Once you’ve successfully established traffic sources to get visitors to your website, the next step is connecting with them through fresh and relevant content. To do this effectively you will need the ability to create and post fresh content to your website on an ongoing basis. The cost effective and direct way to do this is to use a Content Management System (CMS). You can read more about CMS’s and the best way to use them in an earlier post of mine.
One great way to connect with your customers is through news or a blog. A lot of our customers ask me what the difference is between the two, so I created the chart below to try and better explain. Although these generalizations do not always apply, they should be useful in differentiating the two types of content when it comes to their use on small business websites.
| Blogs are usually: | News is usually: |
| Created by and attributed to a specific person/author. | Written by either a person or from the organization as a whole, with no named author. |
| More opinion based commentary such as a review, recommendation, etc. | Informative in nature. |
| Written in a more personal writing style. | Written more formally. |
| Meant to induce discussion/commentary. | Not meant to induce discussion/commentary. |
Another great way to connect with your visitors is through the use of multimedia such as image slideshows and video. Now that computer and internet connections are able to cope with the additional bandwidth these methods require, it becomes a matter of the resources and time it takes to create the material. If you are a non-profit organization you can host this content for free on 3rd party websites like YouTube, Vimeo, and Flickr and then embed them on your website pages. Most CMS’s also come with modules for uploading and hosting this media onsite.
Posting free resources for download is another great way to deliver useful content to your customers and employees. This content would of course vary depending on your business, but could involve items such as PDF documents and applications, powerpoint templates, or printable company logos.
From a marketing perspective, posting testimonials or case studies is a method to help potential customers more easily envision how your company might help them some day, as well as give them a feeling of security that there are other companies out there who have trusted you in the past with similar projects.
There are many ways to connect to your customers that I have not touched on here, but the ones I have highlighted are very effective and sustainable ways to accomplish this goal and still have time to spend on your business!
Check back soon for Part 3: RECONNECT.
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