Lately, marketing tactics have gotten a lot more complicated.  I am constantly focused on every aspect of online marketing from the infrastructure and toolsets to the documentation needed and the talent used.  If you are like most of the people I talk with, your marketing plate is uncomfortably full.  But if you have a few minutes I would like to share with you what we do to help our clients plan for, and execute, marketing more efficiently using the powerful toolset that business owners and marketing directors now have at their fingertips.

Our first step to our clients’ success is clearly identifying what they sell and to whom.  Our consultants guide our clients through our Web Planning workbook which starts with a discussion of who they serve, what their markets should know about them, and what our clients want their prospects to do once they have gotten their attention.  We supply our clients with a site that is optimized for the search engines, but that is not enough these days for most industries. So we also discuss ways to meaningfully reach out to their clients and prospects regularly, and to ensure that the content always includes their branding messages and contact information.

Because you are talking with the people you serve about the things you do, with the right direction, you are inherently filling your site with keyword combinations that your target market will use to find companies such as yours. You can often work website updates into your existing processes. For example, instead of filing your testimonials in a drawer, put them online tagged with the city or industry in which the work was done and the type of service you provided. Oh and the next time your sales staff asks for a testimonial, just tell them to go to the website.

Now imaging including social strategies into this simplified process.  Each piece of content you produce is getting multiple uses (Site, Search and Social) the second you hit “Publish”.  (See infographic)

What is Publishing Today?

In its simplest form what we do is build websites.  Why did Media Relations, the country’s largest performance-based public relations firm, and its sister company Checkerboard Strategic Web Development, Inc., with 15 years of web development experience, join under the banner of “Publishing for Business”?  Because we help our clients do web “publishing”.

Wikipedia defines publishing today, September 22nd, 2011, as follows:

Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature or information—the activity of making information available to the general public.

We are always striving to understand the toolset, talent, processes, training and documentation necessary for our clients to increase the reach, frequency and quality of their messages while controlling their brand.   These “publishing” sites serve as a solid foundation from which you can customize and to which you can add over time – at a pace that matches your goals and commitment.  Over the last two years, we have built 60+ sites for companies of all sizes.  As you’ll see outlined in our attached program, we have included the necessary planning, design, build, training and launch time for an average local business or start up.  Please review it when you have time.

P.S.: If you already have a site like I talk about, check out our newsroom.  We often fill gaps in our clients’ staff to assist in technical, design, writing, video, editing or strategy.