I’m not the only one who believes this way…

I’ve been hangin’ out lately over at the Golden Tech Blog, having fun with my fellow NWI social media playa’s. We jack around on Twitter and such… ya know, just Tweetin’ and chillin’ — but it’s all for a purpose. That purpose is to draw folks back to our blogs where we have the title to the realestate… where we order the conversations …and where we can interact with potential clients without being “that guy” who hawk’s his wares at dinner parties. Your blog can be like that too ya know??

Along the lines of social media and blogging, Golden Tech has a little challenge going on right now… it’s their way of helping/encouraging businesses to “get it” when it comes to blogging. They call it “Inbound Marketing” and I think that’s cool.

Inbound Marketing — Push or Pull Marketing — Definition

If you have traditional, big corporate marketing experience as I do, you may have seen this referred to as “Push and Pull” marketing. Let’s look at that real quick… Here are my own loose definitions of these two styles:

Push marketing is when you toss out or ‘push’ your message in an attempt to get eyes on your shiz. The marketer is in control of what the message is, how it is seen, when and where. Some examples of push marketing are: direct mail, newspaper ads, billboards and TV commercials.

Push marketing does work, but it is quite like a “spray and pray” kinda strategy if you are new to a market. It’s also dang’d expensive and that’s why large corporations use it… cuz they got the money, and their egos require it be spent to look bigger! And just so you know, even the big companies don’t have a freaking clue about how to properly use push marketing… but they keep doing it because “that’s just how it’s done here.”

Now let’s talk about you, the NW Indiana small business owner looking to make your mark. What can you do to be agile and quick that ain’t gonna break your bank? Enter: Pull marketing, or as my friends at Golden call it, Inbound Marketing.

Pull marketing is all about building client relationships. Some would call it “fluff” and in many cases, it is, but it works! Pull marketing strategies involve blogging, video-casting, social media interaction and and other types of relationship networking (both on and offline).

Pull marketing exposes the human side of the business and draws people in to be a part of the “folks” behind the business. This way, when a potential customer needs your services, they turn TO you because they already “know” you. Cool right?… yeah it’s cool … and it is fun too!

People like to do business with people they know and pull marketing makes this possible. It’s also much less expensive IF, and only IF, you believe in it!

And herein folks, is the conclusion of this blog post:

YOU, the small or medium-sized business owner need to embrace the latest in pull marketing strategies and dedicate resources to them. These resources include business blogging, Facebook marketing, Twitter, YouTube and a few others. Now… I know you think you can’t do it, but the truth is, you can! You just need some help figuring it all out.

Small Business Social Media In NWI

I’ve said that small business social media is like running multiple marathons simultaneously on a 4-lane highway and trying to win all of them. If you are gonna do that, you need a chase vehicle to guide you, and that’s where we come in. Contact us … We love social media, but more importantly, we are outspoken advocates of NWI small biz!

Here is a simple definition of SEO:
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site or a web page (such as a blog) from search engines (like Google and Yahoo and Bing) via “natural” or un-paid (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results.

In short, when you hire me to work on your SEO, the main goal is to bring in targeted visitors to your website. Targeted visitors are those who are searching for your product or service. If a customer is searching for the “best plumber in NWI” or the “cheapest lawn service in Crown Point” or “Indianapolis family lawyers” then he/she will search those terms in the Google/Yahoo search box.

If you are my client, we will work together to determine the best terms related to your business (I have some nifty software too) and then get to work so you will show up in those searches at or near the top. In fact, you won’t pay a dime until you do show up at or near the top! That’s right, at Blue Suit Media, SEO campaigns are “pay per performance” based.  But there is a lot more to it than just “showing up.”

Dominate Search Results With SEO And Social Media

“How we do SEO” is kinda one of those proprietary secrets we don’t talk about at parties, but we will tell you that it combines on page content (words on your website) and off-page links (endorsements from other websites). If you want to know what links are, you can take about an hour and learn from my video series on “What Are Backlinks.”

So we get your website and all of its pages ranking up high in the search engines and that’s all good, but there is more to it. You see, it’s not enough to just “be in the search game,” you have to “dominate the search game.”

Dominate SEO — Social Media

In order to completely obliterate the competition, we employ social media marketing strategy. If you don’t have them yet, I will help you set up a Twitter page, Facebook Fan Page and possibly a YouTube channel, as well as a few other choice free marketing spots around the web. Once we do that, we proceed to have ALL of these pages rank for the exact same key word phrases that we ranked your company website for. So in the end, you have your website ranking number 1, your company twitter profile ranking #2, your Facebook Fan Page ranking #3, etc etc etc. There is just no room for your competitors anywhere! We/you OWN it ALL!

We also make sure you have a couple videos ranking up there, and tweek your Google Local Listing to show up top too.

That’s a lot of ranking, especially if you have 100 or so keywords that you want to dominate for. But that’s that game and it’s a challenge!

So how much does all this SEO goodness cost? Well, it is not as expensive as you might think. I usually start you out slow and simple, and then once you see the returns, we take it to another level. Most clients run in 5-6 phases, and each one incorporates another part of the strategy. Wanna see it laid out?… contact me here.

DISCLAIMER:  this post is gonna get touchy and feely, so be warned! It’s also gonna fly in the face of what your “big corporate” counterparts are doing… they are old school dinosaurs… and they will soon be extinct… don’t YOU get caught up with their way of thinking! …let’s be NEW SCHOOL!!! …so before you turn your nose up at this concept, I want you to think about your current marketing efforts and what they accomplish at what cost. I also want you to look at your business from your employees’ perspective. Then keep in mind that what I am advocating here is nearly FREE and promotes good employee relations in the process. Stick with me ok??? 

First off, we need to talk about reality! The truth is that probably 80 percent of your employees have personal Facebook pages that they use weekly or daily, and I can bet they are visiting Facebook in some way or fashion during the work day! Some may use their smart phone to update Facebook on your time, and others may use your company computers to do it. That is FACT!

But I am here to encourage you to encourage them to CONTINUE this behavior, but steer them in a direction that benefits your business in the process! Yep, this is VERY forward, cutting edge thinking, but guys, it’s time to EMBRACE the world we live in instead of fighting it!!!

(1) I want you to have a meeting, and encourage your employees to use Facebook to “invite” their friends to join your business fan page. It’s simple, non-assuming, and it works well, especially because I am sure that you treat your employees well, and they love working for you! Think about this: your full timers spend upwards of 40 hours per week at your store… why not encourage them take a little personal time and promote your place too?

(2) Big companies spend thousands of dollars developing and updating software to keep their employees from visiting social sites like Facebook during work time. They have multiple paragraphs of legal-speak in handbooks dedicated to telling employees what will happen to them if they are found “wasting company time” on the internet. It’s laughable !!

But you, the NWI small business owner, should embrace your employees’ desire to visit Facebook during the workday… you should encourage it! Don’t get me wrong, I am not telling you to let them surf social media spots for 7 hours per day… but it would be a great idea to have select employees visit your business page for 15 minutes 3 or 4 times per day to chat with your fans and friends! They are going to do it anyway, so let’s just STEER them OUR way in the process!!

Let’s look at this using a real world example… let’s pretend you operate a local hardware store in Lake County and you have 10 employees plus a couple managers… you can ask your office manager, Carrol to status update her personal Facebook page with something like:

I just checked in an order of the new Easy Seed. Looking forward to trying this out at my house this weekend. Stop by the store today and see me if you need some.

Keep in mind, that Carrol has posted this to her PERSONAL friends. They all know where she works, so it is very normal that she’d share work stuff with them.It is also pretty fair to assume that most of her friends LIVE in NW Indiana too!!

You could also have Carrol post a picture of the Easy Seed too.

Next, I would have Carrol go in and update something very similar to your Facebook business fan page…

Hi guys, Carrol here,  and I wanted to let you know that we just got in a shipment of the new Easy Seed. Get some before the weekend and get your lawn looking nice! Stop by and say “hi” when you come in!

Then what you do in order to get the convo going, is have a couple of your other employees go in and talk to Carrol on the fan age. Jason, your shelf stocking guy would go in and reply to Carrol like this:

Hey Carrol, check this out, I just had a customer come in and get 10 bags of that seed… said he was gonna use it for his entire back yard! Must be good stuff!

and then you, the owner, could write:

It works well guys, I used it just last weekend and already have good germination. I highly recommend this one!

Then of course, Carrol should reply and answer back and continue to interact. If you ask 5 or 6 of your folks do this, you will find that customers will also feel very comfortable jumping in and being a part of it too. You might call this strategy, “priming the pump” for “flowing conversation!”

By the way, all of the above probably took less than 5 minutes per employee. Keep in mind, they are experienced in these spaces and can get in and get out fast!

(3) Finally, we don’t want to make it “all about me,” or just all about your business. We can use our Facebook Fan Page to produce good will back to the employees and their families. We can also use the Facebook page to illustrate that we are HUMANS and not just a stick and brick store. Remember, social media is about connecting with HUMANS!

Here is how YOU, the small business owner in NWI can use Facebook in the personal manner. Update your page like this:

Hey everyone, real quick, Carrol our office manager just adopted a baby girl! We wish her all the best, attached are some pictures of dad, mom and baby Jenny.

Or you could update something like this:

Billy Gregg Jr has worked with us for 2 years, and now he’s heading off to Air Force basic training next month! Come in and wish him well. Thank you Billy for being a part of our team, we will miss you buddy!

I hope you are getting the idea of how this all works! Think you can’t do it? Think it is too much to handle? Get in contact with us, and we’ll train it, run it and admin it all for ya! Contact us here.

1) A dead brand blog makes the brand overall appear dead or boring or worse, a FAILURE

2) A dead blog that once was alive and interactive demonstrates lack of enthusiasm from the business

3) Leaving a dead business blog online is like leaving a 73′ Comet up on blocks in your front lawn

Should I Start A Blog For My Business Then?

Yes you should! Don’t plan for failure guys. If you wanna save some time right now, just hire me here and we can get started — I won’t let your blog die… but if you are here to feed your informational craving and learn a little sumthin’ about search marketing with blogs… then keep reading!

Being Human On Your NW Indiana Business Blog

First off, your blog is NOT a repository for fact sheets and press releases. Don’t do that, it’s boring. Instead, your blog needs to show your human side on the web. Let’s face it, when searchers find your regular website, there isn’t too much there for them to interact with. Sure, they can see your logo and tagline, read about your services, maybe see some “before and after” pics and and then hit you up on your contact page, or maybe dial your phone — but that isn’t “alive” now is it?

But on a blog, we have a great opportunity to be human and invite other humans (potential customers) to interact with us. The way we do this is to use the business blog to GIVE rather than take. Here is a good example of a way your business blog can be human and giving and bring in the customers at the same time.

1) Let’s think off the internet first… ….You are a local auto dealer and you invite a local Boy Scout Troop to come to your place and hold a fund raising car wash on a Saturday. To help them, you send emails to all of your former customers letting them know about the day and encourage them to come in and support the Boy Scouts. (everyone love to support these kinds of activities). Encourage your employees to get involved in this charitable event also.

2) You will be talking about the event ahead of time both on your blog, and on Twitter and Facebook. You will also ask some of your Twitter business contacts to help you spread the word. You’ll all be using the #NWIndiana hashtag on Twitter. (if you don’t know what that is, you can hire me to do it for you ) You also will broadcast the event to your Facebook friends and page fans. The idea is to create a buzz about the event online at zero cost!

CAUTION: don’t over-promote this event in the social spaces! You have to GIVE more than you get in these areas and that means for every broadcast you do ASKING for someone to support your event, you need to GIVE and help promote someone else’s event. We call that “networking” folks, networking! I could show you dozens of examples of NWI businesses that use Twitter and Facebook in the most annoying manner! Man-O-man they are annoying… don’t you do that!

3) There are some traditional marketing techniques to utilize here too. Talk to your contacts in the real world and hand out fliers. Hang signs in your dealership and put signs out at the roadside talking up the event, wimple.

4) On the day of the event, you take tons of pictures, some video and interview people coming through. Of course, you are smart and will have some of your best cars lined up in plain view near the car washing area… a few lookers may buy. A big buzz will be created if you work hard at this, and you will be doing something good for a great organization and all of it is associated with your car dealership!

The Blog Followup

Ok, so here is where we are really gonna take this thing to another level, so be sure you read this part carefully.

The day after the event you post a nice article and a bunch of pics and some video about the event on the blog. People love to see themselves on blogs, so make sure you get lots of happy pics on there for sure! You then go to Twitter and Facebook and broadcast it as a success so people can come and see how much fun you had, how much money was raised for the Boy Scouts and also how great your dealership is in general.

Here’s What You Are Accomplishing In All Of This

1) You did a nice thing for your community. This makes you look good of course, but it also strengthens your own employees’ loyalty to you because they like to do good too! A business blog is a great employee relations tool also if used correctly! Happy employees will generate happy customers. There is a lot more to this important use for a business blog, and we will talk more about this in another article.

2) You created a buzz online, and specifically aroung your BRAND. Potentially thousands of local citizens have been exposed to your brand name and even visited your blog! Remember, marketing is about “touches” and a visit to your blog or Twitter page is a definite positive touch. They will remember you when they go to purchase an automobile.

3) Your blog is alive and dominating the search engines. We refer to this as Search Engine Optimization. I won’t bore you with it, but just keep in mind that your blog, and more importantly your blog posts will be all over the internet and showing up in Google local search results. The more posts you have (regardless of topic) the more times your brand name will be seen online!

This post is getting long, so I am going to end it, but what you need to realize is that dominating online is about GIVING first, and getting second. You will find that this giving also brings out your human side on the internet, and that is a definite advantage in today’s tech heavy world.

If you don’t see the need in this type of marketing, contact me and let me convince you… you’ll be glad you did!

By now you understand the importance of having a blog in conjunction with your basic website right? of course you do! But why, when, how and who the heck is gonna run the thing? And what difference will it really make anyway? These are questions you have, and we’ll get em’ answered here for ya!

(Scroll down and watch the vid before you get bored with this reading!)

Business Blogging

At Blue Suit Media, we understand exactly how daunting the idea of business blogging can be: not only technically speaking, but time wise too. So it’s cool if you are not fired up about 750-word blog postings, we’ve seen this before .

So why have a blog? The answer is simple: to show your human side. You see, your regular website is pretty static. It may look nice and have a few pictures, but the content is pretty straight forward, like a fact sheet. And that’s cool because that is what a business website should be… Now add a blog… blogging allows you to speak to your customers and potential customers in normal conversational tones (kinda like you’re reading now!), adding in a trust factor and personal loyalty that can’t be accomplished through flat HTML codes and files. Throw in some video and holy cow, you’re kicking into high gear now!

Let’s talk about the farther reaching benefits of a blog… the “touchy feely” side that actually matters! You see, your blog is a public relations tool, especially if it is human oriented and alive. You can use your blog as a way to showcase you good will in our community here in NW Indiana. If one of your employees pulls a drowning cat from the top of an oak tree, put that on your blog!

No, we’re not kidding. That kinda stuff plays out very well in the online world and indirectly injects goodwill at your business. And guess what else? … the big companies that you compete with… they ain’t doin’ anything like that!

But wait, there’s more…. put your blogging excitement on the back burner here for a couple seconds and read on…

Social Media For NW Indiana Business

Social media is: the collection of websites and applications that enable people to interact and share information online.

When it comes to your business, social media is: a collection of online tools you use to meet and interact with existing and potential customers. Some of the best known social media sites are: YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Flickr. There are also industry specific social media sites, but we don’t wanna weigh you down…

(re-read that above, it’s important!)

Let’s illustrate: here’s Al on video. He’s a social media dude too:

So are you getting it now? Can you see how having a positive presence on your blog AND in the world of social media can increase your “touches?” Look guys, if you are constantly in front of people in a human, positive way, they will turn to you when they have a need for your services. It’s pretty simple, but of course, not easy.

There is still more: SEO

In addition to being all happy and huggable in the blog and social media spaces, the two combined can and will help you dominate search results in Google, Yahoo and Bing. That is what we call Search Engine Optimization, and, oh yeah, we are experts there too. (sorry, lots of back patting going on here)

Again guys, it’s all about showing up online in every available way at every available point. That is how we do it, and we make sure not to be “that guy” when we do it. (‘that guy’ is the one who shoves business cards in your ear at cocktail parties…we ain’t him and neither are you!)

After all this reading and video watching,  you are ready to:

1) get a blog and keep it relevent and real

2) have a presence on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube

3) make sure #1 and #2 show up all over the place when people search

Nice work you! But do you have the time and availability in your schedule to actually accomplish these tasks? Do you have the knowledge? Do you even want to?

Contact us here at Blue Suit Media and let us to ALL of it for you! Yep, it’s not as expensive as you’d think. Check it!