People do business with those they know, like, trust, and value. A huge part of that is trust. People trust you in part when you establish yourself as an expert before they even meet you. So how can a blog help you establish that expertise?
Social media management can be a challenge. You have to worry about setting up sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn the correct way. You have to share updates on a consistent basis. And you need to build your audience.
So you have a website for your organization, and you like it pretty well. You’re online, and it seems to get the job done. But how do you know whether or not your website could benefit from a facelift? Is it worth the time, effort, and investment to travel down that road?
If you have that nagging feeling of failure when marketing your organization online, you’re not alone. Plenty of other people have felt the same way you have. The key is to move past that by figuring out what you did wrong, and correcting it.
In many cases, I’ve found that people had that feeling of failure because they were doing some key steps out of order. Or maybe they were leaving out some steps entirely.
When you’re running a business or working within a particular niche, it’s easy to to fall into the habit of making assumptions. The issues and concepts you deal with day-to-day may seem obvious and self-explanatory. Industry terms and buzzwords might slip into casual conversations with clients, because you assume everyone knows what you’re talking about.
Everyone wants to be loved. The problem is, trying force people to love you doesn’t really work. Many people fall into the trap of over-tempering their marketing content and branding, because they want to appeal to everyone.
It’s New Year’s Eve and many people are getting ready to charge into 2014 with a shiny new marketing plan. They’re going to blog every day and get more active on Twitter and LinkedIn. Potential customers will be impressed by the flood of content and updates. It’s going to be a great year. It’s going to be different—better than last year.
One of the questions that comes up a lot when people ask me about blogging is “How long should my blog entries be?” I’ve struggled with the same issue and did a lot of research over the last couple of years to find out what other writers, content strategists, and marketing gurus think.
Whether you’re on social networks, working on your email newsletter, or blogging on your website, you should be working on getting others to Know, Like, Trust, and Value you. Value is a key component of that, because people that don’t know what you do or aren’t in the market for what you do won’t do business with you.
As we’ve discussed before, the whole point of marketing your organization online is to get people to Know, Like, Trust, and Value you. So what are some ways you can get someone to like your organization?