In marketing, prioritize what you can control - by Chuck Sink

Every online platform except for one can modify, add to, or even ban your company messages. Your brand can be all over the place: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Google, YouTube, directories, blogs, guest landing pages, etc. You can maximize your presence in all these online medias and the brand experience visitors have will be limited and in many cases disappointing. Why? Because these spaces don’t belong to you and you are being used by them, not the other way around!

The hard truth of social media: Your company information and, very likely, personal employee information are actually the product of social media companies, sold through advertising to other marketers. Your data (which is cumulatively collected with each login) belongs to them as much as it belongs to you. And if you want more than a small handful of people to see your posts, you must pay to have it distributed, even to your own friends, followers and connections!

So, where is this one place on the Internet that you control completely? Hopefully, it’s the one in which you invest the most time and money – your own website! Your own company website gets top priority in all matters concerning online marketing because only you get to customize the experience for your specific target audiences. Social platforms, search engines and other channels are fine for distributing your website content, but they are not where your brand resides. Metaphorically, you should be engaging your customers right inside your home (website) rather than having a quick chat inside a Starbucks (social media).

I suggest getting busy writing about how you solve specific problems better than your competition. Take great pictures and shoot video. Embed your videos into your website so they’re viewed in your brand environment.

My company has been enjoying some new business from receiving higher quality leads in recent months following a content marketing campaign that resides, guess where? My website.

Chuck Sink is CEO of Chuck Sink Link, Contoocook, N.H.