Comments on: Small Businesses’ Level Playing Field

By: Jim Hughes

Jim Hughes — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 18:29:00 +0000

Much like a traditional marketing and advertising campaign, a talented agency partner can provide direction, creation and execution of a client’s content marketing, inbound marketing and social marketing strategies. Regardless if its online or offline marketing, a good marketing partner can establish a company’s identity as well as design a communications strategy which engages the client’s target customer.

By: Elaine Braderman

Elaine Braderman — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 15:39:17 +0000

From my perspective, it can be a great aid to hire an agency to assist with these tasks. An agency should provide a strong content partnership that can manage (among other things): Content direction, ideally mapping to a sales and marketing plan, free critical staff for more essential tasks (like running the business) and can add professionalism to the content.

With so much going on in the day-to-day, it makes more sense for our CTO and Sales VP to be helping to close business than writing blog postings–especially when a talented agency can interview him and shape his thoughts into great content.

By: Jeff Heron

Jeff Heron — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 20:39:51 +0000

Without question the internet provides an enormous opportunity for small businesses to compete. However most companies do not have the staffing or the proper talent to conduct internet marketing in an effective manner.Does it make sense to hire an outside agency or consultant to handle this task?

By: Christine Meyers

Christine Meyers — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:58:57 +0000

One of the biggest challenges we face as a small company is maintaining enough content that is relevant and timely.

Within our organization, the majority of the push comes from the Marketing side as these techniques are part of integrated programs with measurable goals and companion pieces. However, we need to remain flexible enough to respond to the immediate needs of sales (a recent news item or market mover).

To be better prepared and consistently refresh content, we cycle through four to six core writers and solicit articles/opinion from select partners or customers. With about two weeks of writing in reserve, we are able to keep up with demands, repond to issues like posters who “forget” about their content, and we’ve reduced the risk of burn-out. That having been said, for all the planning, we’re a small group (practically everyone writes) so we haven’t eliminated the midnight posting sessions, yet.