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Have you figured out the right online marketing mix for your business? Do you know exactly where your online activity should be focused? Or, have you been utterly confused by the vast amount of expert opinion telling you what you should and shouldn’t be doing? Don’t feel bad if you answered yes to that last question.

Where to Start?
You know you should be “engaging” with your prospective customer base. You’re getting advice at every corner to “start a conversation”. You’re being bombarded with statistics proving the importance of blogging, social media, and search engine optimisation (SEO). In my own business, I’m constantly juggling priorities trying to give equal attention to all these areas. I bet you are too. As I write this, I’m already two days behind my own blogging schedule.

Online Marketing Opportunity Report
One thing I know for certain: different industries behave differently when it comes to online marketing. Twitter is full of marketing people. Travel companies spend a fortune on Pay-per-click. Retailers love Facebook. LinkedIn is popular with the professionals and is a haven for recruiters. Each industry seems to have its own personality, making it difficult to have firm rules on how to implement a digital marketing strategy. If you’re not working in the marketing field, it can be overwhelming to know what to do.

I came across a fantastic ebook from HubSpot titled Online Marketing Opportunity Report: Social Media, Blog and Search Engine Activity by Industry. It’s the first free segmented industry report I’ve seen giving detailed information and measurements of online activity.

So What’s the Big Deal?
The beauty of this information is that once you understand how your industry best operates in an online environment, it’s easier to formulate a marketing strategy for your particular business. While a healthy mix of original content, social media and SEO is the backbone of a good content marketing campaign, how you allocate your time and money to each of these areas can make a big difference in the overall success of the project.

The Takeaway
Once you understand the general philosophies behind a digital marketing strategy, you need to understand the intricacies of your own industry. Broad category industries like Hospitality prove there can be significant differences within a grouping, (e.g,. airlines are far more dependent on SEO than hotels, while restaurants find success in blogging). Armed with the right data based on solid research, you can then prioritise your budget to obtain maximum results. Grab a copy of the HubSpot report. It might just change the way you manage your business and gain you competitive advantage in the process.

Where do you find the most success in your online marketing?

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*Image courtesy of JohnONolan at www.flickr.net

Do you have an eNewsletter for your business? If you do, you’re probably already aware an eNewsletter is an extremely effective way to build brand loyalty and connect with your customers and prospects. Many people neglect a newsletter in favour of a website or a blog. If you’re one of those people, consider this one truth. Not everyone surfs the `net every day; nearly everyone young and old opens their email.

I wrote a post at the Content Marketing Institute titled, Five Essential Elements to a Great Newsletter. But if you have an eNewsletter, what can you do to get more mileage out of it?

Post your eNewsletter to your Facebook Page
Every issue of your newsletter should be posted onto the wall of your Facebook page. A fan page is a fluid group of people “liking” you with no obligation. Some of them will probably receive your eNewsletter but some of them will not. Put it out there for everyone to see.

Include a share widget in your eNewsletter
Make it easy for people to circulate your newsletter. By putting a widget on your eNewsletter, each one of your readers is a possible distribution channel.

Archive every eNewsletter on your website
Developing a regular newsletter requires planning and the development of a lot of content. It’s also chock-full of keywords related to your business. If you archive every issue of your newsletter on your website, you’ll gain SEO benefit from the keywords and links contained in each issue.

Collect email addresses
There are several ways you can build your subscriber list:

• Put a subscription form on the home page of your website.
• Tap into your Facebook community for more email addresses
• Research the interface applications supported by your email marketing provider
• Hire a telemarketer to contact customers from the past before you were keeping record of email addresses
• Add a link to your subscription form in every blog post you create

Publishing a regular eNewsletter is a lot of work but the benefits are worth it. Each issue is an asset to your company. The digital format means you can extend the life of your content, repurpose it into other areas and use it to influence the search engines. An eNewsletter campaign doesn’t have to end when you distribute it to your list.

What other ways do you squeeze more life out of your email campaigns?

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*image courtesy of krooclub at www.flickr.com

Why do you run a content marketing campaign? When do you use social media? Most businesses have the same answer for these questions and it always concerns getting more customers to spend more money. What if your business had all the customers they need? What if those customers were unlikely to spend much time using social media tools? What if you had little control over how much money you could earn. Would it make sense to invest in a digital marketing strategy? You bet.

A Case Study: The Aged Care Industry

I’ve always marvelled at the aged care industry. Like maternity hospitals, there’s not a great deal they have to do to get people through the door. With the first Baby Boomers reaching retirement age, they’re in the uncomfortable position of knowing they cannot keep up with the burgeoning demand for services. At least in Australia, the industry has discovered modern techniques to help solve these problems.

Influencing Social Policy
In a post at the Content Marketing Institute, I wrote about how the aged care industry in Australia is using a strategically crafted content marketing campaign to effect social policy. Titled, What Content Marketers Can Learn From an Australian Non-Profit, the article describes how the The Grand Plan is encouraging people to take action at the government level on their behalf.

Raising Awareness
The precursor to The Grand Plan was a wildly popular campaign known as Kevin87. Referring to the campaign slogan of Kevin Rudd during the 2007 Australian federal elections Kevin ’07 Aged & Community Services (ACSA), ran a video of Rudd morphing from a relatively youthful politician to an 87-year-old man. When the video went viral, ACSA got busy and made sure the opposition leader, along with the deputy PM, were given the same treatment. It helped give focus to the shortage of aged care workers in Australia.

Fostering Groundswell Support
Nearly a year after the Kevin87 project – an unthinkable passage of time in “web world” - aged care advocates are participating in a daily online newspaper service called paper.li Publishing what looks like an old-fashioned broadsheet online, the service collates all Twitter activity containing the hashtag #agedcare. Every day a new paper is published printing all the tweets, linked articles and Twitter ids of people actively using the hashtag. It’s a great way for all the advocates of the aged care industry to find each other and band together.

Listening Posts
Twitter remains a valuable tool to advance their agenda, provide avenues to inform the public and even influence politicians. A recent #agedcare tweet caught the eye of the The Australian Sex Party who took note of the issues in the industry. Organising meetings to gather more information, the Sex Party was able to glean vital information to craft their own policies on aged care.

Generating revenue has always been the topic of popular business discussion and nothing will ever change in that regard. Using content marketing and social media to advocate change and influence social policy is worth a consideration. The aged care industry has provided a great case study and they have all the business they need.

Have you used social media or content marketing to effect change?

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Do you have an RSS feed on your blog? My web and graphic designer, Ryan Briggs, insisted I put an RSS feed on both my news items and my blog. I didn’t think I needed one in either place but I took his advice. Or I should say, I didn’t make a noise about it and he implemented his own recommendation. I’m really glad he did.

It took me awhile to figure out the power behind the feed. One of the first things that happened is James Bull contacted me and scheduled a meeting. James runs a web content strategy company and is founder of Perth Web Industry News Digest (aka PerthWIND), a news aggregator from over 40 sources of the Perth web industry.

PerthWIND has news and opinion from all sources in the digest. All items link back to the original publisher’s company website or blog, and there is also a list of all sources. Ryan had plugged my RSS feed into PerthWIND. From my very first effort, my posts were being syndicated and gaining additional exposure on the website and through the PerthWIND Twitter activity.

In recent months, I’ve really come to understand how to exploit my feed. In addition to PerthWIND, here are some great places to register your feed.

• Wot News: www.wotnews.com.au  A news aggregator for the Australian media. When I found out about Wot News at the Media140 conference, I immediately registered both my feeds.
• Technorati: www.technorati.com  A blog aggregator connecting bloggers with media and advertisers. My blog was selected as one of the Top 50 Australian Writing blogs due, in part, to my Technorati ranking.
• Networked Blogs: www.networkedblogs.com An extension to the Facebook application, Network Blogs allows your feed to be automatically published on any Facebook page.
• MailChimp: www.mailchimp.com Mailchimp allows you to publish your blog for delivery to an email address. It’s a great way to ensure readers never miss a post. Set the RSS Feed campaign up once and never worry about it again.
• Social Media Today www.socialmediatoday.com If you write about social media, Social Media Today is a fantastic place to register your feed. Every post is reviewed by their editors and the best ones get published on their influential website.
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com If you manage a discussion group on LinkedIn, you’re able to include up to 25 different feeds for the group.

I’m on the lookout for new places all the time. I’m sold on the idea of syndication and the power it has to spread my posts around the globe. While some people feel an RSS feed is far too technical, if you’re spending the time writing a blog, why not make sure it gets maximum exposure?

Where have you registered your RSS feed?

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*Image courtesy of Stylianos Mystakidis at www.flickr.net

Last night Joe Pulizzi, the co-founder of the Content Marketing movement, published a blog post at Junta42 titled, 7 Reasons Print Will Make a Comeback in 2011. It was an interesting commentary from a guy who spends nearly all of his time speaking about online marketing.

I’ve always felt content marketing described both online and print collateral. Most businesses I speak to, especially SMBs, are reluctant to dispense with physical documents. Why? Because they work. We no longer have to convince people an investment in online content is important, even necessary, but I don’t know of a single company that’s made a complete switch from print to online marketing strategies.

Everything Old is New Again
Something I’ve seen recently, however, supports Joe’s theory. Soggybones is about to launch a print version of their popular online magazine. A lean outfit run by a couple of young guys, Soggybones is breaking rules and redefining journalism while maintaining a culture of excellence in design and photography. Their strategy to go to print is indicative of a bigger trend.

I’m happy to see Joe’s prediction. Personally, I enjoy holding something in my hand while reading. I like being able to walk out the door with a sheaf of material I can peruse while waiting or drinking a cup of coffee. I absolutely love to see a brochure with beautiful images like Premier Studio distributes to describe their outdoor photography studio. I get excited when I see a clever design implemented by a graphic designer who understands the power of traditional print.

The Takeaway
As Joe astutely points out, there’s a lot less post coming through your mailbox. We all agree receiving a handwritten letter is a joy in the age of email. Why not explore ways you can deliver your marketing message through the mailbox instead of the inbox? Look for a graphic designer with both print and web competencies and start working on an online/offline campaign.

What do you read “in print”?

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*Image by Mercedes at www.flickr.net