Do you know what the image is, above? You should – it’s an RSS symbol. If you don’t know what RSS is, read this article.

Staying in touch with your customers (or potential ones) is a critical step in maximizing revenue.  Some customers are just not going to buy from you upon first blush – that’s just the way the online sales world works. By the time they’re ready to buy, are you on the tip of their tongue? By staying in touch, you’re making sure you don’t lose that sale.

The Benefit to Your Business

Those interested before, are still interested now. Let’s think about this for a second. Someone has interest in what you have to say. They ask themselves, “Hey, maybe they’ll say something interesting in the future. I’ll follow them.”

Think one time, read many times. In the process above, your subscribers (in infinite variety and sources) think once, then don’t have to think again about interacting with you. They’re saving time thinking by following you.

How do you stay in touch?

Your website.

Your website is the most visible aspect of your business, particularly to the potential customer. This is where you sell yourself and build trust.

Once you’ve built that trust, you make a strong call to action (like a newsletter or RSS feed) to keep in touch.

The product update. If you’re doing e-commerce, you should have ways of potential customers to monitor the pricing (or any change, for that matter) on a particular product. targeted RSS feeds are the way to do this.

• The tool: RSS. Real simple syndication is a hot topic these days, it allows your customers (or potential customers) to follow you, their way. By giving your customers the power to follow you through RSS, they can pick what to read, and when to read it. Some of the information that you send along your RSS will not interest them; other bits might pique their interest greatly.

Without using RSS, you won’t attract a significant portion of potential consumers or readers. It’s a trust building process, but one that keeps you in front of them, too. Here are some other tools in the mix:

• RSS Diversification. You don’t have to have just one RSS feed on your website. You can have RSS feeds for any ‘aggregation’ of topic, like a category or tag on a blog. A product RSS is like that, where you can follow a single product (or a group of products, like a wish list), so if anything changes on those products (like there is a sale on one of the items) the patron is prompted and they can come back to your site to buy it. This is also a great way to get feedback on what triggers them, too.
• RSS readers: Google Reader. One of the many tools out there that allows readers to ‘aggregate’ their feeds is Google Reader. It’s free, it’s powerful, and you can share bits of information with your Reader followers (Google Buzz is starting to get involved, here… another great article to write for the future!)
• RSS refinement: Feedburner. Feedburner allows you to ‘refine’ your RSS feed, It’s a bit complicated, but the real advantage is that you can track your followers – that means you’re getting feedback on if anyone is listening. More about Feedburner here.

Your newsletter.

Your tribe. The true followers of what you want to talk about are the ones that ‘opt in’ with your newsletter. The newsletter is still (in our opinion) the most powerful way to keep in touch. By creating special incentives within your newsletter (not found anywhere else) you’re driving people to follow you intimately. This is where you build the greatest trust, among your newsletter readers.

• The tool: aWeber. We suggest aWeber. It’s relatively inexpensive, has great tracking capabilities, takes care of all the sending stuff, and allows you to setup RSS feeds of your newsletter. Basically, it’s a syndication tool. But it also lets you set up multiple auto-responders, meaning that you can send out 7, or 13, or 31 newsletters over a period of time, without having to physically push the buttons. That’s an impressive system of keeping in touch.

Your social sites.

Followers. How many do you have? By using social sites like Facebook and Twitter, you’re creating a ‘weak tie’ to a loose association of special interest groups. By posting to these sites regularly about topics that interest your customers, you’re allowing those customers to stay in touch with whatever you like – specials, references to other people’s articles, tidbits of information that interest them.

• The tool: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn (among others). You’re probably familiar with these social sites, and they’re great ways to keep in touch.
• Specialty social sites: FQuick.com. For my client Ultimate Auto Center I found a great social site specific to his business, FQuick.com. These social sites, specific to industries or hobbies, are starting to spring up everywhere. Take advantage of this by finding the social site in your industry.

Creative writing.

Creative Writing: Shine brightly among competitors. All else being equal, the creative and sensitive writers win. They listen to their customers better, write to them, and – dare we say – entertain them.

• The tool: article writing. Without being interesting (see below), how are you going to keep people coming back to your website? You’re not. Creating articles is builds trust, helps with SEO, but frequently overlooked is the power of staying in touch.

But let’s face it, you don’t stay in touch with obnoxious acquaintances, you only stay in touch with interesting people. Your website should be interesting – that makes keeping in touch a stronger desire in your reader’s hearts.

How to Identify if “staying in touch” is not working.

You have low return visitors to you websites.

Through analytics programs like Google Analytics, you can track whether you have return traffic. You can also ‘trend’ that over time, to find out if your ‘stay in touch’ strategy is working.

You have few followers on Social sites.

How many followers do you have? A fan count is one way to gauge if you’re being followed.

Remember, however, that does not mean that it’s driving traffic and sales. A better measurement is the amount of comments you have on your fan page. If customers are interacting, that’s showing you they’re staying in touch.

Do something about it.

About creative writing: how to stay interesting.

Creative writing is a way to connect, emotionally, with your customers. That might sound strange, but it’s true. If you write passionately, with expertise, and topically about something your customers want to read (or listen) to, a magical thing happens – they stay in touch to read more.

Start with your passion. What are you passionate about? That is what you write about. I’m passionate about Internet marketing (no, really!)

I find the intricacies of the digital world exciting, a big opportunity for any business to become successful, and an interesting evolution of our world.

Continue with what you’re good at. But you should also write about what your expertise is. Again, for me, Internet marketing is a body of knowledge that I know a great deal about, know how to put all the pieces of the puzzle together.

Hopefully, you’re working inside a field that you’re passionate about. It’s a two-fer!

Write something that matters to your customers. Remember, however, that I am writing this for you. By working in this field, I know (but could always know more mind you) about what companies should want to learn about. But if you don’t want to read what I write, I might as well just spend time going out and getting customers.

So how do you find out what your customers want to read? ASK THEM.

About the tools.

Start a newsletter. Creating an opt-in newsletter is a way of staying in touch with your strongest group of followers. After all, they chose to follow you. Newsletters should be more intimate and give away exclusive offers that you can find no where else.

Start a Facebook fan page. Although Facebook discourages businesses from using their primary account page, the Fan Page is a great way to stay in touch with customers that might want a particular thing, an element of business.

Here’s my Facebook Fan page. I also have one for my Podcast.

But do yourself a favor; find some Fan pages (by using keywords you would use to describe your business) already developed (and have many followes) and listen to how and what they say. What they say is what your customer is probably interested in. How they deliver their message is how they drive visitors.

Setup an RSS feed. If you have a blog, RSS is built in. Here is a way to setup an RSS feed without a blog. Once you have that RSS feed setup, you’re on your way.

Start (or keep) blogging. There’s a good 50/50 (as of March 2010) chance that you have already setup a blog. Are you writing once per week? You should. Studies show that if you write consistently, you have a much better chance of being followed.

Start tracking your analytics. You know about Google Analytics, right? Start using it to stay in touch with customers. You can track the day and time that most people are likely to read what you write. That increases the ‘stay in touch’ factor considerably. I myself am going to probably switch to a Thursday publication for my newsletter, since that seems to be the day that my particular information is read the most (this goes against the convention, by the way, of the Tuesday/Wednesday deliver sweet spot.)

In Summary…

By using RSS tools to stay in touch (RSS, newsletters, social sites) you’re creating the potential for the return (or reluctant) customer. By using creative writing, you’re ensuring that what you say and how you say it are interesting to your customer – and that makes they want to keep in touch. Remember, always, that staying in touch is customer-centric – you write for them.

What’s next?

Next week in Strategic Wednesdays article we’re tackling the one strategy that has all the buzz – Generating Sales (and Calls!)