If someone asked you which aspect of the Internet revolution has reached out and touched you the most, you will probably point to the Internet video paradigm. Video on the Net is no longer just another way to communicate using digital multimedia, it has slowly but surely evolved as probably the most effective way to generate more website traffic on your Internet property and using video as part of your content strategy adds variety to the media through which you share content with others.

 The “Play” button has made it possible for thousands of web entrepreneurs and decision-makers like you to trigger website traffic growth on their websites. If you  wish to generate more website traffic through video-based e-marketing, here are a few tips on how you can effectively increase website traffic through a well orchestrated video deployment strategy:

The Home Page Advantage and Website Traffic
Invest if you can on a well-produced short video of approximately 3-4 minutes to be uploaded on your web hosting server through a link on your home page. The video should anticipate some of the questions site visitors may have about your product or service. It should attempt to answer these questions. Call it video FAQs if you wish. Visitors who arrive on your website are, in most cases, sure to click the “Play” button at least out of curiosity if nothing else.

If your Analytics indicates that instead of generating more website traffic, the video happens to be demonstrating alarming bounce rates, it is time to replace your existing video with new digital video content. There is absolutely no reason to feel discouraged if this scenario emerges because it can be quickly corrected with virtually no damage whatsoever to your website’s reputation. Once you have the right video and web content mix in place, the website traffic, which arrives on your home page, will find good reasons to explore your website and find interesting possibilities all of which are designed to increase website traffic.

The Wide World of Internet Video Sharing
You Tube is only one of hundreds of video sharing websites to which you have free access today. If embedding a video on your home page simply preserves the traffic stream and leads to more sales and conversions, uploading it on video sharing websites will surely generate more website traffic for your site.

Create a well-designed and high-impact video landing page complete with title, keywords and description on every video sharing website. The more popular video sharing websites happen to be You Tube, MetaCafe, Mega Video and DailyMotion. Use Google to locate more video sharing websites by using search phrases such as “video sharing website directory” or “video sharing website list.” You can also use paid video uploading services to ensure more website traffic like Traffic Geyser or TubeMogul.

Assure a Professionally Produced Video for your Website.

 If you do not have a proven background in video production, it is best to hire a professionally qualified video production firm that specializes in online videos to produce your clip. The Web is a professional arena today with unprecedented competition levels so it is a good idea to hire the best company you can afford. They will not only test your video on multiple web browsers but will also embed links to your website within the video itself ideally suited to drive more website traffic to your site that happens to be both qualified and targeted in every manner and respect.

  Very similar to what we said about Facebook, Twitter  can also be an important tool for your outbound rivers of information strategy.  Twitter is a valuable tool to distribute content as everyone of the more than 20 million users has followers that can broadcast a message by Retweeting it. Mobile phones have increased the use of Twitter because it is very easy to read and Tweet on a mobile phone.

Business people use Twitter as its main river of information as it summarizes info from companies, brands, products and experts they choose to follow so if you feed your content through a Twitter account that your readers can follow, you will have a captive audience that can read your content frequently.

Twitter plays an active role for people learning about products and services and keeping up with new releases and it is so easy to recommend by retweeting that its viral effect is outstanding.

Some ideas to integrate Twitter to your rivers of information strategy are:

• Your company must have account in Twitter.
• Your blog, should feed content to your Twitter timeline every time you publish  and provide a link to the main blog.  
• Your Twitter account can publish and notify of upcoming webinars and articles.
• Through Twitter you can ask questions and receive comments
• You can measure acceptance by the number of followers you have.
• By placing a Twitter button in your blog you can have new readers recommend your article to their followers by retweeting your content
• You can also integrate Twitter into your blog so readers can have a glimpse of your Twitter timeline without leaving the blog.
• And many, many other ideas…

Keeping up with the possibilities that Twitter can add to your rivers of information strategy is not easy, so be sure to get help from professionals.

If you would like to design and implement a write and publish strategy and launch a “rivers of information” initiative, contact Prospect Factory

Carlos Guzman D | WSI Certified  Internet Marketing Consultant.

Facebook  has many users, actually providing a number of users is always risky because it grows so fast that no figure is ever accurate. 

Facebook has become the preferred way of sharing content, second only to email and engagement in Facebook has gone beyond friend only, Facebook is engaging businesses of all kinds. Their main potential is that it  is becoming and integrated platform where many things can be done without leaving the environment. And while many marketers now consider it  from “beneficial” to “important” to “critical” on their marketing strategy, the reality is that it value as a tool to acquire customers has increased  (more for B2C than B2B).

As always, integrating Facebook into the strategy, must be part of your digital media plan where each part plays a specific role. Here are some ideas on how to integrate Facebook into our rivers of information strategy and the role it can play:

• As a start, your company must have a company page in Facebook because there is where the rivers of information will find additional readers, if you only have a personal Facebook account, your information will only get to those “friends” you have accepted, but will not reach new potential customers.
• Your blog, being the distribution center for content, should feed content to your Facebook page and the Facebook page should publish an excerpt of your content every time you publish  and provide a link to the main blog. You can even insert the full blog content to your Facebook page by implementing a tab in your Facebook page where the full blog can be displayed.
• The Facebook page can publish and notify of upcoming webinars and articles.
• Through Facebook you can survey your readers to see if they like your content
• Through Facebook you can measure acceptance through the “like” button
• Through Facebook you can capture information from leads that like to use the sign in feature in Facebook called  “Facebook Connect”  to add the Facebook login/profile experience to your blog.
• By placing a Facebook button in your blog you can have new readers recommend your article to their own community.
• You can also integrate Facebook into your blog so readers can have a glimpse of your Facebook company page without leaving the blog.
• You can provide recordings from webinars and presentations through the video display features in Facebook.
• And many, many other ideas…

Almost every day  new applications that add functionality to Facebook are released and according to Facebook, 20 million applications are installed per day.

Keeping up with the possibilities that Facebook can add to your rivers of information strategy is not easy, so be sure to get help from professionals.

If you would like to design and implement a write and publish strategy and launch a “rivers of information” initiative, contact Prospect Factory

Carlos Guzman D | WSI Certified  Internet Marketing Consultant.

An important question we always have is how often should we publish, once the river of information is set and it can star distributing content to your readers, you have to make sure it does not flood and it does not get dry…  so how often should content be published?

It really depends, but some data published by HubSpot should help you decide:

• Most people read blogs more than once a day
• Blog articles do influence purchases and 40% of blog readers refine their choices and decide on a product or service influenced by a blog.
• Companies with more than 51 blog articles experience and important lift in their median monthly leads.
• Blogging frequency has a direct and significant impact on lead generation. Those companies that blog multiple times a day have 89% more leads than those who don’t;  companies that blog weekly show a 72% increase.
• Morning  is the most popular time to read blogs, peaking around 10:00 am.

Remember that although we have been talking extensively about blogging, blogs are not the only way to feed your river of information, on a most frequent basis you can send a quick micro blog message through Tweeter if you find something interesting to share with your readers (please… add value with your Tweets) and on a more spaced time, you can prepare a webinar an invite your audience. A good idea might be:

• Blog from daily to weekly
• Micro blogging from hourly to daily
• Webinar from weekly to monthly

 If you would like to design and implement a write and publish strategy and launch a “rivers of information” initiative, contact Prospect Factory

Carlos Guzman D | WSI Certified  Internet Marketing Consultant.

Consultancy companies, especially small ones, have a common problem:  when they are busy developing  and implementing a project, they do not have time to do promotion and sales activities, usually their cycle looks like this:

So implementing an outbound river of information helps them be present on the web while they are busy working for a customer. The process has 5 steps:

1. Place your content on the web, publish and distribute valuable content. Be sure such content is published in a search engine friendly platform and it is search engine optimized so it gets indexed and highly ranked by Google.
2. Be sure this content is interesting enough so it engages your reader
3. Be sure your content has a call-to-action that converts readers into leads
4. When you get a contact, initiate a sales cycle fast
5. Measure the process and correct.

There are many tools to support this strategy, read more about how consultancy firms can get more new clients…

If you would like to design and implement a write and publish strategy and launch a “rivers of information” initiative, contact Prospect Factory

Carlos Guzman D | WSI Certified  Internet Marketing Consultant.

The whole purpose of writing and publishing strategy is to engage readers that will convert into leads.  The whole purpose is to generate a pipeline of leads that generates money. So once you add value, you should create a call to action in your post, obviously the call to action should be closely related to the topic in the post. The call to action might be a link to a contact forma, a  special offer,  a complimentary pdf to download with more information, a brochure, a video, a free trial or a complimentary consultation… be creative and decide what you can provide that moves the reader to take action, seems attractive for them and at the same time starts a selling cycle for you.

Nevertheless, keep in mind the process is not fully automatic, most successful content marketers have real sales people contacting leads, following up, requesting a call, offering a trial or an initial consultation. So in order for your strategy to fully work and produce sales, you need sales people.

As we stated in our last post, you can offer attractive things on your call to action like  

• eBooks,
• whitepapers,
• videos,
• case stories,
• research reports,
• webinars,
• slideshows,
• consultations.

Some of the ideas to convert readers into leads are:

1. Plan a good offer.- once they got engaged with your topic, your offer should give them a reason to fill out a contact form.
2. Create calls to action as listed above
3. Decide if you should lead them to your website or to a specific landing page
4. Be sure you have analytics software installed in your blog, your site and you’re landing page because you will need to measure what is happening.
5. Be fast to respond.- internet time is hours and sometimes minutes.. if your reader responds to the call to action and sends a request, be sure to answer fast.

Download a whitepaper about “6 Steps to fill up your sales funnel” here.

 If you would like to design and implement a write and publish strategy and launch a “rivers of information” initiative, contact Prospect Factory

Carlos Guzman D | WSI Certified  Internet Marketing Consultant.

Most business write and publishing strategy start with a purpose: they know what they want to communicate to the market. For example, this blog you are currently reading has the purpose to share with our readers tips and information on internet marketing, so almost everything we write, covers that topic. For the last 10 post we have been much more focused and we have been writing about rivers of information and how to implement a “write and publish” strategy that leverages on content to attract potential customers. Some time ago we did a serial on email marketing because we wanted to add value with tips and information on that subject at the sametime we offered a free trial of a world class email marketing tool… so it depends on what your company wants to communicate

What are you trying to educate your industry and potential customers about? You have to be careful because readers are not seeking to get educated on your product or services, they are looking for answers to common industry issues and problems and you need to talk about that and then link those issued to the solution you provide.

 A great way to start developing content through your “write and publish” strategy is to think about common questions you get asked by leads, prospects and customers. Write a post with different answers. Remember to let your expertise and passion shine through your blog content.

Although we have been talking about blogs and blogging, using a blog isn’t the only form to publish content. You can produce other pieces like  eBooks, whitepapers, videos, case stories and  research reports than can be used as lead generation offers.

If you would like to design and implement a write and publish strategy and launch a “rivers of information” initiative, contact Prospect Factory

Maturity model for a writing and publishing content strategy.

Maturity models are a good help to benchmark the organization against the best practices. There are many maturity models proposed by experts on this topic, this is just another proposal:

• Level 0.- No use of social media, no integration with any other strategy.
• Level 1.- social properties, the company has a Twitter account, a Facebook page, maybe a YouTube channel and probably (not likely) a blog. But there is not a strategy to even publish anything periodically, you visit those channels and the last post is maybe 2 or 3 months old. The just jumped into creating the channels because an innovative employee did it on his own (and maybe even left the company without sharing the passwords). You review the channels and they seem abandoned.
• Level 2.- social messages, there is someone that publishes information regularly, maybe already from the marketing department or probably from the tech support dept but there is not a real content blueprint and no content strategy for creating (and maybe consuming) rivers of information. Feeds to social channels are basic with no apparent order but when you review the channels they do not seem abandoned.
• Level 3.- social publishing, there is a content blueprint, the blog publishes regularly and the Twitter and Facebook accounts do have a responsible person that not only posts but also answers comments. 
• Level 4.- rivers of information, the company has a content blueprint and provides valuable content to a big audience, content distributed and promoted not only on their own channels but supports itself with webinars, videos in a YouTube channel and they main publishing site enjoys incoming links from many referencing sources that send traffic. They have deliberately chosen an organizational model to support the strategy.
• Level 5.- full integration, the content strategy is so well executed that the company becomes an authority on it market, content goes beyond the normal writing and publishing reach and includes guest writers and speakers that are real influencers in the market, includes research documents and research papers. The reach of the company is on the high thousands and sometimes millions.

So, define a strategy for your company and start moving through the different stages of the maturity model and you will see that you gain credibility, position your brand and start getting more potential customers because of your value added to the market.

If you would like to design and implement a write and publish strategy and launch a “rivers of information” initiative, contact Prospect Factory

Carlos Guzman D | WSI Certified  Internet Marketing Consultant.

Experts that are studying how organizations are approaching  the challenges of managing a social media campaign have found five models that can help implement a content publishing marketing strategy that generates valuable rivers of information for your customers:

1)      Decentralized.- all contributors move on their own, allows for organic growth, it respects authenticity as all contributors have freedom to write, experimental but uncoordinated. No one department manages or coordinates efforts. According to “Altimeter Group” approximately 10% of companies use this model

2)      Centralized.- one central coordination entity, one department controls all efforts,  assures consistency,  policies  and protocols rule contributors who cannot be as authentic but at the same time assures for a unified message across the company and supports brand credibility strategies. According to “Altimeter Group” approximately 28.8% of companies use this model.

3)      Hub and Spoke.- similar to centralized, one entity sets policies and procedures and spreads to business units who then undertake their own efforts and execution plans. It is good for big organizations with divisions and business unites that address different markets and different audiences. More bureaucratic and take time. According to “Altimeter Group” approximately 41% of companies use this model. This model has proven effective as it provides coordination but allows business units to deploy on their own.

4)      Multiple Hub and Spoke.- it is a combination  of several hubs for bigger organizations. According to “Altimeter Group” approximately 18% of companies use this model.

5)      All over the place.- there is a general set of rules but employees and contributors are empowered to do their own thing. Employees have a basic set of do´s and don’ts but at the end, are free to publish as they feel. Almost no companies use this model by definition, nevertheless this is the model that arises when the company does not have a policy and the general rules come from other initiatives.

Obviously, the model you choose depends on the shape, size, coverage and goals of your organization, just be careful not to avoid deciding a model, you must make a decision and choose a model, either to write and publish content or to manage a complete social media program. You need to formalize an organizational model and implement it accordingly.

If you would like to design and implement a write and publish strategy and launch a “rivers of information” initiative, contact Prospect Factory

Carlos Guzman D | WSI Certified  Internet Marketing Consultant.

One of the most popular tactics when you want to influence your market via content is providing webinars and virtual events. According to the The MarketingSherpa 2011 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report,  this is a very effective online marketing tactic  (48% of responses in a survey answered that virtual events and webinars were either somewaht effective and 43% answered they were very effective).

If writing and publishing content requires a set of skills, webinar broadcasting requires other skills because, additional to the content and the presentation slides, this tactic requires a good presenter and an intensive outbound marketing effort to attract the audience on the date and time of the webinar.  People perceive more value through a webinar compared to content published through a blog. As in all tactics, it requires : people, process and technology.  The process also needs special attention because a webinar can be tied to an email campaign, a blog publishing and white paper release so planning needs to consider that all elements need to be ready in the right time. For example:

1. Once  the topic, content and materials are ready, an invitation needs to be sent through the social media channels, through an email marketing campaign and through the previous blog releases.
2. A good presenter needs to be appointed
3.  Technology for the webinar needs to be chosen, we can suggest at least four platforms: WebEx, GoToMeeting,  Adobe and Microsoft.

If you are planning on using webinars as part of you rivers of information strategy, it is a good idea to see how the experts are doing it: try to follow and analyze companies as WSI, Marketing Sherpa, Marketing Profs, Constant Contact, HubSpot, once you register with them, you will be receiving frequent invitations to webinars: analyze the invitation, the wording, the action items, the design; analyze the flow of the webinar and analyze the post-webinar activities where they usually thank you for attending and provide a recorded version for you to review. Many times this recorded versions are recommended by the user to other co-workers so the broadcast gets an aggregated audience through the replays.

If you would like to design and implement a write and publish strategy and launch a “rivers of information” initiative, contact Prospect Factory

Carlos Guzman D | WSI Certified  Internet Marketing Consultant.