WebSight Viewpoint #48

When you build your next Web site, or write your next blog post, or craft your next email campaign to customers or prospects, answer three questions:

1) Who is the primary intended audience
2) What is my primary message to them
3) What is my expected outcome

Most marketers do the first two, but don't always think through the third. And although the first two are required to make the third work, the outcome of your activity is by far the most important.

In fact, many successful marketers work backwards. If your expected outcome is to generate qualified leads for your sales team, for example, that will help decide who you choose as an audience and what you might say to them.

But the outcome is rarely just about generating leads, or traffic, or visits. When you think outcome, think revenue. What is the revenue-based outcome of what you're trying to accomplish, and how does every facet of your execution gear towards that outcome?

(source: Matt Heinz, HeinzMarketing.com)

WebSight Viewpoint #46

Get all of your social networking activities together.

Are you logging into Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn separately? Did you know that you can combine your posts and tweets? There are several different ways to accomplish this.

For example, from your Facebook account you can link up to your Twitter account so your updates will appear from one to the other. Log into LinkedIn, and you'll see that it has the option to post Twitter status updates, too! In Twitter, you can update your status there and have them concurrently posted on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Or, you can use a third party interface to manage them. A few out there are HootSuite, HelloTxt, and Splitweet. With these applications, you can identify which accounts you want to have updated each time you send out a post, and can also be set up to update your blog.

You can save a lot of time by synching up your social media posting efforts, eliminating the need to log in to each account separately.