Facebook is emerging as a very effective part of businesses’ online marketing strategies, but take care not to neglect your own blog—or website—for your interaction on the social networking site.
On SmallBizTrends.com, Lisa Barone discusses the importance of continuing to focus on your own blog “to create your own authority and brand.” She offers 10 reasons, including:
“Blogging builds your house, not theirs”: Focus on building your site and your authority by placing your original content on your site, not someone else’s. It’s one thing to syndicate content to Facebook—in fact, we encourage that here at Hammock. But don’t give away your content and your audience completely to Facebook.
Search engine rankings: If you stop posting original, dynamic content to your own blog, it will start to slip in search engine rankings. This not only hurts your authority but can end up hurting your ability to bring in new business.
“You don’t own Facebook”: Barone reminds us that social networks evolve, change, and can always fade away (remember MySpace and Friendster?). “While it’s never smart to put all your eggs in one basket, it’s especially unwise to do it when you don’t even own the basket,” says Barone.
Next week the May/June 2010 issue of American Spirit, and its member companion, Daughters newsletter, will begin arriving in mailboxes of all 165,000 members of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution. The increased circulation of the magazine and newsletter for this special issue enable NSDAR to promote subscriptions, encourage membership development and recount the achievements of the past three years of President General Linda Gist Calvin’s administration.
What do you know about your customers? Besides the fact that they all have at one time used your products or services? Drilling down to more specific information can help you improve your content marketing strategy, says Michael Thompson on btobonline.com.
“Collecting customer preferences allows you to have a better understanding of each customer’s interests,” he says. “This information becomes even more valuable when married with ongoing activity data, giving you a full view of your customers’ buying behavior and what drives them to take action. Collecting and harvesting this information allows you to create more relevant e-mail marketing communications, providing your customers with information they want, when they want it, to drive significantly higher sales conversion rates.”
Lee Odden’s article on content strategy vs. tactics got a lot of attention this week, with more than 40 people in his social network expressing their opinion on the value of social media experimentation.
As America’s rapid response armed service, the US Marine Corps early saw the advantages of adding air power to its traditional amphibious capabilities. Marine Corps aircraft, flown by legendary figures such as Medal of Honor recipient “Pappy” Boyington and his Black Sheep Squadron, helped win pivotal victories in World War II, Korean, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.
The May-June issue of Semper Fi, the magazine of the Marine Corps League, which we publish for the League, looks at what’s ahead for Marine aviation. With its long-awaited new bird, the tilt-rotor Osprey, racking up impressive service in Iraq and now Afghanistan, the Corps must aggressively update its other rotary wing aircraft, as well as acquire a new generation of fighters.
The article explains the urgency behind these replacement programs and what the Corps expects from birds that Pappy and his boys would’ve given their eyeteeth to command.
