Your 4 Online Choices

Written by Anne Miller
Wednesday, 02 June 2010 10:26

Online Marketing … Feeling Confused?

You’ve decided that marketing online will be useful for your business … now which type should you choose?

1. Corporate website - there’s no debate. Whatever you do online, you MUST have a website for your business. Debating in the 21st Century whether or not you need a website is like debating whether or not you need a telephone. The scale and scope of your website will differ depending on the type of business you are running but the bottom line is, you MUST have some sort of presence on the Internet. This presence is more than just an online advertisement, it’s your Corporate identity in cyberspace. It’s the anchor point for all your other online activities. Once you’ve drawn people to your website via whatever online streams you enter, it must be easy to navigate and have sufficient information to entice the reader to close a sale. This is your online shopfront.

2. Social utilities such as Facebook and micro-blogs such as Twitter are much more personal. This is why they’re called “social marketing”!They provide valuable SEO opportunities to draw readers to your main corporate website. They also provide an excellent way for you – as the business owner – to interact personally with your customers. As explained in a previous article, they are more likely to succeed if you speak with an authentic voice. Your role is that of a friendly salesman, ready to chat about anything but with all your business information at your fingertips, too.

3. Blogs are another online social utility which started initially as a way for friends and families to swap information and for individuals to keep online diaries. Used in a corporate way, however, blogs provide an opportunity to post longer articles about particular subjects - or particular goods and services – and then interact publicly with your readers and refer them back to your website. Again, your role is as a friendly salesman, but this time demonstrating your in-depth expertise. A real advantage of blogs is that search engines spider blog posts so your posted information will appear in web searches. This is particularly true of blogs on Blogspot or Blogger (no real surprise, they’re owned by Google!) Technorati is a specialist search engine website that keeps a close eye on the “blogosphere”. To check out some successful small business blogs visit Technorati’s blog directory and follow the links.

4. Forums. Electronic bulletin boards, usually built around a single topic or hobby, date back to the earliest days of the Internet. As the web developed, these message boards became more sophisticated in design and developed into user-friendly forums with hundreds of pages. However their basic aim has remained the same.  A group of people, usually with the same interests, gather together at a point in cyberspace to ask questions, post photos and generally chat about their hobbyhorse. Sometimes these chats can be in real time (using chatroom software) but usually they work by someone opening a topic and then others responding to the thread across time.

In Options 1-3 above, the business owner has some control of the message. Forums work differently. Although levels of access can be controlled, usually once a member registers he/she can do whatever they like unless you ban their IP or limit their privileges.

So can this work for your business? Definitely yes, but in a much more limited way than other online options. For example, a computer repairer could host a forum where people ask and answer software-related questions. All the time they are on the forum, the readers have the computer repairer’s name in front of them and the business owner has the opportunity to demonstrate their expertise by solving problems. Likewise, forums work well for other specialists such as car restorers, antique dealers … in fact, anywhere where there is a speciality topic that readers (ie potential customers) want to explore. There are also many forums dedicated to subjects such as shares and property, some with dubious investment “tips” that are obviously designed to manipulate the market. Forums can also be manipulated by people seeking SEO opportunities however search engines are aware of this, and links from these forums are usually downgraded.

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It’s important to remember that digital marketing is simply one weapon in your marketing arsenal. It supports and reflects your business story, brand, service, conveys your point of difference and creates a call to action.