You spend time out of your day writing a blog entry (and thinking about what to write).  Why not get the most out of your time and effort?  Use your content as a way to provide useful and interesting information to your customers.  To do this most effectively, think about ways you can get your message out.

Make sure you post a link to your post on any social networks where it makes sense (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn would be the big ones).  You should also use a full RSS feed – meaning that your RSS feed shows your full post, not just a portion of it.  Why?  Because search engines and content aggregators will pick up your feed and put your content in front of a wider audience.

Some people  want people to come to their site to read their content.  This has advantages in terms of measurement and marketing once they’re on the site.  However, most of us are not in the content creation business – we’re in some other type of business – so it makes sense for us to try to get our message out to the largest audience as possible.

This isn’t to say that you’ll benefit from getting your content out to a wide audience.  The more related your audience is to who you want as a customer, the more valuable it will be.  So, look for targeted places to share your message for the most bang for your buck.

How do you put your content to work?

This is a guest post by Sarah Worsham, CEO & Web Strategist at Sazbean Consulting and blogging at Sazbean.com. Sarah is passionate about creating Internet strategies to help companies reach their business goals. Sarah provides guidance through Internet Marketing, Strategy & Business consulting. Connect with her on Twitter, Facebook or the Sazbean Facebook Page.

It’s so much easier to learn about people and companies these days – and what they’re really up to.  If a company says it promotes free trade, but has a sweatshop in the jungle, someone is probably going to find out about it and not only tell the media but all of their friends.  That might be a pretty extreme example, but hopefully you get the point – it’s probably better to be fairly transparent with yourself and your company online.

Now I’m not advocating sharing all your personal details and private life – that probably goes into the realm of TMI (too much information).  But people want to know that the person and company they are dealing with are genuine.  That you can do what you say.  That you do have the experience that you tout.  It’s so much easier for people to check up on what you know – just by googling your name and that of your company.  People can quickly find out pretty much everything you’ve done and said an everything that’s been said about you.

This is a good thing.  It’s much harder for people to pretend to be something they’re not.  To pretend to be an expert in an area they have no experience in.  Which means its much more valuable to be transparent with your customers.  Again, I’m not saying that you need to let them into your private life, but there’s not much point in pretending to be what you’re not.  No amount of marketing and advertising is going to be able to make up for what you don’t know.  At some point you won’t be able to keep up the facade, someone’s going to write about it and that one person will cancel out all those advertising dollars.

Online reputation is still evolving.  There will come a time when a paper resume will be pretty much useless – because it will be what you say you’ve done.  Instead, it’ll be much more valuable to see what everyone else thinks you’ve done.  Googling someone can give you a lot of information, but the information out there is still in its infancy.  You can still influence the information that’s available about you by publishing, by having conversations, and by encouraging your customers to do the same.

This is a guest post by Sarah Worsham, CEO & Web Strategist at Sazbean Consulting and blogging at Sazbean.com. Sarah is passionate about creating Internet strategies to help companies reach their business goals. Sarah provides guidance through Internet Marketing, Strategy & Business consulting. Connect with her on Twitter, Facebook or the Sazbean Facebook Page.

Technology changes very quickly.  How we use technology also changes and evolves.  Helping people and businesses figure out how to use technology (social media, websites, the Internet, etc.) requires keeping up with all these changes.  I’m constantly reading, listening and learning.

Even if you’re not in a field or industry that changes so quickly, we all have something to learn from each other.  Maybe it’s a new way to present your ideas.  Or ideas on how to improve your product or service.  Talking to a variety of people and listening to what they say can be invaluable for increasing your own knowledge, expertise and effectiveness.

When you try to explain what you do to a new client, they’ll probably ask a lot of questions.  These questions can give you insight in what additional information you can provide to other potential clients.  Or if you’re at a networking event and you give your elevator pitch and get some confused looks, you might get some feedback on how to improve it.

You may work at the same thing your entire life, but someday you’ll retire.  What will you do with your time?  Hopefully you’ll be able to pick up some hobbies that you’ve put on the back-burner or some new things that have always interested you.  Still learning.  And those of us with kids know that we learn something just about every day from how our kids view the world, interact with us and each other, and the questions they ask.

One of the things I love about what I do is all the people I get to learn from every day.  You can learn something from just about anyone you talk to (even if its just something about yourself).  It’s one of the reasons I enjoy doing workshops – to learn how people view the concepts I’m presenting – where they have questions, what questions they bring up, their comments, etc. – how I can improve.

The world is a fascinating place filled with intriguing people doing interesting things.  How do you learn from others?  How do you apply that learning?

This is a guest post by Sarah Worsham, CEO & Web Strategist at Sazbean Consulting and blogging at Sazbean.com. Sarah is passionate about creating Internet strategies to help companies reach their business goals. Sarah provides guidance through Internet Marketing, Strategy & Business consulting. Connect with her on Twitter, Facebook or the Sazbean Facebook Page.

Sandi and I were having a discussion today and one of the things that came up is that sometimes business owners are a bit afraid to try out something new (to them) like social media.  But social media is one of those things that is pretty important for your business to be doing.  And while it’s great to be doing it properly, social networks like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are fairly new in terms of business use, so everyone is still trying them out to see what works and what doesn’t.

While there are good strategies to put into place, and good practices, as long as you’re not a jerk about it, you’re really not going to hurt anything by giving any of them a try.  Just remember the example of a good conversation at a cocktail party – there’s some give and take, nothing that’s too serious and certainly not too one-sided.

Everything new takes a bit of getting used to, but if you never try it, you’ll never know how to use it.  No matter how many books or workshops or websites you read about how to use social media, there’s nothing that can substitute for just giving it a try.  And don’t be afraid to ask questions or ask for help.  There’s lots of us who would be happy to help.

This is a guest post by Sarah Worsham, CEO & Web Strategist at Sazbean Consulting and blogging at Sazbean.com. Sarah is passionate about creating Internet strategies to help companies reach their business goals. Sarah provides guidance through Internet Marketing, Strategy & Business consulting. Connect with her on Twitter, Facebook or the Sazbean Facebook Page.

An important ratio when putting together publications is how much content there is versus how many there are.  It may seem like this would be so you don’t annoy your readers too much, but, at least for print publications, it’s to avoid being called a catalog by the US Post Office who will then charge higher postage rates.  Online, this ratio really is important to readers who can easily go somewhere else.  But this ratio also applies to social networking…

Think about the people you are most likely to follow on Facebook or Twitter or on their blogs.  They probably provide you with useful information.  They may occasionally promote their own products, but it’s a low percentage in the sum of the content.  You’re less likely (or not likely at all) to follow someone who does nothing but tell you about their products (and what they ate for breakfest).  This self-promotion is the same as ads on a website or in a magazine.  It’s ok to do it, but it has to be a small percentage of your overall content for it to be acceptable (and for it to have a better impact).

Keeping a good content-to-ad ratio is important because people are more likely to actually pay attention to your ads when most of what you provide is useful information.  Having a good ratio also helps build your reputation as someone who is looking out for their audience.

For print magazines, I think the ratio is somewhere around 75% (so 25% ads, maybe as high as 33%).  Online, we try to keep it closer to 80% but there’s actually better click-through-rates and ad impact if there’s only one ad per page.  For social networking, I think the ratio should be even higher, maybe 90-95%, since most of the time should be spent either providing useful information or building relationships (you know, that networking part).

By keeping a high content-to-ad ratio in all the content you produce, you’ll have an easier time of actually promoting things than if you just spam everyone with your marketing messages.  After all, no one likes either a spammer or a self-promoter.

What’s your content-to-ad ratio?

This is a guest post by Sarah Worsham, CEO & Web Strategist at Sazbean Consulting and blogging at Sazbean.com. Sarah is passionate about creating Internet strategies to help companies reach their business goals. Sarah provides guidance through Internet Marketing, Strategy & Business consulting. Connect with her on Twitter, Facebook or the Sazbean Facebook Page.

When you were born (or probably before), your parents considered many different names for you.  They thought about how the names flowed together, what meaning they had, and how they could be abused on the playground.  There may even be some family names or people in the family they wanted to name you after.  Names are very important.  In the case of a person’s name, it (usually) sticks with them forever.  They may get nicknames later on in life, but their name will still identify them to the world.

Names for businesses and products are equally important, so spend some time thinking about what the name means.  How unique is it?  Can people remember how to spell it?  Is it Google safe? What meaning is already associated with the name? Does the name have meaning that you can use for your branding? Is the domain name available?

I’ve been asked many times, so here’s the story of my biz name. Sazbean is a college nickname and I also liked it because it was Google safe, easy to remember and stands out.

How did you come up with your business name?

This is a guest post by Sarah Worsham, CEO & Web Strategist at Sazbean Consulting and blogging at Sazbean.com. Sarah is passionate about creating Internet strategies to help companies reach their business goals. Sarah provides guidance through Internet Marketing, Strategy & Business consulting. Connect with her on Twitter, Facebook or the Sazbean Facebook Page.

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Blogging, etc.  Everyone is in a hurry to connect with as many people as possible through various social media.  But the best way to use online networking tools is in conjunction with off-line networking.

I’ve connected with some great people online, some of which I’ve still not met in person.  And you can too.  It just takes a bit more work to build a relationship entirely online.  But some of my best advocates online are people I’ve met in person – either clients, or at an event or conference, or whatever.

Networking online is important, but make sure you also remember to reach out to people offline.  Then, connect with them online too so you can keep the conversation going and continue to build the relationship.  Online and offline networking work best as a team!

How do you use offline networking to enhance your online networking?

This is a guest post by Sarah Worsham, CEO & Web Strategist at Sazbean Consulting and blogging at Sazbean.com. Sarah is passionate about creating Internet strategies to help companies reach their business goals. Sarah provides guidance through Internet Marketing, Strategy & Business consulting. Connect with her on Twitter, Facebook or the Sazbean Facebook Page.

After reading a comment on Tom’s recent post, I thought I’d talk a bit about why consultative selling is important for long term business success.  It used to be that salespeople would try to convince or persuade customers that they needed your product.  Often the product wasn’t a very good fit, so customers would be unhappy.  Back before the Internet this wasn’t a huge problem because customers only had limited access to other potential customers (only those people they knew in person).  With the widespread use of the Internet and online social networks, disgruntled customers can have a huge impact on potential sales.

Consultative selling is the process of determining what your customer actually needs and then making recommendations for what would best fit those needs.  Sometimes what fits those needs is not something you offer, but if you’re honest, customers will remember that and will be more likely to recommend your services to others.  If you try to fit something you offer to what your customer needs, and it’s not the right fit, they’re not likely to be happy.  If your customer is unhappy enough, they can easily let other potential customers know.

This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t educate your customers on options you have that may be a close fit.  If you give your customers honest information about the advantages and disadvantages of any product, they’re more likely to be satisfied with their choice even if it’s not necessarily the best fit.

How do you sell to help your customers?

This is a guest post by Sarah Worsham, CEO & Web Strategist at Sazbean Consulting and blogging at Sazbean.com. Sarah is passionate about creating Internet strategies to help companies reach their business goals. Sarah provides guidance through Internet Marketing, Strategy & Business consulting. Connect with her on Twitter, Facebook or the Sazbean Facebook Page.