Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Pinterest, Reddit…how many social media outlets can you name?  And, wait!  Let’s not forget the old school, veteran social media outlet that is simply blogging.  Now, perhaps you are sitting at your desk thinking, how does social media fit into my Denver marketing needs?  After all, isn’t Facebook just for college kids to connect with one another, and isn’t Twitter just another way to get celebrity gossip outside of People magazine?

Actually, the answer is no.

In this digitalized world we live in, social media needs to be a huge part of your online marketing plan for your business.  The underlying reason for this is that social media makes connections.  Social media connects people to other people, businesses to other businesses.  Social media can help drive traffic to and from your website or blog.  Today, we are going to touch on a few of social media’s highlights.

1. Getting more people to read your blog

A great way to use social media to drive traffic to your blog is to plug your own articles on Twitter or Facebook with a catchy line that sums up the read.  An enticing blurb is great to inspire clicks, and therefore article readers!

2. Advertising promotional events

This can be done in many ways with social media: links to event pages with Twitter or Facebook posts, Flickr albums of past events (i.e. let everyone see how successful the event was last year, and get them to attend this year)…the possibilities are endless!  We should add that one of the bottom lines of using social media is: get creative.  Using social media to better your internet marketing campaign means finding a way to stand out from your competitors.  With social media, you can add all sorts of value to your business, and to customer experience.

3. Connect with customers

Let’s touch on adding value to customer experience: social media allows for direction business-to-customer communication, and vice versa.  With social media outlets like Facebook, you can get customer opinions on products, ideas, events, etc.  Blogs, of course, are also a great tool for this.  The ability for customers to comment on blog articles is a great way to gain consumer insight.

4. Connect with other businesses

As previously mentioned, social media can help connect your business with other businesses.  Social media can help you create partnerships, and find other ways to team up with businesses that complement your business model and goals.  On that note, social media can also help you compare your success with the success (or, possibly, lack thereof) of your competitors.  Looking at competitors’ social media tactics can help you discover what you’re doing right and wrong, and what you can do to better serve your customers.

If there is one piece of advice about social media that you take out of this article today, let it be: get creative.  As we mentioned before, social media is about getting creative, whether it’s with words, pictures, or events, get creative to bring customers in and add value to your business.  Also, when you’re focused on getting creative, you can be pretty sure that you’re going to end up having fun as well!

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As a Denver Marketing company we stay connected to our peers in order to keep up to date on what is going on in the industry.  Recently we have encountered crisis’s which peers or communities we follow have had in their online communities. After seeing these cases we felt it would be best to write a post in our Public Relations for Small Business series that lines out how to manage a crisis in an online community.

Crisis is never something that a business wants to be a part of however it happens. When it happens it is best to have a plan on how to handle the situation. Here are some tips on how to handle a crisis should it arise.

1. Silence is never the answer

If a crisis arises, either from an individual or something that involves a mass of people, provide a response.  When all of the facts aren’t there a simple “we are looking into the situation and will be respond as soon as more facts are available” will suffice.  Silence is concession. Provide a response and make sure to follow up. This simple step may not be the immediate response community members want, however it will cover the company in the end. Responding will also help build rapport with the audience.

2. Present an united front

This can be simple for businesses with a staff of 5-10. However larger businesses need to know how to communicate between each other and with the outside community during a crisis. Its been said “failure to plan, is planning to fail” this is true here. It would be beneficial for businesses to have a social media plan that lines out how they respond to crisis online. This should include who will be the one responding to the crisis. Once a crisis has been identified then employee’s will know how to respond.

3. Communicate the truth

A no-nonsense statement right? At times it can be tougher than it seems. When a crisis arises we want to promise that everything is going to be alright. However, we can’t over promise, we must always state the truth of the situation. Then we communicate what we can do to overcome the crisis. Anything more than that can cause long term problems. Recently a major corporation came under fire during a sponsored Twitter hashtag. Instead of working to communicate the truth immediately in that situation they simply pulled the hashtag and ended the conversation. Hopefully they will respond to the questions raised from during their hashtag instead of being silent.

In the end every crisis is different.  What we must realize that these three steps are key in crisis communication. Ultimately it is up to the company to determine how to handle the crisis. We hope that these three points can help a company in any crisis situation.  If your company

Success Stories

We have compiled some success stories of our Inbound Marketing services. If your company could use our Inbound Marketing services take a read. Your company is safe knowing we have planned out how to handle any crisis which may arise.

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If you haven’t heard, this week bills were halted both in the House and Senate that could potentially heavily censor the internet. As a Denver online marketing company we found this a subject of great interest. After sitting back and watching the storm of online changes we have compiled a list of lessons that can be learn from what happened this week and be applied for years to come.

Internet Users are a Majority

We could camp here for the entire post but there is more to this subject. However, the online world showed that they are a force that can persuade through majority opinions when united under a cause. It’s been a while since Internet users were in the minority but this is one of the largest movements that has been successfully organized and implemented in America. It really shows the power of the Internet currently.

Internet Users are well Informed

The majority of these pieces of legislation were meant to be passed in order to crack down on pirated music, movies, and other media. These things should be cracked down on — however Internet users quickly realized SOPA was more than that.  SOPA allowed for a looser interpretation of what is deemed as copyright infringement enablement, allowing potentially any website with user comment or user-uploaded content functionality, such as ours, to be automatically liable for copyright infringement by default. Internet users, through being able to share and analyze the bill online, were able to discover and publicize this game-changing legal liability.

Internet Users are Redefining

What can be taken from this overall is that through the power of the internet, legislation can be once again swayed through the power of the people. Previously there hasn’t been an efficient way for legal information to flow to the people in order for them to be educated and follow politics properly. Now the Internet has provided that. The American government has seen how other countries have been shaped recently through online media and the most recent opposition to SOPA shows that Americans aren’t afraid to use the power of the online community either.

Conclusion

As the Internet expands there will be even more legislation regarding it.  In the way the American government is shaped, we have the opportunity to voice our opinions. So we should stay informed on government proceedings in order to make sure that our liberties surrounding the Internet stay protected. If you have any questions or comments about SOPA feel free to leave them in the comments section below. Keeping the conversation open on the subject will help us further our knowledge of this situation and how to approach it in the future.

View this info graph on the SOPA movement from Google. Click the image for more information on how you can continue to support the movement.

Inbound Marketing Plays into all of this

The new power of the internet and internet users has not only changed politics, but marketing as well — companies increasingly need to focus on inbound marketing rather than outbound marketing. Come read our inbound marketing success stories and how you could benefit from our marketing services yourself.

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Last week, we gave you plenty of ideas on how to use Google Apps for Education to make for easier and more efficient coordination and relations between administrators, teachers, students, and even parents!  Today, we are delving into the business world with the benefits of Google Apps for Education, but listen closely… we are looking at non-profits and how these organizations can benefit from Google Apps for Education.  Maybe a non-profit isn’t the first kind of business that comes to your mind when you envision the typical business structure, but rest assured, it’s beneficial for any kind of business to learn a little more about how Google Apps for Education can benefit a multi-faceted organization.

So, why are we focusing on non-profits today?  Google Apps for Education is free for any 501(c)(3) organization (a non-profit) that has less than 3000 employees.  Considering that many non-profits are on the smaller side, and often look for grants to fund their business, that’s a pretty great deal!  Therefore, we would really like to encourage any non-profit to take advantage of Google Apps for Education as they go through the web development process.  Here is why:

First off, Google Apps for Education gives users the ability to collaborate with others not only nationwide, but worldwide as well.  This could be extremely useful for a non-profit.  Partnering with an organization that maintains similar goals and practices could certainly help spread the good that two non-profits do for the community.  For example, two non-profits that house cancer patients in separate cities could coordinate through Google Apps for Education to sponsor 5k races around the nation to raise money for cancer patient housing.  The great organizational tools within Google Apps for Education, such as the ability to share spreadsheets and other documents, could help these two (or more!) organizations team up to find additional sponsors and keep tabs on financial stats for the 5k races project.

Secondly, let’s talk marketing.  Hey, a little marketing never hurt anyone!  Now, we don’t necessarily mean pay-per-click ads or social media campaigns this time around.  We’re thinking more along the lines of educational marketing.  A big part of a non-profit’s business practice is to inform the community about the problem (and, consequently, the non-profit’s solution) so that people are encourage and motivated to get involved.  Webinars and presentations can be archived and organized in Google Apps for Education by a non-profit business.  In turn, these non-profits can distribute these informative tools to other organizations.  For example, non-profits can connect with schools and universities via Google Apps for Education.  For any non-profit, a college campus is a great place to start giving people information about the organization, as college-aged students are often very interested in and driven to make a difference in the community.  Google Apps for Education can help get that process started, and hopefully make the entire journey a little more simple.

Last but not least, Google Apps for Education can help connect everyone in one non-profit organization.  Non-profits, although often small, are also often multifaceted when you consider that non-profits also include the surrounding community as part of the organization.  Let’s use the example of a non-profit that owns a community garden with 50 to 100 plots, and allows gardeners to sell their produce at a small neighborhood farmer’s market once a week during growing season.  Google Apps for Education can help connect the people within the non-profit infrastructure to the gardeners who own plots.  Everyone who works for and who supports the organization can find out who is selling what every week, can get input from other gardeners on the best growing practices, and can find out more ways to spread the word about what we will call the growing “slow food” movement.

We hope this series on Google Apps for Education has given you a few brainwaves here and there, it sure has for us!  What do you think Google Apps for Education can do for you?

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Last week we typed out a post about how to continually come up with blog topics for posts if you are on a tight blogging schedule.  This week we are going to continue on that track and talk about how formatting a post can not only help turn an idea into a full blown post but it can also help make the post more desirable for readers (and search engines at times).  As a Denver marketing company we have come to terms with each of these steps and their benefits and embrace them.

1. A 5 step program: People like numbered posts.  There has probably been research done on the thought process behind why people do, but we don’t have that.  We simply know that if you can sit down, look at your article idea and put 5 steps to it, not only will it give you more paragraphs to talk about, it will be something that a reader enjoys to see. (It doesn’t have to be 5, it can be 2, 3, 4, even 10 or 12 whatever fits for the post.)
2. Bulleted Points: Obviously 5 steps doesn’t solve everything.  However blog posts typically have some structure to them.  If you can pull key thoughts out, elaborate on them and highlight them this will expand your post rapidly. The unique thing about  bulleted points (and more so of bolding) it makes the post look different.  A change in text size and boldness can actually be detected by search engines and those phrases can be chronicled as the key topics for the post.  This also helps with readers knowing what to share about the post and remembering what they read from it.
3. Typing with an end in mind: Bloggers can be creative (that’s right, give yourself a pat on the back) but that creativity can get the best of us.  A great blog topic comes to mind, however it’s way too elaborate to fit into one post.  This is when you sit down, brainstorm, and determine how to get the topic out in a clear and concise message (all the while expanding the amount of posts you are developing).  All the sudden a blog idea that seems impossible has turned into a six part blog series.
4. Pairing like concepts: The exact opposite of the last point, sometimes there is a blog idea but you can only think of 100 words.  If you can’t implement one of the first three strategies then employ this one.  This happens often when we write posts, if we aren’t typing with the end in mind, then we are pairing like concepts.  A great example of this comes from our PR Principles blog series when we wrote about both Video News Releases and Micro-blogging.  In the PR world both of these are just starting so the information on them is very limit.  So we simply combined them under the PR Principles umbrella.
5. Examples: Sometimes there is a complex concept that doesn’t need to be expanded upon into multiple points however it needs to be explained.  This is where you can take a fun topic that you enjoy blogging about and make the complex become simple.  We did this when we wrote out our Inbound Marketing for Business series.  We used everyday social media examples to help understand deeper subjects.

We have provided with five different ways to format a post in order to get the most from it, if you have any more suggestions please leave them in the comments below!

How about a cool web site?

Now that we have discussed ways to expand blog posts and make them top notch how about some information on how to have a top notch web site?

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