The Character of Your Web Content

The Character of Your Web Content
By Brent Leary
The only way we stand a chance of having the content of our business character judged in the age of social media is by creating Web content that is full of character. In his immortal speech delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King Jr. shared his dream for this country. In one of the most quoted parts of the speech, he spoke of his wish to see his children judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. Those words will live on forever to inspire generations of people to come. Because the content of our character is what tells people who we are, what we believe in and what we stand for. And through this speech we understood the content of this remarkable man’s character.So if we’re to be judged, we’d like to be judged by our accomplishments, capabilities, and by what we’re made of. And from a business perspective, we not only should want to be judged in this manner, we need to be judged as so. However, the people we seek judgment from do not preside over courtrooms and pound gavels, but rule over social networks and comment on blogs. But shrinking attention spans coupled with an exponentially-increasing supply of online information is making it harder for us to plead our case to the judge. One thing we do know -- the only way we stand a chance of having the content of our character judged in the age of social media is by creating content that is full of character.
Some may confuse character-filled content with colorful content. Others may feel images, pictures, and videos will turn heads and focus eyeballs. And they absolutely can, but only for a minute if there’s no real substance accompanying the color. Because substance is what our online judges are looking for to allow them to make important decisions. And while it is important to offer up content on a regular basis, the quality of it is the most important factor.Quality of content not quantityMany feel it’s too time consuming to create good content, or that it’s too daunting a task. But you don’t have to write volumes to share the content of your character. Abraham Lincoln needed less than three hundred words to express his feelings for what took place on a battlefield in Maryland during his Gettysburg Address. What many feel was the most important speech in our country’s history is shorter than the average blog post. No Flickr picture or YouTube video necessary. But even today those words move people to tears. Just as Martin Luther’s words, nailed to the door of a church in Germany, started a religious revolution that’s still being felt almost 500 years later. Using content to display our true character, as individuals as well as business entities, is not a new thing. But we have to be ready and willing to make sure the content we produce represents us in a truly meaningful way. Meaningful to us -- as we need to represent ourselves and our businesses properly. More importantly, we need to make it meaningful to the judges out there who have to make the important decision on whether or not we have the expertise, experience, and character to help them answer the challenges they face. Despite the obstacles we are faced with, in terms of creating content that captures the attention of our online judges, it’s time to get over it. Don’t tell it to the judge, because they have their own issues and concerns to deal with. They are looking for help -- good help. They’re willing to search for it, discuss it, and share their story in order to find it. So use pictures, videos, blogs, and whatever you need to share your story. Post once a day, once a week, or once a month. Automate, co-create, and user generate it if it can help streamline the generation process. But remember one thing: All the judges ask is that you make it as easy as possible on them to find the real you, by creating content that allows them to understand your business’ character. Now go out there and throw yourselves on the mercy of the court.Brent Leary is a small-business technology analyst, adviser, and award-winning blogger. He is the co-author of Barack 2.0: Social Media Lessons for Small Business (http://barack20.com). His blog can be found at http://brentleary.com, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/brentleary.Tech Talk: Online Meetings Serve Clients By Elizabeth Wasserman A Connecticut based information technology company that serves community banks and credit unions found online meetings not only helped save travel costs but allowed the firm to be more accessible to clients.COCC, of Avon, Conn., provides information technology services to community banks and credit unions to help process checking accounts, debit card transactions, loan accounts, ATM transactions and more. The company's use of online meetings, says vice president Brent Biernat, has allowed COCC to better service customers, avoid travel costs, and expand its offerings to existing customers.Elizabeth Wasserman: Tell me about COCC and how you use technology.Brent Biernat: COCC is a cooperative data center for financial institutions, banks, and credit unions. We provide their transaction processing for them. If you go to a community bank in Connecticut, New England, Ohio, New York, or the Northeast, there is a good chance that your transaction is being processed by COCC. We've been around for 40 years and have about 350 employees.Wasserman: Why did you invest in a virtual meeting service?
Biernat: Every company in the world says they are very concerned about customer service, and as a cooperative we live and breathe customer service. The presidents of all these financial institutions sit on our board of directors. They fill out report cards about our service. We want to be able to stay high touch as we continue to add more credit unions. We want to be able to communicate with them more readily. And there was a great technology to enable us to do it from GoToMeeting. If you try to do this on a regular phone and conference call, you lose something. You don't have that collaboration.Wasserman: How do you use it?Biernat: We do a lot of it with our customers. There are various reasons. We do a lot of online training with them to show them a new feature in or product or to give them an update. We use it to introduce them to a new product or show them an entire demonstration. And we also use it to do regular collaboration if we have a project going on with them. We set it up and all join together and we can have some webpages or material in front of us that everyone can see. We also use it internally if we have a lot of production items we want to review and make changes to. In the past, what we'd have to do is gather in a conference room and huddle around for a discussion with a few callers on speaker phones. We have several buildings on our campus. It wastes productivity if you're trying to have a meeting and gather everyone in a room and you don't realize how much time that costs when you can have an online meeting with these same folks and they can join in right from their desks. They don't have to spend that time walking and socializing. It's much more efficient.Wasserman: What have the results been?Biernat: Essentially, it's saved us a significant amount of money and still helped us to maintain a very high touch with our customers. In the past, we used a rival technology and an average meeting cost us $250. We found this easier for our customers to use. We've saved lots in terms of travel costs alone. Every time we get in a car or on a plane it ends up costing a lot. We figure we've saved about $3,000 a month in travel costs. The flip side of that is that we still want to get our executives out in front of our customers so they still have meetings where they have face-to-face time but during the travel time back, they can call in and be part of the regular internal meetings or join another customer call.Wasserman: How long have you been using virtual meetings?Biernat: We've been using this technology for four years now. We pay a flat monthly fee per host for the service and can host unlimited meetings. We've really incorporated it into our overall strategy. As a financial services company, we're always concerned about pandemic planning and we've made sure we're set up for it. The virtual meetings are a piece of that. If swine flu seriously increased, it would allow us to have meetings without being face to face in a closed room.