Adventures in Marketing

[thomasbmcc]

Pack and Ship Centers

Interviewing Noelle Wright of Pack and Ship Plus about pack-and-ship centers--I didn’t know that the PO boxes don’t cost anymore than what the US Postal Service offers! And you can call ahead and find out if you have mail.

With life getting busier and busier, pack-and-ship centers are on the rise, but that’s not the only trend driving their growth. It turns out Amazon is a key factor because more and more people are having goods shipped to them that used to be picked up at brick-and-mortars. Using a pack-and-ship center for Amazon deliveries means the package won’t go missing, and returns are easy.

As Amazon grows and retail evolves, pack-and-ship centers might become a neighborhood center. Talk about hyper-local -- I’m going to ask Noelle to come on our radio show!

[thomasbmcc]

Analyze This! New Trends in Data Analytics

ASAE’s Great Ideas Conference

Monday, March 14, 2016

The Broadmoor  

Your data is telling a story and once you understand the story it’s telling, you can change the ending! Learn how four associations of different sizes and missions are enabling their staff to have a “conversation with data,” resulting in better business decisions. Discover new thinking about what to measure, what data to collect, how to interpret and analyze the data, and how predictive analytics can advance your mission. Walk away inspired to use data to mitigate risk and leverage opportunities for increased member engagement, retention, and meeting attendance.

                                                                                                                                Debbie King (@DebbieKingDSK), Chief Executive Officer, DSK Solutions

Christin Berry (@ASAEcenter), Senior Director, Business Analytics, ASAE: The Center for Association Leadership analytics is when you don’t know the question, where to look or what you might find. Analysis is when you do.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   :

Guillermo Ortiz de Zarate (@GuillermoOZ), Director, Information Systems, National Council of Architectural Registration Boards                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             Tori Liu (@torimillerliu), Vice President, Technology and Strategic Initiatives, Global Cold Chain Alliance                                                                                     

Deborah Herrin, Senior Director, Information Technology, The Optical Society

 First, BEAM: personae for different types of members so that you can then ask where do you store the data about this person.

S.M.A.R.T. Goals

The ability to take data – to be able to understand it, to process it, to extract value from it, to visualize it, to communicate it’s going to be a hugely important skill in the next decades Google’s Chief Economist Hal Varian

Tableau

Center of Universe: Data Mart, not AMS.

Data Visualization: Data Quality Management, Dashboards, Data Discovery, Predictive Analytics and Big Data

[thomasbmcc]

The Idea Hunter: Powerful Insights to Create an Idea-Intensive Association

IOpening Keynote, ASAE’s Great Ideas Conference

Andrew C. Boynton

Sunday, March 13

The Broadmoor

Colorado Springs, CO

Too often, people fall into the trap of thinking that the only worthwhile idea is a thoroughly original one. Idea Hunters know better. They understand that valuable ideas are already out there, waiting to be found — and not just in the usual places. Enter Andy Boynton — dean of Boston College’s Carroll School of Management, regular feature on Forbes.com, and groundbreaking author of The Idea Hunter: How to Find the Best Ideas and Make Them Happen. This myth-busting keynote reveals that great business ideas do not spring from innate creativity, or necessarily from the brilliant minds of people. Rather, great ideas come to those who are in the habit of looking for great ideas — all around them, all the time.

Andrew C. Boynton (@Andy_Boynton) makes a strong case that innovation is curation more than orginality. He starts by suggesting that good idea hunting begins with establishing your vision and focus and then tuning into to ideas which, like radio waves, surround us continually.

One of the original idea hunters was Thomas Edison, who created the capability to find ideas and constantly innovated to create value, adding a new invention approximately every six months! Unlike his predecessors who built incremental improvements, Thomas Edison would establish a vision and “backcast” from that to the necessary incremental tactics, big and small, which he would then address in order.

One of the first components of idea hunting and innovation for Thomas Edison was to find “smart creatives” (those who scored 90% or more on his 100-question test that covered history, philosophy as well as the technology of the day). He also reviewed failures, which he viewed as some of his greatest assets, as the ideas and experiences behind them could often be re-purposed. Setting up an infrastructure for cultivating ideas on is particular important today when one considers that products and services typically time out after a limited shelf-life of, perhaps, 3-4 years.

Another famous idea-hunter was Walt Disney, who borrowed his idea for Disneyland from his trip to Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen. Some of your best ideas will come from other industries, so spending time with people from different backgrounds is important. And, like Thomas Edison, Walt Disney mined “failures,” occasionally even looking through wastebaskets to recycle the discarded ideas of his cartoonists.

Andy Boynton also cites a current innovator, Apple CMO Phil Schiller who helped develop the iPod by borrowing 1983′s HP9000′s "clickwheel.” To recycle such disparate ideas, leave your comfort zone by going on trips, socializing with “weird people,” reading and embracing failure. (Even Jeff Bezos estimates Amazon gets it right about 30% of the time.)

Through Ideo (@ideo), Andy Boynton is also co-creator of DeepDive™, “the world’s leading methodology for helping executives harness the power of teams to significantly improve problem-solving speed, innovation and results.” His  DeepDive process: form an eclectic team that interviews experts, immerses themselves in a problem, encourages collaboration and even wild ideas and resists focusing on seniority or ruling out any ideas prematurely.

He sites 7 key factors to leverage your team’s passion and brainpower to generate great ideas and achieve a vision:

Time pressure

Clear goals and realistic commitments

Diverse skills

Idea hunting

Rapid prototyping

Great conversations

Taking the initiative once an opportunity is identified

More money, more resources, more time never equal more ideas: hire smart people, harness their expertise and skills to drive innovation. And, instead of providing time, assign deadlines. Rapid prototyping on a fixed time frame is vital. People, and their collective IQ, are the guts of innovation. Energize your people and leverage their power, he says. Establish clear goals and realistic constraints to focus brainpower before unleashing the ideas. Remember, too, that conversations move ideas and to “fail often in order to succeed sooner!”

His parting advice is that innovation is about finding practical solutions (functional, emotional and social) aimed at your vision and then backcasting from those. Great idea hunters purposefully increase the probability of colliding with a great idea every day!

Andy Boynton’s latest book, The Idea Hunter: How to Find the Best Ideas and Make them Happen, is based on his idea-hunting research and is co-authored with Bill Fischer and William Bole.

[thomasbmcc]

Creating a Content Marketing Calendar

Keeping tabs on all the many venues in which you publish, overseeing production, holding people accountable, and definitely not least, being able to execute a coherent strategy makes going forward without a content marketing calendar downright foolhardy. So let’s have a look at how you can create a workable content marketing calendar and strategy.

How many and who’s going to do it?

Even if you are a large company with a few departments making use of the calendar, you’ll need to have a person dedicated to ensuring the overall plan is advancing, and people are held accountable. This presupposes that you have a single content marketing calendar. We believe this is best as even while there may be different people or teams working on different aspects of content creation, it is vital that there is a common vision and goals here. Having more than one calendar is asking for it, and really hinders efforts at promotion. Resist the calls for independence here.

This is to lessen the chances for assignments and deadlines falling too far behind, and jeopardizing marketing promotions that are inextricably intertwined.

What form should the content marketing calendar take?

Very often the simplest solution is best, and for those just starting out, or even for the more experienced, a simple spreadsheet is often sufficient for the task. Obviously you will want to customize it for your company’s particulars, but this is easily done. Plus, there are many that have gone before you in this endeavor, and a simple Google Image search will give you plenty of examples to look at.

There are also software solutions that will do the job nicely, which might be the ticket for you if you have a large organization or just wish to automate more of the task completion reporting and project management. Tools like Basecamp and Teamwork come quickly to mind, but there are dozens of quality programs to choose from, so set aside some time to look them over. Be forewarned that there are costs and learning curves involved with this type of solution.

Most of the time a simple solution works best, and we would encourage this to get started, especially of you haven’t before attempted to task your content marketing. Upgrading to more sophisticated systems can always happen in the future if need be.

Creating a Content Marketing Calendar was originally published on The NSI Partners Blog

[thomasbmcc]

Making Blogging Work for You

Inbound marketing allows you to get customers to actively seek your business, and when looking at the top inbound approaches, blogging surely shows up. When blogging, in fact, business-to-business marketers see around 67% more sales opportunities than their non-blogging competitors. Needless to say, this is only true if you’re blogging effectively.

Structure is Crucial

In just about any marketing, you must stay consistent. This is especially the case, though, on the subject of blogging. Once people start employing your blog as a source of information, they will expect reliable postings. If they are not getting them, they will likely look elsewhere. In addition, an always up-to-date blog will really help your organic reach on search engines.

Completely focus on Search Engine Optimization

One of the big draws of blogging, and content marketing in general, is that it brings people to your business who may have otherwise never encountered it. This is successfully done through useful search engine optimization. Consider this when creating your blog. By using industry keywords and your location in the opening paragraph, keywords in headers and utilizing photos with those keywords in their file name, you can help scoot these blogs up the search engine ladder.

Make Your Blog Material Scannable

A recent report found that readers trust bloggers more than any source other than family and friends, but this won’t matter if people aren’t reading your blog. To ensure your content is being seen, make your blogs very easily scannable. Keep paragraphs brief and use subheaders and pictures to distinguish content. This will be much easier to read, so people will remain on your website and develop that essential confidence.

Blogging has developed into a powerful advertising tool. Verify that you are not dropping the ball by making simple blogging blunders.

Making Blogging Work for You was originally published on The NSI Partners Blog

[thomasbmcc]

How to Market Your Business

Businesses today must market themselves just as effectively as they do their product. If you properly find a way to do this, customers will have the confidence to remain trusting you with their business.

Create a striking Website

Too many company owners view their webpage as nothing more than an inconvenience that comes along with running their company. For this reason, you will often see hastily thrown together websites that look like a high school student could have created them. Ensure that your website looks professional and runs smoothly. Research shows that 40% of users will leave a page if its loading time is over three seconds, so make sure it is as functional as it is good to look at.

Sign up for Industry Events

Whether it is a trade show, formal event or just a speaking engagement, attending trade events can quickly develop brand credibility. This is particularly the case if you can get a well-informed speaker to give a presentation on your behalf. Whenever you earn the respect of others in your industry, credibility from everybody is the usual result.

Develop Great Content

Even without other credibility-building techniques, creating great content can go a long way. Ensure that your videos, blogs, articles and other items of content are both informative and valuable. Should you do this, people will organically locate your business, and they’ll grow to trust your opinion. By making this happen, you are creating trust that simply is not bought.

When you’re looking at marketing, you need to remember to focus on marketing yourself. Businesses that successfully pull this off will build confidence in their brand that will keep prospects returning.

How to Market Your Business was originally published on The NSI Partners Blog

[thomasbmcc]

Avoid These Mistakes on Social Media

While your social media pages do wonders for informing your clients, you need to recognize that there is much more to these pages. Just like all marketing tools, social media can maximize profits. If you are not generating leads, though, you may as well drop the page entirely. Sharing unique content on your page is a fantastic way to do this, and since 71% of business-to-business companies use content marketing to generate leads, it’s obviously an efficient tool.

Purchasing Fans or Followers

Purchasing a social media following is one of the biggest faults you could make. While it does supply the impression that a business is well-accepted, it also leaves behind pretend profiles that will never ever interact with the page. Social media sites judge your posts’ level of popularity based on how many fans interact with it, and if these paid-for followers are the type being served your post, make no mistake there is little potential for your content gaining traction.

Failing to Integrate Lead Generation

Social media is a wonderful way to get connected to your followers, but it is also even more than that. It is a tool supposed to increase your profits. If you are unable to generate leads with this tool, it’s all but pointless. A full 71% of business-to-business marketers use content marketing to generate leads, so be certain that you’re creating custom content and sharing it in your social media sites.

Focusing Only on Merchandise Promotion

The primary goal of your social media pages is usually to promote your product or service, but you cannot permit this to be fully apparent. People don’t want to be commercialized at all of the time. Actually, that is a fantastic way to lose followers. Make sure that you are posting engaging content quite often to keep people involved. Keep straight product or service promotion to under 20% of your posts.

Social media is normally the greatest weapon or maybe your worst enemy. Make sure to stay on its good side by keeping away from the aforementioned common mistakes.

Avoid These Mistakes on Social Media was originally published on The NSI Partners Blog

[thomasbmcc]

Changing Your Marketing Strategy

Details sometimes should change, and this goes for marketing strategies just as much as anything else. Continuing with an unsuccessful campaign simply makes no sense. You should recognize when a particular strategy is not paying off so it can be updated. However, there are a few obvious signs that a change probably be crucial.

Email Marketing Proving unsuccessful

Research has shown that 66 percent of Online users have bought a product or service because of email marketing messages. This should instantly nip the notion that email is pointless in the bud. However, if you’re not seeing a positive return on your investment, the effort is useless.

When looking at your email marketing metrics, even if it is only how many people read your messages, you’ll be able to see if they work effectively. Verify your email addresses, be sure to have a simple method to opt out, and ensure that your messagesare worthy of reading.

Traffic Becomes Stable

Whether it is on social media or the company website, numbers that level off are a sure signal that it’s time to upgrade a digital marketing strategy. The amount of Internet users jumped from 738 million in 2000 to a whopping 3.2 billion in 2015. More than 100 million new users are added each year, and if your reach is not steadily increasing, this means something has gone askew in your marketing strategy.

Monthly Goals are not Being Met

One really telling signs that a marketing strategy isn’t working is simply not meeting envisioned goals. Whether it is increasing sales by 1 percent on a monthly basis or adding 20 new Facebook followers each week, something is preventing you from thriving. Of course, it’s possible that hopes were just set way too high, but if goals that were once being reached are falling behind, you are going to rethink what’s happening.

A business will invariably fail if major problems are not tackled. Fortunately, the same is not true for marketing strategies. Small adjustments in your strategy could be all you need to get your business back to normal.

Changing Your Marketing Strategy was originally published on The NSI Partners Blog

[thomasbmcc]

Turning Leads Into Clients

Many businesses offer some sort of incentive to attract leads, whether it be a giveaway or a white paper. However, turning these leads into paying clients can be more challenging. Provoke Communication Promptly

Research has revealed that 90 percent of leads actually go cold in a hour. And that means you need to initiate contact right away. The easiest way of doing this is by sending an email. Whether you get it by having someone sign up for a trial run of your service or by joining your email list to get a discount on a meal, the critical thing is to get it. Have an automated email dispatched, so even if they rapidly forget they signed up, they will have a reminder in their inbox.

Offer Added Credits

Offering a different motivator might seem like a bit much, especially after providing a freebie, but in the end, this can significantly be worthwhile. The additional incentive doesn’t have to be another freebie. A sandwich shop could offer an easy punch card loyalty program to help keep people coming back. Those offering advertising as a service could price cut their yearly rate if paid up front. You’ll find lots of other incentives to provide, so just use your imagination.

Keep Conversation Open

Advertising experts say 10% of a small business’s monthly sales should go into free trials. This is a large chunk of budget, so you should already be able to keep communication lines open. Mail out periodic emails or reminders, but ensure some are framed as helpful communications. People fail to remember, so while daily emails are a bit overzealous, a few friendly reminders never hurt anyone.

Too many customers take full advantage of a free offer and then simply never revisit. Thankfully, you can decrease the likelihood of this by merely being proactive.

Turning Leads Into Clients was originally published on The NSI Partners Blog

Turning Leads Into Clients was originally published on The NSI Partners Blog

[thomasbmcc]

SEO Practices for the New Year

It’s a new year and that means online marketing will adapt and change, as it always does. The world of advertising is a intricate one, and as modern technology evolves, your marketing approach will have to do so as well. One of the most utilized techniques in this field is search engine optimization (SEO). While SEO procedures have been set for many years, they are swiftly transforming. In truth, the evolving technique will see important new traits in 2016.

Utilize Your Personal Images

Images can still drive traffic to a website, and this is still true even though they aren’t as critical as they once were. Uploading images is very important for SEO purposes, and you are going to do much better if you use unique images. Hundreds of websites could be using the same photograph, but if you offer different things, you are going to stand out. Ensure you have this distinctive advantage when internet marketing a company.

It Isn’t About Keywords Anymore

It absolutely helps to have specific keywords on a website’s copy to generate traffic, but it is not really as important as it used to be. Search engines have progressed, and they now do not need precise words to tell them what a customer is searching for. If someone is in search of information on an iPad, for instance, Google might return a number of results based on Apple products and smart devices.

In reality, it is much more about the searcher’s intent. Specific keywords can get them to your website, but if they rapidly come back to Google, the search engine will think the page is not delivering on what it promises. So get your keywords in where possible, but ensure you are giving people what they want.

Continue Driving at Mobile

In 2014, the time period spent surfing the net on mobile devices outpaced that of desktop computers. While many are slow to come around to this fact, it is far from going to change. Your internet site will have to be created with mobile access in mind, and if it isn’t, you are surely going to lose customers over it.

Search engine optimization will not be going anywhere as an invaluable marketing tool. Make sure you are keeping up with it.

SEO Practices for the New Year was originally published on The NSI Partners Blog

[thomasbmcc]

Using Reputation Management to Enhance Your Advertising

Create a Large Online Presence

While setting up a page on the internet is helpful in several ways, reputation management is among the most essential things an organization can do. When a potential client is searching for a local business by name or industry, you don’t want them to see websites with negative reviews. This could be minimized by creating pages on Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Yahoo Local. Since less than 10 percent of Google users move forward to the second page of results, having several relevant corners of the web assists in trashing negative sites to the dark recesses of Page 2.

Monitor the Company Name and Products

One of the largest factors of reputation management is what people are finding online. Thankfully, a business owner can sometimes track this just as easily as people are finding it. By simply heading over to Google and doing a search on the company name or its branded product, a business person can see precisely what others are noticing with regards to their company. Additionally, it is easy to set up Google Alerts which notifies you of new mentions with certain keywords, such as the company name. If anything negative appears, corrective actions can be started.

Be Transparent on Social Media

Many business owners make the blunder of getting rid of negative mentions from their social media pages. In reality, they should be contacting the upset customerin whole view of the public. When others see a company striving to right a wrong they already know the business actually cares about its customers.

Marketing is only able to do so much once a company’s reputation is tainted. Reputation management, however, is capable of turning your business in the best direction.

Using Reputation Management to Enhance Your Advertising was originally published on The NSI Partners Blog

[thomasbmcc]

How to Make Blogging Work for Your Business

Search Engine Optimization Help

Whether you are promoting and advertising a small business or a national corporation, you want to be on Page 1 of Google. Over 90% of traffic coming out of Google is produced by the first page of results, so Page 2 simply is not an option. Thankfully, blogging increases your online presence, backlinks, and helps in a variety of other ways to increase your organic reach and land near the top on search engines. This means more people see you, and more people will come in.

Existing Customers Become Ambassadors

One of the most effective benefits of having a blog is the fact that you can make easily shareable content to publish on your social media pages. The secret here is to ensure that your information is actually valuable. If you sell swimming pools, a nice blog post titled, “Everything You Need for an Amazing Summer Vacation” would likely do well for your company. If a blog post works your followers will share it, and this equates to more eyes on your content.

Showcase Yourself as an Industry Thought Leader

Blogging is a style of inbound marketing, and this means people are in essence seeking you out as opposed to you going after them. If they are looking for information and find it on your organization blog, you suddenly become a experienced resource for them. This can set you up as a business thought leader, and people are far more likely to do business with someone they trust than someone they do not even know.

Just like social media marketing, blogging is becoming less of an option and a lot more of a necessity. Do not get left behind.

How to Make Blogging Work for Your Business was originally published on The NSI Partners Blog

[thomasbmcc]

Save Money with These Lead Generation Tips

Not all remarkable marketing strategies have to cost an arm and a leg. Simply combine these lead generation methods with other low-cost marketing tips, and you can make your marketing budget go further.

Do Not Be Scared to Buy Leads

There are those who look down on lead purchasing, but if you are just starting out or business has slowed, it can be very useful. While these directories are affordable, make sure not to go too cheap. You need to purchase quality leads, and this only comes from companies that have a verified track record of success.

Find Referrals

You have already got a strong lead generation tool available in your current clients. Research recently found that nearly two-thirds of advertising executives think word-of-mouth marketing is the best form of marketing and advertising available. If you’re able to get your customers to tell their friends about you, even by offering money off, you can be successful.

Implement Webinars or Instructional Videos

Creating a live webinar can go quite a distance in generating new leads. You just need to get the smartest person on the payroll to lead the webinar and promote it well ahead of time. Obviously, this type of lead generation does not work so well for all corporations.

All things considered, how many fishermen will want to see a live webinar on anything a bait-and-tackle shop is putting out there? Thankfully, businesses like this could just develop instructional videos that people organically come across online.

This kind of content is ideal for getting new eyes on your business, but make sure there is always a sign-up form or call to action listed. This content-based method is very efficient considering content marketing decreases the cost-per-lead by 13%.

Impressive marketing tactics do not necessarily need to be expensive. By utilizing these lead generation ideas and other affordable marketing strategies, you could greatly reduce your promotion spending budget.

Save Money with These Lead Generation Tips was originally published on The NSI Partners Blog

[thomasbmcc]

Outsourcing Some of the Workload

Accomplishing all the tasks involved with running a business online is an enormous undertaking, but the good news is that you don’t need to take all of it on by yourself.

The the reality is, there are people available who can do some of the tasks you’ve got on your plate, and probably a lot better than you, especially when you are rushed and overburdened. In fact, keeping all this work to yourself is pretty much ensuring that you won’t be growing your business very much at all. You simply won’t be able to do the things needed to scale.

Here are a few specific reasons why you need to be outsourcing. Take a look and see if this doesn’t make sense to you.

There’s a few things only you can do – And you should be tending to those. These include things such as planning, networking, finding new clients and sewing up deals, and in general, being the visionary behind your company. This can’t be outsourced. By freeing you up to do more of this type of work, you set yourself up for more business and success in the future.

Make growth possible – When you’ve got more hands helping, more is possible. You will be able to deliver projects and work quickly and efficiently, and therefore have the ability to take on more work. Not to mention that you are more able to avoid the dreaded “single point of failure” effect, where when one person quits, goes on vacation, gets sick or is otherwise unavailable, your train stops.

Increase your levels of expertise – Outsourcing tasks to people who might just know how to do it better than you has benefits too. Not only is your firm more capable now, you benefit by having increased levels of expertise you can sell and package. Also, let’s face it, no one person can know and do everything.

Do your business a big favor and begin to look for ways to outsource work that you don’t need to be doing to others. You’ll find greater revenue along with increased productivity that will serve you well into the future.

Outsourcing Some of the Workload was originally published on The NSI Partners Blog

[thomasbmcc]

Write a Business Plan in a Weekend

Susan McGovern

Corner Office Coaching

Saturday, January 9, 2016

Library 21C, Colorado Springs, CO

I remember when we founded NSI Partners. It was exciting. It was my sixth dive down the entrepreneurial chute, and this time we were going to get it completely right, having had mixed results prior. Over the course of those adventures, I had written quite a few business plans, but with NSI, the business was simpler. We weren’t inventing a product. We were founding a digital agency to help others market their products, using the skills we had all gained in the dot-com upheaval.

Our goal was not to get on the cover of BusinessWeek. (That was the prior venture, and, as things turned out, we only warranted the cover of a local magazine). Our mission was to get other people’s inventions and offerings famous, while we would use our skills with the then brand-new Internet behind the scenes.

And we needed to get things up and running right away, because dot-com ashes didn’t come with investment or even savings accounts. In fact, all we had was knowledge, a great team and debt from the prior venture. So we skipped the business-plan stage.

Fast forward to 16 years later, and it all worked out, but Susan McGovern (@MustangLdr) at Corner Office Coaching is now offering a Business Plan in a Weekend workshop, which I found very convenient. Time to tie up lose ends from years ago and fine-tune our heading.

She asked our class to begin by trying to recapture the moment we had when we founded our businesses. Part of this is involves prioritizing your personal objectives by selecting 10 from a very long list. I have a lot of personal objectives, I guess, so this was hard, but I came up with:

Faith/Religion

Family

Altruism

Justice

Compassion

Connecting to Others

Accomplishment

Achievement

Authenticity

Commitment

Then by asking a series of questions, we develop, Vision, Mission and Values:

Our Vision - What we aspire to be. Customers confidently choose us for their marketing needs because we consistently launch projects that accomplish quantifiable marketing goals, efficiently and affordably.

Our Mission - Our plan to get there. We strive to maintain a comprehensive knowledge of the latest digital marketing trends, to offer customized, quantifiable plans to a selective clientele at affordable prices and to execute and deliver these plans efficiently and in a timely manner. 

Our Core Values - The principles that guide us. Passion For Our Customers Our small size means you’re not lost among hundreds of clients. We take an individual interest in your business and your specific needs.

Customized Approach Our unique insights into the rapidly changing world of marketing means you are receiving a customized plan, designed exclusively for your business.

Partnership We listen - to you, your stakeholders, and your industry. We believe success is found in a true give-and-take dialog where you educate us about your business, your clients, your particular challenges, and we bring our 15 years of online marketing experience to bear on your unique situation.

Knowledge Our senior partners started in marketing before there was online marketing, and we stay abreast of developments in the ever-shifting landscapes of search, social media, mobile and email marketing.

Community Focused We are committed to leadership through service.  Our passion for marketing and the joy we find in building relationships leads us to share our expertise in the wider community through memberships in business organizations, speaking engagements and writing. 

That’s the introduction to writing a business plan. Now we move on to the Marketing component of it, but at this time of new year’s resolutions, if you don’t have a business plan, it’s a good time to write one. Thanks Susan!

[thomasbmcc]

How to Scale your Content when You Haven't Got a Huge Staff

One of the scarier scenarios a lot of small businesses and independent marketers face is the fact that content marketing is an essential element of a modern online business.

It’s hard enough when you have a team of writers and marketers devoted to crafting and publishing content round the many platforms that comprise the content marketing universe, but to be left to accomplish this all on your own is a truly daunting prospect.

Let me assure you that there is a way, and it’s not as frightening as it might appear on the surface. Let’s take a look at how you can scale content marketing with a 1-person team!

5 Tips for scaling content by yourself!

Content Marketing Calendar – The first step is to get incredibly organized, and by this we mean creating a content marketing calendar. This is where you plan out your new content at least 6 months in advance, to coordinate with your other marketing initiatives at the same time.

Don’t forget to curate content – This tactic helps you in a couple of great ways: you can quickly publish valuable content for your readers, (remembering to attribute and inject your own views as well) and increases your own authority in Google’s eyes.

Don’t be afraid to outsource – One easy way to get some help is to outsource a portion of the work. Although this is an added expense, it’s not as much as you might think, and will help you tackle areas in which you may not have a lot of expertise, such as video, images and more.

Repurpose your content – Just because it’s a terrific blog post doesn’t mean it can’t be a just as compelling video, slideshow, email series or social media snippet. Think outside the box and utilize your content for more than the original purpose.

Content promotion – Don’t think that when it’s published you’re done. A big part of the effectiveness of content marketing lies in spreading the word, and when you send out new content, let the world know via your social media channels, and even paid promotion if it’s worth it you.

Working as a 1-person marketing department is definitely a struggle, but using these techniques, you’ll find a lot more success than you might think!

How to Scale your Content when You Haven’t Got a Huge Staff was originally published on The NSI Partners Blog

How to Scale your Content when You Haven’t Got a Huge Staff was originally published on The NSI Partners Blog

[thomasbmcc]

Three Tips for Managing Social Media for Small Businesses

We have all had it ingrained into our brains that social media is a must-do for any business that hopes to have a shot at winning their niche. Of course, small businesses rarely have the resources to concentrate solely on social media. With the following tips, we’ll get you in a better position to leverage the time you are able to dedicate to social media.

3 Tips for getting started with social media in your small business

Lay out a social media strategy – Decide on a goal for your social media strategy from the outset, as it will make it a lot more achievable and real to team members as you pursue it. Regardless of whether you intend to generate leads, engage with prospects or advertise, lay this out and then look at all the possible social platforms that could work for you. Not all of them are going to be a good fit.

Don’t try to use all of them – There are a lot of social platforms you can sign up for, but not all of them may be applicable enough to your business to justify the time and expense involved. For instance, if you are a Mercedes auto body shop, SnapChat (frequented by teens) is probably not your best use of resources.

Consistency is key – One of the main reasons social media works well for businesses is that they commit to engaging in it. Posting once a month will draw a big yawn from social media, and nobody will care or come around. Once you commit, post frequently with awesome value and honest intent.

Once you’ve laid the groundwork for a successful social media initiative, you can start to cultivate and build the type of following that will not only look forward to hearing from you, but will gladly help you spread the word.

Three Tips for Managing Social Media for Small Businesses was originally published on The NSI Partners Blog