How to open a branch office without paying rent

You don't sit around in your office all day waiting for people to show up and give you money. So why would you do the same thing with your website?

David Wilson at Social Media Optimization compares your organization's website to a brick-and-mortar store.

Now using a brick and mortar analogy, consider for the moment that your web site was not in a single location online, but instead had multiple locations. While your store (ie web site) gets a lot of walk-in traffic from one main road (your SEO and PPC strategy) you have noticed some new neighborhoods have began to spring up with a demographic that matches your target audience.

What would you do? You would probably consider expanding your business and building more stores in these new locations and that is where your audience is. The concept of social media optimization is similar. You want your web site and message to appear where your audience is congregating online.

This is a wonderful, "why-didn't-I-think-of-it-before?" analogy. It goes to the point I made yesterday about widgets, which allow you to offer compelling, engaging information to people who've never even heard of you, by sharing your content with other organizations, for use on their websites. If you have important things to say -- things that people will really value -- you shouldn't sit on it. And putting it on the front page of your own website isn't enough. There's no excuse for maintaining a single point of contact with people online. Every organization should be opening online branch offices that help them reach people where they've already gathered.

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