3 Hot Ways to Communicate with Your Customers Online!

By Wendy Burge

It used to be that having a website URL address was the way to show you were hip to the new online movement by having a web presence for your business. However, things are changing rapidly and with the help of newly emerging, user-friendly technology, it is much easier to establish more ways to build good customer relationships. The Internet can offer more than a place to host your website for your business. It can also give you more powerful and creative ways to engage and communicate with your customers. Here are the top 3 hot ways to infuse online communication into your marketing toolbox. 

Blog – Be Read
 
Web logs otherwise known as Blogs are a journal type website. Their structure is quite different however from traditional websites. Blogs allow people to post their ideas, thoughts, expertise, and commentaries on an open site which they can set up through one of the many free, blog hosting sites where people around the globe can read it. Blogs are web-based journals written by anyone and everyone with an opinion to share.

People who write blogs are known as Bloggers. Blogs are often written by only one person and are usually intended to share a point of view about a particular subject. Unlike an on-line magazine or other forms of journalistic commentary, blogs allow the everyday person to take a position in it-globally!  Newbie bloggers be warned, do not post ideas that aren’t your own because active blog readers will let you know they caught you. Just remember that when deciding to create a blog, authenticity is key. Also, not everything you read should be believed. Bloggers are not journalists, but people openly offering unsolicited opinions, much like people standing on a street corner sharing their ideas and latest experiences. It is up to you to stop, listen, and believe or not believe their credibility.
 
Blogs are finding their way into the business world by means of bloggers who post opinions about businesses, products, and services. This can be a good thing as their posting act like testimonies and can be used to actively drive traffic, the prospective customers, to a business. On the flip side, a small business owner who blogs can easily create an expert position by posting about their business ideas, intentions, and desires in a way that positions them with a transparency for viewers to read and learn more about them. Likewise, as a blogger, yourself, you can post feedback on other people’s blogs that are relative to your industry and or target market of customers as a means of positioning your expertise.

Readers can post commentaries, when allowed, and interact within the co-creation of their experiences with your business by offering their feedback. Blogs can easily allow for customers, prospects, and the world, in general, to discover more about your business in a less “salesie” way. 

Podcast – Be Heard
 
Broadcasts of audio that are downloaded to listening devices like an iPod, the most common, are called Podcasts. Podcasts are sound bites of audio content that are broadcasted to people through a subscription service. People can receive regular updates of audio created by the host person or podcaster. Podcasters can create unique “talk-radio” content on any subject with which they have experience– lasting anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour-long show.

Like having your own radio station, podcasts allow a person to create “radio shows” that people can listen to at their own convenience by downloading show segments to their computer or other listening devices like an iPod or MP3 player. With a few pieces of equipment; a computer, a mic (microphone), and the Internet, anyone can create a podcast. These small sound bites of audio, or podcast shows, are then uploaded on to iTunes. (That’s right–you do not need to be a band, book or movie to get on iTunes.) People can then subscribe to your podcast show. New podcast segments are finally uploaded to the hosting distribution site and are sent to subscribers who can download the podcast to their preferred listening devices.
 
Podcast are equivalent to blogs, in the same way that they are open to anybody who wants to talk about a topic of choice. Small business owners can easily convey their expertise by broadcasting their knowledge through their own podcast shows. This is a great way for small business owners to update and offer timely topics of interest to their followers.
 
Podcasts are great for people who prefer talking over writing; however, some planning and prep work should be done before hitting the mic. Spontaneity can be okay, but, tightening up on a topic with a scripted show outline allows for clearer content to be communicated. URL links to your shows are generated and can be posted on your website, blog, Twitter, Facebook, and within email marketing pieces to your customers.

Podcasts are great “calling cards” in positioning your expertise. Once podcasters are up and running and their shows are getting exposure, it is common to be asked to be interviewed as a guest expert on other podcast shows related to your industry. You can not find better PR than that! 

Video – Be Seen 
 
Web video is probably better noted through sites like YouTube. However, it is slowly making its way as a new, hot online marketing strategy. As advancing technology makes it easier to create video clips and upload them to sites like YouTube, video allows people to capture content with relative ease for others to see and for the videographer to be seen. While we have all seen the stupid-person antics caught on video and posted on YouTube, video as a communication media is catching on with other people besides the amateur, candid-camera enthusiasts. Again, with just a few pieces of equipment– a computer, a video camera, and the Internet, anyone can create simple video clips to convey their messages.
 
The business world is starting to catch on that this simple tool is great for delivering personalized messages about updates, product enhancements, and promotional offers. Some organizations are going as far as creating a themed series of video clips, often humorous in nature, in hopes that these small mini-videos go viral, and will be sent by viewers to each other around the global-net to see. They are often relatively inexpensive to make and offer a flexible way to create non-written content on a weekly basis to share with consumers.
 
You do not need to be a large corporation to take advantage of this new communication tool, either. Because of the reasonable cost, mostly in equipment, it is easy for a small business owner to start creating video clips about a topic specific to their industry. By posting it to a YouTube account, they can offer links to customers through a very personal and interactive media that goes beyond the written word or voice-only recording. This is great for businesses and organizations which naturally don’t lend well to the other formats above. Because it is so easy to create, it is used for product demonstration, speeches, and sales training.
 
Video is also popping up as an add-on to blogs as it is easy to create and upload along with a posting-of-commentary about the topic covered for the viewers to also read. It conveys more personality than just the written word alone. This is called Vlogging, short for video blogging. And like a podcast, video content can be added to iTunes and this is called Vodcasting. Again the idea is that each video is created, uploaded, and sent to subscribers who download it to watch at a more convenient time.
 
As you can see above, the numerous words bolded constitute a whole new vocabulary developing to explain this wonderful, marketing phenomenon which we are finding and creating online. Become familiar with them and their meanings because your customers and clients are learning them, too. 

© 2009 Wendy Burge – Radiant Edge Consulting.

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Radiant Business & Marketing Coach Wendy Burge publishes the On the Edge! weekly ezine–Where business, marketing, and lifestyle meet. If you’re ready to have radiant marketing, make more money, and have more freedom in your small business, get your FREE tips now at www.RadiantEdgeConsulting.com

 

Friends, Followers, and Tribes: Social Network Marketing 101

by Wendy Burge 

In this day of digital communications, an evolution of social networks have emerged connecting people without geographical boundaries. Social networks in their purest form let people connect who have a commonality. It’s these commonalities that create “tribes” or groups of people who relate to their similar aspects, collectively. Social networks have become the greatest marketing tool for businesses to utilize because of their targeted, cost effective strategies for relationship marketing. However, social network sites like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn do have cultural distinctions that must be considered when choosing them for marketing purposes.
 
Let’s start with MySpace. This social site is largely dominated by 17- 25 year olds. Personal profiles host commentaries, video, and music. Musicians, bands, and artists often use it as a multi-media gallery to showcase their works. However, the nature of MySpace tends to feel “noisy” as profiles have individualized personalities. In general, MySpace feels like a voyeuristic glimpse into a teen-ager’s bedroom where friends come to hang-out and anything goes. MySpace has very few privacy features and profiles are open to full public viewing so businesses geared to younger consumers could take advantage of interacting with them on this site with relative ease.
 
Facebook, on the other hand, is like the office water-cooler where people share stories of their lives and things they’ve done. The median age on Facebook is 35 years old, and with 1 million users a week signing on, it’s the fastest growing social network site. It hosts 200 million active members and is predicted to hit ½ billion within the next 2 years, if not sooner. This makes it one of the best places to do business online.
 
A person is limited to having only one profile listing on Facebook and only 5000 ‘friends’-those people who are linked to your profile. As a privacy feature, people may not read your profile until you both agree to be ‘friends’. ‘Friends’ can make comments to your posts which run like news feed to your Facebook networks. For small businesses, this news-feed profiling becomes viral throughout networks that can consist of your customers, prospects, and colleagues and read by their networks attracting new clients. Their commentary to your posts allows them to co-create the experience with your business. For this reason careful consideration should be made about the content of posts, in general.
 
Your business may not host a profile page itself, but you may set up a ‘fan page’ where information relative to your business including updates on product or service offers, special events, and or activities your business may be involved in can be listed. Fan pages are open for full public view, have no limits to the number of ‘friends’, and offers target-specific broadcast of information directly to people who are interested in what you have to offer.
 
If Facebook is the office water-cooler, then LinkedIn is the corporate boardroom. As one of the largest professional network sites online, members showcase their career profiles, ‘link’ to others within their industry, and connect with people from jobs they have held or done business with. The adage “Its not what you know, but who you know’ that best describes this site. If you are a solo-professional, LinkedIn is an important site to join as your profile is like a virtual resume for other to see. It’s a great site to target other businesses for joint ventures, collaborative opportunities, and or add as referral resources too. On a note, LinkedIn has become the hottest place to be “headhunted” because companies can easily check out potential candidates who might possess the skills they are looking for.
 
Last, but definitely not least, is Twitter. Described as a micro-blog, it allows people to post up to 150 characters of information about themselves at a time. Twitter hosts over 8 million users and has no limit to how many people can follow your profile. Like a cocktail party where you share sound bites of information within a group conversation your ‘followers’ or “tweeps” can and do make comments or contribute to your posting and overall discussion. As a marketing tool, it can be used to post info regarding business products, services, or offers. Innovative businesses are using it to drive traffic back to their websites for special promotions to their consumers.

Social network sites have given businesses an innovative and new way to reach their consumers. Building upon relationships-even those without borders, considerations and courtesies should still be kept in check because potentially the whole world is watching.
    
© 2009 Wendy Burge – Radiant Edge Consulting.

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Radiant Business & Marketing Coach Wendy Burge publishes the On the Edge! weekly ezine–Where business, marketing, and lifestyle meet. If you’re ready to have radiant marketing, make more money, and have more freedom in your small business, get your FREE tips now at www.RadiantEdgeConsulting.com