Archive | Social Media RSS feed for this section

How Social Media Can Drive Content Creation

Posted on November 18, 2011 by in Content Marketing, Social Media

Social Media ContentWe’ve talked about tapping into feedback from your sales and services teams as a valuable resource for content ideas (see previous blog post for more information on this topic), but a less traditional solution to finding ideas for content has emerged over the past five years in the form of social media.

There’s no question that B2B marketers are using social media, but too few are treating social media as a source of feedback, and not just an outlet through which to distribute their message. Additionally, many marketers use social media to target potential prospects, and are leaving another very important resource untapped: their customers. Your current clients are also out there in the social media world, and conversations with these clients can spur ideas for worthwhile content.

The key is to treat social media marketing as a dialogue, not a monologue. You are not just trying to force your message out to a wide array of audiences, you are trying to engage with these audiences and establish a sense of community. So don’t just tweet, ask questions. Start conversations with customers, find out what they’d like you elaborate on in a blog post and watch for trends. This creates a mutually beneficial relationship: your customers know that you value their opinion and you receive valuable feedback.

There are several reasons why the opinions of your current customers are of such great value to you. Your customers are the experts on your product: they know what their needs are, and chances are, they’ll be more than happy to share them with you. Furthermore, they know the challenges they faced when buying your product. So building content around feedback from these customers can both help you to retain current customers and make your product more attractive to future prospects.

In this content-crazy marketing world, constantly cranking out content won’t always be enough to set you apart – but engaging with your customers through social media and producing content in accordance with their feedback can give your content a valuable edge.

Spring Cleaning for the Marketing Department

Posted on March 11, 2011 by in Email Marketing, Social Media

Spring cleaning is an annual (and often dreaded) task in many households. It’s the time of year that you scrub every nook and cranny, climbing high to reach the ceiling fans and crouching low to dust the baseboards. While it’s not always the most fun task, you feel much better when it’s done and you’re proud to show off your home to family and friends.

So, when’s the last time you gave your marketing materials a good polish? Ideally you’d make updates on a frequent basis, but in a busy marketer’s world, this isn’t always a reality. Over the past year, it’s likely that your product has undergone some improvements, you’re offering new services or the industry has evolved in some way. Here’s a list of items you might want to review to make sure all of your materials are up-to-date.

Spring Cleaning for Marketing Checklist

  • Review your white papers and check for outdated information, new features you can include to enhance the information, new industry research that may be relevant and new images or product screen shots to add.
  • Give your frequently used email templates a once-over and be sure all information – especially links – are up to date. This is extra important if you have “set it and forget it” items like autoresponders that you may not edit frequently.
  • Revisit your social media profiles on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other sites to be sure they still accurately reflect your product offerings and highlight the latest and greatest features.
  • Audit sales proposals and presentation materials to be sure they don’t contain any outdated product or pricing information
  • Brainstorm new keywords that might help you bring in more paid and natural search traffic, and nix any old or unsuccessful terms

Now, doesn’t that put a little extra spring in your step?

Using LinkedIn Like a Lead Generation Pro

Posted on October 5, 2010 by in Social Media

A lot of companies are working on a social media strategy as an element of their marketing mix. Over on the BrainRider blog, Scott Armstrong gives tips on how B2B marketers can optimize their LinkedIn profiles to generate new business.

Scott gives eight simple tips to creating the leanest, meanest, most effective LinkedIn profile out there:

  1. Complete your profile. This means including a picture, a complete description of your expertise and even using keywords just as you would on your corporate website.
  2. Customize your website listings. Include links to your company, your blog and other online outlets. Personalize the links with your company name, rather than the default “My Company.”
  3. Utilize recommendations. This is another way to gather customer testimonials and spread the word. Plus, it’s good karma.
  4. Connect with prospects. LinkedIn is the new business card. It is a form of lead nurturing – and can lead to others finding you as well.
  5. Join groups. Participate in the conversation. Don’t just toss out sales pitches.
  6. Take advantage of key applications to link up your materials across various sites.
  7. Refine your company page. Treat it as a mini homepage and make sure it accurately reflects your value proposition.
  8. Promote yourself. Include your LinkedIn page in your email signature. Make it easy to be found.

Some of these steps are on-going, like making an effort to connect with prospects you meet, but you can check off most of this list in about 15 minutes.  Remember, your LinkedIn profile is a public reflection of you as a professional as well as your company as a whole. Don’t miss out on this simple and free way to build brand awareness.

BrainRider also provides a complimentary guide to LinkedIn for marketers with more in-depth information on optimizing your profile.

Components of an Inbound Marketing Campaign

Posted on September 3, 2010 by in Conversion Rate, ROI, Social Media

Sales used to be all about cold calling from a list and large-scale events like trade shows. Today, many marketers are moving toward a strategy that relies heavily on inbound marketing. While the old tactics are tried and true, collecting leads through inbound channels means the prospects are already interested and warmed up to the idea of your product or and how it can solve a problem they are experiencing.

The idea of inbound marketing is that prospects seek you out, rather than you pushing information out to them. Some ways to get started with inbound marketing include:

Blogging – Creating a blog that not only discusses your product, but also discuss best practices and key trends in the industry is a great way to build keyword-rich content. This content can then be discovered by new potential customers through search engines or through links from other popular industry blogs. You can also share your posts through your social media channels.

Social Media – Having an active Twitter account, Facebook page, LinkedIn Group or online community are all great ways to provide valuable information that can attract future clients. You can start building a relationship with your followers before you even enter the sales process.

Paid Search – Paid search is a bit of a compromise between the old and new ways of marketing. You’re still paying for an ad, much like you may have in a magazine or trade publication in the past, but the prospect only sees your ad when it corresponds to a term they are researching. Because you’re delivering highly relevant solutions to what they seek, paid search very often provides great ROI.

The key to inbound marketing is developing highly relevant, interesting content that keeps readers coming back for more. Positioning yourself as a leader in your space will ensure that your company is top-of-mind when prospects are ready to enter the buying phase.

Buzz is Great…But What Does It All Mean?

Posted on August 11, 2010 by in Analytics/Reporting, Social Media

A few posts back, we examined whether Facebook fans have any real value. Naturally, fans aren’t worthless, but determining just how much value they have from a marketing perspective can be tricky. Ciarán Norris takes a stab at this $64,000 question in his column Let’s Get Social. Norris reports on a recent event called MeasurementCamp and leaves us with some valuable takeaways on how to use key performance indicators (KPIs) to make sense of the buzz generated through social media.

  • Noise is the total amount of social buzz about a brand or company. This includes every mention of that brand, no matter how trivial, along with all relevant conversations. Facebook Fans comprise part of this noise, as do followers on Twitter. Noise might encompass a lot of (nearly) meaningless fluff, but there is some real value to be found amongst the chaff. Noise serves as an important baseline for measuring future marketing activities.
  • Sentiment combines human context with automated analysis of data. Because computer algorithms can only go so far in making sense of buzz, it is crucial that the data also be considered from a human perspective. For example, a strictly automated data analysis of a Twitter conversation would likely interpret as positive a string of tweets about “how great Brand X is” — totally missing the sarcasm that the actual participants all understood as an insult. Applying this human context is crucial if you want to get meaningful results from your analysis of social buzz.
  • Topics allow us to classify and organize what would otherwise be an endless stream of thousands of conversations. Categorizing conversations by topic makes it much easier to make sense of social buzz. People might be talking about your product, but are they raving about new features or complaining about shortfalls? Knowing these sorts of details can give entirely new meaning to what might have previously been an amorphous social media mess. Topically sorted conversations also provide a window into what popular search terms might be.
  • Where are these conversations taking place? If the social buzz is coming from a wide range of people carrying on discussions in a very broad forum, you know you’ve done something right. Conversely, if buzz seems to be concentrated among niche groups, you might want to consider more targeted marketing based on these groups.
  • Who is talking about you? One tweet from an industry expert or a mention on a well-known blog is worth many thousands of conversations between low-profile spectators with no real influence.
This last point is precisely where the answer as to the true value of Facebook fans and Twitter followers lies: Exactly who are your fans and followers, and how much influence do they wield?
Just something to think about.

How B2B Marketers Use Social Media

Posted on July 28, 2010 by in Marketing Strategy, Social Media

Your prospects are social, are you? Using social data and sources like Twitter is one way to get involved in the social media revolution. Another way is to make your company and your marketing campaigns more social-friendly.

A recent study featured on eMarketer gives some insight into how marketers are using – and planning to use – social media as  part of their marketing initiatives, specifically email marketing. The top way to integrate social and email? Adding sign-up forms to social media profiles like Facebook. This is a great way to make sure you’re keeping in touch with customers and prospects who are already engaged with your brand. Coming in at a close second were broadcasting blog posts to subscribers via email and using “follow me” functionality within email campaigns to recruit new social followers.

Are Facebook Fans Really Worthless?

Posted on July 16, 2010 by in Analytics/Reporting, Conversion Rate, ROI, Social Media

A recent article from Forrester Research’s Augie Ray carries the rather scandalous title “What Is The Value Of A Facebook Fan? Zero!” Of course, Ray doesn’t really think Facebook fans are worthless. But he does raise a crucial question that deserves serious consideration in our brave new world of social media-driven marketing.

Ray discusses the valuation of Facebook Fans and concludes that it is impossible to put a dollar figure on the ROI of such followers. He emphasizes that when it comes to getting a real return on social media investments, having followers in and of itself is not nearly so important as what a company does with those fans. In other words, your conversion rate is really what matters.

Marketing guru Seth Godin touched on this same topic in another recent blog. His conclusion nails it: “Commitment is the essence of conversion.” Becoming a “fan” requires little commitment and more or less amounts to being a digital spectator. But marketers don’t just want a bunch of spectators — they want participants, because participants are where you get your return! Accumulating spectators shouldn’t be an end in itself, but it does lay the foundation for conversion. The more spectators you collect, the more potential participants you could have on your hands.

But it’s ultimately up to you, the marketer, to convert those spectators into active participants.

Social Capital: Enhancing Lead Nurturing with Social Media

Posted on July 9, 2010 by in CRM, Lead Nurturing, Social Media

There’s endless buzz these days about social media and how it’s going to change the course of marketing as we know it. B2B marketers are scrambling to keep up with this trend by mastering the intricacies of social media outlets such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. There’s no question that these applications can be powerful tools for marketers who want to spread their message to potential customers. But consider social media from a different perspective. What sort of value can marketers get from these tools when using them to craft relevant messaging that will optimize their lead nurturing efforts?

As it turns out, social media outlets offer a wealth of valuable prospect data that’s there for the taking. Social media profiles typically contain obvious items that you might already have in your prospect records, such as job title and company name. Oftentimes you can see past distinctions, employment history, and other information that marketers typically find helpful. But don’t dismiss the rest of that profile data as unimportant. You can still get plenty of value out of it! Knowing more about your prospects can only make things easier for your marketing and sales teams. Small tidbits such as knowing a prospect’s alma mater, favorite sports team, or weekend hobbies can help establish and build the kind of friendly rapport and ongoing relationships that lead nurturing requires in today’s extended sales cycle.

Since you’re making use of what is essentially freely available public information, you shouldn’t feel like a virtual stalker for collecting prospect data in this way. But there is a very fine line between tailoring your message to appeal to prospects and making them feel like you’re some creepy marketer watching their every move. Put yourself in your prospect’s shoes. Even though they’ve made this information public, it would still intimidating for your prospects to be contacted by some eerily omniscient salesperson with a zenlike ability to somehow sense their every like and dislike. So make sure that your team knows how to use this valuable information appropriately.

Here are some examples of how a salesperson might use, and abuse, prospect data collected through social media channels.

Example 1: Who’s the Boss?

Prospect X is a huge Bruce Springsteen fan, as evidenced by the virtual shrine on his Facebook page.

  • Appropriate – While engaging in the usual sales call banter, your sales rep might casually work in something like, “Yeah, I’m dragging a little bit today…stayed out too late at the Springsteen show last night.” If the prospect doesn’t bite and keeps quiet about their love for The Boss, the rep can assume that they’ll probably need to make a stronger connection with this prospect in order to be effective.
  • Inappropriate – Sending Prospect X an unsolicited copy of the latest Bruce Springsteen album comes off as overly personal, which can backfire: “Hey! Did you get that Springsteen CD I sent you out of the blue? You’re a big fan, right? How do I know that? Well, uhh…doesn’t everyone love The Boss?”
Example 2: Trick or Tweet?

Prospect Y has been tweeting increasingly often about her dissatisfaction with your competitor.

  • Appropriate – Knowing full well that Prospect Y is unhappy with the competitor’s product, your salesperson could ask casually, “So…is your current solution meeting your needs?” If Prospect Y responds as expected, it is an open invitation to explain what you have to offer and highlight why your product is more suitable.
  • Inappropriate – The salesperson cuts right to the chase with something like, “I see on Twitter that you’re using our competitor. Clearly you need a change.” This will not only weird out the prospect, but the sales rep’s presumptuous tone will likely be a big turnoff.
Example 3: The Missing Link?

Prospect Z’s LinkedIn profile lists an undergraduate degree obtained at ABC University.

  • Appropriate – Once they’ve gotten Prospect Z talking about college football, your salesperson can mention, “My favorite team is the ABC University Sharks.” An engaged prospect should perk up and mention that they went to school there, thereby establishing that all-important connection your  sales rep is looking for.
  • Inappropriate - The salesperson makes a clumsy attempt at forging a connection, saying “You went to school at ABC University, didn’t you? I’m not sure, but I think my cousin went there.” Attempts like this will only fall flat with your prospect, perhaps even raising the red flag that someone’s been doing a little too much snooping on LinkedIn.
Social media is power. Use it wisely.


Twitter for B2B Marketing and Sales

Posted on June 29, 2010 by in Marketing Strategy, Sales, Social Media

Everyone is abuzz (atweet?) with talk of the best way to use social media, whether it be to promote your brand, promote yourself or engage your customers. For today’s B2B marketer, there are a many ways to benefit from social media interaction and the information it provides. One site that provides an immediate business value is Twitter, where users provide short messages and status updates to their network. A feature that distinguishes Twitter from many other social networks is that most users allow their updates to be publicly viewed, unlike networks such as Facebook that revolve around a more exclusive social group.

Using Twitter for Marketing
Twitter can be a useful venue for promoting your brand, especially through the use creative or value-added techniques such as contests, discounts or free content like a webinar or ebook. It is also a great way to share your recent blog posts, announce exciting new features and highlight company accomplishments. Just remember not to toot your own horn too loudly without providing something of value, or you may start to lose followers.

Tracking social media interaction can be tricky, but using distinct URL structure to promote content on Twitter can help you track interactions. Marketing automation tools can help you pull in statistics from Google Analytics tracking links and tie the source to individual prospects. Some systems also provide a URL shortener that can provide in depth statistics on clicks.

Using Twitter for Sales
If the marketer is out there using Twitter to “talk” to potential customers, the sales guy should be out there listening. When you’re about to make a sales call, it can be helpful to check out a prospect’s latest Twitter updates. Sometimes this gives you valuable insight into their research process, even revealing what other competitors may be involved in the deal. In other cases it may just give you a few talking points.

Using Google Alerts or programs like Tweet Deck to track what people are saying about your competitors and key industry terms can also help you scout out new leads that you may not have otherwise discovered. This is an opportunity to engage with someone when you know they are actively looking to make a purchase.

Marketing Automation Incorporates Social Media

Posted on August 10, 2009 by in Social Media

These days in the marketing world, there is a lot of buzz around social media and marketing automation.  Fortunately, these two marketing trends can work together, creating one super-charged online marketing tool. Many marketing automation solutions now offer the ability to connect with sites such as Jigsaw and LinkedIn.

Together marketing automation and social media combine to improve your lead triaging process.  Prospect profiles are integrated with links to LinkedIn and Jigsaw.  Click on either one of the connectors and you will be automatically directed to the search results for a prospect or a prospect’s company in either network.

The feature will come in handy from the perspective of both a marketer and a sales representative.  Features such as this add an extra element to make researching and segmenting leads even easier.  Both Jigsaw and LinkedIn are popular social networking sites used by most professionals.  Each site provides another source of information on your lead including their job title, industry, location, and company background.  Using this component of marketing automation you can research prospects much faster.  You also can cater to the prospect and how you decide to nurture them on their track from lead to customer.