‘Practical Techie:’ LinkedIn provides for content posting
Author Rafael Matos is professor of multimedia at a private university and director of the Caribbean Multimedia Center, a nonprofit media lab focusing on closing the digital divide. Questions should be sent to [email protected].
Many social media platforms are fast becoming ever more useful for professional business people.
LinkedIn, for one, has just recently opened up its platform to allow users to post their own content or to link to outside content producers. This means that this social platform for business people, which is barely 10 years old and makes a $1.5 billion a year in ad sales, has now morphed also into a publishing platform.
Which is to say, an opportunity for brand-driven publishing. This is to say entrepreneurs can post relevant brand content for intended target audiences to create engagement and drive conversion. Which is to say, sales.
In our content driven world, all this is logical. A small business can now post content that will help its own product branding. Consequently, LinkedIn can make money with user content by attracting new ads.
Since the old mass media, “push” advertising model is passé, LinkedIn has only done what is required of the times we live in. Instead of the old model of placing ads or using bullhorns to advertise a product, the new model is to offer content that will engage cybernauts and indirectly convince them to buy something from you.
Your good info becomes an added value that moves people to action. That is, at least, what is supposed to happen.
Retaining clients
So LinkedIn has helped you acquire new clients, so the next move is to keep them in the fold. The thinking on this by the experts is that it is easier to retain a customer than it is to acquire a new one. Less expensive, too.
First of all, make it evermore easier for your loyal customers to interact with your content. Make all engaging with you less and less complicated on each occasion. The best way to do this is to keep databases of all your clients and almost automate for them the online commerce procedure.
Also, always measure your websites performance. Is the content effectively capturing your visitor’s attention? Which content is up to speed and which information must be updated, or declared outdated and removed.
This requires metrics, some analytics, your own soul searching to determine which content is more engrossing. Be ever vigilant of client feedback and commentary, in or outside your website. Then, watch out for the ever-changing demographics.
With so many boricuas leaving the island, be wary of where your old clients are settling and keep in touch. Inquire, do small surveys, look out for mentions of movers and doers within your clients email or social media exchanges.
It’s also prudent to constantly gauge you product, or your merchandise or services. Ascertain its relevancy to changing times and economic conditions. The Web offers so much information on what is happening all around us, even to a hyperlocal level, that there is no excuse for an enterpriser to be out of touch with its actual market realities.
Be keen to what’s driving customer behavior. Why they stay with you. Why they want to leave.
Prod, poke, dig as much as you can your customer’s minds without being a nuisance. This takes a bit of strategy and diplomacy with no set formula on how to do it. Each business has its own idiosyncrasies, so it’s up to each business owner to set up a method.
Some tactics include short surveys via Web, focus groups in real time or exit interviews on site.
But not only engage your customers, also you sales people. Infuse them with the pride, enthusiasm and self-respect you feel for tour brand. If you achieve this, these people will pass on that fervor almost unconsciously, to your customers.
Finally, always improve, alternate, move, remove or innovate.
The biz world is perpetual dynamics and I’ve heard many enterprisers say that that’s what makes it so fascinating for them.
