Remember the old spy movies?  The hero was a clueless hack who had stumbled into the situation and found himself in peril.  As the plot was slowly being revealed, the villain would explain that information was being provided on a ‘Need to Know’ basis.  In other words, our hero would find out the important stuff too late to do anything about it.

If your business  – especially a small business – uses the Internet to sell, market, or communicate your value, do your prospects engage your information on a ‘Need to Know’ basis?  The very nature of the Internet marketing allows all of us to find the information we need when we need it.  Just like our poor guy in the movie who is hanging by a thread over the shark tank, if the only chance we have to connect with our customers is the first time they hit our site, it may be too late.

So what can be done to engage prospects more deeply?  That is the secret of effective Internet marketing.  Blogs, Vlogs, podcasts, and social media are all designed to let you engage your audience and build a relationship.  Building a strategy that uses these tools effectively will move you from ‘Need to Know’ to ‘Required Reading’ status.  This takes time and commitment, but is well worth the effort once you’ve built a tribe that delivers the business referrals you need to succeed.

A couple of quick tips to get started:

• Find several interactive sites in your industry or target market and become a regular contributor.  This will create links to your site and get you exposed to people who may have an interest in your content.
• Look for opportunities to be a guest blogger.  Again, exposure to a new audience widens the reach of your message.
• Get connected on all major social media outlets.  You may only regularly contribute to one or two, but RSS and other aggregating tools can feed your content to the many sites where your prospects live.  If you distribute your content to the major sites (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Plaxo, MySpace, etc), you’ll increase your audience even if you’re not a regular ‘in person’ contributor on that site.
• Blog, vlog (video blog), or podcast on a regular basis.  If you vlog, set up a YouTube page and encourage comments while regularly commenting on other videos.
• List your preferred social media links on your website, emails, business cards and other daily correspondences.  Today people get online information from a variety of places.  Letting them know where you reside can facilitate a connection.
• Seek feedback, comments, and ideas on improvements.  Make sure you quickly respond to any comments or feedback.  Every time you respond, you expose yourself, your links, and your message to a new and wider audience.

And don’t forget about your current customers.  Hy Serure from Hyquality Media discusses the impact of social media:

“Your current customers are more likely than total strangers to respond to offers posted on social networks because they already know you and trust you based on their prior purchases.”

The information that you provide will create the audience that will ultimately grow your business.  Small business owners should look at blogging and social media marketing as efforts to grow a tribe of raving fans and customers.  This is much better than being shark bait.

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