Make it very useful, then make it portable and spreadable.
Package it in as many ways as you can think of, build it out, extend it with participation, give it away for free, give it away for leads, give it away to sell it.
These and many other ideas can help you raise your online profile and be tactical at the same time. A quick tactical list:
Regardless of how much we'd like to think of this tool in the context of chats, it really isn't suited for that. However, chats are our way to establish a consistent, time-based (weekly seems to work well) stream of topical content that humanizes you.
Add to that useful links to content elsewhere, announcements, and offers sent when your monitoring uncovers opportunities to be helpful, and you have several ways of allowing people to spread your information.
More on business uses for Twitter.
Start a fan page, group, or create an application. Each is a different way to propose content so you'll need to make sure you write and package the content in ways that are suitable to the medium, and to the way people behave in that medium.
For a group to be successful, once you integrate it with your branding, you can seed it by inviting existing Facebook friends. Reach out to your email list to grow it and don't be afraid to use news announcements to attract people outside your immediate circle and list. Best advice for creating an application: find a developer.
How do you know if your Facebook fans are truly engaged?
Widget or API
For the less geeky like me, API stands for application program interface, a set of routines, protocols, and tools for building software applications.
For example, TweetDeck is an Adobe AIR desktop Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn application. Like other Twitter applications it interfaces with the Twitter API to allow users to send and receive tweets and view profiles.
You can find plenty of widgets at Widgetbox. Alltop.com and MarketingProfs Daily Mix use widgets to make the content on their sites viewable on other sites.
Video
All I have to say here is Gary Vaynerchuk, and your probably know I'm talking about Wine Library TV. Gary does educational content with panache. You could be doing a short white boarding session, a lively Q&A, or something a little bit shorter and punchy.
The point is to make it interesting, and interactive. More on video, customer interactions, and getting seen.
Live streaming
What an amazing opportunity missed by the Oscars! Imagine what would have happened if they had integrated (that's key) Ustream, Qik to name two, into their program. From the red carpet to the auditorium, they could have curated the content for TV, print, and live stream -- and gained more attendees in the process.
Think about that alternative to WebEx when doing for demos and training. If you're thinking that live streaming may be too complicated, for live events you could be using something like twitterface, the one linked was developed for a recent conference. Check it out.
Newsletters
Use software to do your email marketing. Providers like AWeber and MailChimp have templates you can set up with offers. AWeber has a Twitter integration mechanism, MailChimp has geolocation tools. I would be remiss if I didn't also mention Blue Sky Factory.
They all have tracking and analytics capabilities that will give you information back to give you insights about which content gets more traction, and make your newsletters more compelling.
Mobile apps
Think about making your Web site friendly for mobile, because many more people today have smart phones. The other part of this equation is the numerous apps developed for the iPhone.
A few weeks ago we talked about mobile news. Think about mobile instruction manuals, and other training and reference materials.
Desktop apps
You may think about developing one, like Hulu did. Hulu Desktop is a downloadable application and will work on PCs and Macs. From desktop to online, back to desktop, Google is now releasing offline gmail.
Another example is eBay Desktop.
SlideShare
You can use this tool to share presentations, documents, studies, and package the content in written and video form. With SlideShare, people can view, embed and share your content, and you get to see what they've looked at and downloaded.
SlideShare is a favorite tool of mine because the way it formats presentations -- I love visuals. Scribd is another tool that allows you to share documents online and get them seen.
Blog posts
You can always repackage blog posts into eBooks, especially if you run series. Or you could expand each post into a short eBook to go deeper.
To spread content further, you could also guest post on high traffic blogs. This will allow you to cross network and socialize your content in different and related or pertinent networks.
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The idea is to create and package content for the medium, while you repurpose the ideas and concepts, stay true to your brand essence, and integrate it all to connect the dots. It's not your Web site that needs to be sticky and keep people there at all costs, it's the content in and around it that does. The more portable you make it, the more spreadable, the stickier.
What else? What do you use to make your content sticky?
© 2010 Valeria Maltoni. All rights reserved.