For years marketers have been explaining that companies are their brands. In the digital exponential economy, that is just as true as ever. Your digital platform can deliver value on-demand 24-7, which means you can make money 24-7. Need convincing – check out these case studies on folks who are doing just that!

The key to good marketing and product development is alignment. Alignment allows your services to build on each other. For example, your blog can feed your book, which can serve as a calling card to clients or support classes. An app can help maintain continuity of consulting services and keep clients connected with your community.

Getting Set-up

Setting up your Website

I’m a big fan of building websites on a blog platform. Clients from Hell recently gave an excellent webcast that I think is well worth a listen. There are also a lot of great resources at this link. Bryce also gives a run down of various options pros and cons from WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, Tumblr etc.

Community / Event Scheduling

I’m going to call this out separate from social (although it overlaps). Many companies have been really successful creating closed Facebook groups to build out their communities. People are more willing to share and be vulnerable in a carefully cultivated space. Facebook can also be used to set up events. Meetup (paid) and Eventbrite (free) are great tools to organize your events.

Social Media

I hate splitting my personal social media from my private social media and have been dragging my feet on it. One minor fear I have is that I’m going to tweet out something silly meant for my personal account to my business audience. Although considering that my professional persona is really similar to the one I have with my friends it’s not too great of a concern. (yet another reason for alignment).

Here is a run down of all the social media sites you can sign up for.

Hint: Don’t sign up for all of them. Get your priorities straight, pick sites aligned with your community, that you enjoy and can easily maintain. It is fine to experiment, when looking to acquire new clients, and see if you can locate “white space” or places where your potential clients are, that your competitors are not.

Social Media Scheduling and Management

Here is a link to an article I found comparing Hootsuite with a ton of other options. Personally,  I always intend to send out tweets for events, but my life got much easier and my campaigns were much more consistent when I can carve out time to build, organize and schedule tweets.

Email Management Options

Here is a link to several email management options. I’ve worked with Emma and MailChimp, both work just fine, but I’m sure there are other great options.

Other resources (updated 10/5/16)

• sassysuite.com/toolbox.
• Jansen Communications for Content Marketing. Monika and her team are great writers and strategic partners.