Content Is King, Again. How to Find New Customers

Content is king. That’s the mantra. While we, as internet players of all sorts, have wandered in and out of technology tools to try and find ways to new customers, the reality is content is what matters. Always has, always will.

Let’s take that one step further -- it isn’t just content, words on paper or voice on audio or video. It is expertise. And that expertise has to be shared in a way that’s other-centric.

That means, unselfish, in plain old English.

I harp on this a lot in prospect meetings and networking events where I occasionally speak -- think about others when you write, speak, dance...

If you told every business person you knew that they had to become a journalist, a writer, a broadcaster, they would simply say that you were daft. Nutty. Unrealistic.

But that’s exactly what we (not us personally) have been doing as an industry (the internet and marketing types).  Everyone, every soul on the planet, should be blogging. Hogwash.

Not everyone has something to say. Not everyone has something worth listening to. But that doesn’t stop them from talking. The risk I run is that I’m included in these lists: I intend to keep writing, though.

Most of my efforts are based on that other-centric model I always mention. It is impossible to keep up with it all, so I find the best stuff I can and share that with people who need it. I have tried to earn a living doing that, but what I’ve found is the info itself isn’t as meaningful as the interpretation of it. And most important, the USE of that info in a sales or marketing or customer care program.

Here’s a few things I’ve been reading and why:

Demand Generation and Lead Generation blogs & why, because the world of sales has shifted into the buyer’s hands and if you’ve missed that shift, you need to figure it out fast.  There is an awesome new whitepaper out there by Jeff Ogden, and sponsored by Marketo, on How to Find New Customers. Go here to get it.  In it, he cites a number of important ideas -- one from Jill Konrath that is a fictional letter from a buyer to a seller. Insightful.

DemandGenReport.com if you want a roundup of all the cool tools and systems you can consider in the process of finding and keeping new customers. Go here for the publication’s home page.

Paul Dunay, one of the leading online marketing guys posted some compelling (and confirming of this post) ideas at Buzz Marketing for Technology entitled "If I had a dollar" http://buzzmarketingfortech.blogspot.com/

Lisa Barone at Outspoken Media digs into the niche of Catering, but her and her very accomplished (and well known) business partners give some great content and social networking strategies.

http://outspokenmedia.com/small-business-marketing/catering-marketing/

There are some terrific blogs out there. Millions of them... Many of the blogs out there are corporate mouthpieces. Some disclaim that they are not the voice of their company. Some are truthful about that fact. Some are not and they are spin. I define Spin as not other-centric. If you read the quotes in Jeff Ogden’s paper, you’ll see that buyers really don’t care about your product. That’s hard to believe, to digest, and process for so many sellers out there. They care about learning how to solve their problems. People solve problems; technology just assists.

Coming later in May: A new search engine optimization service debuts to help you manage the SEO process and sort out what you do with your content once you create it. I have an in-depth review about this new SEO subscription service that I think you’ll like.

TJ McCue is founder of the Sales Rescue Team and a strategic content guy at Q4 Sales. He writes about online marketing, small business, and entrepreneurship. He welcomes your comments here or by email or with a Twitter Follow.