I wasn’t going to labor on this Labor Day, but I ended up renewing my City of Ontario business license. (This coming year will be the fourth that Bredemarket has conducted business in Ontario.)
The UPS Store, 1030 N Mountain Ave, Ontario CA 91762.They WERE closed for Labor Day (but boxholders have keys).Bredemarket’s mailing address is 1030 N Mountain Ave #259, Ontario CA 91762-2114.
Now most people don’t interact with Bredemarket via my physical mailing address. The few that do include the City of Ontario, and three of my clients who have chosen to pay me via paper checks. (I’m flexible.)
This got me curious.
What if?
What if the Internet were to disappear tomorrow? What if the only way my clients could interact with Bredemarket was through my Bredemarket physical mailing address? Could Bredemarket still conduct business?
Possibly.
Some of my business would disappear overnight. Blog posts, for example, are meaningless in a non-Internet world, unless companies choose to post long text-based communications on utility poles. Or in laundromats.
This used to be my laundromat. 454 N Mountain Ave, Ontario, CA 91762.
Even if the Internet were to disappear, I could still write text for case studies (maintaining my Inland Empire case study writing business) and white papers. I could send my client a Microsoft Word file (perhaps an old version of Word), and the firm could send the file to their printer. But how would I send the file? Put a CD in the mail?
If your Inland Empire company doesn’t have an online presence, one quick way to create one is to create a business page on Facebook.
This post outlines the benefits of establishing an online presence via a Facebook business page. It also provides four examples of Facebook business pages. Finally, the post addresses the thorny question of creating content for your Facebook business page.
Why Faceboook may be the best online presence for your business
For the first time in years, I attended an Ontario IDEA Exchange meeting at AmPac Business Capital on Tuesday afternoon. There was a mixture of attendees: some who had established several businesses, some like me who had run one business for some time, and a few who were just starting out in business.
The ones who were starting out were still trying to figure out all the things you need to do to start a business: figuring out why the business exists in the first place, getting the appropriate business licenses (and in some cases professional licenses), printing business cards (or creating the online equivalent), setting up SOME kind of way to track prospects and customers…and establishing an online presence.
Now some businesses choose to establish their online presence by creating a website.
But even the simplest website can involve a lot of complexity—bredemarket.com currently has 57 pages, not counting tag pages and individual blog post pages.
For many small businesses, it may be much easier to create a Facebook business page then to create an entire website.
Facebook business pages are free. (Well, unless you run ads.)
Facebook business pages are easy to create.
Facebook business pages potentially reach billions of people, including your prospects and customers.
Creating a Facebook business page
So how do you create a Facebook business page?
There’s no need for me to document all of that in detail, since many have already done so.
Don’t worry if you don’t have all the optional items, such as a page cover picture. You can add them later. This will get you going.
Other guides to creating Facebook business pages are available from Buffer (with pictures), Hootsuite (with pictures). Sprout Social (with pictures), and a number of other sources.
But before you create YOUR Facebook business page, let me show you four varied examples of EXISTING Facebook business pages.
Four examples of Facebook business pages
Let’s take a look at some pages that already exist. Perhaps one or more of these will give you ideas for your own page.
The artist page (Paso Artis)
Paso Artis is a European business whose proprietor is a painter who sells her paintings.
The menu options at the bottom of the picture above (some of which cannot be seen) illustrate some of the elements you can include in a Facebook page. Here are just a few of the page elements that Paso Artis uses:
Posts. This is the equivalent of a blog on a website, and allows you to post text, images, videos, and other types of content.
About. This is where you provide contact and other basic information about your business.
Shop. Facebook allows you to include a shop, which Paso Artis uses to sell her paintings.
Photos. As you can imagine for an artist’s page, photos of the artwork are essential.
The shirtmaker page (Shirts by Kaytie)
(UPDATE 10/20/2023: Because Shirts by Kaytie is sadly no longer in business, I have removed the, um, live links to her Facebook page.)
Let’s leave Europe and go to Illinois where we find another artist, but her work is not displayed on paintings, but on shirts. Here is the Shirts by Kaytie Facebook page.
You’ll notice that Shirts by Kaytie has a different menu item order (and different menu items) than Paso Artis. For example, Shirts by Kaytie doesn’t have a Facebook “shop” element; you need to contact her directly to purchase items.
Enough of such exotic locations as Europe and Illinois. Let’s head to California’s Inland Empire and look at my favorite marketing/writing services Facebook page, the Bredemarket Facebook page.
First, Bredemarket (unlike Paso Artis and Shirts by Kaytie) provides services rather than tangible products. Therefore, I chose to include a “Services” element as part of my Facebook page.
Second, Bredemarket has chosen to implement Facebook’s “groups” feature. In Bredemarket’s case, there are three separate groups that focus on various aspects of Bredemarket’s business. Inland Empire businesses can read the content in the Bredemarket Inland Empire B2B Services group and not get bogged down in out-of-area identity discussions about the change from FRVT to FRTE. (They’re missing out.)
By the way, if you are an Inland Empire business—especially an Inland Empire startup technology business—and you have never heard of Startempire Wire, STOP READING MY POST and go follow Startempire Wire’s Facebook pageNOW. Startempire Wire is THE news source for Inland Empire startup tech information, and is a strong champion of the IE tech community.
So what does Startempire Wire’s Facebook page offer? Posts, photos, weekly videos, and the “Inland Empire Startup Scene” group. All of the content is jam-packed with information.
Facebook pages are essential to these firms’ strategies
Now in some cases the Facebook pages are only part of the online presence for these firms. Both Bredemarket and Startempire Wire have their own web pages, and both firms are also active on other online properties such as LinkedIn. (Bredemarket is almost everywhere, but not on Snapchat.) But Facebook is an essential part of the outreach for all four of these firms, allowing them to reach prospects and clients who are only on Facebook and nowhere else.
Perhaps a Facebook page is a perfect solution for YOUR firm’s online presence.
Let’s talk about content
But creating a Facebook page is not enough.
You need to populate it with content, such as images, videos…and posts.
Now I’m not saying that you HAVE to update your Facebook page daily, but it’s a good idea to add new content at least once a month.
But what if you aren’t a writer, or don’t have time to write? Do you have to resort to ChatGPT?
Heavens no. (I’ll say more about that later.)
Well, online content creation is where Bredemarket comes in. I help firms create blog posts, Facebook posts, LinkedIn articles, case studies, white papers, and other content (22 different types of content at last count).
Does your product (or company) need these 22 content types?
Let me help you populate your Facebook page (or other online content).
Authorize Bredemarket, Ontario California’s content marketing expert, to help your firm produce words that return results.
If you are reading this on your laptop (or your desktop), point your smartphone to the QR code on your laptop (or desktop) screen to read my first e-book, “Six Questions Your Content Creator Should Ask You.”
(UPDATE OCTOBER 22, 2023: “SIX QUESTIONS YOUR CONTENT CREATOR SHOULD ASK YOU IS SO 2022. DOWNLOAD THE NEWER “SEVEN QUESTIONS YOUR CONTENT CREATOR SHOULD ASK YOU” HERE.)
As I said before, QR codes are sometimes useful, and sometimes not.
If you want to know the “why” about the e-book-see what I did there?-visit my announcement of the e-book. You can view the e-book there also.
By the way, I just checked my WordPress stats. Since this e-book was published in December 2022, it’s been downloaded over 160 times. I hope it’s helping people.
We often use the phrase “four-letter word” to refer to cuss words that shouldn’t be said in polite company. Occasionally, we have our own words that we personally consider to be four-letter words. (Such as “BIPA.”)
There are some times when we resign ourselves to the fact that “tech” can be a four-letter word also. But there’s actually a good reason for the problems we have with today’s technology.
Tech can be dim
Just this week I was doing something on my smartphone and my screen got really dim all of a sudden, with no explanation.
So I went to my phone’s settings, and my brightness setting was down at the lowest level.
For no reason.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
So I increased my screen’s brightness, and everything was back to normal. Or so I thought.
A little while later, my screen got dim again, so I went to the brightness setting…and was told that my brightness was very high. (Could have fooled me.)
I can’t remember what I did next (because when you are trying to fix something you can NEVER remember what you did next), but later my screen brightness was fine.
Was Arthur C. Clarke right? And if so, WHY was he right?
Perhaps it’s selective memory, but I don’t recall having this many technology problems when I was younger.
The shift to multi-purpose devices
Part of the reason for the increasing complexity of technology is that we make fewer and fewer single-purpose devices, and are manufacturing more and more multi-purpose devices.
One example of the shift: if I want to write a letter today, I can write it on my smartphone. (Assuming the screen is bright enough.) This same smartphone can perform my banking activities, play games, keep track of Bredemarket’s earnings…oh, and make phone calls.
Technological convergence is a term that describes bringing previously unrelated technologies together, often in a single device. Smartphones might be the best possible example of such a convergence. Prior to the widespread adoption of smartphones, consumers generally relied on a collection of single-purpose devices. Some of these devices included telephones, wrist watches, digital cameras and global positioning system (GPS) navigators. Today, even low-end smartphones combine the functionality of all these separate devices, easily replacing them in a single device.
From a consumer perspective, technological convergence is often synonymous with innovation.
And the smartphone example certainly demonstrates innovation from the previous-generation single-purpose devices.
When I was a kid, if I wanted to write a letter, I had two choices:
I could set a piece of paper on the table and write the letter with a writing implement such as a pen or pencil.
I could roll a piece of paper into a typewriter and type the letter.
These were, for the most part, single purpose devices. Sure I could make a paper airplane out of the piece of paper, but I couldn’t use the typewriter to play a game or make a phone call.
Turning our attention to the typewriter, it certainly was a manufacturing marvel, and intricate precision was required to design the hammers that would hit the typewritter ribbon and leave their impressions on the piece of paper. And typewriters could break, and repairmen (back then they were mostly men) could fix them.
A smartphone is much more innovative than a smartphone. But it’s infinitely harder to figure out what is wrong with a smartphone.
The smartphone hardware alone is incredibly complex, with components from a multitude of manufacturers. Add the complexities of the operating system and all the different types of software that are loaded on a smartphone, and a single problem could result from a myriad of causes.
No wonder it seems like magic, even for the best of us.
Explaining technology
But this complexity has provided a number of jobs:
The helpful person at your cellular service provider who has acquired just enough information to recognize and fix an errant application.
The many people in call centers (the legitimate call centers, not the “we found a problem with your Windows computer” call scammers) who perform the same tasks at a distance.
All the people who write instructions on how to use and fix all of our multi-purpose devices, from smartphones to computers to remote controls.
Oh, and the people that somehow have to succinctly explain to prospects why these multi-purpose devices are so great.
Because no one’s going to run into problems with technology unless they acquire the technology. And your firm has to get them to acquire your technology.
Crafting a technology marketing piece
So your firm’s marketer or writer has to craft some type of content that will make a prospect aware of your technology, and/or induce the prospect to consider purchasing the technology, and/or ideally convert the prospect into a paying customer.
Before your marketer or writer crafts the content, they have to answer some basic questions.
Using a very simple single-purpose example of a hammer, here are the questions with explanations:
Why does the prospect need this technology? And why do you provide this technology? This rationale for why you are in business, and why your product exists, will help you make the sale. Does your prospect want to buy a hammer from a company that got tired of manufacturing plastic drink stirrers, or do they want to buy a hammer from a forester who wants to empower people to build useful items?
How does your firm provide this technology? If I want to insert a nail into a piece of wood, do I need to attach your device to an automobile or an aircraft carrier? No, the hammer will fit in your hand. (Assuming you have hands.)
What is the technology? Notice that the “why” and “how” questions come before the “what” question, because “why” and “how” are more critical. But you still have to explain what the technology is (with the caveat I mention below). Perhaps some of your prospects have no idea what a hammer is. Don’t assume they already know.
What is the goal of the technology? Does a hammer help you floss your teeth? No, it puts nails into wood.
What are the benefitsof the technology? When I previously said that you should explain what the technology is, most prospects aren’t looking for detailed schematics. They primarily care about what the technology will do for them. For example, that hammer can keep their wooden structure from falling down. They don’t care about the exact composition of the metal in the hammer head.
Finally, who is the target audience for the technology? I don’t want to read through an entire marketing blurb and order a basic hammer, only to discover later that the product won’t help me keep two diamonds together but is really intended for wood. So don’t send an email to jewelers about your hammer. They have their own tools.
(UPDATE OCTOBER 23, 2023: “SIX QUESTIONS YOUR CONTENT CREATOR SHOULD ASK YOU IS SO 2022. DOWNLOAD THE NEWER “SEVEN QUESTIONS YOUR CONTENT CREATOR SHOULD ASK YOU” HERE.)
Once you answer these questions (more about the six questions in the Bredemarket e-book available here), your marketer or writer can craft your content.
Or, if you need help, Bredemarket (the technology content marketing expert) can craft your content, whether it’s a blog post, case study, white paper, or something else.
I’ve helped other technology firms explain their “hammers” to their target audiences, explaining the benefits, and answering the essential “why” questions about the hammers.
Can I help your technology firm communicate your message? Contact me.
But what if I want to know how to work with Bredemarket?
Glad you asked.
After reading Mace’s LinkedIn post, I realized that I have a bunch of different online sources that explain how to work with Bredemarket, but they’re scattered all over the place. This post groups them all the “how to work with Bredemarket” content together, following an outline similar (yet slightly different) to Mace’s.
And no, it’s not a stand-alone PDF, but as you read the content below you’ll discover two stand-alone PDFs that address critical portions of the process.
Question 1: Why would I work with Bredemarket?
As you’ll see below, “why” is a very important question, even more important than “how.” Here are some reasons to work with Bredemarket.
You require the words to communicate the benefits of your identity/biometrics product/service. I offer 29 years of experience in the identity/biometrics industry and am a biometric content marketing expert and an identity content marketing expert. I have created multiple types of content (see below) to share critical points about identity/biometrics offerings.
You require the words to communicate the benefits of your technology product/service. I have also created multiple types of content to share critical points about technology offerings.
You require the words to communicate the benefits of a product/service you provide to California’s Inland Empire. I’ve lived in the Inland Empire for…well, for more than 29 years. I know the area—its past, its present, and its future.
You require one of the following types of content. Blogs, case studies / testimonials, data sheets, e-books, proposals, social media posts / Xs (or whatever tweets are called today), white papers, or anything. I’ve done these for others and can do it for you.
Question 2: Why WOULDN’T I work with Bredemarket?
This question is just as important as the prior one. If you need the following, you WON’T want to work with Bredemarket.
You require high quality graphics. Sorry, that’s not me.
I did not draw this myself. Originally created by Jleedev using Inkscape and GIMP. Redrawn as SVG by Ben Liblit using Inkscape. – Own work, Public Domain, link.
You are based outside of the United States. Foreign laws and exchange rates make my brain hurt, so I only pursue business domestically. But depending upon where you are, I may be able to recommend a content marketer for you.
Question 3: What are Bredemarket’s most popular packages? How much do they cost?
Here are the three most common packages that Bredemarket offers.
Note that these are the standard packages. If your needs are different, I can adapt them, or charge you an hourly rate if the need is not well defined. (But as you will see below, I try to work with you at the outset to define the project.)
If you follow the link above for your desired package and download the first brochure on each page, you’ll get a description of the appropriate service. The pricing is at the bottom of each brochure.
Each brochure also explains how I kick off a project, but the procedure is fairly common for each package.
Question 4: What are Bredemarket’s working practices?
But that’s not all that we address in the kickoff. There are some other lower-level questions that I ask you (such as the long and short form of your company name).
Once we have defined the project, I iteratively provide draft copy and you iteratively review it. The number and length of review cycles varies depending upon the content length and your needs. For example, I use up to two review cycles of up to three days each for short content.
Eventually I provide the final copy, you publish it and pay me, and both of us are happy.
From Venn Marketing, “Awareness, Consideration, Conversion: A 4 Minute Intro To Marketing 101.” (Link)
The picture above shows a simple sales funnel example. The second of the three items in the funnel is the “consideration” phase.
In that phase, those people who are aware of you can then consider your products and services.
If they like what they see, they move on to conversion and hopefully buy your products and services.
But how do prospects in the funnel consideration phase evaluate your offering as opposed to competitor offerings? Is it truly a quantitative and logical process, or is it in reality qualitative and emotional?
Quantitative consideration
For purposes of this post, let’s assume that there are two competing companies, Bredemarket and Debamarket, who are fighting each other for business.
Second, let’s assume that Bredemarket and Debamarket offer similar services to their prospects and customers:
Blog posts
Case studies
White papers
Finally, let’s assume that a big government agency (the BGA) has issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) for blog/case study/white paper services, and Bredemarket and Debamarket are the two companies competing for the award.
A pre-acquisition consultant will develop a Source Selection Plan (SSP). In competitive procurements such as the one in this example, the SSP will state exactly how proposals will be evaluated, and how the best proposal will be selected.
Here is the U.S. Government’s guidance on Source Selection Plans. (link)
SSPs can be very complex for certain opportunities, and not so complex for others. In all cases, the SSP dictates the evaluation criteria used to select the best vendor.
The weighted scoring approach breaks down your RFP evaluation criteria and assigns a value to each question or section. For example, your RFP criteria may consider questions of technical expertise, capabilities, data security, HR policies and diversity and sustainability. Weighted scoring prioritizes the criteria that are most important to your business by assigning them a point or percentage value. So your weighted scoring criteria may look like this:
Technical expertise – 25%
Capabilities – 40%
Data security – 10%
HR policies – 10%
Diversity and sustainability – 15%
RFP360, “A guide to RFP evaluation criteria: Basics, tips and examples.” (Link)
Individual question evaluation
In most cases the evaluator doesn’t look at the entire technical expertise section and give it a single score. In large RFPs, the technical expertise section may consist of 96 questions (or even 960 questions), each of which is evaluated and fed into the total technical expertise score.
For example, the RFP may include a question such as this one, and the responses from the bidders (Bredemarket and Debamarket) are evaluated.
Question
Bredemarket
Debamarket
96. The completed blog post shall include no references to 1960s songs.
Example evaluation of a proposal response to an individual RFP question.
Final quantitative recommendation for award
Now repeat this evaluation method for every RFP question in every RFP category and you end up with a report in which one of the vendors receives more points than the other and is clearly the preferred bidder. Here’s an example from a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission proposal source selection process. (And you can bet that a nuclear agency doesn’t use an evaluation method that is, um, haphazard.)
From U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, “FINAL EVALUATION RECOMMENDATION REPORT FOR PROPOSALS SUBMITTED UNDER RFP NO. RQ-CIO-01-0290 ENTITLED, “INFRASTRUCTURE SERVICES AND SUPPORT CONTRACT (ISSC).”” (link)
So what does this example show us? It shows that L-3 Communications/EER received a total score of 83.8, while its closest competitor Logicon only received a score of 80. So EER is the preferred bidder.
So in our example, BGA would evaluate Bredemarket and Debamarket, come up with a number for each bidder, and award the contract to the bidder with the highest evaluation score.
Quantitative recommendation for the little guys
Perhaps people who aren’t big government agencies don’t go to this level of detail, but many prospects who reach the consideration phase use some type of quantitative method.
For example, if the (non-weighted) pros for an item under consideration outnumber the cons, go for it.
Now of course the discussion above assumes that everyone is a logical being who solely evaluates based on objective criteria.
But even Sages such as myself may deviate from the objective norm. Here’s a story of one time when I did just that.
As I previously mentioned, I had never written a proposal response before I started consulting for Printrak. But I had written a Request for Proposal before I joined Printrak. For a prior employer (located in Monterey Park), I worked with an outside consultant to develop an RFP to help my employer select a vendor for a computer system. The questions posed to the bidders were not complex. Frankly, it was a simple checklist. Does your computer system perform function A? Does it perform function B?
The outside consultant and I sent the final RFP to several computer system providers, and received several proposals in response.
A few of the proposals checked every box, saying that they could do anything and everything. We threw those proposals out, because we knew that no one could meet every one of our demanding requirements. (“I can’t trust that response.”)
We focused on the proposals that included more realistic responses. (“That respondent really thought about the questions.”)
As you can see, we introduced a qualitative, emotional element into our consideration phase.
According to Kaye Putnam, this is not uncommon.
Qualitative consideration
Humans think that we are very logical when we consider alternatives, and that our consideration processes are logical and quantitative. Putnam has looked into this assertion and says that it’s hogwash. Take a look at this excerpt from Putnam’s first brand psychology secret:
Your brand has to meet people at that emotional level – if you want them to buy. (And I know you do!)
Findings from several studies support this, but one of the most seminal was outlined in Harvard professor Gerald Zellman’s 2003 book, The Subconscious Mind of the Consumer. Zellman’s research and learnings prompted him to come to the industry-rocking conclusion that, “95 percent of our purchase decision making takes place in the subconscious mind.”
From Kaye Putnam, “7 Brand Psychology Secrets – Revealed!” (link)
But how can the subconscious mind affect quantitative evaluations?
While logic still has to play SOME role in a purchase decision (as Putnam further explains in her first and second brand psychology secrets), a positive or negative predisposition toward a bidder can influence the quantitative scores.
Imagine if the evaluators got together and discussed the Bredmarket and Debamarket responses to question 96, above. The back and forth between the evaluators may sound like this:
“OK, we’re up to question 96. That’s a no brainer, because no one would ever put song references in a BGA blog post.”
“Yeah, but did you see Bredemarket’s own post that has multiple references to the song ‘Dead Man’s Curve’?”
“So what? Bredemarket would never do that when writing for a government agency. That piece was solely for Bredemarket.”
“How do you KNOW that Bredemarket would never slip a song reference into a BGA post? You know, I really don’t trust that guy. He wore two different colored shoes to the orals presentation, a brown one and a black one. Someone as slopy as that could do anything, with huge consequences for BGA communications. I’m deducting points from Bredemarket for question 96.”
“OK. I think you’re being ridiculous, but if you say so.”
And just like that, your quantitative logical consideration process is exposed as a bunch of subconscious emotional feelings.
How does qualitative consideration affect you?
As you develop your collateral for the consideration phase, you need to go beyond logic (even if you have a Sage predisposition) and speak to the needs and pain points of your prospects.
Spock is behaving illogically. Jayenkai, “Pain – Star Trek Remix.” (link)
Here’s a example from my law enforcement automated fingerprint identificaiton system (AFIS) days.
If your prospect is a police chief who is sick and tired of burglars ransacking homes and causing problems for the police department, don’t tell your prospect about your AFIS image detail or independent accuracy testing results. After all, 1000 ppi and 99.967 accuracy are only numbers.
Provide the police chief with customer-focusedbenefit statements about how quickly your AFIS will clean up the burglary problem in the town, giving residents peace of mind and the police department less stress.
If you can appeal to those emotions, that police chief will consider you more highly and move on to conversion (purchase).
Can I help?
If your messaging concentrates on things your prospects don’t care about, most of them will ignore you and not shower you with money. Using the wrong words with your customers impacts your livelihood, and may leave you poor and destitute with few possessions.
If you need a writer to work with you to ensure that your written content includes the right words that speak directly to your prospects, hire…Debamarket!
So you’ve decided that you are going to create some content for your business. But which content type should you create first? Audio? Blog post? Case study? Social media post? White paper? Video? Something else?
But coming up with a complex content creation matrix is silly, because selecting a content type isn’t that hard. (This post does have a content creation matrix, but it’s easy to understand and pretty straightforward.)
The first question
What is the first question you have to answer before deciding which content to create?
First, you need to look at your online presence and see which outlets you have, and which ones you don’t have.
Do you have a website?
Do you have a blog?
Do you have social media accounts? If so, which ones, and which types of content do they support? (Threads, for example, supports text, image, audio, and video content.)
If you don’t have a certain outlet, then that makes your decision a lot easier.
For example, if you have social media outlets but don’t have a blog, then don’t worry about creating blog posts (unless you have LinkedIn and want to create LinkedIn articles). You’re not going to create blog posts on Instagram or Threads or Twitter (unless you’re a blue check person).
Similarly, if you’re not on YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram, videos are less important. (Although a lot of services support video.)
Create content for your outlet(s)
So now that you know which content outlets you have, and which you don’t, you can create content that is supported by your outlets.
Here’s a handy-dandy table that suggests the content types you can create, depending upon your online presence. These are suggestions, not hard and fast rules.
Content Type
Website
Blog
Social Media With Audio
Social Media With Images
Social Media With Text
Social Media With Video
Audio
Yes
Blog
Yes
Case Study
Download
Social Media Post
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Video
Yes
White Paper
Download
Some of these are fairly obvious (yes, if you have a blog you can create blog posts), but it helps to say them.
Don’t worry about the content outlets that you don’t have. If you don’t have a blog today, don’t worry about creating one just so you can write blogs. Go with what you have.
(And if you don’t have ANYTHING right now to promote your business, then the easiest thing to do is to create some type of social media account: Facebook, LinkedIn, whatever. They’re free, and it’s easy to create content for them.)
As I said above, these are suggestions, not hard and fast rules. For example, the table above says that case studies and white papers are best if you have a website from which prospects can download documents. But some social media services allow you to embed documents (such as case studies or white papers) into your social media posts.
Think about what you’ve got, and create for it.
Repurpose
And once you’ve created the content, don’t be afraid to distribute it on other channels, or even to repurpose it on other channels.
Have you uploaded a great video to YouTube? Embed the video in a blog post.
Did you write a great blog post? Repurpose it as a downloadable document. (That’s what I did.)
You may choose to only issue a specific piece of content using a single content type. But if you feel like repurposing the material for other content types, go for it.
Don’t be afraid to fail
Finally, don’t be afraid to create content, even if it’s not perfect. I’ve (re)committed myself to video, and spent yesterday creating multiple videos for multiple outlets. Two of the videos that I created ended up havingproblems…but I left them up anyway, and learned in the process.
I figure that the more content that I create, the better that I will get at it.
You will find that the same holds true for you.
Do you need help with textual content?
Now when you are ready to create content, do you need someone to help you create it?
But if you need help with the text for blog posts, case studies, white papers, and the like, I can help you. Especially if your text involves biometrics, identity, or technology. Contact me!
In case you like to consume your information in video form, here’s a video about my Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service, for text of between 400 and 600 words.
About the Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service.
If you prefer to read your information rather than watch it, you can do that also.
Does your identity business provide biometric or non-biometric products and services that use finger, face, iris, DNA, voice, government documents, geolocation, or other factors or modalities?
Does your identity business need written content, such as blog posts (from the identity/biometric blog expert), case studies, data sheets, proposal text, social media posts, or white papers?
How can your identity business (with the help of an identity content marketing expert) create the right written content?
A little over a year ago, Bredemarket announced two changes in my business scope and business hours. I stopped accepting work from clients who marketed systems to identify individuals, and I reduced my business hours to Saturday mornings only.
Generated at craiyon.com.
I had to change my business scope and business hours. On May 9, 2022, I started a full-time position with a company in the identity industry, which meant that I couldn’t consult on weekdays and couldn’t consult on identity projects.
But things change.
As of May 31, 2023, I will no longer be employed at my day job.
Which is my misfortune…um…opportunity.
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Has Bredemarket changed its business scope and business hours a second time?
Yes.
As of June 1, 2023:
If you need a consultant for marketing or proposal work, and your company is involved in the identification of individuals, Bredemarket can accept the work.
If you need a consultant who can meet with you during normal business hours, Bredemarket can accept the work.
So what?
My…um…opportunity is your opportunity.
Now that I can expand my business scope and business hours again, you can take advantage of my extensive marketing expertise, including deep experience in the identity industry.
This means you can obtain quickly-generated and expert content with an agreed-upon focus.
This means you can get content that increases your revenue.
These two e-books explain (a) how Bredemarket starts a project with you, and (b) how Bredemarket has helped other businesses over the years.
(UPDATE OCTOBER 22, 2023: “SIX QUESTIONS YOUR CONTENT CREATOR SHOULD ASK YOU IS SO 2022. DOWNLOAD THE NEWER “SEVEN QUESTIONS YOUR CONTENT CREATOR SHOULD ASK YOU” HERE.)
Bredemarket 