Testing one, two, three...
Content is key to making sure people come back to your social locations again and again.
With social media it’s no longer a question whether you should embrace it. Now it's a question of identifying the business opportunities in doing so. It’s about identifying the different ways you should do so.
It’s critical for us to find ways to keep our cash outlays to a minimum while keeping our customers happy, and find more customers like them. This is precisely why businesses are turning to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social tools and networks, as they are able to meaningfully connect with customers and prospects at a very low price point. This reinforces findings from a recent study conducted by Coleman-Parkes Research that found 84 percent of companies headquartered in North America feel they need to find new ways to communicate with customers.
Because it has become so easy to create and distribute content, it’s also more difficult to capture people’s attention long enough to really connect with them. But the difficulties involved in attracting attention for your blogs, podcasts, and videos should not discourage you from using these valuable communication tools. It is too important. In fact the 2008 Cone Business in Social Media Study finds that 93 percent of North American social media users feel companies should have a social media presence -- with 56 percent saying they feel a stronger connection with companies that do.
The good news is top notch content should eventually stand out from the marginal stuff. And the vast majority of Web content would probably fall into the marginal category, if that. So it’s important to put some extra time and effort into consistently creating good stuff -- the kind of content that will turn heads, lead to conversations, and eventually build long lasting relationships.
On the Web, people really appreciate information that provides them with solutions to their challenges. They also love blogs and videos that make them, think, laugh, cry, and experience all kinds of emotions humans can feel. And when they do find content that stirs them in these ways, they share it with friends and colleagues. They leave comments on blogs, “tweet” about it on Twitter and promote on sites like Digg and StumbleUpon. This is the beautiful thing about the Web -- people promoting the good works of others just because they feel the work is worthy of acknowledgement, and the creator deserving of a “shout-out”.
