Omni-channel Marketing and Blogging

It’s difficult to get a clear message across on all the different ways you interact with customers on Twitter, Facebook, and whatever other online tools you use to connect with consumers. Blogging can help give you direction in your online interactions, make them cohesive, and direct users back to your website to make them more brand loyal. Blogging can be the cornerstone of content creation that allows you to interact with customers on a deeper level and have a stronger presence in their lives.

Why is this a good thing? Today, more than ever, customers don’t distinguish between the different ways they interact with your brand across the different channels, from online to real life. To them, it’s all their life and all the same. The Harvard Business Review says to keep your customers you need to keep it simple. Simplification also makes your online presence a lot easier to manage and unified among all the different online platforms you use. This marketing approach is called omni-channel marketing.

One idea is to send all your online traffic to your website. While social media allows you to provide quick updates and fast customer service, it’s hard to do everything in tweets and short Facebook posts. It can take more words and pictures to get across the reason why your brand should be included in your customer’s life, and your website provides a bigger platform for you to connect with customers. This doesn’t mean you should stop doing what you’re already doing on social media, it just means that you can expand upon the work you’re already doing.

For example, Uncle Sam’s Safari Outfitters recently had a sale at their store for the 4th of July and it was a great success. We created content (including the graphic shown at the top of this post) for the blog and then shared the post across social media. We directed Uncle Sam’s social media followers to the website where they found out all the details they needed to know about the sale and what Uncle Sam’s offers. By directing the traffic to one single source, we spoke to all the followers with the same message even though we created a special message for each social media network. Not only did this save time but it also gave Uncle Sam’s a cohesive presence across networks. Since many customers follow them across multiple networks, reinforcing the same message across all of them allowed Uncle Sam to drive home the call to come out for the sale. Directing traffic to the website also allowed for a longer brand interaction than a quick 140 characters and created a better relationship with the customers.

When customer’s reached the store, they found the same feeling there as on the blog and the social media platforms. Wherever they interacted with Uncle Sam’s, customers found the same look, tone, and feel.

You can apply this same technique to your brand or company by using your website as the cornerstone of your marketing. By directing potential leads to your website, you’re inviting them to convert and making it easier for them to see the reasons why they should. It also makes it easier on you because instead of having to create content specifically for different networks, you can use your blogging content as the main source of content for your interactions.

Keep in mind that your website still needs to provide something useful for your visitors that shows your brand is worth letting in to their lives. If your website is only sales speak, customers will have a harder time seeing your brand’s usefulness in their lives. It also won’t keep them coming back for more. You’ll notice on the post about the sale we explained details about the sale as well as linked to other useful content customers might want to read to keep the interaction going longer. Ideally, you want to be as present as possible in your customer’s lives. Extending your online interactions with useful blog content helps.