Here’s why:

1. Who has the time? Is there a person, or people, in your company who has a few hours to put into a blog per week? Can your company afford to pay for a professional blogger blog if no one has those few hours free? If you answered no to both of these, you should think about holding off on a blog for now.
2. What are you going to say? Do you have enough content to post about? If so, do you have time to proactively schedule out your posts? Once again, if you answered no, you just might not be ready!
3. What’s your goal? Do you want to generate sales from your blog? How about marketing your brand? Well, if you have it in your head to generate sales, maybe you should Google blogs. I’m not saying that it’s impossible but according to research, less than half of companies generate sales from their blog. However, it is a great marketing and SEO tool and it’s terrific content to add to your social media posts. Blogs are an effective tool when it comes to making your brand known.
4. What’s your style? What are your topics? How big of a vocabulary will you use? Will you have comical blogs? You should be pretty consistent in your style because when you’re consistent in your style, readers are more likely to come back and read more.
5. Do you have a trusted blogger? If you can’t afford to hire someone who is a great blogger, you have to let one of your existing employees blog.  How good are they at blogging? Remember, when someone posts a blog on your site, it’s similar to someone wearing a t-shirt with your logo on it, it represents your company! Do you have a trusted blogger?
6. Can you afford design? How clean does your blog look? A person will spend a lot more time on a good-looking site. If you’re not able to afford a good-looking site yet, it may be a good idea to hold off on the blogs.

If you aren’t confident your answers to these questions, then you may want to hold off  until you’re a bit further down the road.  While blogs are great for making your brand known, you want it to reflect a brand people will love. Not a brand that doesn’t have clean, clear, consistent style or goal.  Be patient with the blog and when the time is right, capitalize on it.

Unarguably the Internet has this effect on all of us. We are instantly able to become a source for information support and resource in times of great despair. The power of this tornado has not only shaken Oklahoma but its impact reaches across the nation. Events like this cause us to pause, focus on others and connect on whole new levels.

Get the latest developments and videos here.

What are some ideas you can add?

When your cheese gets moved, as Spencer Johnson describes in his classic book, we have couple of ways we can respond to the market changes that happen.

We can let our “lizard brain” take over, as Seth Godin would describe, and panic in fear of utter failure.  .  .  . or we can evolve beyond that brain.  Realizing we live in a country where the  chances are very unlikely that we will be left to starve.  The second choice is to respond to your cheese moving as the best thing to happen to your business and market.

The next step is designing your way out,  creating your way out,  evolving your way out,  reinventing your way out, liberating your way out or just plain starting your way out over.

Panic locks your life into a standstill and will stop your creative, thinking part of the brain to not allow you to redesign your business or your life.

Focus your energy on slowing your breath to convert that panicing energy into creativity and action.

Take back control of the “lizard brain”.

I’ve had my own personal experience with the never ending to-do list. This is until I ran into some good advice turned great advice.

I’ll share this insight with you, but you there’s a catch to it. If you read this, you HAVE to apply it! Trust me, it works!

1. How much is it going to make you?

Start with your to-do list. When you write out everything on your list, write out its dollar value next to it. Monetize it! If it’s not going to make you any direct money, and it’s a client, how much is that client making you every month? If it has no dollar value attached to it (ex: a new company logo) put a zero next to it.

2. What’s the point of writing the dollar value next to it?

To put it in order silly rabbit! If it’s going to add $10,000 to your company, it’s going to be more urgent than that new logo. Number and order your list in a descending order. This will help you prioritize.

3. What to do next?

 Split your list in half. Fold it, draw a line, cut it, whatever satisfies you, do it. Make sure you split your list 50/50.

4. What to do on with that 50/50 list?

That’s an easy one to answer. Do it! On the top half, don’t rush through it, take your time and go down this list one by one in descending order. Try not to skip numbers and go back to them, unless you have to wait on someone or something to finish the task. Stick to the list in your descending order.

On the bottom half, look to see which tasks will make you money. Continue going through this list carefully. Then pause when you get to the zeros, how important are they? Do you have another list evolving? If so, is it possible to pass these tasks onto someone else? Don’t bury yourself with a huge to-do list, especially if it’s filled with a bunch of non-urgent tasks.

The key to focus is to ignore trivial tasks while doubling the time spent on the things that make a big difference.

Focus isn’t deciding what to do, it is deciding what not to do. – Steve Jobs

Watch the quick video to learn how we approach marketing through something we call, Teach Marketing.

At Stringcan, we’ve designed and use our own platform, Sandbox. We believe that marketing and sales should work together as team, which can be done through marketing automation.

Here are the 3 areas of the marketing automation process we focus on:

1. Marketing Intelligence: Our tool tracks social media, email campaigns and webpages to track behavior in order to find who is interested in what. Ultimately, to get insight into what your clients and prospects are interested in to gain a measure of intent. By gaining this insight the sales and marketing teams will be able to accurately target responses and develop strategies based on relevance.
2. Marketing Automation: This exact function has a focus on moving leads from the top of the marketing funnel to the bottom of the funnel, where the sale is made. Prospects activity is scored and then presented with a drip campaign messaging via email and social channels. The marketing automation process involves several areas of marketing. Yet it is distinguished through its use of email marketing coupled with a structured sales process. It’s truly the embodiment of sales and marketing working together as a perfect marriage.
3. Workflow Automation: In other words, CRM, customer relationship management. The entire process of budgeting, planning, events, collaboration, management and so forth is handled directly in our marketing automation platform, Sandbox. Using this system increases the marketers’ ability to deliver relevant content to relevant individuals at relevant times.

Using Marketing Automation effectively will directly result in greater sales. It empowers sales and marketing to work together to progressively profile leads and deliver relevant content that aligns to a buyer’s buy cycle. This approach will not only accelerate sales and provide much value it also gives you measurable ROI. We can definitely help you learn how to use marketing automation strategically to become more efficient, effective and grow your business.

So how can we  make our content viral, and better yet, how do we create viral content?

Wouldn’t you love to be able to create content that’s forwarded over and over again? (Ted Prodromoum, Ultimate Guide to Twitter for Business)

ReTweets = FREE Marketing

A ReTweet, or RT is an action by definition, to repost another user’s message on the social networking website Twitter. For instance, let’s say all your Twitter followers each have 1,000 followers and 500 of those followers are on Twitter at the same time. Simultaneously, you’ve created tweet gold, a 140 character tweet that’s both humorous yet drives business. Five of those 500 followers like the tweet enough to ReTweet(RT) it. Those 5 followers have now shared your tweet with their 1,000 followers. Meaning, 5,000 tweeters have had eyes on your tweet.

By targeting the right followers, the correct people will RT you. Odds there is someone on Twitter who will most likely be able to use your product/service.

Take another example. You could have someone with millions of followers RT you and then have tens of thousands of eyes on your tweet. Simply through one RT. That’s the power of Twitter!  Always think big.

Try adding a ‘Please RT’ at the end of your tweet.  Doing this simple thing will most likely get some RTs. (So long as the content is helpful / relevant). Use the power of RT for FREE online marketing! Link funny videos, jokes, etc. to encourage more people to RT you.

Always Tweet at your Peak (time)
When are your target market, business partners, dream partners online the most? Answer it. Then tweet at that time. Because that’s when you should tweet the most. If you’re a business man/woman, your tweet peak is probably during normal working business hours, but if you’re a club promoter then it’s probably later in the evening. See my point?

You can also use apps and programs like SocialBro to determine the best time to tweet. SocialBro has an option named “Best Time to Tweet,” which keeps track of when your followers are tweeting the most, when they are online the most.

The whole idea, at least for me, to create a Twitter account for my business, is to generate FREE online marketing. Use Twitter to its advantage. Learn the type of tweets your followers RT and generate more of them. Find out when they are online and post your tweets accordingly.

Try these 2 tactics and see how Twitter can lift your business off the ground. What Twitter tactics do you use?