How is Social Media Impacting Your Brand
I’m sure management has been asking the 64 million dollar question: How is social media helping our Business? As marketers, we need to define those base line objectives to get answers to these kinds of questions. More importantly, is Facebook getting us more action or is it YouTube? If we know where our successes are, then we can spend more time cultivating them.
Generate Qualified Leads Using LinkedIn Answers
I recently read a post by Jason Falls, How to Make LinkedIn Answers part of your Routine, that showed me yet another way to generate both thought leadership and leads. Under the “More” button at the top of your home page is where you’ll find the Answers tab. There are several industry categories you can choose to follow. Since I use Google Reader, I subscribed to the appropriate categories and had them sent to my reader via an RSS feed. I also created a folder called LinkedIn Answers.
Habitat for Humanity: Tool Drive
Since our major focus is on manufacturers who make things for contractors, we thought it would be a good idea to help support our local chapter of Habitat for Humanity, so we’re having a tool drive in the month of August to try to raise money, and more importantly, tools (both new and used) to help in their building efforts, as well as to support them through their retail stores.
Marketers: It’s Time To Get Off The Dime
It’s been a tough 18-plus months for everyone in this channel, contractors, distributors and manufacturers alike. But manufacturers who pulled back their advertising and promotion budgets back then and haven’t restarted them, may be in for some surprises.
I had the good fortune to catch up with Bob Miodonski, group publisher of Plumbing & Mechanical, PM Engineer and Supply House Times magazines. We talked about the biggest trend in his industry, which turns out to be “green technology,” and he discussed how it is affecting the market in general, as well as other trends that affect contractors and distributors.
Have You Got a Social Media Policy?
Since anyone can be a spokesperson on social media, your company should have established guidelines that outline rules for online engagement. If you’re in a larger company, that means getting everyone from the executive suite to HR, and of course, customer service and marketing. If you’re a smaller one, you still need guidelines but maybe not to the extreme of larger companies.
Social Media Success Story
I wanted to share a success story with you of a traditional trade association, the PMPA (Precision Machined Products Association) and their results from starting a social program a little over a year ago (disclosure: they are a client of ours).These types of associations aren’t very sexy and they have plenty of competition out there for members to help them run their business better.
I recently caught up with Tom Hammel from Contractor Supply magazine, and he was able to share some insights as to what STAFDA distributors were doing to get them through the 2009 downturn. Tom shares his thoughts here.
Contractor Supply magazine's editorial director shares the successful tactics that STAFDA distributors used to get through the 2009 downturn. Listen to the Podcast: [audio http://tradesmeninsights.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/tom_hammel.mp3 Download the Podcast...
Pros and Cons of Starting a Blog
Blogs can be a very important part of your social media strategy. I use it as the hub of all other activity and get more hits to it than our website. If you’re thinking about doing a blog, here are a few things to consider first.