 50 years, they've grown, both as a company, but also as a family, and today, the 200 people they employ are an extension of not just a corporation.  You see, Dowding doesn't just build parts... they're building people.

It turns out, that those people they are building, are really great at building the things their customers need.  Sometimes that looks like creating custom processes to build a part that other suppliers couldn't.  Other times, it means inventing a machine that no one else thought could be built, just to meet a customer's needs.

Dowding came to us to help them create a series of videos that would tell their story.  They noticed that whenever their potential customers visit them at their 3 plants here in Michigan, they almost always won the business.  When people experienced who they are, and walked that factory floor, they almost always won their business.  The challenge was getting their potential customers here to their factories.

We took on their project to create a series of videos that their sales and marketing team could use when they meet potential customers, helping them re-create the "in-person" experience, even far from Eaton Rapids.   Our goal was simple - tell the story. 

Once we had dialed in the tone and message of the videos, we tackled an update of their website, so that the brand story was consistent across all of their digital marketing materials.  We focused on using large images, as well as creating pathways for their story to come through online. 

One of the most important things for businesses to remember, is that you have an ability to engage with your potential customers and share your story, before they ever interact with anyone at your business.  Your website, social media, and digital marketing strategy can help you communicate who you are and what you stand for, in a powerful way, that attracts your ideal clients.