Take for instance this befriended entrepreneur of mine, Mike Jagger. He initially sent out an email with a link to his blog to a controlled list of 100 clients. He was amazed to see that more than 70 of his clients followed the link to the blog within 12 hours and 41 asked to be set-up for an auto-notification every time he added a post.
“Since launching, we have generated quite a few additional sales based on specific posts and we have had clients actually call us to thank us for the ‘service’ that the blog provides,” explained Jagger. “In our business (security), one of our challenges is that we tend to only talk to people when there is an incident or something bad happens. The blog is allowing us to proactively communicate to, and add real value for our clients without having to wait for a security issue to arise.”
“One of the most amazing and powerful things that has happened is that the blog address has been forwarded on to many businesses and neighborhood associations by third parties as a ‘great community resource’, literally quadrupling our exposure over the course of a couple weeks… essentially, we are getting our marketing done for us, for free. The power and snowball effect of this thing is absolutely incredible and I cannot believe that I did not do it last year when I was first hearing about blogs,” adds Jagger.
Wiki’s
Another entrepreneur I know, Andrew Duthie, uses a wiki at his company. A wiki is a specific kind of website that allows users to easily update, edit, and add information. This ease of use makes wiki’s excellent for team collaboration. For Duthie Associates, its wiki includes:
– Procedures
– Competitor information
– Customer information
– Internal meeting minutes
– New employee orientation info
– Notes from webinars
– Ideas in general
Everyone in the company is able to create and edit any of this information. In addition, they’ve accumulated 253 articles in their wiki; the last three have included two technical articles and a marketing article with research on their upcoming Google AdWords campaign. Setting up a wiki hardly takes any time according to Duthie, you can just use MediaWiki, the same web engine used by Wikipedia.
Squidoo’s
Create a Squidoo page NOW! Seth Godin, the marketing genius of our time (Purple Cow, Permission Marketing, All Marketers are Liars) has launched a new site for experts. Instead of searching Google and having to sort through what’s good or bad, search Squidoo and find someone who has 20 years of expertise on a subject and let them guide you to the appropriate resources. Squidoo is still in Beta, but jump in and be the “corrugated box” guru.
I have created a “Growth Guy” Squidoo lens for growth firms with links to help you with your people, strategy, execution, and cash decisions. Check it out here.
I would also encourage you to look through Squidoo to find experts on blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, and on Squidoo itself. The key is to put yourself out there as an expert in your industry and use a “pull” strategy instead of a “push” strategy to market your business and yourself.
Meet ‘the Growth Guy’
Iedereen die Verne Harnish met eigen ogen aan het werk wil zien, krijgt nu de kans. Op donderdag 15 juni zal Verne Harnish u zijn groeistrategie uit de doeken doen. U meldt zich hier aan.
