How to Leverage Big Brands for Your Small Business

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No man is an island, and no small business is either. As small business owners, we know that success requires reaching out to others. You can’t do it all on your own. At least… you can’t do it all on your own and be anywhere near sane by the end of the quarter.

When I say “reaching out to others,” I don’t just mean networking. What I’m really referring to is leveraging the big brands and power players in your industry through your company blog. By leveraging these brands, you’ll be able to boost your own reputation and solidify those leads you’re already working on.

A few pointers:

When You Talk the Talk, You Will Walk the Walk

When your blog audience sees you cover well-known, credible businesses, they automatically begin to view you in the same light. Check out how the Matchstic blog weighs in with opinions on what’s happening in the world of big business branding.

They’re a mid-size branding agency, but they regularly associate themselves with big brands through their blogs. Case in point: this recent post on Arby’s.

Talk the big brand talk, and your readers will naturally assume you walk the big brand walk.

Turn An Enormous Marketing Concept into a Bite Sized Point

Big brands make great examples in your blog posts. Because these brands are already well known, you don’t have to waste your words trying to convince readers that your point is legitimate.

In the previous example, Matchstic doesn’t have to waste time talking about the Arby’s company by explaining what they do and where they came from. Everyone already knows Arby’s is a legitimate business.

It’s easy for the blogger to jump right in to the meat of the story (no pun intended), and create a bite-sized takeaway. Okay, that pun was intentional.

Get Ready for the Re-Tweets

Big brands will help your small business blog get more social media attention. Which blog post is likely to get more shares?

• “4 Lessons I Learned About Selling Clothes Online”

or

• “4 Lessons From Target About Selling Clothes Online”

The second title, of course. I don’t know who you are; I know who Target is. That’s the blog post I’m going to read, and it’s the post I’m going to share.

However, spammers and spam robots think the same way. So, when you do share an article that drops big brand names, prepare for the fake Twitter followers and spammy comments. It’s not a big deal, but you should be aware.

Of course, you might even make contact with the company you mention. If you wrote a blog post about Target, you would definitely want to include an @Target when you tweet the article.

Don’t Be General. Get Specific.

This is always a good rule of thumb for blogging. However, it’s especially important when you’re talking about big businesses. Because you’re writing about a company that has tons of available information and examples, you have no excuse for not using it.

If you need the nitty-gritty financial info for your blog post/case study, head over to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission where EDGAR will become your friend. The more details you have, the stronger your content will be.

Don’t Take Competition Too Seriously

I know, I know, it’s business. But, really… don’t go out of your way to avoid mentioning a big brand or competitor if they have some content that can help you boost your own company’s reputation.

So, you sell jewelry and Tiffany’s sells jewelry? Everyone in the world knows about Tiffany’s. Not many people know about you. By linking to a Tiffany’s product page or some valuable piece of content the company’s written, you aren’t hurting yourself. If anything, you’re demonstrating to your readers that you care about providing valuable information more than anything else.

If You Can’t Say Something Nice…

Don’t say anything at all. There’s nothing wrong with blogging about what not to do. However, try to avoid picking out a specific company as your example. You never know what big brand competitor might be interested in buying your company in a couple of years.

Even if you have no plans of selling, picking on another company:

(a) Looks bad.

(b) Could come back to bite you.

There’s no telling what kind of distribution your post could end up getting.

How do you leverage big brands in your small business blog?

Internet Chatter Photo via Shutterstock

The post How to Leverage Big Brands for Your Small Business appeared first on Small Business Trends.

via Amie Marse

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Reverse Customer Service Strategy

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I recently had a fascinating experience with my cellphone service provider that was a great example of reverse customer service. And it went a little something like this. . .

My children and I started experiencing call and text interruptions over a couple of days. These breaks in service were happening in my house. We’ve had this service for many years and have never had a problem like this.

Over a two day period I texted, visited and called the provider about this situation. Apparently they were working on a tower in my area and this was causing the problem. I mentioned to several people what I thought was a common sense customer service tactic that would have helped:

“Since you have all of our cell numbers, why not text us when you are going to be working on a tower? Then we’d know what was going on in the event we had reception issues.”

No one I spoke with thought it was a good idea. Frankly, I don’t think they understood what I was trying to tell them.

Guess what happened a day later?

I received a text message telling me I’d be receiving a text survey about the customer service I received.

Seriously?

They could use the text messaging feature to find out how my experience was with their customer service department but they couldn’t use it to keep me informed about the use of the product I was paying them for?

We Can Learn A Lot From This Experience

It shows that companies often spend more time thinking about what THEY need instead of what their CLIENTS need. That’s backwards. I know it may seem like they care when they want to be sure the customer service experience was good.

However, if they would focus on how their clients are experiencing the product or service they’d have fewer problems to handle.

Put Yourself In The Client’s Shoes

At the beginning, not at the problem stage:

• What might they want to know?


• What might they need to know?


• What information do you have that if shared with them, would make their experience better or not bad?

I think we are trained to offer our product or service in its most basic form. Then we establish a system for dealing with issues when and if they arise. We consider ourselves stellar if we then add in a follow up to that customer service experience. See, we really care!

Hold the phone! If you really cared you’d make sure my experience with the product or service was stellar; not the follow up to the complaint.

You can work on this backwards and implement a strategy that will prevent the reverse customer service experience described above. Think about your own business. Think about any and all situations when clients called or emailed your customer service department:

• What was their issue?


• Was it something you were aware of?


• Could you have avoided the call by sharing information?

If so, implement a communication strategy for reaching out to your clients. Don’t be afraid to tell them something if that knowledge will help them understand their experience. In all honesty, they’ll love you for thinking about them instead of yourself.

That is true customer service.

Upset Customer Photo via Shutterstock

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