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Listening: the Doorway to the Future

Listening the Doorway to the FutureCustomer service can be argued as one of the most important responsibilities of marketing. It can either be a company's best friend or it's worst enemy. People talk about their experience with products through hundreds of platforms and companies need to be listening and responding to the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Social Media, Storytelling and the Great Wind

Social Media, Storytelling and the Great WindStorytelling is one of the best ways a marketer can communicate their message. If you want to capture the attention and interest of your audience you must tell stories. This past Friday we had a very violent rain and windstorm that hit all of New England. Usually at this time of year we would be talking about a blizzard with people digging out for days. Not this time. Instead we got two to as much as seven inches of rain and hurricane-force winds. Northern New England, especially New Hampshire (NH) my home state, got hit very hard. In 2008 we got hit with an ice storm that knocked out power to more than 400,000 people in NH. Some people didn’t have power for weeks and everyone learned a lot from the great ice storm.

The Glue of Inbound Marketing: Content

Content CreationContent is your best marketing tool. However, if you don't produce enough or the right types of content then it could hurt you instead of helping. I take the less is more approach and quality over quantity. If you can only get one high quality piece of content created a month, its much better than four poorly written pieces that could actually be hurting your brand or company's reputation. Content is the glue of inbound marketing. People start sticking to that glue by finding you through organic searches and referrals from other Web sites or blogs.

Educational and Funcational Content; Key to Social Media

Content CreationCreating engaging content is the key to having people find and link to your web site. Content can take many forms and be used for different purposes. One of the best ways to use content is for educational purposes. The content should connect with the customer and draw them in to your web site. Here are ten examples of valuable content:

Inbound Marketing: the Power of Targeting Your Message

Inbound Marketing

Organize your Social Conversations and Patterns will Appear

Information overload is a very big problem. There are so many social conversations happening so fast that you can't keep track of them in your mind or on a piece of paper. You need to start organizing and creating silos of information you think have some value. This is one of the hardest parts of listening, deciding how to organize the information.

a TV Commercial for our Social Conversations

Social ConversationsOver the past few posts I have discussed social conversations, listening, reading, and planning. I watched the Super Bowl last night and was excited to see the Colts and Saints play, but more excited to see the TV commercials. Not because I wanted to laugh or figure out which one was the most clever, but rather to see what companies really get how to integrate traditional, interruption-based marketing with our online social conversations.

Listen, Read, Plan (Don't Market)

Searches engines have changed the way we find information. It was very difficult to access information before the Internet was invented. We now live in a real-time world of continually updated information, which we have access to at almost at any point during our day. We come into contact with so many Internet marketing messages and there are hundreds of ways to find what we're trying to answer, that businesses have to be listening and contributing.

Listen then Market then Listen Some More

It's all about listening. We're now transforming how we (marketers) gather information about the consumer and how we monitor them through the entire buying cycle. The end goal of our efforts is making sure they become brand/company advocates (the ultimate form of marketing). They must need, love, desire your product. It takes a great product to achieve success, but if you don’t have outstanding customer service, you created a bad product.