We all remember the Brothers Grimm fairy tale of the little tailor whose mistaken feat of killing seven flies with one blow eventually earned him the hand of the princess and king of the land. A rather efficient use of one’s circumstances, wouldn’t you say.
When it comes to marketing and branding your business, you can choose the one-swing-at-a-time method or take the little tailor’s efficient approach and hit several at one time.
In previous articles, I talked about the need to a diverse approach to your online advertising and marketing plan. With the wide assortment of social media sites, directories, social book marking sites and other sites, you can spend hours spreading your message or you can let technology do the work for you.
We can’t pick up any publication about marketing without seeing the importance of blogs in your marketing plan. I don’t want to burst your bubble, but the power of a blog is not just in the eloquent word skills you exhibit. The real power is the viral nature of your blog, getting it in front of as many eyes as possible. If you only post your blog to your website, you’re limited only to the amount of traffic you site gets. So how do you increase the readership of your blog?
That’s where a diverse approach comes into play. Start by posting your blog to your social media sites (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter or LinkedIn). But equally as important are the social bookmark sites. There are hundreds of these sites that are made up of user contributed articles. Many are divided into communities of like interests, while others are general purpose site, open to any type of post. Sites such as Delicious, Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon and Mixx are examples of the later. All that is required is to create a free account and within 5 minutes you’re ready to share your blog with thousands of others.
Now for the double secret stuff— How would you like to have one site handle it all for you? If you are using a WordPress blog (other than a free version), you can add a plug-in called Share To Any. Once you publish a blog post, there will be a button at the bottom that will allow you (or anyone that reads the blog) to share it to dozens of sites, including all the major social media and social bookmark sites by simply clicking the site you want to connect to.
Ping.fm is another site that will publish your blog to all the social media at one time. The downside of Ping is that it does not reach the social bookmark sites. Regardless, the time saving factor is well worth it.
So be smart, be efficient. Like the little tailor, take care of as many areas as you can with one blow.
Gary Wagnon and 800biz.com specialize in website design, search engine optimization, search engine marketing and social media marketing.