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When you are about to send out a press release, or even publishing a new blog post you should definitely consider your timing too. Timing can be very important to maximize your announcement. Large companies tend to pick their announcement dates well in advance and they usually coincide with industry events or competitive announcements. But you too can use this technique to get more mileage out of your announcements.

Sometimes it is not enough just to have a great message, but you also need the right audience to capture their attention.

Perhaps some examples will help, imagine you are in the consumer electronics company and you have a new gadget that has been highly anticipated. What do you do? Well in the case of Apple they announced that in two weeks time there would be a big announcement. And for the two weeks that followed there was great anticipation and a lot of speculation of what it could mean. Exactly two weeks later they launched the iPad, a new product for the company and you were not even able to buy it yet.

Ok so you are not Apple and do not already have a cult following, but you could instead take advantage of recent news headlines. If you are selling cars you could take advantage of timing by speaking about product safety, since with the recent news of Toyota safety is once again taking over prime time news and television. Or if you have been watching the growing discussion about interest rates rising later on in 2010 you could use that opportunity to launch a new promotion.

In fact just today my mortgage company sent me an email asking me if I was thinking about the potential of rising interest rates and if I was interested in locking into a fixed mortgage before it happens. There it is, a perfect market timed marketing push.

What dates are key for your marketing messages?

Some key dates might center around conferences or trade events that you will be attending. If you release your announcement at these functions you can definitely make a splash and grab people’s attention. And if you’re lucky take attention away from your competition.

1. Watch the current news for ideas on what is going to get people talking today
2. Annual Awards where local businesses are recognized
3. Community Events
4. Holidays – Spring Break, Mother’s Day, etc.
5. Charity Events you might want to Sponsor or contribute a fund-raising prize

Image Credit: Redstamp (via Flickr)

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According to a new survey conducted by Junta42, businesses are increasingly understanding the value of creating remarkable content. One of the key marketing themes predicted for 2010 will be centered around content marketing.

Most people think it is expensive to create content for their marketing program. But in fact it can actually be inexpensive to create if you can create it in-house instead. When you think about it the content could be as easy as putting together a presentation that you regularly take on sales calls and putting that content online. your content specific to your best value propositions. Then think about adding audio or video to your website. Even uploading your content to Slideshare.net is also a great help in getting more people to link to your website when they find the content useful.

Key Finding of the survey:

• 59% of the 259 marketers surveyed plan to increase their spending on content efforts, which compares to 56% in 2009 and 42% in 2008.  This is an 11% increase in spending from 2008 to 2010.

So what does this mean for Small Business? Well if you look at the comparison of the use of content marketing spending between small businesses and larger sized businesses.  According to the report, smaller companies are allocating 40% of their marketing budgets to content marketing, which is more than twice the amount of larger companies, who are allocating 18%.

Do you have content marketing in your plans for 2010? Discuss on Facebook

Image Source: Flickr – Danard Vincente

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