This article is meant to be a hands-on exercise. Why? Chances are you already know that you need to be submitting more content into the marketplace to grow your business, but you find this thought overwhelming. So I have a challenge for you, here today.  Take one piece of content you have already created (this can be stats in your industry, a newsletter article, blog post, case study, etc.) and ACTION each step below as you read them.

Step One – Let’s start with an easy one. Put it up on your website. Make sure you have some common search terms in there so Google can index it and increase your relevance for these terms.

Step Two – Send it out in your newsletter. Don’t have a newsletter? Set one up now. Constant Contact offers a free 30 day Trial and has templates pre-built.

Step Three – Post it on your blog.  Don’t have a blog?  Set one up now. WordPress is by far the leading blog software and will allow you to set one up for free in 5 minutes. You can also get some help and have it integrate right into your site.

Step Four – Submit it your industry or regional publications and to the media. Don’t have a list of relevant publications or media contacts? Call up your library and ask them if they carry a recent copy of the Gale Directory of Publications and Broadcast Media or if they have a local list of such publications (if your focus is the local market). Gale Directories cover media and publication listings all over the world. See if the library can create a list otherwise make time now in your calendar to go down there and compile the list yourself.

Step Five – Submit it to online article sites like www.ezinearticles.com. It’s free to sign up and takes only minutes to submit and link the article back to your site.

Step Six – Take out 5 – 10 little one sentence snippets and create small posts. Post these snippets on Facebook and/or your Facebook Business Page, Twitter, Linked In and Google +. If you don’t have any of these of profiles, set them up.  If you want to make posting to these sites easy, set up a tool such as HootSuite (again free) to submit posts to all your social media sites in one click of a button.

Step Seven – Insert into a Word File titled “MY Book” or “MY e-Book” or “Another great free report”. Place it into the chapter where it would belong so that over time you have created a larger publication and also so you start to put themes around future content (to fill in blanks).

Step Eight – Create an online Ad – This could be on a Chamber online newsletter, Google, Linked In or Facebook.  Link back to the article on your site and have a call to action at the top and the bottom such as subscribing to your Free Tips or a Free Assessment or a trial product or service.  Set it up for one week only and put a small budget on it like $40 – $50 and then watch the traffic to your site and measure results.

Step Nine – Send it out in the mail to prospects.  Include a nice introductory letter outlining your interest in servicing business like theirs, a special offer and this very helpful article. Don’t have a mailing list? Try InfoCanada or InfoUSA and create one today. Dun and Bradstreet also has great lists.

Step Ten – Use it at your next live event (networking, tradeshow, sales presentation). Think of it as a large business card and include your contact details and a call to action on the back.

Content is valuable.  It takes you time to create and is designed to help both your present and future customers.  Make sure you take advantage of ALL the avenues available to you or you aren’t marketing as effectively as you can.

(Photo Credit: Courtney Dirks)

When it comes to social media, the signal-to-noise ratio is low. That is, there’s a whole lotta noise and not much signal. In the words of Clara Peller (RIP), “Where’s the Beef?”

These days you have about 3 nano-milliseconds to get a reader’s attention because they’re trying to read your blog post, check email, check in on FourSquare and play CityVille, all at the same time…and let’s not even talk about what it takes to KEEP their attention.

To get their attention, you need to flaunt your social proof — or show them that your blog is worth reading because other people think it is. Judge Judy would call this “hearsay”.

You see, it’s not enough for YOU to say that your blog is “the best”, or “award-winning” or “read by a lot of people”; you have to PROVE it.

And, the only way for you to prove it is by highlighting your numbers. Numbers don’t lie. 2+2 is always 4 — at least in this dimension.

People don’t have time to waste so tell them straight away:

• 47 new Facebook “Likes” per day
• 24 reTweets daily
• 15 comments daily
• 163 new subscribers each week

Put the numbers in their face and your quality and success are irrefutable.

When people see numbers like that, they think to themselves (even if they don’t consciously know they’re thinking this), “Hey, this blog must be doing something right, they’ve got a lot of people paying attention.” And, then guess what they do? They follow you on Twitter, they subscribe to the blog and Like your Page on Facebook, too!

Here are some examples of companies that get it right:

• Manta Media, Inc. Look at the full-color, HUGE testimonials in the top-center of the page. Look at how they leverage the ads they’ve taken out on ESPN Radio. And, if you scroll a bit, you’ll see the exact number of company profiles that have been updated in the past 24 hours – talk about social proof!
• Angie’s List. The rotating testimonials are a GREAT way to show feedback from members — even if the testimonial is not directly attributable to a specific person or a specific vendor. How cool is that!? Further down the page, they tell you how many members submit new reviews each month – 40,000.  What would be even better is for them to show the exact number of reviews that have been submitted month-to-date.
• And, for a different take on social proof, take a look at Chris Guillebeau’s blog, The Art of Non-Conformity. If you’ve ever read anything by Chris, you know that part of his way of showing up in the world is through experiential travel. He doesn’t just tell you, he SHOWS you. He tells you how many countries he’s visited and how many countries there are in the world so his 152 countries visited out of 192 countries in the world, actually means something to the visitor. He makes it relevant with those three extra characters.

Show, don’t tell. This is one instance where it’s OK to showcase the quantity, in addition to the quality.

Blogs and bloggers come and go. But when you have the right combination of dedication, subject knowledge, and the writing chops to sit down and do it day after day, a blog emerges that stands the test of time.

Over at Planning Startups Stories today, Tim Berry published his 1,000th post on “business planning, starting and growing your business, and having a life in the meantime.” He started the blog in 2006, but doesn’t count that year since he only did a dozen posts. A dozen posts? That’s the sum total lifespan of so many blogs that I’m going to suggest that Tim count those in his history. Besides, without them today’s post wouldn’t be live until at least August 3.

If you have a blog or are interested in blogging, head over to Tim’s site today and read his 10 Blogging Tips. With a thousand posts there,  another thousand or so under his belt on his other blogs and as a guest blogger… the man knows what he’s talking about. You might learn a thing or two.

Cool! I got an e-mail about this list of 100 Must-Read Blog Posts for Aspiring Entrepreneurs, published on Online Classes.org, and I discovered that 12 of those posts were mine, from either this blog or my main blog at Planning Startups Stories. Of course I think it’s a great list.

It’s not 100 books or 100 classes; it’s 100 online blog posts. Lots of different authors, different angles, different blogs, but all available online, and all free. How could that not be a good resource?   I’m adding it to my online course curriculum at course.bplans.com too.

Last week I started assisting my mother and my aunt in starting blogs. It’s been quite a while since I created a new blog from scratch using the WordPress platform and it gave me a unique chance to see the blank slate a blog starts on. All those exciting possibilities to create a space for your words and thoughts for people to read.

My mother will be using her blog to talk about the experience of writing a cookbook. She’s newly retired and this will be her first “I’ve got to stay busy” project.

As I was going through the different sections of the blog she needed to customize, I told her she was going to need to write an “About” page.

“About what?”

“About you,” I answered. “You want to give people an idea of who you are. Why you’re writing this blog. They will want to know why they should trust your information.”

This morning, as I was catching up on some of my blog reading, I noticed this post by Lisa Barone on “Crafting a Killer About Page” at www.smallbiztrends.com.

It goes through some really useful tips on how to make your About page stand out and creating a bases of trust between your customers and your business.

“Your About page is what allows people to get to know you. It’s your introduction and their chance to look behind the curtain to see what lies beneath. You wouldn’t go to a party and stand around not introducing yourself, so why commit the same act on your site? Don’t forget your About page.”

To her very good advice, I would add that you should also make a note to check your About page and update it, at the very least, yearly. It can be as simple as updating your profile picture or adding some new exciting information about your business, product or service.

Fantastic advice for either a personal blog or a business one. And as always, make sure you read the comments to get even more great advice.

‘Chelle Parmele
Social Media Marketing Manager

I keep thinking the watchword should be “what part of the word publishing don’t you understand?” With complaints about invasion of privacy, pranks, and PR headaches, businesses using social media need to understand that what we do there (blogs, Twitter, Facebook) is publishing. Once you let it out into the world (or once somebody else does) it’s gone. You can’t take it back.

I picked up a good reminder and a list of tips today from PR pro Aaron Kwittken in Avoid Social Media Weapons of Mass Destruction in his PR Post, which is also on Entrepreneur.com.

He includes this excellent list of specific practical tips:

1. Be careful what you say and what you post.
2. Be vigilant about who’s recording you and what’s being said about you and your company online.
3. Be prepared with an emergency action plan so you can react quickly to legitimate threats.
4. Minimize any fallout by quickly going on the offensive. Respond genuinely on the same social media channel.
5. Build a bank of goodwill among people who influence your brand; the fans, bloggers, online media, customers and commentators. The best defense is a solid offense, right?
6. Never masquerade online (pose as someone else) or pay a third party to blog on your behalf.
7. Train yourself and your employees on the above steps.

All of which, in my mind, is basically reiterating the basic fact that what you do in social media is publishing. It’s not private unless you set it to be private. You have to live with it. It’s authenticity whether you like it or not.

I thought so, and now there’s data to go along with my hunch. In Social Media Users Profiled on the Marketing Profs blog, something called BIGresearch gives some statistics on social media usage, including this chart showing cross usage of different social media sites.

The way I read those numbers, blog posters are more likely to be Twitter users than any other social media user group.

Why does that matter? Because there’s a natural link between Twitter, which is microblogging, and blogging. Twitter and blogging feed on each other. Bloggers like Twitter. It gives them ideas, and contacts, and sources, and resonance.

How does that affect your business? Your startup?

You’ve probably heard the phrase: “content is king.” This morning I read “The idea that ‘content is king’ in blogging is total bulls***” by Mack Collier on The Viral Garden. He’s got a stark reminder there–a picture of an empty theater–that content doesn’t mean diddly if nobody sees it.

Many bloggers view their blog as their stage. Nothing wrong with that. But it doesn’t make sense to walk behind a podium, start talking and expect the room to fill with an attentive audience. Chris Brogan had a great post on this today (and read @KathySierra’s comment), and the point he kept making is that the difference between an audience and a community is the direction that the chairs are facing. Many bloggers act as if they are addressing an audience, when they want an interactive and passionate community. This is a disconnect that the idea of “content being king” feeds into.

This is an excellent reminder for anybody looking to build a business around content. It takes a marketing strategy to make that work. Make sure you have a type of person or business you’re trying to reach, a message and a way to get that message to them.

Mack makes a different but very important point about the “social” in social media. In his world, it’s about commenting, interacting and developing community, which amounts to the same thing as marketing. Is marketing, in fact, in a lot of one-person content-driven business.

Thanks, Mack.

While I was at the Viral Garden, I browsed some of the posts. Then I added that blog to my blogroll here on Up and Running. Good stuff.  And I was amused, while adding the link, to note that his URL there is “moblogsmoproblems.” Hmmm . . . somehow I find it easy to imagine the circumstances in which somebody would register that name. But that’s a different post.

If you’re looking at a new web startup these days, you have to make a choice. You can aim for money or aim for traffic. Ironically, it’s hard to do both.

Whose business is Web 2.0? You update on Facebook and Twitter, post to your blog, comment on everybody else’s blog, and put your pictures on Flickr. What do you own? How do you make money? It’s your life on Facebook, but who gets the money for the ads?

How much is your content worth? How much is it worth to you? How much is it worth to the rest of the world? And who makes money with it? Given that it’s your life, your opinion and your picture, will other people pay for it? Can you make them pay for it?

In her post Is Facebook Turning us Into Digital Sharecroppers, Anita Campbell makes a very serious, concrete suggestion:

I think there’s a way you can participate in social sites such as Facebook and not be relegated to a digital sharecropper. That is: You should have your own websites or blogs that you own. Or write books, develop DVDs or author academic papers. Whatever methods you use for developing content and intellectual property that you own, you should do it. In other words, create the majority of your work on a venue or in a form where you own it and can benefit from it.

I know I’m just one example, but I think she’s absolutely right; and that this strategy, or my variation on it, has been working for me for years.

Every time I think about blogging, I question what I should write about, whether or not I have the time, if people will read my posts, etc. But when I actually think about what blogging can do for our business, it’s really a no-brainer. Blogging is pretty much free marketing (and can actually be kind of fun!). So how can you go wrong with that?

I recently read an article stating that in times of economic crises (like many feel we are experiencing today), you should continue or expand your marketing budget. The logic was that if others are cutting their budgets, you have a “greater window of opportunity to get your message across to your market.” While I do understand this logic, it is always prudent, recession or no recession, to be smart about how, where and why you are spending your marketing and advertising dollars.

Traditional advertising often doesn’t provide the results businesses are looking for, so even if they have a robust marketing budget, organizations often look for creative (and low-cost) ways to market and advertise. Blogging is one such way, and it can be an extremely effective marketing tool. Not only are you putting content out there for others to read, but when people comment and link back to their blogs, it can start a cycle of exposure.

Aside from creating and writing your own blog, there are other ways to get noticed in the world of blogging. Just like others can comment on your blog, you should explore and find a blog you like, post comments and link back to your company’s blog. There are an abundance of bloggers out there, so you are sure to find at least one that provides interesting and useful content for you to read and comment on.  And since there are so many bloggers out there, another way to draw attention to your company is to act as a guest blogger for someone else in your sphere.

Both WordPress.com and Blogger.com provide free accounts, so take advantage of a free account and add blogging to your marketing mix.

Kristen Langham
Manager of Business Development
Palo Alto Software