IT’S VIRAL, IT’S CATCHING, and you need to know what it is and how to use it to your advantage if you’re going to ride the wave of profits it’s yielding. What used to be word-of-mouth has been turned on its head with the click of a mouse.
Now, people who used to recommend a product or service to their friends can click away to send the same referral to literally hundreds of people in an instant, and they’re doing it.
Take a look at sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. It’s the fastest, greatest, and in many cases, cheapest way to get your company noticed that exists today. Viral emails and videos are flooding the in boxes of literally millions of your prospective customers every day.
And, where word-of-mouth used to take weeks, months and years to really penetrate a market place, word of mouse can do it in hours. And the best part, small business can actually do it better than most big companies because they can adapt more quickly to the technology and ideas.
So, let’s get to the basics first. Content is king now on the net. And content is taking the form of everything from blogs. Libraries of articles, Press Rooms, videos, audios and as much information as you can about your products and services as well as how to buy them, how to choose them and how to differentiate the good suppliers from the bad.
We’ll take a look at each one separately, but suffice to say the more you can upload, the more places customers, researchers, buyers and journalists can find you.
Blogs – These started in about 2004 in any form or reasonable volume and today you can very cheaply and easily build your own blog into your site. Essentially it’s a way that every day, week or two weeks or you can upload a new article, point of view, story or even journal of your day-to-day business.
Many companies are using blogs to communicate with their customers, gain feedback, or even build a volume of searchable content on their site. Remember, the web is building every day and the more you have on your site that is both targeted at your potential customers and Search Engine Optimised the better your results will be.
Press Room – This is where every day, every week or every fortnight you can submit a press release about your company, one where you control the message as you are the journalist. Think about this: an article in a newspaper is what we pay PR people big money for and may reach tens of thousands of people. Well, if an article is placed on the web, how long will it be there and how many people may find it over the next ten years?
Put in the time and energy to build a solid Press Room filled with everything from an online press kit to copies of articles that have been published, but also every single release you have ever written. Remember, the Press Room is as much for your customers as it is for journalists.
Article Libraries – If you provide a service this should be a large part of your online marketing. Scientists, for example, can upload and everyone can write articles about their products, their industry, and advice for their customers.
Imagine a real estate agency with literally hundreds of articles on how to buy, how to sell and how to invest in real estate.
Video and audio – Let’s first look at the Social Network sites of YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. Each site is massively big, as well as cheap and powerful to use. Again, content is king. The more video, the more pictures and the more you write about yourself and with others, the better. You can even have every employee in your company build their own @work page showing what they do every day, who they work for, and the products etc.
This is obviously where the power of ‘word of mouse’ really starts to show up easily. I’m sure you’ve been sent a video or two, a funny picture and so on. Today when you make a video, it doesn’t need the world’s best production techniques or massive camera expense, just a regular digital home video camera and a whole bunch of imagination…
Just think of how many people started to buy Mentos, after the diet coke and Mentos fountains were posted and then emailed globally. Put simply, there is a massive benefit for a few hours learning and a few days site designing here. Time to get into ActionCOACH!