We’re ready to kick it into the next gear

However, like all good things that take time, we’re finally ready to launch into business mode taking what we’ve learnt from the toddler years and creating a platform from which growth is the only way forward. Not to say, we plan to sell out, change direction or put on suits and change who we are as a team but we’re committed to growing what we’ve started and looking to raise a first small round of early stage angel funding. It’s time to take things to the next level and the search is on for the “right investors” to get on board on our new journey there.

It’s not about finding an investor for us. It’s about finding the RIGHT investing partners

Have you ever watched a reality show when a rock band auditions hundreds of potential new drummers or lead singers to find that certain “vibe” or “missing piece of the puzzle” ? It’s more than just finding someone who can play or sing. It’s about the chemistry, a shared vision, a sense of mutual understanding and finding the RIGHT fit to achieve what we set out to do together. Similarly, it’s not just about who has a surplus of funds to invest for us. This is a search for the RIGHT angel investor…reality show style!  So what did we do? We’ve thrown our funding request open to the crowd…

Any Angel Investors in the crowd that believe content & interaction fuels the Social Web?

There’s a perfect match for everyone out there. As die hard romantics….we believe that’s this applies to startups and investors too. Magic happens when the right startups find the right investors and things click into place. So how did we decide to go speed dating and find our perfect match? Crowdfunding! As our association with the GrowVC crowdfunding platform stands and the network it’s grown, we thought it to be fitting and setup the BuzzFactory startup profile on GrowVC and opened our funding requirement proposal to there crowd!

We Invite you to check out our Startup Page, support our crowdfunding campaign and help us find the missing piece

https://www.growvc.com/startups/36060

This is where we are on GrowVC.com

You can sign up for a free login, comment, vote for us and help us gather momentum

http://www.facebook.com/pages/BuzzFactorynet-The-Social-Media-Content-Marketing-Guys/302089203410

This is where you can find us on Facebook, follow our crowdfunding campaign and journey as a startup

The search begins….

My inbox today had a rather interesting read. I received an email from the other side of the world from someone who was looking for permission to use a photo I had shared on Flickr but couldn’t connect there since I’ve been inactive there for a while. She wrote:

I sent you a Flickr e-mail but when I noticed that you hadn’t uploaded in 2 years I figured that maybe you were no longer checking mail there. So I took the plunge to google you, you certainly are not hard to find and that is a credit to your business!

I’m no Justin Bieber by a long shot but it’s heartening to know that what we do with social media and business blogging makes it easier for others to find us and connect with us. This email could well have been a potential customer who heard about what we do through “content” that they came in contact with and then did a search to see if they could connect with us. As a business that wants to be present on the social web the question you should be asking is:

How easy or hard would it be for someone to find you and connect with you if they decided they want to connect with you and did a Google search?

a) Impossible

b) Not to0 hard with some searching

c) Easy, we come up all over in related searches

This is where the reference to the social media phenomenon Justin Bieber comes in. Now don’t get wrong. For the record I would like to say I don’t get the “Bieber fever” …in fact I’m not a fan of Justin Bieber. I have been lucky enough not to have listened to any of his songs or watch any of his performances all the way through and intend to keep it that way. To go a step further his hair bothers me as much as Donald Trump’s does and if I had a razor and had my way I would probably get a restraining order from both their respective lawyers.

However, Justin is a social media wonder. If somehow you don’t know who he is, look up the name on Google and there is no other Justin or Bieber online that dominates the web results like this web phenomenon turned super star. Millions of youtube plays for his videos and a twitter following of over 8 million! Finding Justin Bieber on the web is not a challenge. He is EVERYWHERE!

This is one of the main perks of having an active social media, business blogging and content marketing strategy in constant motion. If you’re publishing and promoting content consistently and daily, you’re growing your web footprint. The more you grow this web footprint, the easier it becomes for those who need to connect with you …find you! Now this may not be on the Justin Bieber scale of things but every action that contributes to reaching out and indexing more engaging content online, makes the process of finding you, your business and website more visible on search engines.

So unless you’re looking to stay anonymous, get the wheels of your business blogging efforts turning and ….get found!

In an early stage business the situation is very different. There isn’t a steady base of customers you can already rely on and the challenge isn’t really growing it, the challenge is to create that customer base. Social media marketing or online marketing is really about engaging people through conversation, content and building a brand through which audiences will start recognizing you through and eventually, approaching you. It’s inbound and pull based but it’s not instant and needs time to develop. Time is something in short supply in the early stages and closing customers is a priority. This should mean…. focusing completely on sales will help you go after targeted set of prospects and close customers slow and steady to build the revenue stream. However, there is a conflict in this strategy.

Given a hypothetical situation where you employee a 3 person sales team using email and telephone campaigns to pursue and close new customers, the progress over a few months is likely to appear like the blue line above. There will be a more or less steady line with some good months, some bad ones but the only way to increase sales in future is to increase the size of the sales team and invest more into sales. Great way to start business development but no long term benefits for growth.

It’s like hunting for your food. The more you need, the more hunters you need and it’s not a sustainable strategy.

Given the same situation where you employ a team of 3 for social media marketing and outreach, you are likely to see something similar to the red line. You may not see much progress over the first few months but as the ecosystem of content and buzz around your business grows, you’ll find an increasing flow of prospects towards your site which with time can be closed as customers. The process starts slow but consistently grows with the same amount of work put in every month. This means, though in the short run it may seem slow, in the long run you can grow your customer base without increasing your investment in the process. Not a great start but great future benefits perfect for high growth.

It’s like farming for your food. You cultivate a customer base by sowing content. It’s highly sustainable in the long run. As the content and buzz around your business increases each month, so does your business development.

Ideally you need both. Some amount of direct sales to kick start the customer base since you can’t completely rely on social media marketing to reap immediate results. At the same time, you need to start your social media and content marketing campaigns as early as possible so that in the later stages you don’t find yourself in a situation where your business development growth has just flat-lined because you were not thinking long term.

Our advice is start cultivating your social content farm as early as you possibly can. It’s sustainable, will grow and provide you more in time through a steady process than the hunting strategy which is effective but will make you work just as hard for every customer you intend to close and eventually, won’t work towards scaling your business. Hope that helps!

Sure….the quiet kid at the back of the class who wait’s his or her turn to speak may really end up being a brilliant student and perhaps a great friend if you get the chance to know who they are but you always know the ones who are always talking since…they are always talking.

When marketing a brand or business online you’re seeking attention. You want to be that noisy kid in class who everyone knows because you can’t be ignored. The social web is a lot like this classroom and publishing content through the blog, through the social networking sites, on twitter and other communication channels is the noise that’s going to get you noticed and have everyones attention. If you need others around to know you and know you’re around then you have you need to be talkative through online media. The difference being you’ll be required to deliver valuable content (not just heckle the teachers) in order to create more than just a ruckus in class. The more actively and frequently your media arm can publish valuable content, the more you’ll be “known” among social circles.

You know how you were always told not to be the noisy one in class? As an online marketer, it’s time to forget this and be that kid! After all…. everyone knows the noisy kid in class!

PR, especially in the online context has changed considerably. What was associated with special PR firms who create a very long term plan for cash rich businesses or individuals who had large budgets to spend over time with these firms is now….well… a lot like what we do everyday. The difference is  it need not be expensive or only for those who can afford it nor does it have to be a slow long carefully crafted image building exercise executed slowly through the press or traditional channels. It’s now a more nimble process of creating conversations over the web through easily accessible channels like blogs, social networking, free PR distribution sites, Twitter, online communities and more. You can be a global banking corporation, a rock band, a t-shirt printing business or an individual working on a web application and you can still access the same tools and practices to reach out to online audiences and create your own PR engine.

The changing face of PR as we witness it today is characterized by:

Web conversations: speaking out loud about what you’re doing, what you represent and sharing your brand or message with the millions that are connected to each other via social networks, blogs and other tools. It’s no longer about publishing “one-way” press releases or publicity pieces with a formal declaration on behalf of the business or individual once in a blue moon. It’s about being upfront and sharing your thoughts and updating audiences online through a two-way dialog.

Speed & Spontaneity: Have something on your mind? Tweet about it. Have an important deal or event which you’d like to share? Draft a quick press release and submit it to the several free press release sites out there. Need a quicker way to share it? Do a blog post and get it published and shared instantly! The long turnaround times for acting on a message that needs to go out are no longer there. What happens today can be published today and shared right away.

Low / No Costs – Accessible To All: The playing field has been leveled and the tools that really matter when it comes to building a presence or brand on the the web are those accessible to the masses. From the enterprise businesses to a one man brand blogs, Facebook, Linkedin, Slideshare….it’s all at your disposal. There are startups and small businesses that have built larger followings and created more buzz online than global enterprises and they didn’t have expensive PR firms…just a determined effort to communicate frequently with others through their content.

If there is one significant change thats noteworthy about PR today is that it’s been thrown open to the masses. You can have an active PR campaign no matter what you do and who you are…in fact ….you should!

The point is, each of these publications has used the power of great content to engage a target audience for years and as a result has been a crucial marketing message platform for the hundreds of businesses that have advertised and connected with readers through them. Thousands of magazines have provided niche audiences with the content they seek and delivered an advertisement platform for the businesses who target these niches…but the magazine game just like newspapers and other publications is changing rapidly. It’s gone online and with iPads and Kindles flying off the shelves in consumer stores, the amount of time an average netizen spends reading online is only bound to climb quicker. Which means,  you better be there when they are searching.

Creating a successful online magazine on the web is a fantastic way to reach out to a very targeted audience and with publication platforms such as wordpress available, it puts everyone on a level playing field as far as being able to start one goes. What sets apart a successful online publication from the rest is the quality of articles and ability to update frequently because unlike a weekly, fortnightly or monthly, online magazines need to keep churning out great content daily. If you can do that and provide valuable content around a subject area, you can build a successful publication and have access to the audience drawn to it. Here are a few tips if you’re considering starting an online magazine to reach out to your target audience:

1. Put yourself in the audiences shoes and think about the kind of articles, layout, categories and sections you would love to see on the publication and structure the content around this
2. Put the reader first, branding second. Don’t base your articles purely on the brand or products that you wish to promote through the site, cover a wider area around the audiences interest and think of ‘what would interest them?’ before ‘what can I say about my products’. For example if you sell time-share vacations in Italy, then it’s better to base the publication on wider Italy Travel magazine idea than to restrict it to only time-share posts.
3. Balance the content by creating a mix of well researched informative articles around the subject along with lighter pieces which people tend to share on the social web. It could do wonders to your traffic.
4. Get readers to contribute to articles and share experiences. The advantage of having a magazine online is you can make it as interactive as you want so audience participation in interviews, discussions, comments and content is great.
5. Offer RSS feed subscription, options for the content to be shared and email updates. If your content is great, it will distribute itself.

All considered, the online magazine or web publication is one of the best content marketing strategies around today. It’s targeted, non-intrusive, effective for SEO and becomes a long term online marketing asset for any business that can manage it consistently. For all you know, you could own the next Forbes, People, Vogue, Newsweek or Good Housekeeping on the web!

1. No Time: The contributors to the blog prioritized writing new content during the initial stages but as other tasks and duties catch up with them they find they can’t commit the time it takes to research, come up with ideas for posts, draft, check and publish them on a regular and consistent basis.
2. Out of Ideas: A plan was defined for the kind of topics which will be covered on the blog and after a while one finds themselves at a road block where coming up with fresh articles or posts within the defined topic scope was so difficult the writing stopped happening.
3. No Takers: The regular publishing was happening but it seemed like it was all pointless since there seemed to be no readers, no comments, no feedback. As a result motivation to continue died out and the blog froze in time.

At the end of the day, a blog where activity from your end has died out is not going to work. It needs consistent and work before the blog starts working for you. It needs fresh content, new ideas, regular updates, replies, changes in direction, promotion, distribution and more.  Once you’ve determined what’s slowing your blog down here are some quick tips on how to overcome those causes and revive it:

• If there’s no time, you have to find the time or the bandwidth to commit and make it work. Re-allocate it to someone within the company who can dedicate the time to post. Developing a successful blog takes time and patience. It’s never instant traffic magic and one needs to dedicate time over several months to keep at it and getting it to work. Alternatively, (and pardon my being so outright salesy) hire us to manage the blog for you!

• If you find yourself out of ideas, look around at other online publications within your area and look for inspiration (don’t ever copy, it just works against your objectives). Also try re-focusing your topics and content to cover a wider scope and still be engaging for your target audience. For example, a business that sells “designer light switches” for homes and offices doing a blog on “designer light switches” is bound to run out of topics soon and runs the risk of getting boring.  Re-focusing the blog to cover articles on “interior decor ideas for homes and offices” widens the scope, keeps the content interesting and reaches out to the same target audience which would be interested in the switches.

• If there are no takers and it appears no one has read your posts, you have to make it happen. Blogs don’t gather subscribers and regular readers overnight. It can take a long while. Till then, you need to promote every post, bookmark them on social sites, share them on social networks, tweet about them, link them and push it out to the first set of readers while hoping they in turn will share them with others. Push your content out to others and over time, they will come to your blog.

If your blog has been stagnated for some time now, have a closer look into what may have caused it, re-focus your blog outreach plan and revive it. If you stick to it, it will start working for you.

Reading has rapidly moved to the web. I personally do a lot of reading online every single day across a variety of personal interests from aquascaping, music theory, travel to social media, marketing and more. Even if i’m experimenting with dishes in the kitchen I have a recipe open on my netbook nearby. It’s only natural that we’re all going to take to e-readers and tablets sooner or later. From the current buzz, my guess would be sooner. So the question to start asking is not “should I go in for the iPad or Kindle? The question that urgently needs to be answered is “is my business publishing online and is it ready for the tablet boom?”

Online magazines, blogs and online publications are bound to be consumed that much more. If currently most reading is done while at your pc or at work, e-readers are simply going to ensure reading happens on the bus, on the subway, at airport waiting lounges and in bed. In marketing terms, it just opens a wider window of opportunity to have wider audiences discover your business. Online publications with compelling content will be key to engaging consumers and the earlier you can establish a leading publication within your industry space, the better prepared you can be for the inevitable boom. So how ready is your business on the online publication front?

Along with blog related activity and articles we often work with our customers to create very short Slideshare presentations which carry a single or very focused message about their products or offerings. We’ve found that these are simply great ways to reach out to customers and drive even a single valuable aspect or benefit of the offering across just a handful of slides and conveying a short crisp message. Traditionally, one would expect a slide presentation to be a comprehensive demo with detailed text and images which walk through a product but we tend to prefer using a combination fewer words and expressive images to just drive enough interest in a minutes time to  generate some curiosity about the product or business and explore some more.

For example… here is one on the importance of content in the online marketing space which we created to embed on the front page of our website to explain to users what the essence of what we do is all about.

Here are some reasons why we think Slideshare presentations are a great addition to your online content and help you reach out to more customers:

• They are on-demand viewing: users can access them and go through them when they have the time and need not set aside time from their schedule to go through them. More and more people actually take the time to go through presentations (as long as they are fresh and interesting) which means they are likely to get noticed.
• They are very sharable: This is perhaps the best reason to try out Slideshare presentations. Whether internally among the Slideshare community which alone has a large user base or on sites like Linkedin and other social networks, they can easily be shared on large communities and get noticed by people within your vertical or industry. Also since they are easy to embed in blogs as I’ve done above, there is a good chance people will help syndicate your slide show on their own blogs and sites.
• They show up well in search results: which is exactly what you want from any content you publish and Slideshare presentations don’t disappoint here. If they are well titled and tagged, they make for great search able and useful content for users who are searching for more information around your space.
• They are engaging & educational: which simply means they are perfect for demonstrating something in an interactive way and you can easily incorporate links to live examples, other web pages with more detail and use them to do what you would during a live presentation in the given time frame.

So if you are experimenting with different types of content to reach out to users try adding Slideshare presentations to your mix. You may just grow to like this versatile medium of content marketing just as much as we do.

If you have links of Slideshare presentations that you’ve done share them with us and post a link to them in the comments section. We would love see them.

On it’s own freshly published original content can drive some amount of search traffic on a more established site but for most sites it makes sense to give every newly published piece of content a jump start by sharing it with as many relevant users as possible. For example, if  you’ve just finished publishing a new blog post for your business website it may generate some views from regular readers and subscribers to your website and blog but to reach out to a wider audience and drive the most out of your content you need to go a step further. Submitting and sharing it with your network on social sites like Digg, Mixx, Stumbleupon, Reditt and others can draw a wider readership and allows the online community to further promote the ones they enjoyed reading. Posting them to social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin and others also could create some amount of traction for your post. Besides the more generic social sites, almost every industry and vertical has it’s own social networks, communities and sites where quality content can be shared with peers and audiences from within the industry giving your content the right kind of exposure and drawing more visitors towards your website.

While many are aware that they can leverage all these social sites to promote their content time and shedules often get in the way causing one to overlook this and a lot of well written, well created fresh content doesn’t get promoted and read to it’s full potential in the process. What is needed is a disciplined process of publishing + online promotion activity to push your content to users as soon as it’s published and build as much momentum from each post, article or piece of content. Once you have that in place you should see a marked improvement in how well distributed your content is and how much more effectively you can market your website. Simple!