Point of View

Social Media, Blogs, Landing Pages, Website – What comes first?

Posted by Chris Harmon on 21 June 2011 | 0 Comments

Tags: marketing, website

The answer is simple – you need to start with a website. If you don’t have a website you don’t have a home. Regardless of how many channels your business communicates in, every prospect, every consumer, needs a tangible touch point to connect with before trusting you with their business.

The difference is that your website needs to become much more than brochure-ware – it needs to become the nexus point for all of your communication channels. Of course, you need to catalogue what you do, who you are, and who uses your products and services – but you also need to provide a reason to believe – a reason to engage with you.

The key here is content – in a variety of forms. You need to tell stories about how people use your products and services. You must speak to the "pain" or reasons why someone needs your services, and you need to provide guidance for the best-practices in using your services. In an ideal world, your website becomes the hub for all of these communication channels as you speak in different voices to different audiences across different mediums.

Practically here’s a quick breakdown:

• Website – Validation, what we do , who we are – the hub.
• Blog – Thought leadership, opinions, our point of view across topics and people
• Facebook – Why build customer communities on expensive platforms when you can build one for free where your customers are ready congregate, and where data shows people are spending a significant amount of both work and personal time.
• LinkedIn – The best recruiting tool you can use.
• Twitter – Bite sized bits… But needs to be relevant. Corporate tweets should be all about news and events. Thought-Leadership needs to be connected to your people, your visionaries.
• Marketing Automation – The best way to measure conversion through directed campaigns and landing page conversions – nurture your leads to drive business.
• SEO – no brainer. If you’re doing the above well, you’re doing SEO
• SEM – Once your organic efforts flat-line, there’s nothing like SEM to give you a boost

The rest… advertising, events, PR – they’re all important. But if you don’t have a place to point them, with a relevant and compelling way to engage, then you’re throwing money and more importantly leads, down the drain. First priority – start with your website website.