Here are some tips you should know so this full-steam-ahead engine doesn’t pass you by.

1. Know your customers and their informational needs. Some brainstorming and a little research will help you with this important step. You are in the position of being able to inform and guide people with your knowledge.

2. Develop your strategy. Determine the message you want to give and how it will impact your customers and your sales.

3. Craft your message with creativity. Use content marketing methods to add value and relate to your customers’ needs and lifestyles. You will establish credibility and build relationships.

4. Make sure your media player can be embedded, whether it’s audio or video, a Webcast or PowerPoint images. This ensures that your message travels across cyberspace. And don’t forget mobile devices and how to access them.

5. Provide a way for your customers to talk to YOU – for feedback, comments, questions – then use that information to improve your message or your service.

6. Make available both short and long forms of your information. Summarize for those customers who only want to skim the surface and provide a way to skip to their particular topic of interest.

7. Strive to be interesting and to add value. This takes only some research and thought. When you’re an authority on the service you offer, it’s not hard to know how to advise and help people.

8. Know how your new media tools blend with your existing ones, such as e-mail, brochures, news feeds, and even business cards. They should complement one another.

Marlene Taylor, who lives in Knoxville, Tenn., is a business writer and a regular editorial contributor to Hook PR Group.

Newt Barrett, founder of the marketing consulting firm Succeeding Today. Succeeding Today (www.succeedingtoday.com), is a lead thinker in this new way of communicating with customers.

The idea is simple. If your service is of value to people, and you’re an authority on that service, then use your knowledge to inform and add value to your customers. Rather than shouting, bragging and trying to drill information into your customers’ heads, build a relationship with them that creates trust and establishes you as a leader.

Barrett offers six tips for this refreshing, cost-effective means of reaching your customers:

1. Become customer-centric. Find out just who needs your services most; then learn what their problems are and what would solve them. This knowledge will become the base of all your customer communications.

2. Focus on the customer by creating a Web site filled with valuable content your customers use. You, as the authority of the service you provide, become a trusted source of information. Barrett considers your Web site to be the most important sales tool you have, so position yourself as the expert, not the salesman.

3. Start a blog. Blogging allows you to engage in two-way dialogues, shows that you are authentic and is another venue in which you can establish your knowledge.

4. Refocus the tone of your newsletter (or begin publishing one) to be informative and helpful, offering advice and solutions.

5. Always direct your customers to your Web site because that’s where the meat of your message lies. The amount of information available to your customers is infinite on the Web, so use it effectively.

6. Rely on a content marketing professional to convert your message into the
relevant, value-loaded information you want to pass on to your customers. Well-written copy that flows nicely and keeps your customers reading, free of grammatical, stylistic or punctuation snares, instills even more confidence in you, the authority and source of the message.

Marlene Taylor, who lives in Knoxville, Tenn., is a business writer and a regular editorial
contributor to Hook PR Group.