Content Is King? Wrong.

If you are involved in any form of online marketing, I am sure you must have heard “content is king!”

So how can anybody deny that? It is a well known fact that whatever you do, whether you post on your own blog, tweet on Twitter or submit articles to article directories, quality content is a must. Providing quality content is one of the best ways to promote any business.

This is all true, and I would have told you the same thing - “content is king” – as I have came to that same conclusion. That is until I recently paid a visit to CopyBlogger, where they discussed one of the pillars of internet marketing: relationships.

And it dawned on me, content isn’t king, relationships are king. Yes, content is extremely important and is also one of your pillars for internet marketing, but without relationships, it will lose much of its power.

I am always emphasizing the importance of building relationships, and after my visit to CopyBlogger I realized this: You can have a list of thousands of people, and with quality content you can achieve success (whatever methods you are using – email, blogging, newsletter, etc.). But imagine if you have a strong relationship with your following. If you have the trust of the people following you, you communicate regularly and you pay attention to what their needs are and what they want, whenever you put any content out there, they are going to read it.

I have often subscribed to lists when it seems to be a good option, just to be disappointed or even forget about the membership later on. You never read the emails, and eventually just cancel your subscription as they just fill up your inbox.

The Money Is In The List

Yes, this is true. You do need prospects, which you need to turn into customers. Without these, you won’t be able to conduct any business. But building your list without building relationships is like building a house without a proper foundation. You will have to work so much harder on building your list, because as you add people to your list you will just be replacing people who are unsubscribing. And even of those who stay on your list, there will be many who don’t really pay attention to you, because of a weak relationship.

Quality content will be the only tool to use. And if you start slipping, nobody will warn you. You will just start losing people (and income). Having good relationships however, chances are good that you will immediately realize when you are missing the point, as people communicate with you and you can pick up warning signals.

Two Way Communication

First of all, two way communication is not only essential, but will also be a good indicator of the level of your relationships. 

Your customers / followers should be able to indicate to you what their needs are and what information they need. But you should also realize that a one way relationship is actually no relationship at all. It’s exploitation.  You must conduct yourself in a professional manner from the beginning.

You must make it clear from the beginning that you are running a business and you will be offering products for sale or you will be rendering a service or whatever it is you intend to do.

Everybody needs to know that you will expect to receive cash value in return, but they need to feel safe in the sense of knowing that they will receive more in terms of use value from you. This should provide a good balance for relationship building, seeing that it is win-win situation to everybody.   

To summarize: Content is a very important pillar of your business, but relationships are king.

So You Want To Get Started On Twitter

If you are serious about building your business, you enjoy interacting with your customers and building relationships; get started on Twitter.

You will start by creating your profile. Creating your profile on Twitter is easy, and much simpler than on Facebook.

One of the most important decisions you’ll make is choosing your account name. If you want to use Twitter for personal use, or brand yourself to promote a service, you can use your own name. When promoting a specific brand or organization, try to stick as close as possible to the name of whatever you are promoting.

After completing your profile, write a short bio in 160 characters or less. Keep it simple and easy to understand.

Finally upload a small image of yourself, or if you want to promote your business you can use your company logo. It will be much easier to connect with people if they can see a picture of a real person, or even a logo of a company. This way they can relate to you, or they can associate you with a product or company.

You should now be ready to start tweeting. I know I have mentioned this already in other posts as well, but don’t “spam” people with advertisements alone. As on any website or blog, you need to post quality content. 

Post something that will be of value to your followers. This doesn’t mean you can never promote your business, but use your discretion to determine a good ratio for your business tweets. A good ratio that is often recommended is +/- one out of every ten tweets.

Once you start tweeting quality content, people will start following you. See what these people are talking about, and if you share interests with them, follow them back.

You can also start finding people on your own to follow. You can use a free tool - such as ManageFlitter – to assist you in this process. By entering names or some keywords that indicates your interest, this tool will search and find people based on your keywords. Choose who you want to follow and ManageFlitter will do the rest  

Try to follow the rule of following people who will follow you back. There is no sense in following people who doesn’t follow you back. It is like talking to a brick wall. It is a one way conversation. ManageFlitter is very helpful in this process as well, filtering and showing you exactly who is not following you, saving you the time to always check who is following you back. Just select the people you want to unfollow and once again, ManageFlitter will do the rest. I find this to be great tool. There are more automated functions available as well if you want to upgrade, but these are optional.

Sticking to the rule of following people who follow you back doesn’t mean you will have to communicate with every single person who follows you on a daily basis. After a while this will be impossible anyway. But during the process you will start to communicate with some people. You will have more communication with some people than with others, but that is how you start building personal relationships.

Even people you don’t necessarily communicate with everyday will still follow you, and you will support each other. They will actually look at what you are tweeting, and when you tweet about your business, or you post a link, they might just click on it to learn more about what you have to offer.

Because you are limited to 140 characters in your tweets, many people are using URL shorteners to turn a long web address into a short one. Popular services are: TinyURL.com, AdF.ly and bitly.

Twitter is a great tool for building a solid foundation for your business when used correctly.