…With effective content strategies, companies large and small can be rewarded with increased customer loyalty, increased brand equity and a perception of leadership in their market. So when launching a content strategy for your online presence, make sure that you follow these seven steps to make sure your story is both heard and appreciated.

Do a content audit of the business. Every company has a voice – whether they work at it or not -and managing it starts from the inside. Identify what type of content is available and what should be updated. Look beyond just your website and include any off-site content (user reviews, organic search listings, social profiles and posts) as well as marketing, sales and PR content. Begin gathering opinions from your own staff, then reach out to the public to reveal any discrepancies between perception and reality.

Designate a content strategy leader. Put one central person in charge of managing the process. This individual is responsible for keeping the content up-to-date, managing editorial calendars and delegating tasks. It’s essential that a skilled, trusted employee is the point person for company information every day. If your leader is not already an expert, some good learning sources include Junta42.com and copyblogger.com.

Be timely and relevant. I recently heard a great quote that sums up the importance of timeliness; “Good content capitalizes on an opportunity in the life of the content’s consumer.” Such information is fed by what’s going on with a company’s brand, what’s going on with the media and what’s relevant to the customer. Try and gain information from the audience, ask them directly what type of content they want, and then follow through and provide what’s applicable to their lifestyle. Much like a relationship, it’s important not to just talk about the company all the time.

Assign contributors. Once the state of environment, audience, and content has been identified, it’s time to write. This is when companies task their most talented and creative staff to help deliver the consumer what they want. Ask that good storyteller to be the voice of the brand.

Make it easy for customers to share. The quickest way companies can allow their customers to share content is putting links to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Foursquare and other social media channels on their own website. Consider content your most important design element. It’s imperative for companies to pay attention to content placement and ensure its consumable, not hidden or lost to a lot of scrolling. Also identify the piece as yours, for example, a title card with your company name before a video gets set to go viral on the web.

Study, Study, Study. When it comes to content strategy, businesses should spend a good portion of time in the virtual “library.” Now companies can see where visitors went before and after coming to their website and referral URLs, where people share your content. This information is readily available through Google Analytics, Facebook metrics for fan pages, and social media monitoring tools including (from free to far from free) SocialMention, PeopleBrowsr, Radian 6, and TNS Cymfony. It’s also fairly easy to set up on-site surveys.

Let go of the fear. Conversations about the company’s content are going to happen regardless. That’s why it’s helpful to provide consumers a conversational platform and engage them on your space. Should they be more active on review sites like Yelp, you should still engage and learn. Leading review sites also provide statistics that can help inform your strategy.

There are certainly a handful of companies that are grasping the concept of content strategy. REI incorporated an “expert advice” section for customers interested in rock climbing and provides them with a list of important items to pack for their trips. Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty has done an exceptional job reaching out to teen girls, presenting content that’s relevant and not simply trying to sell their products.

Lastly, Vail Resorts mobilized their loyal skiers and riders to produce user generated content in their Snow Squad competition to become part of next year’s on mountain social media team. The takeaway is effective content strategy leads to effective storytelling in the digital age.

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When creating a web site or an Internet marketing campaign, one of the most important questions I ask the client is “Who are you trying to reach and what emotional connection are you trying to make?” This starts a larger discussion on branding and positioning.

A lot of small business owners just put an ad together or a web site hoping that the mere presence of advertising will drive business their direction. However, if they have never thought about who they are trying to attract or their overall strategy, they may use the wrong message, photos, and copy that is not attracting their key market. In addition, their web site, brochure, and advertising may be sending different, conflicting messages. For example, they may create a beautiful professional ad but when the potential customer goes to the web site, they have old graphics, miles of copy and confusing navigation. This will cause the customer to jump off the site and not call or Email.

When asking if a company has ever tried marketing in a specific channel, many owners will say “we tried it and it doesn’t work”. However, was the marketing channel the problem (i.e. magazine, PPC ad, online advertiser) or was it the ad itself?

Before starting a web project or any other marketing project, it is extremely important that your marketing team truly understands who you are targeting and what colors, fonts, words and copy will attract that type of person. People buy because of emotions to solve a need, save them money or save them time. If your key audience is not quickly understanding how your product or service will help them, then they will move on. You are not trying to sell the entire world…you are simply trying to connect with potential customers who “match” the value you are offering.

Futhermore, it takes at least 7 “touches” for a person to even recognize that they saw your ad or article. Therefore, marketing should be a comprehensive strategy, not one that just throws mud on the wall to see what sticks.

Finally, all marketing should have a specific lead channel. My next article will talk about the evolution of online brochure web sites to lead generation web sites.

Marcy Mitchell, owner of MTECH Internet Marketing, has been helping small to medium sized business owners develop comprehensive marketing strategies and effective web sites for the past 14 years. For a complimentary marketing review, contact her or call 970-731-6325.

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GROWING SPACES LLC

www.growingspaces.com/community

SNAPSHOT: Based in Pagosa Springs, Growing Spaces produces energy-efficient greenhouses using a passive solar geodesic design for year-round growing.
LEADERSHIP: Owner Michael Parsons started Growing Spaces out of a garage in 1989.
WORK FORCE: The company employed 10 full-time equivalent employees in 2009 and expects to add one or two employees in 2010.
CUSTOMERS: The company has supplied its Growing Domes to more than 1,200 clients in 48 states and 11 countries. Best-known customers include Toyota Motor Co., Shumei Natural Gardens at Rodale Institute and Naropa University.
PIVOTAL MOMENTS: The company cites the “phenomenon of Y2K” as an impetus for people deciding to become more self-sufficient, and the company went from producing 14 Growing Domes a year, to 75. The company launched its website in 1994, putting it well ahead of competitors in e-commerce.
MARKETING STRATEGY: The company’s most successful campaign is its “Tour of Domes” each April in Pagosa Springs when six Growing Dome owners open their domes to the public, displaying fresh herbs, flowers and vegetables when outside it is still snowy. People come from as far as Santa Fe., N.M., and Colorado Springs for the tour.

Growing Spaces has been working with MTECH in developing a robust social media presence with their new interactive blog (http://www.growingspaces.com/community), facebook page and YouTube channel. They are currently re-designing their web site and expanding their marketing initiatives.

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Here is a great article from Marketing Tools:CRM Newsletter that makes some great points:

Marketing Positioning — It’s The Customer’s View That Counts

Where do we fit in our competitive marketplace? That’s a question often posed when new hires are brought into a company and possibly the most interesting and important question for marketing and sales organizations to get right. The question, “Given all of the players in our space, what is our positioning?,” should be answered conclusively.

While marketers often talk about the science of marketing, many people refer to the quantitative aspects of marketing as the science, or hard-marketing. While it’s true there is a great deal of mathematics and analytics in marketing, it’s also true that there is a science to developing an effective positioning, and this methodology can be summarized as follows:

a. Identify your target market;

b. Define your company (or product, brand, etc.) in the mind of the target customer;

c. Develop an understanding of your company’s (or product, brand, etc.) distinctive place in the customer’s mind.

Let’s look at each of these steps individually.

First, identify the target market. This is not always as easy as it sounds. By segmenting the market carefully, and understanding your company’s value proposition relative to each segment, it will become clear which segments are best suited to your solutions, and which ones should be targeted first. The more selective, or granular the segmentation, the better you will understand your very specific value proposition, and this will lead to a much clearer picture of your competitive landscape.

Second, think about your company or solution as if you were one of the target customers. What is your current brand perception, your view of the key values, strengths, and weaknesses, as perceived by this target market? For small, or emerging companies, the perception may be complete lack of awareness.

Lastly, and most importantly, build an honest and complete view of how the customer thinks of your company or solution in terms of a very distinct place in the competitive landscape — a place that is different from all of the other competitors.

Of course, in an ideal world, your customers’ views will match precisely how you want them to see you. If this is the case, then your positioning statements and marketing reflect this existing view. In most cases, however, marketers are challenged with creating a more complete understanding of their company’s value to a target market, in terms of the distinctive place in the market that they believe the company should occupy.

Getting to the most appropriate positioning involves two equally important elements of success. To begin with, your solution must actually do the things you say it does, in order to occupy that distinctive space. That is, it must deliver on that promise. If the actual product/solution is really the same as that of your competitors’, and all you have is marketing statements, that strategy will soon be discovered by the market and a short-lived celebration of success will result.

Next, once you have established that your solution actually works, is distinctive in the specific ways we’ve identified, and solves a set of particular problems for your target customers better than your competitors, you can then start to tell the market about this uniquely beneficial approach.

The marketing must consistently focus on these distinctive benefits, highlighting how your solution is most particularly suited to solve the problem for the target customer in a manner that is superior to your competition.

Rather than diluting your marketing positioning by identifying all of the aspects of your solution, it is essential to position the solution in a very focused way — reinforcing at every possible opportunity that unique and distinctive place in the market that your company occupies, and intends to own.

For marketers, positioning is not about a feature-function battle against competitors; it’s about building a common understanding between the market and the company, relative to the share of the market that it serves best.

We know we have done a good job of positioning our company/product when our prospects and customers know exactly where we fit into the competitive market landscape, and we agree!

Gavin Finn is president and CEO of Kaon. He is an experienced operating executive with more than 20 years of building value in profitable, growth-oriented organizations. Gavin joined Kaon in early 2005 and is responsible for corporate and product strategy, customer satisfaction, corporate growth, and financial performance. Reach him here.

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Now with more than 400 million people using Facebook and $100 million of them using Facebook from their mobile phones, Facebook wants to continue this growing trend and develop social applications that integrate web sites with their new tools.

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Many companies or organizations spend thousands with consultants coming up with their brand, but they don’t know how to effectively communicate that brand throughout their entire organization. Here is a great article from Cobizmag.org that talks about how to penetrate your brand:

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True Story: It was a Friday morning at a Washington, DC subway stop. A typical morning rush hour, there was a man playing an instrument for tips. But this time, something was quite different from the usual street busker. That’s because this musician was part of an experiment being conducted by The Washington Post.

The busker was playing his violin for about an hour in the subway. The test was to determine if people passing by would appreciate his music. They didn’t. The Washington Post purposely placed a world renown violinist into a remote location to study people’s responses.

Herein lies a wonderful lesson for marketing products. Normally, this musician, better known as the famous violinist Joshua Bell, would command, at minimum, $100 per ticket at one of his typical stage performances. But in an a-typical environment (an underground subway station), the public reaction was less than the customary standing ovation he normally received.

Before I tell you the exact response, take a guess. What do you think his recognition factor was: 5 percent, 10 percent, 20 percent, 25 percent?

Despite the fact that he was playing Bach’s legendary “Chaconne” to perfection on his $3 millon Stradivarius violin, of the 1,097 people that passed by that hour, only ONE person recognized who Bell really was. Yep; one person. That one person left a $20 tip.

As for the other 1,096 people who heard him, but thought little of the talent they were passing, he collected $32.17 in tips for a total of a whopping $52.17 earned in an hour’s worth of work. Suffice it to say, substantially less than his normal compensation for a stage performance.

This is the key point. Just because you have a product or service that you believe is wonderful, getting other people to notice is no slam dunk if it’s not put into the right context.

The editors and researchers at The Washington Post were genuinely surprised that the famous violinist wasn’t recognized more. Reporter Gene Weingarten came to the conclusion that basically people are too busy during rush hour to notice true talent. He also concluded that in a concert setting, people are in the right frame of mind and are expecting brilliance. In an unexpected environment, however, people took little notice.

So, how does this experiment translate to a marketing or PR blunder? Simply put, it’s a case of Right Product – Wrong Place.

What does it means for your business?

If you are running ads in the wrong publication, sending out mass direct mail to zip codes rather than to specific people, you are playing the numbers game. It doesn’t work anymore. Consumers tend to screen out anything that looks unfamiliar as they did to the violinist in the subway. They toss unsolicited mail, throw spam into the trash, guard their email addresses with their first born, fast-forward through the commercials of their favorite TV programs, and rely on caller ID to see who it is.

Your challenge in the 21st century of marketing requires strategic new tactics to get recognized. It takes a combination of common sense and creativity to be received positively.

Your Strategy Should Be: Do your homework. Create the right environment for your product or service. Make sure it’s a good fit. If you’re not sure, spend a few bucks to do some market research. Many factors affect marketing, but placing the right product in the wrong places is unlikely to produce the desired results.

Esty Atlas is the public relations director for Hughes & Stuart Marketing located in Greenwood Village. She is a four-time Emmy Award-winning writer, creative producer and coauthor of “Roadrunner Marketing: Strategic Secrets You Wish You Knew.“  http://www.hughesstuart.com.

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Well, Facebook just made that decision a bit easier by now Emailing a weekly report of the visitors, fans and posts to your Facebook page.

By comparing this to other website landing pages driven by marketing advertisements, you can start to see how Facebook compares to the amount of traffic it potentially drives to your site as well as how well it connects to your key audience.

If you don’t have a Facebook Page (not profile) yet, you might be surprised how many of your customers are using this vehicle. So, I encourage you to take a little bit of time, set one up and start playing with it.

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How can I use it to promote my business?  First of all, realize that your personal Facebook profile is not the place to promote your business. It is like sending a Christmas card to someone with your business card in it…not socially appropriate.

Instead, set up a Facebook Page to promote your business.

So, how effective are Facebook Fan Pages? Are they actually generating customers and leads for your business?

Hubspot’s Inbound Marketing Blog recently highlighted how one business is using Facebook fan pages to help their business:

Dessert Gallery, a popular Houston-based bakery and café chain, experimented with a Facebook Fan Page to measure how helpful the popular social media site really is. They set up a “sweet” Fan Page and updated it regularly with pictures, contests, reviews and other items designed to interact with their customers. Three months later, they surveyed over 13,000 customers on shopping behavior and store evaluations and received a significantly higher and more positive response from those customers who became Facebook fans.

In fact, the study found that compared with typical Dessert Gallery (DG) customers, the company’s Facebook fans:

• Made 36% more visits to DG’s stores each month
• Spent 45% more of their eating-out dollars at DG
• Spent 33% more at DG’s stores
• Had 14% higher emotional attachment to the DG brand
• Had 41% greater psychological loyalty toward DG

Creating a Facebook Business Page helped the bakery chain reach a wider range of people and connect with them on a more personal level. More people felt inclined to visit and spend more money, and a large portion of customers felt increased loyalty to the brand.

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Short-sighted measures make the state far less attractive

By Diane Schwenke

Businesses across the state have recently been taken by surprise and alarmed by a package of bills proposed by the Governor and passed by the Legislature in record time, which took effect March 1. The bills were aimed at helping to fill the state’s current budget gap by eliminating or reducing state tax credits and exemptions for businesses in Colorado.

These measures have been used across our state for decades to help companies keep and grow jobs. The increase in taxes paid by the private sector as a result of this package will make it more difficult to keep jobs in Colorado and lure new ones to our State in the future.

We know that Colorado is facing unprecedented economic challenges. Unemployment statewide is 7.5 percent and locally it is 9 percent. We continue to hope that the state and local economy is positioned to return to stability and growth this year. However, the decisions we make now, in both the private and public sector, are critical to achieving that goal.

Colorado has very little ammunition to lure business. While other states are rapidly adding incentive packages to attract companies, we are removing several of the key provisions in our limited arsenal. As the country rebounds from the current economic woes, businesses are looking for opportunities to take advantage of an educated workforce and reasonable property costs.

They will be looking for additional incentives to relocate or expand their operations. Colorado will now have less to offer them based on the recent work of the Colorado General Assembly. In fact, we may have just put out the “Closed” sign in terms of the overall message we have sent business, particularly when compared with other states that are seeking jobs for their citizens.

We know the state’s budget problems are severe. We understand the challenges our elected officials face; the private sector has been experiencing and managing the very same issues. Nonetheless, it is short-sighted to balance the budget with one-time funding sources and the removal of economic policies that drive job growth and ultimately tax revenue.

Colorado’s business community contributed, in the past two years, more than $330 million in cash funds and forgone revenue with the repeal of the vendor fee ( a program where the state paid business to collect state sales tax, which business now does at its own expense) to shore up the state’s budget shortfall. This year, we will continue to do what we can to get our state finances back on track.

In the coming year, the $800 million dollar deficit in the Unemployment Insurance Fund will have to be replenished as well-state government does not cover that cost, business does. Finally, we expect we will also be paying an increased property tax rate due to plummeting home values and the constitutional requirement that business make up the difference in those property tax rates. All that, while trying to cope with the loss of revenue in their own businesses at the same time. The total cost of the actions taken previously by policy makes along with this anticipated deficit in the Unemployment Insurance fund will be well beyond $1 billion over a few short years. That was BEFORE this most recent action.

Business is already contributing to help the state close the budget gap. With this latest legislative action the primary job and tax generators of this State are being required to do even more. There will be unintended consequences. Dollars that could have gone into job growth will be going to pay sales tax on energy used to manufacture a ceramic component part at CoorsTek which must compete internationally for sales, or to pay sales tax on the takeout boxes that a Nick and Willy’s pizza comes in. Make no mistake this will affect the bottom line costs of many small businesses as well as large ones…at a time when they can least afford it.

If this recession has shown nothing else, it has shown the direct correlation between the fate of free enterprise and the fate of government budgets. One cannot help but wonder then, why lawmakers in this State choose to make it tougher for free enterprise to return to the profitability that will be required to in order to have more sustainable state tax revenues.

In 2010, as the Chamber and as the local business community, we will continue doing what we can to get our economy back on track. But we cannot do that alone. We, along with other business associations across the State urge our elected officials within the Colorado General Assembly to join us in this goal, to see business as the ally we are in moving this state forward and to partner to promote activities that lead to jobs for Coloradans.

Diane Schwenke is the president and chief executive officer of the Grand Junction Area Chamber of Commerce.

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