In the month that I’ve been with Catchfire Media, I have had the opportunity to speak with many business leaders—from major sporting franchises to nonprofit organizations. Differences aside, there is one trait that these businesses posses: they do not have the time or money available to recognize or capitalize on the best social media strategies.
These organizations realize that their budget and personnel limitations have also restricted their involvement with social media, but they still have issues with brand recognition that hinder their success. Either their customer service department is spending too much time correcting those misconceptions, or their sales staff is wasting time restating their brand identity to their customers.
What’s Missing
Do your customers not totally understand all that your organization offers? Do you find yourself constantly restating your brand features? Wouldn’t it be great if there were a tool available for organizations to further explain what it is they do? There is—it’s called a blog. A blog can be thought of, in this case, as a business’ online journal displayed for public consumption. Organizations have the opportunity to write about possible brand misconceptions and work to correct any wrongs that have hindered productivity in the past.
Imagine taking 10 minutes to write about a topic that you have had to restate repeatedly to your customers. Then imagine restating your brand misconception over and over again to each customer individually, getting upset each time the peeve comes up. Which sounds more appealing to you?
Drafting positive blog posts about your organization helps to educate your advocates and customers about your benefits and features, as well as free up time for your team to be more productive.
Time Well Spent
Take Business A for example, a financial services company (hey, we are in Des Moines). Their main product is commercial leases, yet their customers only know loan products. That business could take the time to educate their customers via their blog, or they could explain leases to each customer individually during their sales calls.
This being said, there is no guarantee that your customers will read your corporate blog, but there are tools you could put in place to increase the chances. For starters, take the time to sit down and define your organization’s goals, ensuring the topics on your blog relate to those goals. Then, develop an editorial calendar listing those goals and your team in a monthly calendar to ensure all bases are covered. Once the calendar is developed, it will be important for you to incorporate your social media efforts on other platforms; this will drive customers back to your blog.
Thus the domino effect
Social media to blog; blog to website. Bringing customers to your site will increase your hits and help in getting your business placed above your competitors in search engine results. Plus, didn’t your business put a bunch of money into designing your website? Wouldn’t you think that a sound strategy to increase hits on that website makes sense?
Utilizing a social media strategy to reinforce your brand is a major component of engaging your customers on social media sites. Your customers are already there talking—now is the time for you to understand how your organization can go to that conversation and drive your customers back to your content.
Has your business incorporated a blog? Do you have an editorial calendar set? How can we help you?
[Photo from metaforaadnetwork on Flickr / CC BY 2.0]
