Sharon's Marketing Missive

Below is an email I sent to a seafood company looking to build a new B2C website as well as a Facebook presence. During my talk with the web designer, several things came up, so I emailed these thoughts to the client. They were so well received by him, I thought I'd share them here...

"They are for the most part what is now called Content Marketing, which means a more strategic use of the content you create or capture.

"And content is golden. Content is how you get found online by search engines. Content is what people share. Content is how you engage and build relationships. Content is a valuable commodity. The more good content you have, the better off you are.

"With a B2C company that is selling food—something consumers can really get into—you have some great opportunities to get your customers creating content for you. A possible scenario is this: You have a website, a blog, and a Facebook page, and maybe you’re doing email marketing too. Your blog content can come from anywhere. It’s not like you need some English major hidden away cranking out content about your seafood. Your blog content can be written by a freelancer or two, and/or by employees, and/or by customers. Every time you get a testimonial, that’s a blog post. A recipe is a blog post. A new product is a blog post. An employee talking about quality control and another talking about types of seafood and things to know…blog content. Talking about what’s going on elsewhere, like maybe on Chopped they had frozen shrimp as one of their ingredients…proper storing advice, party advice, side dish advice, busy family dinners advice… the possibilities for blog content are literally endless.

"Then it’s really easy to share blog posts with Facebook and Twitter. You simply click on a link and voila, it’s shared. So you’ve taken the same content, but made that many more people aware of it and given them a chance to comment on it, like it or share it.

"It goes the other way too. I just heard about a company that makes gluten-free baked goods posted a request for favorite gluten-free Thanksgiving recipes on their Facebook page and got over 200 recipes. If the company puts all those recipes into blog posts, guess what? That’s over 200 blog posts…that are naturally keyword rich. Plus they will be permanent content, unlike Facebook content that has a very short lifespan.

"Which is the other side of this: All online content has the potential for helping your search rankings. And organic search is still the way to go. Just this morning, I read eMarketer’s article on how organic search still trounces paid search. People trust the organic results. And if you can “organically” create that kind of keyword-rich content…and have people sharing it and spreading the word for you, you’ll get a lot more bang for your marketing buck. Or should I say Content Marketing buck?

"You can add in email marketing, with links to pages on your Facebook page…and those email messages can be repurposed as blog posts. You also can have recipe contests or even a food photo contest. If you wanted, you could pull together recipes and make an ebook…promote it by email, in the blog on Facebook…I hope I’m painting a picture here for you."

That was the bulk of the email I sent the client. I hope that gets your brain churning the way it did mine...and the client's!