A FREE NETWORKING EVENT to celebrate our TWO YEAR ANNIVERSARY!

Thursday, May 30, 2013 – 8:30 AM – 10:00 AM

Eastpoint Executive Center – 264 South River Road Bedford, NH 03110

Create Content  to Drive New Business!

Presented by Chuck Sink Link and Eastpoint Executive Center

Please RSVP  by leaving a comment right here on this post.

You may also RSVP by contacting Chuck:  chuck@chucksink.com  |  (603) 345-7223

Come learn something valuable and make connections.  See you May 30th!

Create content that is engaging!

The post Learn and Network at the Chuck Sink Link Anniversary Event appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

By Chuck Sink

In today’s marketing world you need to be a good Content Curator (Curator, huh?)  Curating the content is also known as getting the content so if I use the word “get” instead of “curate,” forgive me. The last real curators I knew worked exclusively for museums.

Give Me an Easy Tool!

A client of mine recently asked her SEO vendor what they use to generate fresh content for the dynamic news feed on their website. What “Curator Plugin” did they use? The answer came back starting this way: “There’s no easy answer on this one…” The vendor went on to explain how they manually get (curate) articles for their news feed. “We all do a lot of reading and we share the best of what we find…” continued the answer.  That answer is one reason I respect this particular vendor so much. They are diligent specialists and very good at what they do.

The post Curate Content that Drives New Business appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

I will need several business services and products to continue growing my business and many of them I don’t need now, or I can’t afford them yet. That’s why I want you to keep in touch so I won’t forget you.

One of the most common mantras you will hear from seasoned sales professionals is “Timing is everything.”  I agree. Trying to persuade a prospective customer that he needs your product before he needs your product will annoy him. Just as bothersome is attempting to “educate” your prospect about his “pain” when he doesn’t feel any.

A careful sense of timing – to each individual customer – is critical when planning a direct selling message or making a sales call.

You may say, “yeah, but how can you possibly live inside every potential customer’s world and know when the time is right?” In traditional business development, a good CRM (customer relationship management) program works well when combined with good salesmanship. A synonym for salesmanship is relationship. So, that’s one way to use good timing but there’s a better way:  It’s all the time! And here’s the best part:  It’s hard, especially at first. That should be a clue that it works.

Junk goes in the trash!

First, identify your target audience by vertical industry lists or by sales prospecting so you know they have a need for your service or product. Develop your database of names, addresses, phone numbers and EMAIL ADDRESSES. Furthermore, connect with as many as possible on LinkedIn and Facebook. Follow them on Twitter. Then get to work being a sought after genius to each one of your prospects. I’ve probably lost about ¾ of you by now. For the intrigued and motivated quarter, let’s keep going on this.

Why is Apple the most successful company in the world right now? Because they are genius at what they do and how they communicate it. So you need to get busy demonstrating yourgenius to all those prospects in your database.  Be a collector and generator of valuable content – expertise and ideas that make people say “Hmm… or WOW!  Yes, it’s hard but you can do it. If I can do it, you can do it too, maybe better!

Think about the emails you opt-in to and the supplier companies you follow. There are plenty ofgreat marketers who know how to put value in front of their audience on a regular, appropriately frequent basis so they are top-of-mind at all times for their products & services. So, when the time is right for their prospect to buy, guess who gets the call?

The post Not right now but yes, I’m interested. appeared first on Chuck Sink Link.

Call it a feature article, a white paper or a blog post. Maybe your written wisdom is a work of art like a tribute, reflection or poem. Whatever it is, if it’s thoughtful, articulate and valuable to an audience, it’s an asset and should be leveraged as such. Businesses need to create and disseminate information today or they will become obscure and lose relevancy in a crowded marketplace.

The good news for all businesses is there are myriad ways to share and disseminate information freely now. Effectively reaching a target audience of a few thousand used to cost tens of thousands of dollars in the glory days of old media. Today the same reach of exposure can be achieved at no dollar cost other than spending some of the time you’d be watching TV, by building your online networks instead.

Websites are the central communication hubs for businesses today and blogs are where visitors go to find out if the organization has a pulse. Blogs are best leveraged as an integral part of the organization’s website so search engine crawlers can detect the origins of the relevant, fresh, visible content for which they are sniffing. Google looks for dynamic, relevant content that is viewed, shared, back-linked and repeated so it’s best to keep your blog on your website.

Setting up 3 or 4 social media accounts and strategically syncing them for blog content sharing can get your message out instantly and to hundreds or thousands of people FREE! Then there’s email marketing. Newsletters work when the information is valuable. Every blog post can be a newsletter and vice versa. By the way, don’t make the mistake of only pushing your own promotional messages. Be alert. Pay attention to your network and what other people share. Learn from it.

Twitter is a wellspring of fresh valuable ideas and thought leadership. It’s where I often get ideas about which to write articles and blogs. Read people’s tweets and check out their linked content when it catches your eye. Leverage the work of others by sharing it. Engage valuable new business connections, clients and partners by commenting on and sharing their posts. Compliment people when they teach you something new and invite them to comment on your stuff or answer your questions. LinkedIn is exceptionally valuable for this, especially when you participate in Group discussions.

“But I don’t have enough content, I don’t know what to write about and I just don’t have the time with how busy I am…” Everyone reading this post is an expert at something, maybe a few things so saying you don’t know what to write about isn’t true. If you think you’re a bad writer, just dump your ideas out on paper and hire a good writer to edit your messages – it’s not expensive if you provide all the facts. Saying you don’t have time to write your blog and mange your social media networks usually doesn’t wash either. Do you have time for your favorite TV shows every weeknight or a few drinks “after work?” Does your alarm clock have an early morning setting?

It’s true that some professionals really don’t have the time to devote to content creation and online networking development. An architect’s time is better spent designing buildings; a lawyer’s time is most profitably spent litigating, counseling or defending clients. In some cases it makes sense to hire a professional communicator or agency to keep your blog content dynamic and your social media pages updated while you go out and slay dragons or bag trophies.

Increase the value of your business by increasing the quality and quantity of your information assets. So, in blogging it’s your call. Spend the time or spend the money. Either way, like a bank, you’ll see a nice ROA – return on assets.

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