5 - Promotion - Guide to Authentic Conversations

5 - Promotion

Once your company has joined Companiesandme and shared its first conversation, a great next step is to invite the people who support and love your brand to begin building deeper relationships with you on Companiesandme.

Best practices to consider:

Link directly to your company page (e.g. companiesandme.com/yourcompany) or a specific conversation (companiesandme.com/numitea/conversations/10-how-i-fell-into-tea) instead of our home page
Include a call to action, ask them to follow your company so that you can invite them to join new conversations and local special events

Here are a few ways that participating companies are promoting their participation and stories.

Send out an email

With the never ending stream of tweets and Facebook updates, there is no more effective way to share something than email. Most of us receive quite a bit, so be sure to attract them in the ways you do best, engage them by encouraging them to visit a specific story or offer their thoughts or questions, and capture their hearts by keeping conversations personal, meaningful and real.

For the more advanced online marketers out there, you can consider a service such as Flowtown to target your email list geographically and even whether or not they have a Facebook account (e.g. "We noticed that you are a Facebook user and wanted to suggest joining us on Companiesandme using your Facebook account and becoming a fan of our Facebook page so that we can share stories and special invitations with you")

Share each story with your Twitter and Facebook followers

Twitter and Facebook were well-designed to allow you to distribute content like the stories you'll be sharing on Companiesandme, where they can build a more intimate connection with you and your company.