"Plugging away" or just routinely updating
your organization's web presence with useful content is critical to digital
marketing success. Because once created, digital
content is forever!
It does not matter whether it is
your website that is being constantly updated, or blog posts are coming up, new
YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter content is being generated.
Just adding stuff that makes life easier for your customers, suppliers, employees
and all stakeholders and the general public is appreciated and rewarded. That
reward shows in better search engine rankings (SEO), other folks referring to
your site and best of all it gives you that warm feeling of lighting up
the understanding of your field for the world at large.
Considering that in many
organizations only the marketing folks seem to be interested in putting out
content here are some thoughts on how to get more useful content up. And the
lead for this type of work has to come from the marketing department:
- To start with identify your outside facing departments
like Customer Service, Supply Chain, Investor relations, Quality and
Safety folks whose work immediately impacts the world outside your firm.
Meet each department head and identify an individual who will be the liaison
for top 3 key issues that are important for that department to communicate
with the outside world. Consider Customer Service:- For example, customer service calls may be related to
some recurring problems that customers seem to face with your product.
Can you create a You Tube help video to help folks along? - Traditionalists might feel really uptight about
confessing that there are some endemic customer service questions that
come up. But guess what…. before
the customer really goes through your annoying IVR phone call system
they would have tried searching online for the problem. Invariably,
there would be good folks who have already posted discussion threads and
Youtube videos to deal with the problem. - It is very likely that you are hearing at customer
service from (a) non Internet users (b) Internet users who are not able
to resolve their issue based on the content available elsewhere to
them. The question to ask is: - Why would you entirely
abdicate solutions relating to your product to the outside world? If
internal folks do the FAQ's for the world … the chances of
really innovating on the next version/model of your product will
zoom.
- For example, customer service calls may be related to
- Next take up internal facing departments like Production,
Accounting, Finance, HR and try to facilitate stuff that they can share on
the open web. Your HR folks might be quite ready to share a whole
bunch of forms online making life so much easier for employees,
prospective employees and themselves. HR can take one more step of putting
out good advice on their section of their website or on the company
Facebook page.
With good HR content employees will
be happier and a "best place to work" rating can't hurt your
reputation with customers, suppliers or investors. It may not happen
immediately but consistent "plugging away" will ensure that you have
the most relevant and useful industry content whether it relates to customer
service, HR or finance best practices. Since the content is forever…. you can
be sure of rich dividends for your organization. Contact StratoServe.