Image via WikipediaHarvard Business Review
8:04 AM Thursday July 14, 2011
by Dorie Clark | Comments ( 22)
This post is part of the HBR Insight Center Marketing That Works.
… I steeled myself for the onslaught: replying to the hundreds of emails that had built up while I'd been on a luxurious 12-day vacation to Spain. Like many professionals, I have a complicated relationship with holiday — coveting the idea of relaxation, while dreading the idea of being out of touch. …
The trip had been incredible — the best of Barcelona, Madrid, and Marbella — but I returned feeling guilty and slightly panicked. … And that's when I spotted Mimi, one of the most connected players in town. She smiled and walked over to my table. "How's it going?" she said. "You're everywhere."
In that moment, I realized you don't have to be present in order to be ubiquitous.
Ubiquity, of course, is a major marketing goal. You want to be top of mind for your customers, so they're calling you (not your competitors) … . Here are four strategies to consider:
- Schedule your social media presence. … Every few months, I'll lock myself away for an afternoon and come up with a few hundred nuggets to post on Twitter. You can schedule them weeks or months in advance via services like Hootsuite or Tweet Deck. … Similarly, you can use Wordpress or other services to schedule upcoming blog posts.
- Respond quickly when it matters. … If you have a corporate assistant, ask him or her to monitor your email and call you if anything urgent arises. If you're a solo practitioner, shell out for a virtual assistant through a service like Elance. …
- Enlist messengers. Perhaps the best way to seem like you're everywhere is to get other people talking about you. … Specifically ask for referrals (which "forces" people to talk about you), cultivate reporters, attend networking events, and create a robust portfolio of content, from blog posts to white papers. …
- Go somewhere cool. Sometimes, inevitably, you'll miss something important because you're away. … You may never make [your suitors] happy — but you can at least intrigue them. "I'm on vacation" is a fairly boring, lazy-sounding excuse. But — "I apologize for the delay in getting back to you; I just got back from Puerto Rico"… is a fascinating conversation starter. So consider this your permission to go somewhere fabulous and make the best of it.
Dorie Clark
Dorie Clark is a strategy consultant who has worked with clients including Google, Yale University, and the National Park Service. She is the author of the forthcoming What's Next?: The Art of Reinventing Your Personal Brand (Harvard Business Review Press, 2012).
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