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11.19.09 Giving Your Site Multiple Uses Depending On The End User  By Danny Brown In preparation for the upcoming winter fest, my wife bought me some Thinsulate gloves. These things are the coolest ever - transforming gloves! Basically they're fingerless and have a strip of velcro attached to the back of each glove. Attached to the velcro (and sewn to the glove itself) are mitten tops. So, I get the best of both worlds. I have driving gloves if I want them, or simply fingerless gloves if the weather's cool but not too cold for full-on gloves. Yet when the cold snap comes in, I just flip a (velcro) switch and pull the mitten part over, and I have full gloves. Genius! And as I flipped the Transformer glove from fingerless to full this morning, I thought of how we can transfer this to our blogs… Make Your Blog a Transformer Glove There's a lot of information available at the minute, and we're providing it to each other every day. It could be on Twitter, LinkedIn groups, PDF or ebook downloads, video uploads, Slideshare presentations and much more. Yet a lot of this is fractured. Sure, we may offer (or receive) great information via any one of these mediums, but are we really taking advantage of what we can present and help with? Are we concentrating too much on one medium or solution and not seeing the bigger picture? For example, are businesses offering a full solution to both consumers and partners/clients, or simply offering mouth service to one while the other chooses from the full menu? While some information needs to be kept separate, a lot doesn't (or can be a stripped down version). Here's how it could work. Integrated is Not Hard Work Let's say you're a business with a new product and you need to educate both retail partners and prospective customers about all the great features and benefits. You know that social is one of the best ways to market this information, but how do you satisfy two different audiences?
You don't - instead, you satisfy them together, as one. • Set up a blog as your information hub. This is where all the cool stuff will stem from. • Make cool video snippets about some of the best features and how to make the most of them and embed on your front page and rotate regularly. • Build relationships with expert bloggers in your product's niche and ask them if they'd be interested in guest blogging with exclusive access to your product range. This helps cement brand loyalty and collaboration with your existing audience, who can help you grow while they, in turn, are officially recognized as product experts. • Regularly include your audience by asking what they'd like to see on the blog. • Have a Twitter account that can answer quick and easy questions from both consumers and sales reps. For more in-depth questions, direct to your blog hub. • Write up the best tips and advice into downloadable content (ebooks or slide deck presentations). Encourage sharing. • Award regular visitors and contributors with special discount offers or free samples. See how quickly you can build up a resource centre for what is essentially two different audiences, yet can benefit from a single source point? And the single source builds itself, by allowing others to take the reins. The Transformer Glove switch bit? That's your behind-the-scenes area for retail only. You have all the front-end support for both customer and retail channels, but then you have a password-protected area where only retailers can sign into, for special incentives and rewards on selling your product. This information can be delivered via point-of-sale messaging or similar. Continue reading this article. About the Author: Danny Brown is the owner of Press Release PR, a boutique agency specializing in search engine optimized press releases and social media PR. He offers consultancy advice on social media and PR to both individuals and corporations He has guest authored at leading web and search marketing site Web Analytics World and is a blog partner of the WebProNews and iEntry business networks. He is also a regular contributor to the Dad-o-Matic project. To read more of Danny's articles or interact with him, please visit danny BROWN - social media PR. |
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