Last night, I was at the Taste of Technology series put on by smallbiztechnology.com, and one of the panelists, Brent Leary of CRM Essentials, mentioned that he doesn’t think content is king anymore. It’s context that’s king now. I definitely agree with him.
In order to be visible online, you need to produce content. There’s no question about it. But to be effective, you need to have a laser sharp focus on the content that you create. From a local Internet marketing perspective, this means dropping in references to the community or geographical location that your business serves. This also means paying attention to local events/news and providing relevant insight from your position as an authority in your field.
Getting your content out there
While your website may be your final destination for a specific conversion event (download, registration, phone call, or email submission), it helps to get your message out through more dynamic content channels. Specifically, I mean blogs and social media.
Blog postings are the perfect vehicle for providing timely content that’s relevant to you local business. On most blogging platforms, each posting contains a datestamp and category so timing and organization are already built in. Your blog posting doesn’t need to be more than 300 words, and this is plenty of space to present a particular topic and your opinion.
If you just can’t seem to make time to write a blog posting, there are now alternatives with Twitter and Facebook which are designed to limit the amount of content provided in a single status update. When you hear about a specific local topic from a friend, on the news, or online, you can then search for some online coverage of the topic and post your opinion and link to that page in your Twitter or Facebook status. For the uninitiated, this is a great way to begin using social media because you’re giving a short commentary on a local topic that’s relevant to your business.
That’s exactly the kind of local expertise your potential customers are looking to hear from someone who can possibly help them.
