Know-How Exchange : Website Critique

Here's the deal:
You need a good inbound internet marketing strategy. This is where B2B marketing is headed. B2B decision makers are LOOKING FOR the right vendors. They are not interested in receiving your unsolicited phone calls, emails, etc. They ARE interested in finding you online. How will they do that? The premise of inbound internet marketing is that your prospects will find you if: (1) you provide the rich, relevant information they are looking for; (2) you are easily found on the major search engines; and (3) your content is distributed and shared among the right people.

Yes to Blogging!
Yes to Social Media!
Yes to Search Engine Optimization!
Yes to a website that is built to capture leads!

Good luck.

If you are just starting your web presence, I would actually recommend first getting your website done before jumping into blogging and social media.

I believe in blogging, but websites can take a lot longer (and be more of a political process) than many people think.

Here's what I recommend -- first, make sure you have documented your goals in launching a website. (increase sales, merely provide information, lead generation, etc.). You'd be amazed at how many people skip this step. This step comes before planning the website design, architecture or content.

Once you've done that, and built the website, measure your website analytics. Once you've got THAT down, then take a look at blogging. (WordPress has free installable software which is great, btw). Then you can look at your "before" and "after" analytics to determine if the blog is helpin you achieve your original stated goals.

Blogging is more than just writing the content... depending on how much time you want to spend on it, it will also include cross-posting, commenting on other thought leaders' blogs, driving traffic to your blog, etc.

Hope that helps, and good luck!

Actually, I agree with both of the above. You can build your new site in A blog platform like wordpress, and once you've squared away all the details on the site, you can just expand the site to include an actual blog. The benefits are that the site is easy to create (we've done a number of these as quick turnaround projects for clients), the content is manageable by your internal team, and it's built on a blog structure so that adding live blog functionality / social media in the future is SUPER easy.

I agree that inbound marketing is core to any good marketing strategy.

The goal of a website is to generate leads. Build your website to help grow your business, not be an electronic brochure.

You might take a look at the software from my company, HubSpot. We have software that makes it easy to build a website, track your marketing, capture leads, engage in social media, do SEO and launch a blog. It is designed for non-technical people at small and medium sized businesses. You can find some information at this link about the marketing ROI of using HubSpot.

Much of what people are suggesting is very much dependent on what product your company makes and markets. The first thing anyone should do before designing or redesigning a web site and getting into social media is to be clear as to whom you are targeting.

Then you can build a strategy that is built logic. It bothers me that your company has had a half built web site for a year. It doesn't show a lot of commitment on managements part. Perhaps it would help for you to review the white papers at www.octanecorp.com/whitepapers . This will give you an information base to help you convince management to move in the right direction.

I believe you get better traction when the blog is off your normal site. This serves as an outpost that puts provides a live link back to your main site.

I agree with everyone here, I think you should get your website totally done first and after that you can start on SEO, blogging etc. to get more leads.
When I started my website, I had an outsourcing company setup my website. Than I created my own strategy and added everything I wanted myself.
It really helped because the website was designed properly and everything else can be fitted in very easily.
I'm from Australia and I used www.marketingeyedigital.com.au to help me develop my website, but there are many more companies offering the same service. It isn't that expensive and the returns are worth the investment.
Good luck