Last week, members of the Jonas marketing team got a chance to take part in the annual Marketing Profs B2B Conference and see some of the ground breaking changes that are coming to the web 2.0 landscape. Although the construction industry may be slow to adopt new techniques, this last year has shown a flurry of contractors and businesses promoting their Companies online; whether through conventional blogs and web posts, or via Twitter and Facebook. The standard goal of ‘marketing to the masses’ has shifted to ‘marketing to a mass of niches’ and the niche we operate in is growing faster than ever.
To make sure that your niche is satisfied; you must remember the three C’s: Constantly Create Content. Having a strong web presence but no content is like showing off an empty model home; it looks nice from the outside, but once you’re inside there’s nothing to keep your attention, so you leave.
Content is a daunting word that conjures up an image of hundreds of monkeys typing away at hundreds of keyboards in a smoke-filled room, but chances are you already have a pile of content that’s just waiting to be used properly. The key is not to recycle old content, but to re-imagine it as something else entirely. Rethink the message you’re trying to convey; maybe the video you have about building safety is more relevant now than it was 8 months ago because of international events, or maybe your key-note speaker’s speech at last year’s conference would make a great sound bite for the upcoming tradeshow promo. There’s a chance you don’t understand everything going on in the social media landscape, and you’re not the only one. Work with your clients and prospects to help them understand what you’re doing so that they can learn from you and create their own content.
Reimagine, Don’t Recycle
You probably already have a ton of content that you’ve used once and then forgotten about; written testimonials, customer interviews, promotional videos. Instead of recycling them and using them in the same way you always have, why not get creative? Strip down your content to its basics and then see if you can use portions of it to create something new. Turn your video testimonials into a text banner ad, or create a slideshow from your customer reviews and tag them in it.
Rethink the Content
Think of each piece of content as a meal. Even if you serve it up to your fans the first time, it doesn’t mean that you can’t hand out the Tupperware leftovers at a later date. Just because you’ve used the content in the past doesn’t mean you need to get rid of it. You might have new followers on Twitter or new Linkedin members that haven’t seen some of that content and it could prove beneficial to them. There is no harm in reposting. Take that 15 minute video you have and break it into chunks that you can combine with text to create a new piece of content, or strip the audio from it and post it as a podcast. Is there a huge demand of General Contracting podcasts? Maybe not, but the people who are looking will appreciate the effort, and it costs you nothing but time.
Using What You’ve Learned
If you’re the most experienced person in your field, then use all of your expertise to write up a social media guideline for your company and then share it with everyone else. The problems that you’re experiencing aren’t unique to just you, other people have the same questions and they’d like to hear what your solutions are. By becoming a knowledge hub for a specific topic you’re opening the door to build trust and building trust will allow your customers to contact you without hesitation.